by Dan Abnett
'Shall we?' she asked.
We went into the annex and loaded the slate into the ancient codifier. The limpid green display shifted feverishly with runes. She opened the file we were after and set the key to work.
It took a moment or two.
Then the identity of the veteran who had used his power to manipulate Neve's code was revealed on the small, green-washed screen. At last, the damned had a name.
It shocked even me.
'Glory from above/ breathed Inquisitor General Neve. 'Quixos!
Aemos was arguing with Neve's chief savant, Cutch.
'Quixos is dead, long dead!' Cutch maintained. 'This is clearly a case of someone using his authority.
'Quixos is still registered as living by the annals of the Inquisition.'
'As an oversight! No body has ever been retrieved. No proof of death-'
'Precisely…'
'But still! There has been no sign or word from Quixos for over a hundred years.'
'None that we've seen/1 said.
'Eisenhorn's right/ Neve said. 'Inquisitor Utlen was presumed dead for over seventy years. Then he reappeared overnight to bring down the tyrants of Esquestor II/
'It's most perturbatory/ Aemos muttered.
Quixos. Quixos the Great. Quixos the Bright. One of the most revered inquisitors ever to roam the Imperium. His early texts had been required reading for all of us. He was a legend. At the age of just twenty-one he had
burned the daemons out of Artum. Then he had purged the Endorian sub-sector of its false goat-gods. He had transcribed the Book of Eibon. He had broken the wretched sub-cult of Nurgle that had tainted one of the palaces of Terra itself. He had tracked down and killed the Chaos Marine Baneglos. He had silenced the Whisperers of Domactoni. He had crucified the Witch-king of Sarpeth on the battlements above his incinerated hive.
But there had always been an odour about Quixos. A hint that he was too close to the evil he prosecuted. He was a radical, certainly. Some amongst the ordos said he was a rogue. Others said, in low, private voices, much worse.
To me, he was a great man who had perhaps gone too far. I simply honoured his memory and his achievements.
Because, as far as I had been concerned, he was long dead.
'Could he stile be alive?' Neve asked.
'Madam, not at all…' Cutch began.
'I don't know why you employ him/ I said, pointing dismissively at the Cadian savant. 'His advice isn't sound/
Well really!' Cutch huffed.
'Shut up and go away/ Neve told him.
She stalked across to me and took my empty glass from me. 'Go on, then. Your opinion/
'You want it? From an adventurer like me? Are you sure, inquisitor general?'
She thrust a topped-up glass of glayva into my hand so hard it sloshed. 'Just give me your damned opinion!'
I sipped. Aemos was staring over at me nervously from the settle by the door.
'Quixos could be very much alive. He'd be… what, now, Aemos?'
Three hundred and forty-two, sir/
'Right. Well, that's no age, is it? Not given augmetics, or rejuvanat drags… or sorcery/
'Dammit!' Neve said.
'He's an incredibly gifted individual, as his career testifies. He has a reputation, however unwarranted, for straying too far to the radical side. He has… dabbled with the warp. We can say that much. Just because we've heard nothing of him these last hundred or more years, doesn't mean he isn't still active/
'And that activity?' Neve smacked the tip of her crutch down twice on the tiled floor. 4Vhat? What? Utilising daemonhosts? Perverting inquisitors? Hunting for abominated texts like your Necroteuch? Triggering the dreadful atrocity of Thracian?'
'Perhaps? Why not?'
'Because that would make him a monster! The exact antithesis of everything our order is about!'
Well, yes it would. It's happened before. A powerful man who gets so close to the evil he is sworn to combat he gets dragged into it. Inquisitor Ruberu, for example.'
Yes, yes! Ruberu, I know…'
'Grandmaster Derkon?'
'Granted. I remember…'
'Cardinal Palfro of Mimiga? Saint Boniface, also called the Deathshead of a Thousand Tears?' intoned Aemos.
'For the Emperor's sake!'
'High Lord Vandire?' I suggested.
'All right, all right-'
'Horus?' Aemos dared to whisper.
There was a long silence.
'Great Quixos/ Neve murmured, slowly turning to face me. Will he be added to that unholy list? Is one of our greatest to be condemned so?'
'If he must be/ I replied.
