SEED OF DOUBT

Neil McIntosh

It had seemed an eternity, waiting for the life-raft to crash.

Sitting hunched in the tiny cabin, Danielle had watched the patchwork face of the planet inflating like a balloon as the raft fell towards it. Auras of death glittered, beckoning, in her mind.

The end of the mother-ship had been written in the instant when the warp storm had burst around them. The storm’s rage had passed in a moment; time enough to hurl a great fist against the hull and chart the ship a new course, a superheated spiral dive towards the planet Cabellas. There had only been two rafts; one, at least, had made it. She was still alive.

Just for now, Valdez was leaving her alone. The inquisitor was preoccupied with his inventory of equipment: how much salvaged from the ship, how much of that still intact.

Danielle wondered about other survivors, something that would interest Valdez only selectively. Who? How useful? Or how dangerous.

She had watched the launch of the second raft, soon after their escape in the first, but maybe not soon enough. And she remembered her last sight of the Spirit of Salvation, a red glow against the black glaze of space, twisting in its final arc towards destruction. Aboard, five hundred souls. Cargo bound for Terra, final terminus of the Imperium. She had reached into their minds, shared the final moments. Most were stricken with an animal panic, but there had been a few who had already foreseen their fate on Terra. They were calm in the face of early death.

Not for the first time in her life, Danielle was a survivor. And she was alone.

Riders on horseback were approaching the wreck of the life-raft, shabby soldiers decked out in the style of old frontiersmen of the Imperium: greasy denim, leather jerkins overlaid with bandoliers of bullets. The faded badges the soldiers were wearing were for pioneer battles fought and won long before they’d been born.

Inquisitor Mendor Valdez strode out to meet the Cabellans, his brief nod telling Danielle to follow.

A rider with gold insignia splashed over his chest pulled forward and raised a sloppy salute. ‘Any more survivors?’

Valdez sized up the reception party. Aside from the troopers there were four spare horses leashed together in a line at the rear. ‘We need to be taken to the tithe marshal,’ he stated. He turned to Danielle. ‘Are you still in contact with the psyker?’

Danielle closed her eyes and searched. ‘Yes,’ she said at last. ‘Not far from here. But her thoughts are weak.’

‘Hold on to it,’ said Valdez. ‘We’re going to run the operation as scheduled.’

‘Even now?’

Valdez looked around at the wreckage of the raft, massaging his bruised ribs. ‘Especially now,’ he said. ‘What chance, Tchaq?’

A solidly-built figure emerged from the crumpled hull of the raft, las-weld clutched like a weapon in his hand. The Cabellans eyed the bio-enhanced tech-priest mistrustfully.

Valdez spat his pain out in a sour sneer. ‘Don’t fret, he’s staying here. Well, Tchaq? What have we got?’

The tech-priest grimaced, running a hand over his sweaty, bald pate. ‘Orks would have better kit than I’ve got to work with.’ He paused and traded stares with the horsemen before continuing. ‘Give me a while and I might squeeze a squeak out of the voxcaster.’

Valdez grinned briefly. ‘Good.’

Tchaq muttered, ‘Just think yourself lucky you dropped out of the sky with two tech-priests.’

A second tech-priest, younger and taller than his comrade, stepped from the cabin, eyes glinting behind slits cut in his metallic face mask. ‘We’ll fix it, sir,’ Golun affirmed. ‘Every hour spent on this dung-heap is one too many for me.’

‘Then we’ll leave it in your capable hands. Now,’ Valdez turned to the Cabellans, ‘lead the way. And get a move on.’

Danielle rode at the rear of the procession. Away from the babble of voices she could clearly read what was passing through the minds of the Cabellan troopers. Behind the facades of cheerful banter she found suspicion, mistrust and fear. She looked out through their eyes and saw Valdez, saw herself, as they saw them. Ambassadors from a distant Emperor. Bringers of uncertainty to a sleepy, ordered world. Bad news.

She made no attempt to steal through the aura cast like a halo of ice around Inquisitor Valdez. It would have been easy enough, like lifting trinkets from a blind man’s stall. Unlike many of his order, Valdez had no mindsight, no powers beyond other mortal men. He had climbed the Imperial ranks, fuelled by instinct and the primal urge to fight and win. What she had found in Valdez’s mind – blinkered refusal to countenance any uncertainty, any deviation from the one path – depressed and confused her. The inquisitor had forged his limitations into a weapon to be used against anyone who saw, who questioned too much. She had long accepted that his mistrust of her bordered on hatred.

The horses climbed out of the valley on to the great plains of Cabellas. Danielle looked down upon fields of wheat grown tall as men that swayed in great, dreaming waves. At the edges of the gold sea, nests of virulent green tangle-fungus competed for space in the rich soil. The tithe domains of Cabellas formed one of the Imperium’s great storehouses. Here, as throughout the galaxy, the struggle between order and disintegration continued unabated.

Teams of men worked the fields, purging gouts of choking weed from the path of the harvesters. They stopped to stare at the offworlders as they passed above them. The message on their faces was the same: here are intruders.

Danielle avoided their gaze. Beyond the steel-grey grain spires that ringed the distant settlement a lone, siren voice still called. Although each step brought them closer, the voice was fading.

Hold on, Danielle heard herself saying. But she knew it would be too late.

She looked up. The inquisitor had halted the column and was looking back at her, blue eyes probing, searching. ‘Well?’ he demanded. ‘What is it?’

‘Her thoughts are weakening. I thought for a moment I’d lost them.’

Valdez waved her forward impatiently. ‘Ride up here with me.’

Danielle obeyed. As she drew level with the inquisitor she noticed he was sitting lopsided in the saddle, hand braced hard against his side. She sensed pain and Valdez’s stubborn refusal to weaken.

‘Let me help,’ she said tentatively. ‘I have… powers. I can–’

Valdez tugged at the reins, urging his horse on. ‘Don’t waste your spells on me,’ he snapped. ‘Save them for the service of the Imperium. In the Emperor’s name, we may need them yet.’

