'Our time is up/ Voke cried to me.
'How true/ said Malahite. 'And now, your promise. I have answered you fully. Are you men of your word?'
*We can't save you from death, Malahite/ Voke told him. 'But the abominations you have chosen to align yourself with are coming to consume your soul. We can at least be merciful and extinguish your spirit now, before they arrive/
Malahite grinned, flecks of shale clicking off his exposed teeth. 'Damn your offer, Commodus Voke. And damn you both/
'Move, Voke!' I cried. Malahite had simply been keeping us talking, padding his story out. He knew damn well we had nothing much to offer him except a swift end. That didn't interest him. He wanted revenge. That was his price for speaking. He wanted to make sure we were still here, when the end came, to die with him.
The desert behind him raptured upwards, throwing rock and dust into the cyclonic gale. A column of blood exploded out of the ground like a geyser, half a kilometre wide and a dozen high. It rose like a gigantic tree, swirling with pustular flesh, sinew, muscle, ragged tissue and a million staring eyes that coated it like glistening foam.
Branch-like tendrils of bone and tissue whipped out from the swirling, semi-fluid behemoth and tore Malahite apart.
It was the most complete, most devastating fate I have ever seen a man suffer. But he was still smiling, triumphantly, as it happened.
TWENTY-TWO
In the mouth of the warp.
A mandate to purge.
S6-Izar.
The psychically manifested memory of the fringe world and its excavation site blurred away, shattering like an image in a broken mirror. But the towering daemon-form remained, keening in the lethal darkness, driving the tempest of damnation down upon us.
I felt Voke lash out with his mind against the thing, but it was a futile gesture, like a man exhaling into the face of a hurricane.
'Back!' I yelled, my voice lost and distant even to me.
I saw him falling into the void at my side, reaching for me. I yelled his name again, holding out my hand. He cried out an answer I couldn't hear.
Instead, I heard shouting, screaming and the blast of gunfire.
I sprawled painfully onto the cold paved floor of the chapel, soaked with blood and plasmic-residue, gasping for air, my heart bursting. The noises now were all around me, deafening and clear.
I rolled.
Panic was emptying the chapel. Priests and novices alike, acolytes and retainers, all were fleeing, wailing, overturning pews. Lord Rorken was on his feet, his face pale, and his devoted bodyguard, with their saintly masks, were charging forward, their broadswords whirring as they described masterful figures of eight.
I saw Voke, unconscious, nearby. Like me, he was saturated with inhuman gore and the drooling liquor of the immaterium.
I couldn't find my balance, and there was a dullness in my head. I retched clots of blood. I knew I was damned. Damned by the warp, ruined and stained. I had strayed too close too long.
The astropaths were staggering backwards, frantic, shrieking. Some were already dead, and others were convulsing or haemorrhaging. As I looked up, two exploded simultaneously, like blood-filled blisters. Arcs of warp-energy flashed among them, frying minds, fusing bones and boiling body fluid.
Malahite's corpse had gone. In its place on the plinth, crouched a thrashing, screeching horror of smoke and rotting bone. The astropaths had broken the link, having staunchly sustained it long enough for Voke and I to escape. But something had come back with us.
It had no form, but suggested many, as a shadow on a wall or a cloud in the sky might flicker and resemble many things in a passing moment. Inside its fluttering robes of smoke, starlight shone and teeth flashed.
The first of Rorken's bodyguards was on it, slicing with his sword. The razor-keen blade, engraved with votive blessings and curial sacraments, passed harmlessly through wispy, ethereal fog.
In response, a long, attenuated claw of jointed bone, like a scythe with human teeth growing from the blade edge, lashed out and chopped through his torso and his holy blade, bisecting both.
I fumbled for a weapon, any damn weapon.
There was a cacophony of gunfire.
Storm bolters blasting, the three Deathwatch Marines advanced towards the horror. Their black armour was rimed with psychic frost. Over his vox-speaker, Cynewolf could be heard, admonishing the foe and barking tactical instructions to his comrades.