'What do we do?' she asked.
*We find him. We find out if the passing centuries have truly changed him into the being we fear he is. And if they have, Emperor pardon me, we declare him Heretic and Extremis Diabolus, and we destroy him for his crimes.'
Neve sat down hard, staring into her glass. There was a knock at the sanctum's door, which Aemos answered.
It was Fischig.
'Sir… madam…' he said, acknowledging Neve.
'Well, Fischig?'
'Further to your discoveries today, we have been monitoring inter-orbit traffic. Two hours ago, a craft made planetfall at Kasr Gesh. It cleared Cadian airspace using the inquisitor general's authority code.'
Gesh was the site of the last known cult activity.
I gathered up my coat. 'With your permission, inquisitor general?'
Neve rose with me, her face set hard. 'With your permission, Inquisitor Eisenhom. I'd like to come with you.'
Kasr Gesh was three hours flight from Kasr Derm. Cruel winter had blown in from the upland heaths, and the gun-cutter was vibrating its way against powerful ice storms.
My band was all aboard, preparing weapons. So was Inquisitor General Neve and a six-man squad of Cadian Elite Shock, impassive troopers in winter camo armour, prepping matt-white lasrifles and stubbers in the crew-bay
'God-throne, they're tough-ass bastards/ Nayl muttered to me as 1 passed him coming out of the bay.
'Impressed?'
'Scared is more like it. Regular Cadian is soldier enough for me. These are elite. The elite of the elite. The Kasrkin/
The what?' It wasn't like an experienced fighter to show deference to other fighting men.
The Kasrkin. The Cadian best, and you can imagine what that means. Holy Terra, they're stone-killers!'
'How do you know?'
'Oh, please… look at their necks. The Caducades sea-eagle brand. Come to that, just look at their necks. I've seen slimmer trees!'
'Good thing they're on our side/ I said.
'I bloody hope so/ Nayl returned, and moved forward.
The deck lurched again. I walked back down the bay, steadying myself on the overhead handloops, and approached Neve.
She was dressed in Cadian mesh armour, and was adjusting her winter hood. I saw she had exchanged her silver crutch for a lift-assisted cane fitted with a compact cylindrical grenade launcher.
In my fur coat and bodyglove armour, I felt underdressed.
Your usual attire?' I asked.
'Necessary clothing. You should come out with me sometime, cult-hunting in the islands after dark/
'My staff are… worried. These men are Kasrkin?'
"Yes/
Their reputation precedes them/
'So did yours/
'Good point. But, anyway…'
Neve looked round at the row of Cadian elite. 'Captain Echbar!' she shouted, raising her voice above the roar of the buffet and the thrasters.
'Inquisitor general ma'am!' said the warrior on the end.
'Inquisitor Eisenhorn wants reassurance that you are the best of the best and will be careful to watch the backsides of him and his band/
Six snow-visored faces turned to look at me.
We've logged the bio-spoors of you and your company into our sighting auspexes, sir/ Echbar announced to me. 'We couldn't shoot them now even if w
e wanted to/
'Make sure you don't. My staff and I will be leading the way in. The situation may not call for firepower. If it does, the vox or psyker command is "Rosethorn". Vox-channel is gamma-nine-eight. Are you prepared for a psychic summons?'
We're prepared for anything/ Echbar told me.
The gun-cutter stopped shaking.
We've come out of the storm/ Medea voxed me.
A moment later, she crackled, 'I see approach lights. Kasr Geth landing field in two/
The pylon stood three kilometres outside the earthworks of Kasr Geth. The night was clear and glassy, with a heaven full of stars. The Eye of Terror throbbed dimly at the top of the sky. It seemed to me more lurid and brighter than ever before.
Somewhere up there, I knew, orbital detachments of the Cadian Interior Guard were hunting the hidden starship from which the visitors to Kasr Gesh had come. Neve had scrambled them before we left, with strict orders not to move until we had engaged on the ground.
We didn't want our visitors tipped off.
My team moved in up through the frost-caked scrub of the moorland slope. The pylon was simply a black, oblong, absence of stars. I could hear it moaning.