Tithe Marshal Sharney led his visitors to a portal and waved an arm across the expanse that comprised his kingdom. ‘Amazing, isn’t it? Anything grows here,’ he chuckled, ‘and everything tries.’

He handed them glasses of wine. ‘You won’t taste better than this anywhere.’ He took a sip from his own glass and shuffled into the room, watching the inquisitor as he might a barometer. ‘If it’s the quotas you’ve come about, there won’t be any repeat of what happened last yield-time. You have my word for it.’

Valdez drained his glass without pausing. ‘Rot your quotas,’ he said. ‘The Emperor doesn’t send me here as a tax collector.’ He leant against the portal rim, gazing down upon the sprawling steel structures below. ‘Somewhere in this settlement there’s a psyker. That’s the cargo we came to collect.’

Sharney looked doubtfully from the inquisitor to Danielle. His mind was insular, protective by instinct. Before he could reply she said: ‘We know about her. I was picking up her thoughts before we reached orbit.’

Sharney squinted hard at her and re-filled his glass. ‘You’re one of them too, aren’t you?’

Danielle nodded. ‘Like, but stronger. The woman we’re seeking may be afflicted by a power she cannot control.’

Sharney shrugged. ‘All right, we’ve got nothing to hide. We can manage our own affairs, that’s all.’

‘Save the sermons,’ Valdez said, patience exhausted. ‘Just tell us where the mutant is.’

Sharney drew himself up, puffing out his chest self-importantly. ‘I’ll take you there myself,’ he said, ‘but you’ll find you’ve had a wasted journey.’

The old couple sat hunched by a low wooden bed, heads bowed in the attitude of those preparing for mourning. The room was a grey cell lit only by the dusty beams of light that pierced the curtained windows. A single sheet was drawn across the outline of a figure lying on the bed.

As Valdez and Danielle entered, the shape stirred almost imperceptibly.

Danielle stepped forward.

‘See?’ Sharney muttered, peevishly. ‘It’s over.’

‘Don’t get too close,’ Valdez warned.

‘I know what I’m doing.’

The couple looked up. Without explanation they allowed her to approach the bed.

‘She can’t hear nor see you,’ said the old woman. She looked through Danielle, staring into nothing.

Danielle laid a hand tentatively on the woman’s shoulder. ‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘She knows I’m here.’

The head buried deep in the pillow turned towards her. An eye peeled open, a milk-white clouded bead. A voice whispered in Danielle’s mind, a butterfly memory: Sister.

I hear you, Danielle replied. Can you still speak to us?

The girl’s face was swollen and dark, as though covered in a massive bruise. Danielle stooped low to hear the word: ‘Gestartes.’

She looked up. ‘What does that mean?’ she asked the old woman. ‘Is that a place?’

Unhearing, the woman stared at the wall. Her husband rose slowly and took Danielle aside. ‘Gestartes is her brother,’ he explained. ‘The only one of the family who could stay near once the sickness was on her.’

‘When did this sickness start?’ Valdez asked, quietly.

‘With the storms.’ The old man bowed his head. ‘We thought it was just a fever. Then she became racked with spasms: violent, terrible. It was as though she’d become–’

Valdez supplied the word. ‘Possessed.’

The man looked up, fear mixing with his grief. ‘Aye,’ he agreed. ‘Jula fought for her soul. It’s cost her her life.’

Valdez looked pensive. ‘And where is Gestartes?’

As if woken from a spell, the old woman spoke. ‘Gone,’ she said. ‘He tended her long into the night, even though he feared the sickness had tainted him. When we woke at dawn he’d gone.’ She repeated the word, slowly. ‘Gone. Both of them gone.’

Valdez turned quickly to the marshal. ‘Find this man,’ he commanded. ‘I don’t care what it takes, just do it. Go now.’

Sharney hesitated for a moment, lips forming round a mumbled protest. He caught the look in the inquisitor’s eye, and nodded assent.

Valdez beckoned to Danielle. ‘We’ll step outside and wait where there’s cleaner air.’

She followed the inquisitor out into the daylight.

‘The storms they mentioned. And the warp storm–’

Valdez nodded. ‘The same. The warp seethed with energy – perhaps with the energy of one of the Dark Powers themselves.’

‘Do you think – the Lord of Decay?’

‘Yes,’ said Valdez, ‘and that fool Sharney talks as though a little local quarantine’s going to end his problems.’ He cast a scornful glance towards the departing figure of the marshal. ‘Not this time, my friend. The Emperor alone knows what virulence the warp has set free. Pray that Tchaq gets through to Kar Duniash. Quotas or no quotas, the Imperium may have to dispense with Cabellas.’

‘But surely–’ dismay tinged her voice– ‘surely the infestation has waned. The girl’s no harm to anyone now.’

‘The girl?’ Valdez chewed the word out contemptuously. ‘One less psyker worm to blight the Imperium. But whilst she still lived she was an open channel for the poisons of Chaos. Now the infection’s running in her brother’s veins. Who can say how fast the seed may spread?’

‘And when we find Gestartes?’

‘Kill him. That’ll be a start.’

Danielle had reached into the minds of the grieving family; she knew that they, even Sharney, pumped up with his pompous vanity, were innocent souls. Try as she might she could not approach the cold serenity with which the inquisitor would dispatch them all.

‘How can you be sure the infection has spread from the warp?’

Already, she knew the argument was lost. Valdez closed his hand into a white-knuckled fist and held it under her gaze. ‘I don’t need to be sure,’ he thundered. ‘Doubt, doubt is all I need. Doubt like a maggot burrowed in the fabric of the universe.’ Valdez drew a finger down Danielle’s cheek. ‘And remember: I have doubt of you, too.’

Danielle flinched away. ‘I’ve been tested,’ she countered. ‘I’ve never faltered in the service of the Imperium.’ She felt intimidated, and despised herself for it.

Valdez dropped his fist in a gesture of disdain. ‘There’s always a first time,’ he said acidly. ‘And I’ll tell you something else–’

The vox-comm clipped to the inquisitor’s belt started to flash red. Both of them looked down at it in surprise before Valdez found the presence of mind to free the device and activate it.

