Nayl looked dubiously at Mathuin.
‘It’s not up for debate, you vulgarians,’ Thonius said snottily. ‘Don’t make me remind you I’m technically in charge here.’
‘Oh, that would explain why we’re technically nose deep in crap,’ Nayl said.
A thick section of stone wall blew in nearby, hammered to fragments by withering cannon fire. The massive weight of the dreadnought crushed heat-brittled stone into dust as it stomped through the gap.
The trio began to run again, down the next terrace, trying to put some distance between them and the killing machine.
‘Get ahead!’ Mathuin said. ‘I’ll take the first pop.’ Nayl nodded and grabbed hold of Thonius, who was still puzzling over his grenade, figuring out how to adjust the knurled dial to set the timer. Nayl got the interrogator into cover.
Thonius straightened his sleeves. ‘If you’ve pulled my coat out of shape, Nayl…’ he began.
Nayl glared at him.
Behind them, in the open, Mathuin primed his grenade and turned. As the dreadnought hove into view, he hurled the small, black charge.
Kara rejoined Ravenor and Kys like an ape, swinging down through the rafters and leaping the last few metres.
Eisenhorn descended after her. He was being carried by a grotesque figure, a human shape twisted and distended by arcane forces. The thing glowed with an eldritch inner light. Its bare limbs and torso were covered with runes and sigils. Chains dragged from its ankles.
It set Eisenhorn’s heavy, cumbersome form down on the flagstones.
‘Thank you, Cherubael,’ he said.
The thing, its head lolling brokenly, exposed its teeth in a dreadful smile. ‘That’s all? I can go back now?’ it said. Its voice was like sandpaper on glass. ‘There are many more phantoms up there to burn.’
‘Go ahead,’ Eisenhorn said.
The dreadful daemonhost zoomed back aloft into the rain-swept heights of the ruin. At once, the ghastly screaming began again. Light pulsed and flashed.
Eisenhorn faced Ravenor’s chair. ‘The Fratery has unleashed everything they have tonight to stop me. To stop me talking to you. Daemonhosts of their own. Cherubael has been battling them. I think he’s enjoying it.’
‘He?’ said Ravenor via his chair’s voxponder. ‘Last we met, you called that thing an “it”, my master.’
Eisenhorn shrugged. His augmetics sighed with the gesture. ‘We have reached an understanding. Does that shock you, Gideon?’
‘Nothing shocks me any more,’ said Ravenor.
‘Good,’ said Eisenhorn. He looked at Kara and Kys.
‘We need a moment, Kara. If you and your friend wouldn’t mind.’
‘Patience Kys,’ Kys said, stern and hard.
‘I know who you are,’ said Eisenhorn, and turned away with Ravenor. In a low voice, he began to tell his ex-pupil all he knew about the Divine Fratery.
‘Kar… that’s Eisenhorn?’ Kys whispered to Kara as they watched the figures withdraw.
‘Yes,’ replied Kara. She was still rather stunned by the meeting, and Ravenor’s brief waring had left her tired.
‘Everything you and Harlon have said about him… I expected…’
‘What?’
‘Something more intimidating. He’s just a broken old man. And I can’t think why he consorts with a Chaos-filth thing like that host-form.’
Kara shrugged. ‘I don’t know about the daemonhost. He fought it and hated it for so long, and then… I dunno. Maybe he’s become the radical they say. But you’re wrong. About him being a broken old man. Well, he’s broken and he’s old… but I’d rather go up against Ravenor unarmed than ever cross Gregor Eisenhorn.’
Mathuin’s grenade exploded. The aim had been good, but the device had bounced oddly at the last moment and had gone off beneath the striding dreadnought. The machine paced on through the ball of fire, untroubled.
Mathuin dived for cover as the cannons began pumping again.
‘Crap… my turn, I suppose,’ said Nayl. He clicked the setter to four seconds, thumbed the igniter, and ran out into the hallway, bowling the grenade underarm.
Then he threw himself into shelter.
The grenade bounced once, lifted with the spin Nayl had put on it, and smacked bluntly against the front shell of the dreadnought.
