by Dan Abnett
The ogryn fired his heavy weapon at the incoming host. The impact fluttered off Cherubael like petals. It punched its talons into the squealing abhuman's chest and lifted the big brute off the ground.
And then threw him. The ogryn went up. Just simply went up and kept
going.
Cherubael changed direction and skimmed across the gorge towards the retreating meres. Our guns had whittled their numbers down by then and we were in pursuit, though Eleena had stayed with the sprawled, cursing
Nayl.
I noticed something else about this new Cherubael. It didn't laugh any more. Ever. Its face was set in an implacable frown. It showed no signs of taking any pleasure in its slaughter.
I was pleased about that. The laughter really did used to get on my nerves.
It was going to take a while to get used to Cherubael's new face, though. Once installed within the flesh host, the daemon had made its usual alterations – the sprouting nub horns, the talons, the smooth, glossy skin, the blank eyes.
But it had not entirely erased the features of Godwyn Fischig.
It killed the last of the ambushers, all save one who reached the gorge wall and accessed the dimension trap they had emerged from.
'Hold it!' I ordered. 'Hold it open!'
Cherubael obeyed. It atomised the last mere as the trap blinked open and then braced its arms wide, preventing the trap from closing. Even for Cherubael, this was an effort.
'Hurry. Up/ it said, as if annoyed with me.
I reached the trap.
There wasn't time to get us all through. Gustine hurled himself in, headlong, and I followed, shouting to the others to stay back and stay together.
The last thing I heard was a loud, liquid impact that must have been the ogryn finally obeying the law of gravity.
The trap blinked shut.
I felt a sickening twist of translation. I landed on top of the sprawled Gustine in a dim, boxy space that smelled musty.
'Ow!' he complained.
I got to my feet. That in itself was ridiculously hard. I was sweating freely by the time I was vertical.
'You okay?' Gustine asked.
'Yes,' I snapped. I wasn't really. My head was throbbing, and the pain in my legs was beginning to overcome the power of the drugs that were self-administering from a dispenser Crezia had fitted to my hip.
'You had better not expect me to carry you/ Cherubael whispered behind me.
'Don't worry. Your dignity isn't in danger/
I drew Barbarisater, holding it in my right hand, and gripped my runestaff in my left.
I stomped forward. Darkness. A wall. I turned. Another wall.
'Gustine?'
He'd switched on a lamp pack, but it was showing him nothing but black walls. There was no sign of a ceiling.
'How far can you see?' I asked Cherubael.
'Forever/ it said, floating alongside me.
'Fine. In practical terms, how far can you see?'
'Not far in here. I can see that the wall ends there. There is a gap beyond it/
Very well/ I plodded ahead. My back really hurt now where the implants went in and my nose was bleeding. Gustine clipped the lamp pack to the bayonet lug of his las.
He tried to reach Nayl on the vox. Dead and silent.
I made an effort to reach Ravenor with my mind. Nothing.
Heavy footed, I moved through the darkness with my odd companions. The runestaff was trembling, sniffing some focus of power.
'You feel that?' I asked the daemon.
It nodded.
I decided we would follow it.
'Have you noticed we can breathe in here too?' Gustine remarked a few minutes later.
'Gosh, I wouldn't have picked up on that/
He frowned at me, put-upon. 'I mean, the air's right, inside and out/
'It's so the enemy can breathe/ Cherubael said.
'What's that supposed to mean?'
'They got here first. They got inside. Ghiil made the atmosphere appropriate for them as soon as Ghiil sensed they were there/
'You're talking like Ghiil is alive/
'Ghiil has never been alive/ it said.
'It's never been dead, either/ it added a moment later.
I was about to ask it to expand a little on that alarming notion, but Cherubael suddenly surged forward in the blackness ahead of us. I saw the flash of its light, a laser discharge.
It came back, blood steaming off its talons.
They're hunting for us/ it said.
I have seen wonders in my life. Horrors too. I have witnessed vistas and spectacles that have cowed my mind and dwarfed my imagination.
None of them compared to the mausoleum under Ghiil.
I cannot say anything about its size except to use inadequate words like vast, huge…
There was nothing to give any scale. We came out of the black tunnels into a black abyss that was to all intents much the same except that the blackness that had been walls was now immaterial. Tiny, scattered specks of light, dozens of them, illuminated small parts of the face of some impossible structure, as dark and cyclopean as the eternal wall ancient philosophers used to believe surrounded creation. The edge of the universe. The side of the casket an ancient god had wrought to keep reality in.
Which god, I wouldn't like to say.
It was warm and still. Not even the air moved. The dots of light showed small parts of a vast design etched onto the face of the mausoleum. Hints of spirals, lines and swirling runes.
This was where the warped ones had laid their dead king to rest.
This was the tomb of Yssarile, over which Ghiil had been raised in the strange eons before man.
The sight even stunned Cherubael to silence. I hoped its lack of comment was down to awe. I had a nasty feeling it had more to do with reverence.
Or dread.
Gustine lost it for a while. His mind refused to deal with what his eyes were seeing. He began to weep inconsolably, and fell to his knees. It was a dismal sight to see such a robust, fearless man reduced in such a way.