Tchaq’s deep voice was recognisable even over the warbling distortion. ‘How’s that for service?’ he demanded.

Valdez cheered up immediately. ‘Thank the Emperor! Have you reached Kar Duniash?’

Tchaq sounded irritated. ‘Don’t expect the Imperium in a day. We’ve been working flat out just to patch local channels together.’

‘All right. Keep at it. In the meantime see if you can raise the other raft. Grunland’s a good soldier; he’ll have pulled his boys through if anyone could.’

‘Yes, sir. Trouble?’

Valdez snorted and switched off the device abruptly.

Marshal Sharney was back within the hour. The little man’s face was flushed with an unaccustomed urgency. ‘My stewards have searched everywhere. Everywhere,’ he protested. ‘Not a corner of the settlement’s been overlooked.’

‘Don’t tell me,’ Valdez sighed. ‘The bird has flown.’

‘Well, he wasn’t under arrest you know!’ Sharney’s indignation was hollow. He began shuffling from foot to foot as though under sentence of execution. He was spared by a cry from the house.

Jula’s struggle was ending. Her body writhed in the last throes of battle, blind eyes rolling marble white, searching. As Danielle entered, the young woman grew calmer and sat upright. Clusters of dark tumours were spreading across her face and neck, making her almost unrecognizable. Danielle crouched close by Jula’s side to hear the two whispered words: ‘Gestartes... Mordessa.’

She died before Danielle could reply.

Valdez doffed his hat and began to fan his face. ‘Mordessa,’ he murmured. ‘What’s the significance of that?’

‘It’s – uh – a ghost town. A derelict,’ Sharney replied, discomfited. ‘We don’t know it by that name any more.’

Jula’s father rose, anger stemming the tears. ‘We still know it by that name. Tell them what it is.’

Sharney fiddled nervously with his chain of office. The old woman spoke without looking up: ‘It’s the plague village.’

Valdez took Sharney by the collar and drew him in until the two men were face to face. ‘Then this has happened before.’

Sharney was fast getting out of his depth. ‘Maybe,’ he stammered. ‘I don’t know. The girl’s symptoms are similar.’

‘Tell us about Mordessa,’ Valdez suggested.

‘It was all over long ago. A century at least. There was an outbreak of sickness.’

‘Another psyker?’

‘Psyker, witch. I don’t know. One with so-called powers.’ He glared defiantly at his interrogators. ‘No, the Imperium never got to hear of it. I told you – we can handle our own affairs on Cabellas.’

Mordessa. The name stirred in Danielle’s soul. Sharney had told the truth as he understood it, but there was more. Mordessa. An old name; far older than the pioneers of Cabellas; older, perhaps than the Imperium itself. The shadow of a struggle, ancient beyond memory, flickered in her mind, then fled.

‘So,’ she said. ‘What was done?’

Sharney sat down and cupped his head in his hands. ‘The colony was new; the first habitation of Cabellas since the Age of Strife. Towns and villages were small, easily contained. Guards were posted; no one was allowed in or out of the village.’

Danielle kept probing. ‘And then?’

Sharney shrugged.

‘And then–’ the father’s face was puffy, red, ‘then they put the village to the flames. A hundred men, women and children died. No one has lived there since.’

‘You think Gestartes may have gone there?’

The old man laughed bitterly.

‘Where else would a leper go?’

Valdez led Sharney, unresisting, back to the marshalry, issuing orders as he thought of them. Far from dismaying him, the news had sharpened his natural instincts of war. For the first time since the crash Danielle saw him invigorated with a sense of purpose.

‘I want horses. And you’d better let me have half a dozen of your men, armed. Oh, and one more thing–’ He paused, and glanced at the covered bier. ‘See to it that body’s burned.’

‘That’s difficult,’ Sharney mumbled. ‘It’s the practice on Cabellas to bury the dead.’

‘Burn it.’ It was not a request. A brief smile flickered on the inquisitor’s face as he walked over to the bier. ‘Or would you care to bury this?’

A stench of decay filled the courtyard as the inquisitor lifted the shroud. Danielle glanced once at the body and turned quickly away.

Sharney looked as though he were about to be sick. He summoned guards with an urgent wave of his arm. ‘Burn it,’ he said. ‘Burn it at once!’

The tone of Tchaq’s voice deepened. ‘That’s bad,’ he said. ‘Could be messy. But there’s some better news. At least we’ll have company.’

The inquisitor’s features lit up in delight. For a moment, Danielle expected him to drop his saddle-bags and hug her. ‘How many safe?’ he demanded. ‘Grunland among them?’

‘Grunland, aye. Franca too; Plovitch and Van Meer. Their raft hit the hills about sixty kilometres north. Took it worse than ours. Brody was aboard but didn’t make it. Rest of them flamed with the ship.’

Valdez tapped the vox-comm thoughtfully. ‘Not bad.’ Survival rate had exceeded probability; as much as could be expected.

‘Get back to Grunland with my commendation. Explain the position and tell him to get his men to the northern approach to Mordessa, and no further. We’ll meet them there. Now, what about Kar Duniash?’

‘All the military channels are shot. We’ll have to try and pick up one of the freight circuits. Golun’s working on it. It’ll take time, that’s all.’

Valdez made a brief inspection of their Cabellan guides. Six thin youths fidgeted uneasily in the saddle, waiting for the order to move out.

The inquisitor frowned. ‘Tech-priest, are you still needed out there?’

Tchaq sounded non-committal. ‘I could stay here supervising Golun. Fact is, he can patch in a commnet with his eyes closed.’

‘In that case you’ll be more use with us. If you set off within the hour we’ll rendezvous well before nightfall.’

There was a pause. ‘And how am I supposed to get there, with no transport?’

Valdez grinned nastily. ‘Then treat yourself to some exercise, tech-priest! Your legs could use stretching. And, Tchaq–’

‘Yes, sir?’

‘Well done.’