I slid out my main weapon: a storm-bolter which I had sprayed green in memory of the prize sidearm I had lost somewhere on Eechan, may Librarian Brytnoth forgive me. This storm-gun was slightly larger and more powerful, but nothing like so well engineered as the boltpistol I had treasured.
On my hip I wore a Cadian hanger, a short, curved twin-edged sabre that replaced my beloved power sword. It was just a simple piece of sharp steel, but I'd had the hierarchs at the Ministorum of Kasr Derth make some modifications.
Still, in truth, I felt vulnerable going up that slope.
Nayl was to my left, fielding a combat-cannon. Husmaan to my right with his trustworthy long-las. Inshabel was to his right, armed with a brace of antique laspistols that had belonged to Inquisitor Roban. Fischig, hefting an old and trusted arbites-issue riot-gun, had gone wide to the far left.
Bequin, a long-barrelled autopistol in her gloved hand, was right beside me.
Behind us, Neve and her Kasrkin lurked, waiting for my signal.
Aemos was aboard the gun-cutter with Medea, hovering above the drop point, lights killed. They, rather than Neve and her elite, were my reassurance.
'What do you see?' I voxed.
'Nothing/ replied Husmaan and Nayl.
'I've got an angle into the seat of the pylon/ said Inshabel. 'I see lights/
'Confirm that/ crackled Fischig, wide to the left. There are men down there. I count eight, no ten. Twelve. Portable lights. They've got machines/
'Machines?'
'Handheld. Auspexes/
'Measuring again/ Neve whispered over the link.
Tm sure/ I said. Then I said, in Glossia: 'Thorn eyes flesh, rapturous beasts at hand. Aegis to arms, crucible. All points cowled. Razor torus pathway, pattern ebony/
My storm-gun made a loud click as I racked it.
The robed men working in the floodlights around the foot of the pylon froze and slowly turned from their work to look at me.
I walked down from the moor, through the ice-stiffened bracken, bracing my gun in a pose that could kill any one of them.
Bequin followed me a few steps behind, her pistol held loosely, ready to swing up.
I knew we were covered by Husmaan, Inshabel, Nayl and Fischig.
Who is the leader here?' I asked, panning my weapon around.
'I am/ said one of the robed figures.
'Step forward and identify yourself/1 said.
To whom?'
I raised the rosette plainly in my left hand. 'Imperial Inquisition/ Some of the robed men moaned with dismay.
The leader did not. He stepped forward. I could suddenly smell a cold, metallic scent, one that was not new to me.
A warning that came too late.
The leader slowly drew back his cowl. His angular, cruel head was hairless and a cold blue light shone out through his skin. Sharpened, steel-tipped horns sprouted from his brow. His eyes were white slits.
A daemonhost!
'Cherubael?' I said, foolishly, stupidly.
'Your witless ally is not here, Eisenhorn/ said the being, baring his teeth and gleaming with light.
'My name is Prophaniti/
FIFTEEN
Rosethorn.
What Cadians are born for.
The last thing I expected.
There were two ways for this to go. The first was for me to continue talking, and still be talking when the daemonhost killed me and tossed my smoking corpse on the piled bodies of my comrades. The second was for me to say 'Rosethorn' and place my trust in the mettle of my supporters and the ever-vigilant gaze of the holy God-Emperor.
I said 'Rosethorn.'
The thing, Prophaniti, was stepping towards me. I shot at it with my storm-gun, watching in horrid fascination as it caught the white hot bolt rounds out of the air in its outstretched hands, like a man idly catching slow-tossed racquet balls.
The bolts dulled to an ember-red in its palms, and it tossed them aside.
But its entire attention was on me.
Its mistake.
Husmaan's first hot-shot round cracked into the side of its head, and snapped its skull around. As it was reeling, its robes were ripped across by double laspistol fire from Inshabel. Then Fischig's riot-gun roared and knocked it down in the brittle bracken. Fischig liked to spend his free time hand-moulding the shot for his riot-gun's cartridges. Every pellet was silver, and stamped with a sacred sigil of warding that I had taught him long ago.
Prophaniti writhed in agony, the blessed buck-shot burning into its flesh. It started to rise, wrathful and frenzied, but a grinding whir rose from my left, a sound like a circular saw running up to speed.