It was just rebounding off when it detonated.
The dreadnought vanished in a sheet of flame that boiled down the hallway, compressed and driven by the walls and roof.
As it cleared, Thonius saw the dreadnought. Its front was scorched, but it was far, far from dead.
‘Damn. Just me then,’ he said.
‘You’ve dabbled in farseeing,’ Eisenhorn said. ‘I know that. Your time spent with the eldar drew you in that direction.’
‘I won’t deny it,’ Ravenor replied.
‘That makes you bright to the Fratery,’ said Eisenhorn. ‘It illuminates you in the interwoven pathways of the future. That’s why they located you in their prospects.’
Ravenor was quiet for a moment. ‘And you’ve come all this way, risked all this danger… to warn me?’
‘Of course.’
‘I’m flattered.’
‘Don’t be, Gideon. You’d do the same for me.’
‘I’m sure I would. But what you’re telling me is… crazy.’
Eisenhorn bowed his head and ran the fingers of his right hand up and down the cold grip of his runestaff.
‘Of course it sounds crazy,’ he said. ‘But it’s true. I ask you this… if you don’t believe me, why are these cultist fools trying so hard to prevent our meeting here tonight? They know it’s true. They want you denied of this warning.’
‘That I will trigger this manifestation? This daemon-birth?’
‘You, or one close to you. The trigger point is something that happens on Eustis Majoris.’
Within his force chair, Ravenor was numb. ‘I won’t lie, Gregor. My current investigations focus on that world. I was en route to Eustis Majoris when I diverted to meet you here. But I have no knowledge of this Slight. It hasn’t figured in any of my research. I can’t believe that something I will do… or something one of my band will do… will–’
‘Gideon, I can’t believe my only ally these days is a daemonhost. Fate surprises us all.’
‘So what should I do, now you’ve warned me? Abandon my investigations on Eustis? Shy away from that world in the hope that by avoiding it I can also avoid this prophecy?’
Eisenhorn’s face was in shadow. ‘Maybe you should.’
‘No,’ said Ravenor. ‘What I should be is careful. Careful in my own actions, careful to oversee the actions of my team. If there is truth in the Fratery’s prophecy, it is surely bound up in the dire conspiracy I am just now uncovering on Eustis Majoris. But I must prosecute that case. I would be failing in the duty you charged me with if I didn’t. After all, the future is not set. We make it, don’t we?’
‘I think we do. I hope we do.’
‘Gregor, when have either of us shirked from serving the Throne just because we’re afraid things might go bad? We are inquisitors, we seek. We do not hide.’
Eisenhorn raised his head and let the falling rain drops patter off his upraised palm. ‘Gideon, I came to warn you, nothing else. I never expected you to change your course. Now, at least, you aware of a “might be”. You can be ready for it. That’s all I wanted.’
Far behind them, the sound of rapid cannon-fire and dull explosions echoed through the tower.
‘I think the time for conversation is over,’ said Eisenhorn.
Thonius’s pockets were not full of munitions and ordnance like Mathuin’s, but he reached into them anyway. In one, a mini-cogitator, in another, two data-slates. In a third, a clasped leather case in which he had wrapped his tools: files, data-pins, fine brushes, tubes of lubricant, a vial of adhesive, pliers and tweezers. All the bric-a-brac that aided him in conquering and tinkering with cogitators and codifiers.
‘Carl! Get in
to cover!’ Nayl was yelling.
Thonius slid out the vial of adhesive and wiped the drooling nozzle down the side of the grenade ball, waiting a moment for it to get contact-tacky.
Then, taking a deep breath, he leapt out of cover into the face of the dreadnought and lobbed the grenade. It hit the front casing, and adhered there, stuck fast.
Mathuin threw himself out of cover and tackled Thonius, bringing him down behind a pillar.
The grenade exploded.
‘You see?’ said Thonius. ‘You see how thinking works?’
But the dreadnought wasn’t finished. The blast had split its belly plates, but it was still moving, still striding, still firing.
