Shells and las-bolts continued to punch against Ravenor’s shield, rippling and dimpling the air in brief crater patterns.
‘You can’t hold this back forever!’ Molotch yelled.
‘If there’s any luck left in this accursed galaxy,’ Ravenor replied, ‘I won’t have to.’
+Now would be a good time!+ he sent with as much willpower as he could spare.
On the other side of the monastic wall, more hired guns were massing at Slade’s orders to protect the landing. They came running from several directions, arming weapons and running link checks. The gunfire beyond the wall was a rattling, coughing blurt of sound.
‘Fan out!’ ordered Eldrik, in charge of the support unit. ‘Some of you get on the wall top. Heavy weapons to the gate!’
Eldrik paused suddenly. Some of his men ran on past him. ‘Where the hell did that come from?’ he asked.
There was a door in the lower terrace wall. It was made of wood, a very ordinary old door in a very ordinary frame. It looked as if it had always been there, but Eldrik was quite certain he’d never seen it before.
The door opened. A small girl, barely a teenager, stepped out into the rain and looked around with innocent fascination. She held an ornate key in her hand.
‘Hello!’ she said to Eldrik with a bright smile.
‘Who the hell are you?’ asked Eldrik.
‘She’s with me,’ said Angharad Esw Sweydyr.
The towering Carthaen swordswoman came out of the open doorway with such virile speed, Eldrik didn’t have time to raise his weapon. His eyes went wide at the sight of her, a goddess in armour.
Evisorex cut him in half.
‘Get back, child,’ Angharad hissed, and Iosob scooted into the shadows by the door. Angharad became a blur in the rain and lightning, her cloak and her braided hair flying, her sabre flashing. She ripped into the squad Eldrik had been assembling. In the confusion, few of them were able to tell exactly what was happening, although it was patently obvious that they were being slaughtered. A few got off hasty shots. Screams echoed, and lopped limbs spun into the air. Arterial blood squirted up into the torrential rain.
Nayl and Kys followed Angharad out of the door. He wore an armoured bodyglove and carried a Voss-pattern automatic grenade launcher, heavy and pugnacious, with a fat drum magazine. Patience was wearing a dark green bodyglove with long black boots, and a billowing overskirt. The pleats of the skirt contained dozens of concealed kineblades. Four needle blades already circled around her.
They moved fast, following Angharad’s trail of destruction. The flagstones were slick with rain and swilling blood. The steam of entrails and opened bodies fumed in the cold air. Nayl fired two rounds from the launcher, lobbing them down the length of the approach. He was rewarded by a meaty fireball that hurled rock chips in all directions. He sent another round over into the gate itself, throwing two of Culzean’s gunmen headlong with the blast, and then ran forwards, firing single grenades up at the backs of the sentry pods built into the old wall.
The grenades were magnetic. Each one thumped onto a pod’s metal cowling and stuck fast. A sentry gun exploded, blown out of the wall top in a fire shock and a rain of bricks. A second blew out, and then a third. Each pod had been firing on full auto until the moment it was obliterated. Nayl took out a fourth pod, and paused to reload the drum mag. His handiwork had torn holes along the monastic wall, like a gum with the teeth extracted. There was a sharp tang of fycelene in the air. Kys brought down a gunman on the wall steps with her kineblades, and then reached out with her telekinesis into the mouldering bricks and stones of the wall itself. She found the hot, heavy power cables and datawire bundles that fed the rest of the wall’s automatic defences. Gritting her teeth, she pulled.
A long, fat snake of armoured trunking tore out of the wall in a shower of plaster and masonry. It came clean out like the spine of a cooked fish and then snapped in two places, sheeting electrical sparks and voltage flashes across the wet stone.
The remaining wall defences went dead.
+Gideon?+
+That’s better, thank you.+
Outside, on the gale-swept landing, Ravenor began to move forwards, Molotch close behind him. The ground in front of them had been chewed to smoking pulp by the bombardment that had, until a moment before, been hammering them relentlessly. Ravenor was able to slacken his shield at last, and did so with relief. The only shots coming their way were from the blue-suited gunmen Culzean had left on the landing. Ravenor popped his chair’s cannon-pods from their recesses and cut down two of them. The others began to flee back through the gate into Elmingard, firing as they went.