Their chapter-wrought bolters continued to boom in unison until the unremitting fire had blasted the thing from the warp backwards in a scrambling, shrieking smear of blackness and bone limbs. It fell back off the plinth into the retreating astropaths, crashing dead and living alike.
Brother-Captain Cynewolf moved ahead of his companions, faster than seemed to me possible for such a heavily armoured form. Tossing aside his spent bolter, he drew his chainsword and hacked again and again into the writhing mass, driving it backwards into the adulatory stalls, which splintered like tinder wood.
Lord Rorken strode past me, wielding a ceremonial silver flamer he had snatched from one of his attendants. The acolyte ran behind, struggling to hold on to the gold-inlaid fuel tanks and keep pace with his master.
Rorken's voice sang out above the mayhem. 'Spirit of noxious immate-ria, be gone from hence, for as the Emperor of Mankind, manifold be his blessings, watches over me, so I will not fear the shadow of the warp...'
Holy fire spurted from the Lord Inquisitor's weapon and washed across the warp-spawned thing. Lord Rorken was chanting the rite of banishment at the top of his lungs.
Endor pulled me to my feet and we both lent our voices to the words. There was a tremor that seemed to vibrate the entire ship. Then nothing remained of the vile creature except a layer of ash and the devastation it had wrought.
As penance for the act of transgression that had led to this warp-invasion, Konrad Molitor was charged with rededicating and reconsecrating the violated chapel. The work, overseen by the arch-priests of the curia and the techno-adepts of the Glorious Omnissiah, took all of the first six weeks of our ten-week transit time to 56-Izar. Molitor took his duties seriously, dressed himself in a filthy sackcloth shirt of contrition, and had his retainers scourge him with withes and psychic awls between ceremonies. I thought he got off lightly.
I spent a month recovering from the physiological trauma of the auto-seance in one of the battleship's state apartments. The psychological damage I suffered during that event lasted for years after. I still dream of that geyser of blood, clothed in myriad eyes, filling the sky. You don't forget a thing like that. They say memory softens with time, but that particular memory never has. Even today, I console myself that to have forgotten would have been worse. That would have been denial, and denial of such visions eventually opens the doors of insanity.
I lay upon the apartment's wide bed all month, propped up with bolsters and pillows. Physicians attended me regularly, as did members of Lord Rorken's staff, dressed in their finery. They tested my health, my mind, my recovering strength. I knew what they were looking for. A taint of the warp. There was none, I was sure, but they couldn't take my word for it, of course. We had come close, Voke and I, close to the precipice, close to the edge of irreconcilable damnation. Another few seconds...
Aemos stayed with me, bringing me books and slates to divert me. Sometimes he read aloud, from histories, sermons or stories. Sometimes he played music spools on the old, horn-speakered celiaphone, cranking the handle by hand. We listened to the light orchestral preludes of Daminias Bartelmew, the rousing symphonies of Hanz Solveig, the devotional chants of the Ongres Cloisterhood. He warbled along with operettas by Guinglas until I pleaded with him to stop, and mimed the conductor's role when the Macharius Requiem played, dancing around the room on his augmetic legs in such a preposterous, sprightly fashion it made me laugh aloud.
'It's good to hear that, Gregor/ he said, blowing dust off a new spool before fitting it into the celiaphone.
I was going to answer, bu
t the strident war-hymns of the Mordian Regimental Choir cut me off.
Midas visited me, and spent time playing regicide or plucking his Glavian lyre. I took these recitals as a particular compliment. He'd been dragging
the lyre around for years, ever since I had first met him, and had never played in my hearing, despite my requests.
He was a master, his circuit-inlaid fingers reading and playing the coded strings as expertly as they did flight controls.
On his third visit, after a trio of jaunty Glavian dances, he set his turtle-backed instrument down against the arm of his chair and said 'Lowink is dead.'
I closed my eyes and nodded. I had suspected as much.
'Aemos didn't want to tell you yet, given your condition, but I thought it was wrong to keep it from you/
'Was it quick?'
'His body survived the seance invasion, but with no mind to speak of. He died a week later. Just faded away'
Thank you, Midas. It is best I know. Now play again, so I can lose myself in your tunes.'
