The Beast Arises

Vangorich strode over to the dead alien. ‘These are their elite of elite. We were lucky to kill it.’

Krule left the disc where it was. He flexed his fist. ‘It hurts like hell.’

‘Do you know, Krule, one of the reasons I have always enjoyed your company is that you never say anything asinine like “I had it covered” or other such nonsense.’

‘I didn’t. I’d be dead without you.’ Krule spoke quietly. He was panting hard, and sweat and blood ran from his skin. He had never come this close to being beaten.

‘Quite. The question is, what is it doing here? I wanted to interrogate it. It’s a shame I had to kill it to save you, but I had no choice. I could not cripple it. Their weapons are mentally operated, so it was the head or it was nothing.’

‘You have my thanks.’

‘Save them. In not too long a time the ork ambassador will be back aboard the attack moon, and you may yet die today.’ Vangorich stroked at his scar in thought. ‘Only seven or so, Mercado said. That’s an awfully small number to try anything meaningful at the Palace, even for xenos as arrogant as the eldar. I am not so sure all is as it seems here. Come, we had better go, or there will be none of the xenos left to question.’

Four

Before the Throne

Lhaerial came to the outer precincts of the Sanctum Imperialis. Bho the death jester followed her, close as a shadow. For as long as they could they avoided combat, she clouding the weak minds of the humans where possible, detouring to avoid them where it was not. They followed half-forgotten conduits and filthy service ducts, coming ever closer to their target. The blazing light of the Emperor’s beacon grew in her mind’s eye, blotting out her limited ability to read the skein. Her future was a mystery to her now, and she must act cautiously.

One by one she felt the death songs of her fellows, fallen in solo dances with no audience to applaud. A black wave of despair rose in her heart, but she froze it. Sorrow could wait for a time when it could be turned into laughter, a celebration of her troupers’ joining with Cegorach.

There came a moment when they could hide no more, at the place where the architecture of the Palace opened up and became dominated by the vast avenues radiating from the Throne Room. The weak infantry in black were replaced by armoured giants, their golden plate draped in sombre black cloaks. Their species aside, there was nothing similar between the two breeds of warrior. These were the Adeptus Custodes, and few could stand against them.

Lhaerial had expected to encounter them sooner, for Ulthran had told her they guarded all parts of the Palace in the days when the Emperor lived. Time had made them cautious, and they gathered now only around the Throne Room of their lord, careful of what little mortal life remained to Him.

The secret tunnels turned away from the Throne Room, and Bho and Lhaerial were forced out. They avoided the main processional way and its progression of mighty, symbolic gates, taking a lesser avenue — still many hundred lengths across, the vaulting of the ceiling lost to smoke and distance. Only one gateway barred this avenue, at the entrance to the antechamber. Far away down the mighty road it hid in clouds of incense.

‘This way, Bho, come!’

The Adeptus Custodes waited for them, opening fire as they ran down the vast processional way. Hard projectiles of metal whined past them, shot from the tips of long-hafted weapons as heavy as Lhaerial herself. Primitive, as all the technology of the humans was, but deadly. Just one round, were it to hit, would obliterate her slender body.

They did not hit.

Lhaerial wove around the bolts. Bho fired from behind, his screamer cannon punching the genetically enhanced warriors from their feet. They were too mighty to be felled by the shot itself, instead dying painfully as the gene-toxins in the shrieker rounds rewrote their life code explosively.

‘Stop, stop!’ she called out in their ugly language. ‘My name is Lhaerial Rey,’ she continued, ‘Shadowseer of the Ceaseless Song. I come here at command of Eldrad Ulthran to deliver a message of great import to the Emperor of Mankind!’

Only murder dwelled in their hearts. A giant moved to intercept her, his great halberd whirling in buzzing arcs around his head. This one moved with a grace and speed she did not associate with the humans. She fought ferociously with him, trading parries and ripostes like for like, the sheer strength of the human shocking her. She saluted him before she took his head from his shoulders. ‘Friendship! Friendship!’ she cried out, Gothic’s coarseness an affront to her tongue.