Kys, Nayl and Angharad were waiting for them. By the time Ravenor and Molotch came through the gate, the only gunmen still alive were the ones who had been wise enough to flee up into the banked terraces of the cliff top fastness.
+Start moving. Start searching.+
‘Are you sure he’s here?’ asked Nayl.
+I’m sure. He’s hard to read, hard to pinpoint, because he’s not really Carl any more, but he’s here. I can hear him screaming.+
‘What do we do if we find him?’ asked Kys.
+Call for me.+
The three of them ran off up the steps onto the terraces. In under a minute, Ravenor and Molotch could hear more shooting, and the ominous crump of Nayl’s launcher.
‘Iosob, stay here, by the door,’ Ravenor told the girl. She nodded.
+Let’s follow the others,+ Ravenor sent to Molotch.
‘Do you have a plan?’ asked Molotch.
+No. This is entirely improvised. I am just hoping we can find Thonius before it’s too late.+
‘What weren’t you telling your people?’ Molotch asked.
+I don’t know what you mean, Zygmunt.+
‘Come on, Gideon, don’t try to trick a trickster. What were you keeping from them?’
They moved up a mouldering flight of steps and onto one of the lower terraces. The dark, interlocking bulk of Elmingard rose above them in the storm.
+That it’s already too late. This place is radiating a psychic force that’s off the scale. I daren’t probe it in any detail, because it would burn out my mind. There is no question that Slyte is here.+
‘So I return to my original question. Is there a plan?’
+I was hoping you might have some suggestions. Daemonology is one of your specialties, Zygmunt. I was also hoping that Culzean might have tools or resources to help us.+
‘Culzean’s playing his own game,’ Molotch replied, dismissively, ‘but his house is full of arcane trinkets and talismans. It’s possible there might be something that could aid us. However, I’ve been studying Culzean’s collection for weeks, and I haven’t found anything so far that would do. Believe me, I’ve searched diligently.’ He paused, thoughtfully. ‘As for my own talents... I don’t know. I have dabbled. I have studied. I have bound certain lesser fiends, and created a daemonhost or two over the years. I understand the basic principles of gate and portal rituals, but Slyte is a Daemonicus Arcana Majoris. I would never try to summon him, because even with the correct rites and wards, he would be too powerful to bind. As it is, he’s already here. It’s long past the time for prophylactic rituals.’
Thunder splintered the sky.
‘The only control a man can ever have over a daemon is by way of transaction,’ Molotch said. ‘A man provides the daemon with a way into our dimension, and in exchange, the daemon is bound by the terms of that favour. It is a very complex, hazardous thing to do, and takes years of precise preparation to pull off. If a daemon is already here, in our universe, there is no transaction left to hold it to. No terms, Gideon. There’s no way of asserting power or command over it, because it owes us nothing and wants nothing from us. It is simply a material fact, ungoverned by mortal powers.
+What about banishment?+
Molotch laughed. ‘Like binding, it’s a complex process. It takes months or years of preparatory study. It also requires the correct t
ime and place.’
+And this isn’t the correct time or place?+
‘Does it look like it to you?’
+I’m not going to give up. We have to try, while we still have life in our bodies. We have to try something. You know the layout of this place, Molotch. Take me to Culzean’s trinkets and help me search for that something.+
Culzean’s hired guns offered resistance to the bitter end. Nayl came up some crumbling stone steps onto a paved terrace several levels above Ravenor and Molotch, and immediately came under renewed fire. Las shots shrieked at him from a large doorway across the terrace, forcing him into cover behind a stone urn that quickly became a shapeless lump.
He, Kys and Angharad had been obliged to fight every step of the way up into Elmingard, and he was down to his last few grenades. He switched to his heavy autopistol, keeping the launcher in reserve.