I let him be as long as I dared, but the sounds of his weeping carried in the dark and seemed alarmingly loud. Some of the tiny lights on the face of the mausoleum began to move, as if descending.
I took hold of the sobbing fighter and tried to use my will to calm him.
It didn't work. No persuasion could anchor the edges of his sanity where it had come adrift.
I had to be harsher. I numbed his mind with a deep psychic probe, blocking his terror out and freezing his thoughts but for the most basic instincts and biological functions.
We approached the mausoleum across a plain of lightless stone. The further we got, the further away I realised the structure actually was. It was evidently even bigger than I had first realised.
I had Gustine switch off his lamp pack. We simply followed the dots of light up ahead. I suggested that Cherubael might like to warn us if the darkness around us became anything other than a flat table of stone. A chasm, for example.
The only advantage in the mindless scale of the place as 1 could see it was that the enemy would have a hard job finding us. There was so much space to search.
After what seemed like an hour, we were still a very long way from the tomb. I checked my chronometer to determine precisely how long it had been since we accessed the interior of Ghiil, but it had stopped. Stopped isn't right exactly. It was still running and beating seconds, but the time was not recording in any way.
I recalled the clock in Aemos's suite, chiming to mark out times that had no meaning.
As we closed on our destination, I was able to make more sense of the lights. Tiny dots, they had seemed, casting little fields of light.
They were massive lamps, high power, of the sort used to light landing fields or military camps. Mounted on suspensor platforms, they floated at various points in front of the face of the mausoleum, lighting up surface details in patches of glare the size of amphitheatres. There were forty-three of
the platforms, each with its own lamp. 1 counted them.
There were men on the platforms, human figures. Glaw's men, I was sure, some of them mercenary guards, most of them adepts of arcane lore enlisted to his cause.
As we watched, some of the platforms drifted slowly or adjusted the sweep of their light.
They were reading the wall.
By whatever catalogue of means, Glaw had learned of this place, found it and made his way inside to plunder its vile treasures. But its innermost secrets clearly still eluded him.
That was why he had wanted the Malus Codicium so badly.
To turn the final lock, to get him through the final barrier.
One of the platforms began to climb vertically, its lamplight flickering across the passing relief of the tomb face. It climbed and then halted far up above at what seemed to be the top of the wall. Its beam picked out an open square, an entrance, perhaps, though who would put an entrance at the top of a wall without steps?
I scolded myself for asking. The warped ones.
'Glaw is up there/ Cherubael said.
It was right. I could smell the monster's mind.
We hurried the last distance to the foot of the mausoleum wall. Several cargo fliers and two bulk speeders were parked down here, alongside metal crates of equipment and spares for the lamp platforms. Their base camp.
We waited. I considered our options.
Almost at the same time, two of the platforms descended the wall to ground level, dimming their huge lamps. There were about six men on each one.
One settled in and two men jumped down, hurrying towards one of the cargo fliers. I could hear them, exchanging words with the crew on the platform. A moment later the other came down softly beside it.
I could see the men. They were dressed in light fatigues or environment robes. Some carried data-slates.
The men who had gone to the flier returned, carrying an equipment crate between them. They loaded it onto the platform and it immediately began to climb back up the wall, its lamp powering back to full beam to resume its work.
'Come on,' I said quietly.
More men were loading more crates onto the other platform. There were six in all – four in robes and two armoured meres operating the platform controls.
Barbarisater took the three loaders out with two quick strokes. Gustine dragged a man backwards over the platform rail and snapped his neck. Cherubael embraced the two meres from behind and they turned to ash and sifted away.
We got on board.
'Get ready with the lamp/1 told Gustine. I studied the platform control panel quickly, and then activated the lift. The attitude controls were a simple brass lever.
We rose. The tomb face whispered by. As we lifted past the lowermost of the working platforms, Gustine powered up the lamp and angled it towards the wall.
I couldn't remember quite how far up the platform had been before it had descended for spares. How long before we passed our designated spot and were noticed by the others?
I hoped they were all too engrossed in their work.
We were about two-thirds of the way up when we heard shots from another platform and a lamp swung our way. Almost immediately, so did several others, tracking our ascent. Las-fire pinged across at us. Gustine dropped down by the rail and returned fire. I kept us rising.
'Do you want me to…?' Cherubael asked.
'No, stay put.'
Gustine's next salvo took out the lamp of a platform rising after us. A huge shower of sparks erupted out and drizzled down the tomb face. I felt multiple jolts as shots impacted against the underside of our rig.
Almost there.
We rose up next to the entrance. It was square, maybe forty metres across. A platform was already floating outside it and, clumsy with the controls, I slammed us against it. The men aboard began firing. There were others inside the dim mouth of the entrance. Gustine blasted back. I saw one topple back onto the deck of the other platform, and then another pitch clean off and drop like a stone.
Las-fire and solid rounds raked our vehicle, tearing strips and nuggets out of the deck plating and the rail. Shot through, the lamp died.
I hauled on the control stick and slammed us sideways into the other platform, deliberately this time. We ground against them and drove them into the tomb face. The edge of their hull shrieked out sparks as it tore against the stone. I did it again. They were screaming and firing.