Strangely, I came to enjoy Bequin's visits most. She would bustle in, tidying around me, tut-tutting at the state of my water jug or the collapse of my bolsters. Then she would read aloud, usually from books and slates Aemos had left, and often from works that he had already declaimed for my edification. She read them better, with more colour and phlegm. The voice she put on to do Sebastian Thor made me laugh so hard my ribs hurt. When she got to reading KerlofFs Narrative of the Horus War, her impersonation of the Emperor was almost heretical.
I taught her regicide. She lost the first few games, mesmerised by the pieces, the complex board and the still more complex moves and strategies. It was all too 'tactical' for her, she announced. There was no 'incentive'. So we started to play for coins. Then she got the gist and started to win. Every time.
When Midas visited me next, he said sourly, 'Have you been teaching that girl to play?'
Towards the end of my third week of recuperation, Bequin arrived in my apartment and declared, 'I have brought a visitor/
The ruined side of Godwyn Fischig's face had been rebuilt with augmetic muscle and metal, and shrouded with a demi-visage mask of white ceramite. His lost arm had also been replaced, with a powerful metal prosthetic. He was clad in a simple, black jacket and breeches.
He sat at my bedside, and wished me a speedy recovery.
"Your courage has not been forgotten, Godwyn/ I said. 4Vhen this undertaking is over, you may wish to return to your duties on Hubris, but I would welcome your presence on my staff, if you choose so/
'Nissemay Carpel be damned/ he said. 'The High Custodian of the Dormant Vaults may call for me, but I know where I want to be. This life has purpose. I would stay here in it/
Fischig remained at my side for hours, long into the night, by ship-time. We talked, and joked occasionally, and then played regicide with Bequin
looking on. At first, his problems in manipulating the pieces with his unfamiliar new limb afforded us plenty of amusement. Only when he had beaten me in three straight games did he admit that Bequin, in her infinite wisdom, had been coaching him for the past few weeks.
I had one last visitor, a day or two before I was finally able to walk and go about my business uninterrupted by periods of fatigue. Heldane wheeled him in on a wire-spoked carrier chair.
Voke was shrunken and ill. He could only speak by way of a vox-enhancer. I was sure he would be dead in a matter of months.
'You saved me, Eisenhorn,' he husked, haltingly, through the vox aug-metic.
'The astropaths made it possible for us to live,' I corrected.
Voke shook his gnarled, sunken head. 'No... I was lost in a realm of damnation, and you pulled me back. Your voice. I heard you call my name and it was enough. Without that, without that voice, I would have succumbed to the warp.'
I shrugged. What could I say?
'We are not alike, Gregor Eisenhorn,' he continued, tremulously. 'Our concept of inquisition is wildly at variance. But still I salute your bravery and your dedication. You have proven yourself in my eyes. Different ways, different means, is that not the true ethic of our order? I will die peacefully - and soon, I think - knowing men such as you maintain the fight.'
I was honoured. Whatever I thought of his modus operandi, I knew our purposes pointed in the same direction.
With a weak gesture he beckoned Heldane forward. The man's raw, damaged head was no prettier than when I had last seen it.
'I want you to trust Heldane. Of all my students, he is the best. I intend to recommend his elevation to the level of high interrogator, and from there, inquisitional rank beckons. If I die, look to him for my sake. I have no doubt the Inquisition will benefit from his presence.'
I promised Voke I would do so, and this seemed to please Heldane. I didn't like the man much, but he had been resilient and unfaltering in the face of savage death, and there was no doubting his ability or dedication.
Voke took my hand in his sweaty claw and rasped 'Thank you, brother.'
As rr turned out, Commodus Voke lived on for another one hundred and three years. He proved nigh on impossible to kill. When Golesh Constan-tine Pheppos Heldane was finally elected to the rank of inquisitor, it was all Voke's doing. The sins of the father, as they say.
Invasion training began three weeks off 56-Izar. Initially, Admiral Spat-ian's plan was for a fleet action, a simple annihilation of any targets from orbit. But Lord Rorken and the Deathwatch insisted that a physical invasion was required. The recovery and destruction of the xenos Necroteuch
had to be authenticated, or we would never know for sure that it was truly gone. Only after that objective was achieved could extreme destructive sanction be unleashed on 56-Izar.