There was no backup to call for. Kys had split to the left a few minutes earlier, heading into what looked like the domestic quarters. They’d both lost touch with Angharad before that. In her warrior fury, she’d simply stormed ahead, expecting them to keep up. From the screams emanating from a nearby wing of the place, she’d found suitable work to occupy herself.
The rain was getting worse. Nayl had seen lightning strike the roofline of Elmingard at least twice in the last five minutes. A black cloud, blacker than the night itself, whirled like a halo around the upper ramparts of the building. He didn’t like to dwell on what might be causing that. Nayl also didn’t want to notice the sweet, rancid smell that he kept catching on the wind. Putrefaction, the cloying scent of the warp.
The gunmen at the doorway had him pinned. With a grunt of resignation, Nayl hoisted up his launcher and banged a grenade into the air. It landed in the doorway and detonated in a sheet of fire and grit.
He was up and running at once. Two gunmen lay dead, mangled by the blast. Another staggered, deafened, in the ruin of the doorway. Part of the building facade had collapsed and smoke poured out of the broken door.
Letting his slung launcher bang against his hip as he ran, Nayl drew his autopistol and capped the staggering man as he went in past him. The hall inside was thick with smoke. Another survivor was crawling around on the debris-strewn floor on his hands and knees. Nayl put the wretch out of his misery, and then headed on. The smoke began to clear. He found himself in the door arch of a large room with a high roof. Lightning backlit the large, leaded windows. The room was a dining hall of sorts. It was dominated by a huge refectory table of old, sturdy timber, big enough to seat thirty. There were the chairs to prove it.
Nayl took a step forwards, and two heavy rounds exploded against the wall beside him, blitzing out plaster and stone chips. Nayl hurled himself forwards and rolled across the floor, using the end of the hefty table as cover. Another heavy shot whooshed past. He knew the distinctive sound: a bolt pistol.
From the other end of the chamber, Lucius Worna came out to play. The flashes of lightning outside glinted off his pearly armour. He fired his bolt pistol as he advanced, blasting splintered holes in the table.
‘That you, Nayl? Is that you?’ he roared.
‘Oh, probably,’ Nayl replied, crouching under the table end and looking around desperately for an option.
Worna snorted. ‘I’m gonna mess you up, Harlon. Don’t frig with me. Be a man, and come out and take it.’
‘I’m going to say no,’ Nayl answered. Another bolt round tore clean through the table top and fractured the floor tiles beside him.
Worna grabbed hold of the long table with his left hand. The fingers of his metal gauntlet sank into the wood. With a whine of power armour, he hurled the huge table right over. It left the ground and crashed down on its side, shattering some of the chairs.
Nayl was left, crouching, on the open tiles, his cover removed.
He looked up at Worna, five metres away.
‘Nayl,’ Worna growled, a smile crossing his face. ‘You know what this is?’
‘Yeah. End of story,’ said Nayl. He fired the grenade launcher he was clutching against his chest.
The grenade round hit Worna in the sternum, with enough kinetic force to knock him back several steps.
Recovering his balance, the grizzled bounty hunter looked down. The round had magnetically attached itself to his breastplate. Worna scrabbled at it to knock it off.
It exploded.
The blast sent Nayl sprawling along the floor. It threw Worna’s mighty, spread-eagled form violently across the chamber in the other direction, demolishing the far doors as he ploughed into them.
Nayl picked himself up and hobbled down the room to the wreckage of the doors. Smoke threaded the air. He could see Worna’s corpse on its back, half buried in broken hardwood door panels. The armour of his upper torso was buckled and blackened, and his face was a raw, red mask of burnt flesh.
Nayl peered down at his old partner in crime for a moment. He’d always wondered how this story would end.
The corpse grabbed him by the right ankle. With a whipcrack snap, it jerked Nayl down onto his back. Winded, Nayl tried to struggle, but Worna was already rising, black eyes burning savagely out of the blast-flayed remains of his face. Blood wept from the seared flesh.
Worna picked Nayl up by the throat, and lifted him off the floor. With his left hand, he tore the grenade launcher off Nayl’s body and chucked it aside. Then he threw Nayl back into the dining room.