The metalled road out of the settlement beat a path through scenes from a well-run war. The land was cut into vast squares, fields of cultivated vegetation stretching to the horizons. Where the man-made plateaux ended, legions of alien plant life erupted like a virus, tracing the lines of demarcation, slicing up the face of the land into chessboard squares.

As the journey wore on, closer to the site of Mordessa, the terms of the battle altered. Men grew sparse in the fields, then disappeared. The hard-fought squares of industry became straggling expanses of thin, untended crops. Even the tangle-weeds had given up. Grey rather than green, they sprouted now in intermittent, limp clusters, as though the land had lost all nourishment.

In time the idle chatter of the Cabellan troopers gave way to an uneasy silence. By late afternoon, new growths were flourishing amidst the wild corn: strange black fungi like mutated rain-spore. They oozed a scent of death.

‘Over here!’

A sturdy figure was striding through the field towards them, pushing through the crops and rotting fungus. Tchaq was perspiring under the weight of a disproportionately huge field gun that he’d salvaged from the raft. He was propelling himself towards the riders at a brisk pace, powered in equal measure by determination and bitter curses.

He reached the roadway, keeping a wary eye on the Cabellan troop. ‘What’s this then? More frightened jackrabbits?’

Valdez laughed. ‘A band of heroes to fight for the Imperium. What news?’

Tchaq spat against his sleeve and polished the gun barrel with great deliberation. ‘Golun’s got it in hand. He’ll have Kar Duniash for us, soon enough.’

Valdez nodded, satisfied. ‘Ride up here with me. With luck we’ll reach the village soon after dusk.’

Night came quickly, as though the dark growths thickening in the fields were leeching the light from the sky. The smooth paved roadway had become no more than a rutted, overgrown path. Few travellers had ventured this way.

Danielle reached out with her mind, beyond Tchaq’s taciturn fatalism and the inquisitor’s sharpening scent for slaughter, into the gathering night. She saw no shadow of living man, but somewhere in the gloom ahead she sensed the first stirrings in a darker well, its epicentre a pool of blackness so deep the universe itself might drown within it.

Somewhere a clock, long stopped, began to mark time again. Old wounds began to re-open.

They had reached their journey’s end.

At first sight Mordessa could have been just another small colony village. A crop of low buildings nestled together in a shallow valley, a spire visible above the rooftops. But, off to one side, Danielle saw other structures. The remains of walls, fluted and curved, inlaid with strange, spiral patterns. Something in their line and form suggested an older, pre-human presence, as though the pioneers of the Imperium had built their village beside the remnants of another, long departed race.

Now Mordessa, too, was dead. As they drew closer the village was revealed as a charcoal shell, a skeletal frame of scorched iron and blackened timber. The spire presided over a grave.

The Cabellan captain shook his head ruefully. ‘This is an unlucky place.’

Danielle dismounted and followed Valdez down the path to a barricade of rusting razor wire. A signboard, faded and rotten, still clung tenuously to the fence. The legend had been obscured but the crude depiction of a skull was still clear enough. The warning hadn’t been heeded. Just beyond the path, the fence had been prised apart.

The sound of feet slithering on stones somewhere in the darkness ahead of them. Cabellan fingers sweated on rifle stocks. A voice called out in greeting: ‘Hold your fire. Friend!’

The inquisitor’s expression betrayed his astonishment. ‘Van Meer?’ He spoke softly, seeking corroboration from his companions.

Tchaq shook his head slowly in disbelief. ‘He’s a better man than I. It should have taken them another hour to reach this place.’

Danielle stayed silent. The voice was van Meer’s, she needed no special powers to recognize that. And yet – she bit back a warning word as a tall, powerfully built figure dressed in the night colours of the Third Army of Kar Duniash emerged from the shadows.

Sergeant van Meer strode up the road leading from Mordessa, an unidentifiable load straddling his broad shoulders. The grin on his face was almost as wide.

Inquisitor Valdez returned his salute. ‘Greetings, sergeant. The Third Army surpasses itself yet again.’

‘Captain Grunland’s felicitations, your worship. He sends you this little offering.’ He shifted his load over on to one shoulder. ‘Rich pickings.’

The body of a man tumbled from the sack on to the ground.

Valdez turned to the Cabellans. ‘Gestartes?’

The troop captain, Tolmann, nodded nervously. ‘That’s him. The Emperor knows, he never did us any harm.’

‘Nor will he, now. Van Meer, how did you come by this fortuitous catch?’

‘Our paths met as we approached the village from the east. The mutant ran into our arms. He was so ripe with the sickness of evil, he barely knew where he was.’

Van Meer flourished his bolt pistol. ‘A few rounds of this was all the medicine he needed.’

Gestartes stared up at the stars, dead eyes fixed in a mask of blistered wax.

Valdez prodded the corpse with booted foot. ‘We’ll take this and burn it,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘Are the rest of the men far?’

‘Not far at all. Captain Grunland’s searching the village as a precautionary measure.’

‘Good. Let’s hope this one’s the last of an unwelcome line.’

‘I’m sure of it,’ van Meer said. ‘I’ve met these diseased mutants before, on Edmund’s World. See this–’ He turned Gestartes’s face with one heel, exposing a dark crop of subcutaneous welts. ‘Until these pretties blossom out, the infection can’t take. We caught him just in time.’

Not true. A voice, anonymous but certain, spoke in Danielle’s mind.

‘Where did your raft crash?’ She asked the question even before she was fully aware of it. Van Meer looked perplexed, taken aback. ‘What?’

Vexed, Valdez turned to her, but his words were lost. The nebulous darkness which had been bearing down on her suddenly focused. The raft crashed here. Not in the hills. They never left the village.

Valdez was striding out to meet van Meer, hand extended. Danielle reached deep into the soldier’s mind. The physical outline of van Meer faded out of mindsight. Beneath it–

‘Valdez – wait!’

The moment froze. Valdez stood only feet away from the sergeant, surprise turning to anger.

Danielle was taken off-guard by the urgency in her own voice. Then she found the words. ‘Don’t get near him. That’s not van Meer any more. Van Meer’s dead.’