'Let's move!' Gustine yelled.
He heaved a grenade into the mouth of the entrance to clear us a path.
There was a dull bang and a flash, and two figures came flailing out into the air.
Gustine tossed a second onto the other platform and then leapt over the rail into the tomb entrance, blasting into the wafting smoke haze with his lasrifle.
I followed him, Cherubael drifting at my heels. It was damn hard to step wide enough and span the gap between the platform and the entrance's stone lip.
Gustine's second grenade ripped a hole through the deck of the other platform. It sagged and then dropped, like a descending elevator, trailing flames.
Far below us, it tore through two other platforms and spilled men and debris into the air.
The jolt of the blast had come at the wrong moment for me. Our platform shuddered and yawed out like a boat at a dock, and I was still halfway across, forcing my stiff, heavy limbs to carry me.
I was going to fall. The brace around my body felt as heavy as an anchor, pulling me down.
Cherubael grabbed me under the arms and hoisted me neatly into the entrance.
I was grateful, but I couldn't find it in me to thank it. Thank Cherubael? The idea was toxic. Then again, just as unlikely was the notion of Cherubael voluntarily saving my life…
Gustine was fighting his way forward down the entrance, which we saw now was a long tunnel that matched the dimensions of the opening. Crates of equipment were piled up in the mouth, and floating glow-globes had been set at intervals along the wall. They looked like they went on for a long way.
Four or five meres and servants of our adversary were dead on the tunnel floor and half a dozen more were backed down the throat of it, firing to drive us out.
Cherubael swept forward and obliterated them. We came after him. I so dearly wished I could run.
The tunnel opened on the other side of the tomb face. We set eyes on the interior. By now, I had become numb to the inhuman scale of things. The tomb was a vault in which one might comfortably store a continent. The inner walls and the high, stone-beamed roof were lavishly decorated with swirls of script and emblems that I swore I would never allow to be seen by other eyes. This was the crypt where Yssarile lay in death, and the walls screamed his praise and worship.
I could make out little of the dark gulf below, but there was something there. Something the size of a great Imperial hive city. I discerned a black, geometric shape that was fashioned from neither stone nor metal nor even bone, but, it seemed, all of those things at once. It was repellent. Dead, but alive. Dormant, but filled with the slumbering power of a million stars.
The barque of the daemon-king. Yssarile's chariot of unholy battle, his instrument of apocalypse, with which he had scoured the warped
fortresses and habitations of his own reality in wars too dreadful to imagine.
Glaw's prize.
From the globe-lit tunnel, we could make our way out onto a massive plinth of dark onyx that extended from the edge of the inner wall. There was a block raised there, a polished tooth of dark green mineral forty metres tall, set deep into the plinth. It was wound with carved spirals.
Glow-globes floated around it and tools and instruments lay at its foot. Pontius Glaw had been studying this discovery himself. But the noise of our violent entry had alerted him. He was waiting for us.
He emerged from behind the standing block, calm, almost indifferent. His tall, gleaming machine body was as I had remembered it from the auto-seance. The cloak of blades clinked as he moved. The ever-smirking gold
en mask smirked.
'Gregor Eisenhorn/ he said softly. 'The galaxy's most persistent bastard. Only you could scrabble and slash and claw and crawl your way to me. Which, of course, is why I admire you so.'
I stomped forward.
'Careful!' Gustine hissed, but I had long passed the point where being careful was a high priority.
I faced Glaw. He was broader than me and a good deal taller. His blade-cloak jangled as he stroked a perfectly articulated duralloy hand across the surface of the green block. Then he raised the same hand and held it up for inspection.
'Magos Bure did a fine job, didn't he? Such a craftsman. I can never thank you enough for arranging his services. This is the hand I killed him with.'
There's more than his blood on your hands, Glaw. Do you answer to that name now, or do you prefer to hide behind the title Khanjar?'
'Either will do.'
'Your daughter didn't take either of your names/
He was silent. If I could get him angry, I could perhaps force an error.
'Maria/ he said, 'so headstrong. Another reason to kill you, apart from the obvious/
He was about to say something else, but I had waited long enough. I blasted my will through the runestaff, and lunged forward, swinging my blade.
The psychic blast knocked him back, and he half-turned, his cloak whirling out and turning Barbarisater aside with its multiple edges. His turn became a full spin and I lurched back to avoid the lethal hem of his blade-cloak.
Gustine moved in, firing bolts of light that simply reflected off Glaw's gleaming form.
Cherubael came in from the other side. Its searing attack scorched Glaw's metal, and I heard him curse. He slashed at Cherubael with his open hand, extending hook blades from slots in the fingertips.
The hooks ripped into Cherubael's flesh but it made no cry. It grappled with Pontius Glaw, psychic power boiling the space between them and flaring out in spasming tendrils of light. The very air crisped and ionised. Glaw's dancing metal feet chipped flakes of onyx off the plinth beneath him. I tried to get in, to land a blow in support of the daemonhost, but it was like approaching a furnace.
Gustine simply looked on, open-mouthed. He was so far out of his league it wasn't funny.