All that could be learned from my associates and the surviving Gudrunites concerning the saruthi tetrascapes - ironically, we were using Malahite's term by then - was collated during a scrupulously searching series of interviews conducted by naval tacticians and Brytnoth, the Death-watch's revered librarian and strategist.
The collected information was profiled by the fleet's cogitators, and simulations created to acclimatise the ground forces. To my eyes, the simulations conveyed nothing of the wrongness we had experienced on the world of the plateau.
Brytnoth himself conducted my interviews, accompanied by Olm Madorthene. Shaven-headed, a giant of a man even without his armour, Brytnoth was nevertheless cordial and attentive, addressing me with respect and listening with genuine interest to my replies. I tried to do verbal justice to my memories of the experience, and additionally related the theories that Malahite had expounded during that fateful seance.
Eschewing the luxury of a servitor scribe or clerk, Brytnoth made his own notes as he listened. I found myself engrossed watching the warrior's paw working the dwarfed stylus almost delicately across the note-slate.
We sat in my apartments for the sessions, which often lasted hours. Bequin brought in regular trays of hot mead or leaf infusions, and Brytnoth actually extended his little finger as he lifted the porcelain cups by the handle. He was to me the embodiment of war in peacetime, a vast power bound into genteel behaviour, striving to prevent his awesome strength from breaking loose. He would lift the cup, small finger extended, consult his notes and ask another question before sipping.
The fact that small finger was the size and shape of an Arbites' truncheon was beside the point.
4Vhat I'm trying to establish, brother inquisitor, is whether the environments of the saruthi xenos will hinder our forces or deprive them of optimum combat efficiency/
'You can be sure of that, brother librarian.' I poured some more Olicet tea from the silver pot. 'My comrades were disoriented for the entire duration of the mission, and the Gudranite riflemen had broken because of the place more than anything else. There is a wrongness that quite disarms the senses. It had been conjectured by some that this is a deliberate effect used by the saruthi to undermine sentients used to three physical dimensions, but the traitor
Malahite made more sense in my opinion. The wrongness is a by-product of the saruthi's preferred environments. We can expect the effect to be the norm on any homeworld of theirs.'
Brytnoth nodded and noted again.
'I'm sure your chapter's experience and specialised sensor equipment will be a match for it/ put in Madorthene. 'Myself, I'm worried about the guard. They'll be the mainstay of this action/
'They've all seen the preliminary briefing simulations/ Brytnoth murmured.
'With respect, I have too and they hardly do justice to the places we will find ourselves in.' I looked across the table into Brytnoth's face. His rugged features were sunken and colourless, the common trait of one who spends most of his life hidden within a combat helmet. His hooded eyes regarded me with interest. What wars, what victories, had those eyes witnessed, I wondered. What defeats?
'What do you suggest?' Brytnoth asked.
'Adverse cross-training,' I replied. I'd thought about it long and hard. 'Olm here knows I'm no military man, brother-librarian, but that's the way it seems to me. Make the troops practise overburden and off-balance. Blindfold them in some exercises, cuff them in others, alter gravity in the training vaults. Make the weighted packs they carry off centre and awkward. Switch light levels without warning. Crank the temperature and air pressure up and down. Simply make it hard for them. Train them to run, cover, shoot and reload in off-putting extremes. Make them learn all their essential combat procedures so well they can do them anywhere, under any circumstances. When they hit the ground at 56-Izar, let the fight be all they worry about. Everything else should be instinctive.'
Madorthene smiled confidently. 'The infantry forces at our disposal are primarily navy troopers and Mirepoix light elite from the Imperial Guard, seasoned soldiers all, unlike the poor Gudrunite foundees you had to nursemaid, Gregor. We'll put them through the hoops and raise their game for the big push. They've got the combat hours and the balls to do it.'
'Don't stint,' I warned Madorthene. 'And those foundees you refer to -Sergeant Jeruss and his men. I want them with me when I go in.'
'Gregor! We can give you a crack squad of Mirepoix who-'