The Cabellans slipped the safety catches on their rifles.

Van Meer had stopped in his tracks, astonishment on his face. ‘What’s this?’ he appealed. ‘What sort of welcome is this for the Third Army? A mad psyker and a gang of blood-lusty farmhands?’

No one spoke. Valdez looked at Tchaq. The tech-priest’s face was unreadable, but his fingers drummed gently against the trigger of his gun.

‘Your worship,’ van Meer implored. ‘We must send word back to sector command.’

The sound of feet pacing carefully on stones behind him. Van Meer’s glance flicked briefly rearwards. His eyes were eager, sparkling. ‘Kar Duniash,’ he insisted. ‘They could have a ship here for us in a matter of days.’

‘Yes,’ Valdez agreed softly. ‘They could.’

Further down the path to the village, a second figure stepped from the shadows. ‘Trouble, sergeant?’

‘A little, sir.’ Van Meer fixed his eyes squarely on the horsemen. ‘The lord inquisitor’s been badly advised.’

‘I see.’

Danielle looked from Valdez to Grunland. The squad captain was staying well back by the cover of a ruined outhouse, his face illuminated peach-blonde in a shaft of moonlight.

‘Not to worry, your worship,’ Grunland shouted to Valdez. ‘We’ll leave these oafs here to play with their toys. As for the psyker–’ his gaze rested on Danielle– ‘maybe she’d have been better fitted for the Emperor’s table after all.’ Grunland smirked contemptuously. ‘The village is clean, sir. Time to move off.’

Tchaq nudged his mount forward a few paces. ‘Keen to get going, aren’t we?’

‘Of course. The sooner we–’

One of the horses suddenly reared. Instinctively, van Meer spun round, hand slicing down for his gun. Before he reached it, six rifles blazed. The sergeant was picked off his feet and thrown backwards on to the path.

Utter silence. Even the horses were still.

Van Meer’s body twitched, spasmodically at first, then the spasms became co-ordinated movement. Slowly, steadily, the bear-like figure rose to its feet. Even in the darkness there was no doubt most of the bullets had found their mark. The Imperial uniform had been torn open across the chest, twisted shards of bone bursting from the ruptured cavity. The lower part of van Meer’s jaw had been blasted away. Remnants of a mouth opened in a cavernous smile, dripping a thick, yellow pus.

Fear ran through the Cabellan troop like bushfire. Valdez snarled.

The creature which had been van Meer turned, but Valdez was faster. The bolt pistol spat four rounds before van Meer had a chance to draw. His features atomized, bone and muscle spewing out in a dark mist. The headless monster toppled, and stayed down.

Another burst of bolt fire; Tchaq was aiming shots at a target further down the path: Grunland.

‘Save it,’ Valdez commanded. ‘We’ve lost him for the moment.’

He gave the order to dismount. The Cabellan riders circled the remains of the sergeant then dismounted warily.

The inquisitor beckoned Danielle towards the breach in the wire. ‘Now’s your chance to serve the Imperium. Can you read any trace of them in there?’

Danielle closed her eyes to the night and concentrated on the ebb and flow of aura in the village below. She sensed evil stirring like a slow breeze through the blackened buildings, but only in a general, enveloping swell of unrest. She couldn’t focus it.

One thing was sure. However many living men had set foot inside the village, no flicker of a human soul now remained.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘We’ll have to get closer.’

Valdez grunted, a neutral tone that was neither acceptance nor displeasure. ‘You,’ he said to Tolmann. ‘Is there any other way in, except for this path?’

Tolmann hesitated. Like a thief, Danielle lifted a word from his mind. ‘Styrus?’ she asked. ‘Tell us about that.’

The Cabellan’s frightened eyes widened further in amazement. ‘Who gave you that name?’

‘You did,’ she said simply. ‘Now tell us.’

‘Mordessa lies in a valley,’ Tolmann explained. ‘But for this road, it’s cut off by a deep pool. Styrus.’

‘But the pool may be crossed?’ It was more assertion than question.

The Cabellan looked up at her and rightly guessed it was pointless to deny. ‘There’s a crossing, of sorts – west of the village. A line of stones. It’s said a man with a good eye can leap from each stone from the next.’

‘Said?’

Tolmann wrung his hands. ‘No one goes across there. The lake stands guard on Mordessa. Styrus is a name from old times.’

Styrus. A name from the old times – from before humanity came to this world. A psychic legacy left for the pioneers. Ancient, alien words took shape like a warning in Danielle’s mind. Stoi Yn Ra. The One Who Waits. She thought again of the strange, spiral structures lying in the village. For an instant her mind filled with another image, a scene frozen in time, plucked from the forgotten age. She saw battle rage amongst the silver-green facades where Mordessa now stood. She saw alien creatures, half-man, half-amphibian, beset by the forces of eternal darkness. She saw death; the silver structures laid to ruin.

‘Old times,’ Tolmann repeated. ‘Dark times. Legend has it that–’

‘I don’t want your legends,’ Valdez interrupted. ‘Times are dark enough now. If there’s one small chance of getting into that village without walking naked into the hornets’ nest then we’re going to take it.’

Tolmann lapsed into gloomy silence, but Danielle read the unspoken words in his mind: the undead.

Emboldened by the same sense of doom, a second trooper approached. ‘Sir, wouldn’t it be better to return with reinforcements by daylight?’

Tchaq laughed, hoarse and rasping. ‘Daylight? None of us’ll see daylight again if we turn our backs now.’

‘Wise words,’ Valdez agreed. ‘Whatever abominations are in there, they won’t let us go now. We finish them, or they us. Got that?’

‘Nine against three.’ Tchaq goaded the Cabellans. ‘Aren’t the odds good enough for you?’

He lifted his gun and peered through the sights. ‘What about you?’ he asked Danielle. ‘Can you weave a spell or two with one of these?’

‘I call on other powers.’

Valdez loaded another machine clip into his pistol. ‘We’ll see about that, won’t we? Now, let’s move before they cut us down where we stand.’