Nayl's cycling drum-cannon raked the daemonhost and the earth around it, doing hideous damage. The blizzard of shots twisted it, ripping off one of its legs at the knee and the fingers off its left hand.
Eldritch power, white-cold like frost, spurted from its wounds like lava, and burned the soil.
The other cultists were moving now, pulling weapons and firing wildly into the night. The place lit up with shooting.
Las-fire came from behind us, startlingly close, whipping past our elbows and shoulders. Two of the cultists crumpled, one of them smashing over some of the erected floodlights.
Echbar and his Kasrkin charged in past us to engage.
In truth, I may say now that they were somehow more terrifying than the daemonhost. For Prophaniti was a supernatural thing, and one expected it to be horrifying.
The Kasrkin were just men. It made their actions all the more astonishing. Six white blurs, they fell upon the cultists, lasguns barking at close range. They wasted no shots. One shot, one kill. A cultist fled past me, and akasrkin swung to bring him down. his weapon refused to fire as its sight-auspex detected my bio-spoor in the range-field. A second later, I was no longer blocking the shot and the weapon spat.
The fleeing cultist tumbled over headlong in the brush.
More cultists had emerged from the other side of the pylon, and I could hear rapid exchanges of gunfire in that direction. Nayl's combat-cannon was making its distinctive metallic whir between bursts of fire. Inshabel's las-cracks overlapped themselves.
'Fischig!' I yelled. 'Lead off round the back of the pylon. See what you can find. Maybe take a damn prisoner before the Kasrkin slay them all!'
I turned back to deal with the ruined daemonhost. We had punished it badly, but I had no illusions as to its resilience.
Or rather… I had thought I hadn't.
Prophaniti was already gone, the ground still smoking and congealing where it had lain.
'Damn! Damn!'
Neve limped down the slope to me. 'Eisenhorn?'
The daemonhost! Did you see it?'
She shook her head. A loud explosion rolled from the far side of the pylon.
'You ki
lled it, didn't you?'
'Not even slightly,' I replied.
'Gregor!' Bequin shrieked.
Prophaniti was behind me, hanging in the air, incandescent with power. It was naked, and wore the terrible wounds we had inflicted like medals. The right leg, frayed at the knee, dribbled glowing white ichor. Entry wounds and burns bubbled and smoked across its chest. Its head hung slack on a neck broken by Husmaan's hot-shot. It spread its arms and a hand that was just a thumb and a mangled palm sprayed lightning into the midnight grass.
'Nice… try…' the slack head gurgled.
With its robe gone, I could see its body was strung with chains, padlocks and bindings. Stitching needles and other iron awls were pierced into its luminous flesh. Various amulets hung from the chains, or from the barbed wire looped around its neck.
'Run,' I said to Neve and Bequin. 'Run!'
Neve raised her silver cane and triggered the launcher.
The grenade hit Prophaniti in the lower torso and blew it back a few metres with a flash of fyceline.
It rushed back towards us, moaning and chattering in a warp-cursed language.
Bequin grabbed both me and Neve. Her untouchable quality was our only defence now, and she knew it.
Prophaniti stopped short of us, just a metre or so away, hovering in the air and shining like a star. I could smell the rank stench of eternal murder about it.
Its broken neck made a sound like snapping twigs as it slowly turned its lolling head to look at us. The light of dead suns billowed from its eyes and mouth.
Bequin's fingers bit into my arm. The three of us looked up at it, hair ruffled by the warp-winds it generated.
Tenacious/ it said. 'No wonder Cherubael likes you. He said you employed untouchables. A wise move. You can't hurt me with your guns, but with her around, I can't touch you with my mind.'
'Fortunately, I don't have to/ it added.
It lashed out suddenly with its maimed hand. Neve shrieked as she was hurled aside. There was blood on Prophaniti's thumb talon.
Alizebeth's psychic deadness blocked its psychic rage. But not its physical assault.
It lashed out again, and I leapt back, dragging Bequin.
Prophaniti cackled.
'Alizebeth!' I yelled, and grabbed her by the hand. 'Stay with me!'
I drew my hanger. The short curved blade shone in Prophaniti's glare. The runes inscribed on the blade by the Ministorum glittered.