Thonius shrugged. ‘Okay… we’re dead.’
The dreadnought suddenly stopped blasting. It faltered. A chill swept over the chamber.
Ravenor’s chair slid into view, heading towards the killer machine. With the force of his mind, he had momentarily jammed its weapons.
Sudden frost coated the walls, Ravenor’s chair and the dreadnought. The machine tried to move. Cycling mechanisms shuddered as it attempted to clear its guns.
A tall figure strode past Ravenor, heading for the dreadnought. It held a runestaff in one hand and a drawn sword in the other. Its robes fluttered out behind it, stiff with ice.
‘Holy Terra!’ exclaimed Nayl. ‘Eisenhorn?’
A second before Ravenor’s mental grip failed, a second before the cannons resumed their murderous work, Eisenhorn swung the sword – Barbarisater – and cleft the dreadnought in two. The sword-blade ripped along the fissure Thonius’s cunning grenade had put in it.
Eisenhorn turned aside and shielded his face as the dreadnought combusted.
He looked back at them all, terrible and majestic, backlit by flames. ‘Shall we?’ he said.
With their dreadnought gone, the remainder of the Fratery force fled. The warband and the two inquisitors slaughtered many as they made their escape into the storm.
Tugging one of her kineblades out of a body with her mind, Kys watched Eisenhorn ripping his way through the faltering hostiles around them.
‘Now I see what you mean,’ she said to Kara Swole.
‘I’m done here,’ Gregor Eisenhorn said. He looked back across the bride span to the tower. Screamlight was still dancing around the summit. ‘Cherubael needs my help now. I should go and see how he’s doing.’
‘I will be vigilant,’ Ravenor said.
Eisenhorn knelt and pressed his gnarled hands flat against the side of the chair.
‘The Emperor go with you. I’ve said my piece. It’s up to you now, Gideon.’
Eisenhorn rose and looked at the others. ‘Mamzel Kys. Interrogator. Mr Mathuin. A pleasure meeting you.’ He nodded to each of them. ‘Kara?’
She smiled. ‘Gregor.’
‘Never a hardship seeing you. Look after Gideon for me.’
‘I will.’
Eisenhorn looked at Harlon Nayl and held out a hand. Nayl clasped it with both of his.
‘Harlon. Like old times.’
‘Emperor protect you, Gregor.’
‘I hope so,’ Eisenhorn said, and walked away, back across the bridge span towards the tower where the screamlight still flashed and sparked. They knew they would not see him again.
Unless the future was not as set as it seemed.
Malinter fell away below them, vast and silent. Nayl piloted the transport up into low orbit, flashing out signals to their ship.
Once the nav was set and automatics had taken over, he turned his chair on its pivot and looked at Ravenor.
‘He wasn’t the same,’ he said.
+How do you mean?+
‘He seemed so sane I thought he was mad.’
+Yes. I thought that too. It’s hard to know whether I should believe him.+
‘About what?’
+About the dangers ahead, Harlon. The risks we may take.+
‘So… what do we do?’
+We carry on. We do our best. We serve the Emperor of Mankind. If what Gregor said comes to pass, we deal with it. Unless you have a better idea.’
‘Not a one,’ replied Nayl, turning back to study the controls.
+Good.+ sent Ravenor, and wheeled his chair around, returning to the cabin space behind where the others were gathered.
Nayl sighed and looked ahead at the turning starfields.
The future lay ahead, its back to them, saying nothing.
.
About The Author
Dan Abnett is a novelist and award-winning comic book writer. He has written over thirty-five novels, including the acclaimed Gaunt’s Ghosts series, the Eisenhorn and Ravenor trilogies and, with Mike Lee, the Darkblade cycle. His novels Horus Rising and Legion (both for the Black Library) and his Torchwood novel Border Princes (for the BBC) were all bestsellers. His novel Triumff, for Angry Robot, was published in 2009 and nominated for the British Fantasy Society Award for Best Novel. He lives and works in Maidstone, Kent. Dan’s blog and website can be found at www.danabnett.com
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First published in 2004 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd., Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK
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