They turned off the path and skirted through overgrown woodland rising above and away from the village. The forest was dark, air foul with the reek of the grey fungal cancer matted in a canopy over the brittle husks of dead trees, masking off the sky above. Occasional spears of moonlight pierced the gloom, casting pale silver pools amongst the rotting vegetation. Twice the ember glow of watching eyes blinked out on the riders, but there was no sign of pursuit.

At length the path turned downwards again. The forest thinned; the ground grew soft and marshy underfoot. Horse hooves sluiced through shallow, stagnant ponds.

‘There. Down below.’ Tolmann indicated beyond the edge of the trees where moonlight blistered on a screen of water. ‘Styrus.’

On the far side of the lake, the dark outlines of Mordessa. Between them and the village, just visible, a line of smooth stones across the water. The crossing wouldn’t be easy, and they would have to leave the horses behind.

Tchaq cursed quietly, distrustful of the slick, black water.

Valdez slapped the tech-priest across the back. ‘Don’t worry. We’ll see if we can’t save you a swim.’

‘No one swims in there,’ muttered Tolmann. Looking like a man condemned, he began to coax his horse down towards the water’s edge.

As they passed into the narrow clearing between forest and pool, Danielle felt a white-hot stab of warning. ‘Look out!’ she shouted. ‘They’ve seen us!’

A metallic whine cut open the night. A Cabellan trooper was catapulted from his horse. The others scrambled for the cover of the trees as the young soldier lay shaking on the earth, life pumping inexorably from a raw fissure in his guts.

Valdez leapt from his horse and dropped to the ground beside Tchaq. ‘Foul gods! What was that?’

Tchaq swore and spat a mouthful of dirt. ‘Nightfire rifle. If they’ve salvaged a couple of those they’ll pick us off like cattle.’

The Cabellans loosed off a volley of shots across the water. The answering blast struck Tolmann, pulling off an arm like meat ripped from a carcass.

The Cabellan captain lay on the ground, screams drowning the echo of the shot.

‘Shut him up in the Emperor’s name,’ Valdez commanded, ‘or they’ll have the lot of us.’

Danielle cradled the soldier’s head in her hands, dulling lobes of pain until death came. As she lowered Tolmann’s body with a silent prayer, a solid form shifted on the fringes of her mindsight.

‘There!’ she whispered. ‘I can sense one of them now. Across the lake. There’s a boathouse at the waterfront.’

Valdez raised his head a few inches from cover.

‘We’ll have to draw him out. No use blasting away at shadows.’

‘Seven to three,’ Tchaq commented grimly. ‘And narrowing.’

Valdez turned at the sound of wood crackling under hooves, just in time to see the Cabellans galloping back into the forest. ‘Make that even odds, Tchaq.’

Tchaq clambered to his feet. ‘Damn them. I’ve had enough of wallowing on my belly like some swamp beast,’ he declared. ‘If we’re going to draw them out, we’ll have to give them a tasty morsel to aim at.’

He began to advance into the open. ‘And let’s hope you shoot better than they do, inquisitor.’

The dark outline of an Imperial Guard shimmered in Danielle’s mind. ‘He’s seen Tchaq. He’s moving to the door of the house. Aim to the left. Further.’ The image solidified; she saw Franca squared within the sights of the inquisitor’s pistol.

‘Now!’

Bolt fire streamed across the surface of the pool. The boathouse ignited like tinder. A figure swathed in flame stumbled blindly from the wreckage. Valdez and Tchaq fired again, in unison. Gobbets of seared flesh sizzled in the waters of Styrus.

Valdez moved back under cover. He glanced up at the grey streaking the sky from the east. The short Cabellan night would soon be ending.

‘They’ll want to finish it before dawn. They’ll take risks; it could be our best chance.’

Danielle steeled herself against the carnage of death and searched the distant shoreline afresh. The images were coming more easily as her senses attuned to the dark power. She saw Grunland and Plovitch behind the ruined waterfront houses, moving to opposite ends of the shore.

‘They’re spreading apart,’ she said. ‘I can’t focus on both of them.’

‘Then concentrate on one. We’ll take them as they come.’

She let the mindforce draw her, one image fading as the other came into sharper focus. ‘I see Plovitch now. He – he’s climbing. There must be a tower.’

Tchaq gripped the inquisitor’s arm. ‘The spire.’

‘All right. Hold your fire. We may get a look at him this time.’

The Cabellan moon emerged from a bank of cloud. For an instant the figure in the spire was clearly illuminated. Tchaq sprang from cover, dropping on one knee to take aim. In the same splintered second Danielle sensed a shadow emerging from the low clump of houses at the other end of the shore. Her warning shout was lost in the crack of weaponfire, two shots almost simultaneous.

Plovitch dropped from the spire. His body hammered against the stones and did not move again. Valdez struggled to reload his weapon, searching for Grunland. Tchaq remained frozen in a hunter’s crouch.

‘Get under cover, man, in the Emperor’s name!’

The tech-priest turned, slowly. Blood oozed from a wound set like a red medallion in the centre of his forehead. His lips worked round a reply, but only a trickle of blood-flecked saliva emerged. Tchaq’s eyes gleamed momentarily, bright with the light of battle, before his head dropped in a warrior’s bow.

Valdez slammed a last ammunition clip into the bolt pistol. ‘By the Emperor, you’ll be avenged,’ he vowed. ‘Tchaq’s gun. See how many rounds are left.’

Gently, Danielle prised the heavy weapon from their dead comrade’s grip. She pulled the magazine from the long, rune-carved gunstock and examined it. ‘None,’ she said, flatly.

Valdez nodded. ‘Then we’d better make these count.’

The voxcomm hooked to his belt flashed red. The inquisitor stared at it in quiet disbelief before activating the channel open. The voice, slurred as if underwater, was Grunland’s.

‘Inquisitor? Inquisitor, are you there?’

‘We can hear you,’ said Valdez.

‘Your ammunition must be running out. I have enough to kill you both several times over. You know you can’t win. It would be better to surrender now, I promise you.’