Nayl landed hard, dazed. Worna came to him and picked him up again, with both hands this time. He raised him high, and threw him a second time. Nayl’s flailing body hit one of the dining room’s grand windows and smashed through it in a blizzard of glass and broken leading. Nayl fell six metres and landed on the grey slates of an annex roof below. His impact shattered some of the slates and made a dent. He lay on the damaged roof in the torrential rain, twisted and unconscious.
Lightning flared. A fork of it struck the ridge of a nearby roof, exploding the heavy tiles and exposing black rafters that began to burn.
Worna turned away from the shattered window, breathing in long, sucking rasps. He walked slowly across the dining room, found his bolt pistol, and picked it up. He returned to the window. Small fragments of glass were still falling out of the remaining twists of leading, tinkling as they hit the ground. Rain blew in, stinging Worna’s ruined face.
He slammed a new clip into his bolt pistol, racked it, and leaned out of the window to take aim at Harlon Nayl’s helpless form.
Eleven
‘I hope you know what the hell you’re doing,’ Leyla Slade said to Culzean as they advanced briskly up through the northern layers of Elmingard.
‘I always know what I’m doing,’ he replied jauntily. ‘Now, you put him where I told you to put him, didn’t you?’
‘In the old tower, yes.’ Slade looked at Culzean. ‘Believe me, if I’d known what he was when I was doing it, I wouldn’t have gone near him.’
A squad of six hired guns were escorting them. At her words, they exchanged troubled looks.
‘Everything’s all right,’ Culzean said. ‘Everything’s all right, gentlemen. Believe me, you’ll all be receiving triple pay for tonight’s work.’
‘We’re getting reports, sir,’ said Tzabo, leading the fire team. ‘The inquisitor’s forces have taken the gate and are inside Elmingard. We’ve lost men. A lot of men.’
‘Our distinguished foe won’t trouble us much longer,’ Culzean said confidently. ‘Now come along.’ They ran across a courtyard, braving the relentless rain, and entered another wing of the sprawling building.
‘Thonius is really Slyte?’ Slade asked Culzean as they strode along. She kept her voice low.
‘This is what I have learned from the Swole woman, and she was in no position to lie. It’s sweet, I think she’d actually been trying to protect him.’
‘Orfeo, Slyte is–’
‘Slyte is perfect. Slyte is the thing I’ve spent my life working towards and look, Leyla, he comes to me in the end alm
ost by chance. Ah, the irony!’
‘I don’t understand what you think you can achieve. Molotch–’
‘Zygmunt was a fine enough distraction, but there was no real future in that relationship. I believed for a long time he would be an invaluable asset to my work, but I hadn’t taken into account his character. So difficult. So hard to govern.
‘So smart,’ said Slade darkly.
‘Yes, that too. You must have noticed, these last few weeks, how we were falling out? It was just a matter of time before it turned nasty.’
Slade shuddered. ‘I think it’s turned nasty already,’ she remarked.
‘Oh, poo, Ley. You know what I mean. He was so paranoid.’
‘Was he?’ she asked. ‘Or was he the only one who really knew what kind of disaster Slyte represented?’
Culzean stopped and turned to face Slade. The men came to a halt behind them.
‘Ley, listen to me. Have I ever let you down? Have I? You’ve seen some of the shining weapons I have at my disposal. They’ve taken me years to collect and years to learn how to use. Molotch, for all his smart mind, is just a dabbler. I am a professional in these things. Experienced, informed, detached. Slyte is just another asset for me to exploit. Another shining weapon... albeit the brightest and shiniest I’ve ever acquired.’
‘You think... you think you can control a daemon of the Major Arcana?’
Culzean laughed. ‘Oh, I know I can. Control him and bind him. Subjugate him. I sent our savants up to the tower just before Ravenor made his grand entrance. As we speak, they are completing the necessary rituals and enslaving Slyte’s power to my command.’
Slade hesitated before responding. ‘Sir, I advise caution,’ she said, taking out her handgun and fitting it with one of the specially prepared clips. ‘I have always admired your ambition–’
‘Thank you, Ley.’