Valdez cut the link. ‘Get a fix on the mutant,’ he told Danielle. He raised the communicator to his lips. ‘And I promise to send you back to hell.’

Danielle watched him turning the pistol slowly in his hands, weighing every shot. Both of them knew Grunland was almost certainly right. A grinning deathmask blossomed in her mind: Soon, psyker, I’ll have your soul.

She shivered. The phantasm was gone, but so too was the image she had been tracking. ‘I’ve lost him,’ she said. ‘He – it – must be shielding itself from mindsight.’

‘Then it’s coming for the kill.’ Valdez got to his feet. ‘Come on. We’ll have to take chances too.’

Before Danielle could follow she was thrown back to the ground as though a great fist had struck her down. Dazed, she tried to sit up, but her strength had vanished. She looked down at the blood streaming across her tunic. She was dimly aware not only that she had been hit, but that the shot had been intended to wound, not kill. Not yet.

She recoiled from the stream of pain and tried to turn her healing powers inwards. The wound was slight; she could close it if only she could calm herself.

She saw Valdez, running as if in slow motion towards the water’s edge. The bolt pistol spat, then jammed. As the inquisitor tugged at the ammunition clip, a figure appeared on the far shore and stepped on to the stones.

Smiling serenely, Grunland began to leap across. One. Two. Three. Soon he’d be halfway. The trigger of the bolt pistol locked again in a dull, dead click. Valdez threw the weapon down, desperation in his eyes as Grunland closed on him with smooth, athletic bounds over the stones.

The inquisitor tried his footing on the first white rock jutting like a fist from the pool. Grunland laughed and spread his arms in welcome.

‘Come on, mortal man. Pit your puny strength against real power.’

Ice had set in Danielle’s limbs. Paralyzed, she lay watching as Valdez jumped to the second stone. Grunland’s face was shimmering under the moonlight, contours rippling as though a pupa was about to burst from the human shell. On a plateau of rock no more than six feet across, man and mutant met.

Grunland’s first blow nearly crippled Valdez; a vicious hammer punch into the bruised ribs below the inquisitor’s chest. Valdez rocked back, fighting to stay up, clawing for a grip on Grunland’s throat. Grunland lunged again and missed. For an instant he was off-balance.

Valdez stabbed at the mutant’s eyes, fist cracking hard against a socket. Grunland howled in sudden pain but grasped his attacker before Valdez could draw back for another blow, twisting his arm like a rotted branch. The mutant kicked out and knocked the inquisitor’s legs from beneath him, spitting savage curses.

Danielle tried to stand; she couldn’t even crawl. The mutant was straddling his victim, savouring the moment of victory. Grunland’s body was altering now. As the power that had held the chameleon mask was channelled into battle, the mark of the Lord of Decay was revealed. Grunland’s face began to blister and crack until the skin ruptured like an over-ripe fruit. Sores opened out over his body, weeping streams of stinking pus into the lake.

Danielle gathered her powers into a single image of light and fled from her body towards the mutant. Her light broke in a flare of incandescence in Grunland’s mind. The mutant cried out, blinded for an instant by white sun.

Valdez connected with a final, lunging blow, using his body like a battering ram. Grunland reeled; his feet slipped against the edge of the stone and he fell back into the dark waters of Styrus.

It was no more than a brief respite. Within seconds Grunland had regained his feet, the water barely rising above his thighs. He began to wade back towards the rock, but, as he did so, the waters around him seemed to boil, rising in a sudden tumult around the mutant.

Bewildered, Grunland grabbed at the edge of the rock, but the torrent hauled him back. Then, as Danielle watched, the waters seemed to rise up and take shape, moonlight glinting off the green-tinged flanks of a huge, amphibious warrior. Grunland thrashed out, but his blows passed through the cold glistening body without seeming to touch it.

The mutant slipped back into the raging foam. As he tried to stand, the warrior’s scaly arms encircled him, taloned fingers gripping his throat, forcing his body below the waters. The warrior shape collapsed into the turmoil. The waters frothed with heavy waves, then settled. The last thing Danielle saw before unconsciousness took her were the dying ripples on the surface of the lake.

Something cold and hard was pressed beneath her ribs where she lay. The inquisitor’s bolt pistol. She must have reached it before she passed out.

Delicately, as though she were made of brittle glass, Danielle coaxed her bruised body until she was sitting upright. She pulled the torn fabric of her tunic apart and inspected the wound. She would keep the scar forever, but the lesion was healed and dry.

She looked up and saw Valdez, wading slowly through the shallows to the shore. He saw her watching him and tried to straighten his beaten body. The inquisitor cursed and hugged his ribs, pain crushing his efforts. It was a while before he would look at her again.

‘The mutant?’ he asked, finally.

‘Gone. There’s no doubt of that.’ She remembered Tolmann’s unspoken fear of what lay below the waters of the lake. The one who waits.

Valdez gazed back across the pool. ‘So it’s finished. The infection’s destroyed.’

Her grip around the pistol tightened. ‘Maybe,’ she said.

Something was wrong with Valdez, or rather, with her perception of him. She reached out to his mind and realized, with a shock, that her power had gone.

Valdez stepped towards her. ‘What is it? Why are you looking at me like that?’

‘You fought the mutant. There was contact...’

Valdez made a clumsy grab for the weapon, swearing as she drew back. ‘Don’t be so foolish. Use your psyker’s eyes. You can see plain enough what I am.’

Danielle looked. All she saw was the semblance of a man. Suddenly she understood the universe, the dark sightless universe where only the few were given mindsight. And she understood the ways of the blind men who must guard the gateways of the Imperium.

‘Unbutton your tunic,’ she said, levelling the pistol.

Valdez stared at her as though she were mad. Finally, he drew back the thick fold of cloth covering his flank. A thick, bloody syrup oozed from lacerations where the mutant’s blows had struck.

‘How do I know that the infection has been stemmed? How do I know it hasn’t reached you?’ She forced herself to hold his gaze. ‘Tell me,’ she demanded. ‘What would an inquisitor do?’

‘Enough of this rubbish. Let’s contact the raft and I might just forget it.’ He took another step forward. Danielle raised the pistol until it was aimed squarely at his face.

Valdez halted. A half smile crossed his face. ‘That pistol,’ he said. ‘It’s jammed.’

‘Was jammed.’

‘And how can you suddenly be so sure of that?’

Danielle felt a tightening in her throat. ‘I can’t.’

Slowly, Valdez extended his one strong arm towards her.

Danielle squeezed the trigger.

The voice on the voxcomm hesitated, sounding shocked. ‘Dead?’ Golun repeated. ‘Tchaq too?’

Danielle paused, then nodded firmly. ‘He gave his life in the service of the Emperor.’

Golun’s tone was flat, devoid of emotion. ‘Very well,’ he said at last. ‘It appears you’re in charge. I’ve reached Kar Duniash on the freighter circuit. They’ll have a military channel patched back in to us in a few minutes. What’s the message going to be?’

A breeze rustled in the trees, freshening the air. Only the faintest shiver now disturbed the calm of the lake. The dead warrior of the ancient lost race had taken its token revenge. The spirit guardian lay again at rest. Waiting. Waiting for the cycle of battle to begin again. A battle without beginning, or without end. She was a part of it.

Danielle looked around at the new world of uncertainties that, for the moment at least, she must walk through. The flower of evil had been cut down. But what of the root, what of the Chaos infection borne on the warp storm to Cabellas? Could she be sure that the seed of evil had been destroyed?

‘Well? Can I tell them everything’s all right?’

‘No. Wait for the military channel to be restored, then put them through to me. I’ll tell them what needs to be done. In the meantime, get some help down here.’ She looked at the bodies of Valdez and the two soldiers. ‘There’s work that needs finishing.’

Something glinted in the reeds close to the Valdez’s body. Danielle bent down and picked up the tiny silver skull, badge of high office of the Inquisition. She placed it deep within a pocket where she could be sure it would not be lost.

‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘Thank you for testing me. For teaching me the strength which must come from doubt.’

The voxcomm blinked red again. Sector command were ready to receive instructions.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

NEIL MCINTOSH

Neil McIntosh has written cracking stories for Inferno!, namely The Gifts of Tal Daur in issue 20 and Debt of Blood in issue 23. Neil lives and works in Sussex.

A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION

Published in 1990 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd., Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK

Cover illustration by Paul Dainton

© Games Workshop Limited, 1990, 2012. All rights reserved.

Black Library, the Black Library logo, Games Workshop, the Games Workshop logo and all associated marks, names, characters, illustrations and images from the Warhammer universe are either ®, TM and/or © Games Workshop Ltd 2012, variably registered in the UK and other countries around the world. All rights reserved.

A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978-0-85787-544-0

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise except as expressly permitted under license from the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

See the Black Library on the internet at

blacklibrary.com

Find out more about Games Workshop’s world of Warhammer and the Warhammer 40,000 universe at

www.games-workshop.com

eBook license

This license is made between:

Games Workshop Limited t/a Black Library, Willow Road, Lenton, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, United Kingdom (“Black Library”); and

(2) the purchaser of an e-book product from Black Library website (“You/you/Your/your”)

(jointly, “the parties”)

These are the terms and conditions that apply when you purchase an e-book (“e-book”) from Black Library. The parties agree that in consideration of the fee paid by you, Black Library grants you a license to use the e-book on the following terms:

* 1. Black Library grants to you a personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable, royalty-free license to use the e-book in the following ways:

o 1.1 to store the e-book on any number of electronic devices and/or storage media (including, by way of example only, personal computers, e-book readers, mobile phones, portable hard drives, USB flash drives, CDs or DVDs) which are personally owned by you;

o 1.2 to access the e-book using an appropriate electronic device and/or through any appropriate storage media; and

* 2. For the avoidance of doubt, you are ONLY licensed to use the e-book as described in paragraph 1 above. You may NOT use or store the e-book in any other way. If you do, Black Library shall be entitled to terminate this license.

* 3. Further to the general restriction at paragraph 2, Black Library shall be entitled to terminate this license in the event that you use or store the e-book (or any part of it) in any way not expressly licensed. This includes (but is by no means limited to) the following circumstances:

o 3.1 you provide the e-book to any company, individual or other legal person who does not possess a license to use or store it;

o 3.2 you make the e-book available on bit-torrent sites, or are otherwise complicit in ‘seeding’ or sharing the e-book with any company, individual or other legal person who does not possess a license to use or store it;

o 3.3 you print and distribute hard copies of the e-book to any company, individual or other legal person who does not possess a license to use or store it;

o 3.4 You attempt to reverse engineer, bypass, alter, amend, remove or otherwise make any change to any copy protection technology which may be applied to the e-book.

* 4. By purchasing an e-book, you agree for the purposes of the Consumer Protection (Distance Selling) Regulations 2000 that Black Library may commence the service (of provision of the e-book to you) prior to your ordinary cancellation period coming to an end, and that by purchasing an e-book, your cancellation rights shall end immediately upon receipt of the e-book.

* 5. You acknowledge that all copyright, trademark and other intellectual property rights in the e-book are, shall remain, the sole property of Black Library.

* 6. On termination of this license, howsoever effected, you shall immediately and permanently delete all copies of the e-book from your computers and storage media, and shall destroy all hard copies of the e-book which you have derived from the e-book.

* 7. Black Library shall be entitled to amend these terms and conditions from time to time by written notice to you.

* 8. These terms and conditions shall be governed by English law, and shall be subject only to the jurisdiction of the Courts in England and Wales.

* 9. If any part of this license is illegal, or becomes illegal as a result of any change in the law, then that part shall be deleted, and replaced with wording that is as close to the original meaning as possible without being illegal.

* 10. Any failure by Black Library to exercise its rights under this license for whatever reason shall not be in any way deemed to be a waiver of its rights, and in particular, Black Library reserves the right at all times to terminate this license in the event that you breach clause 2 or clause 3.