Mabbon grappled with Hadrel, strength to strength, limbs locked. He forced the sirdar backwards, their arms entangled. Jaghar crashed into them, gouging his claws and teeth into Mabbon’s flank.
Mabbon swung, hurling Hadrel away. He smacked Jaghar aside with a backhand, then ripped his talons through the Qimurah’s throat. Jaghar fell to his knees, clutching at the frothing yellow liquid pouring from his opened neck.
Mabbon grabbed his head with both hands, twisted, and wrenched it off.
Jaghar’s corpse fell forward.
Mabbon staggered, mauled and bleeding. He swayed. Hadrel was on his feet again.
‘You were always the best of us, Mabbon,’ he hissed. ‘So very blessed.’
‘I never asked for it,’ said Mabbon. He spat yellow blood, his eyes neon fire. ‘I never wanted it. But he blessed me anyway.’
They clashed like charging bulls, talons tearing and rending, and tore away each other’s flesh with the fury of daemons.
His vision greying back to nothing, Rawne watched as they both fell in the rain, tangled and torn apart, locked together in a final embrace.
Neither of them rose again.
His vision failed.
When it returned, for a brief moment, the cold of eternity was in his bones. He glimpsed lights, dazzlingly bright in the rain, pulsing green and red. He heard the scream of lifter jets. He heard Oysten’s voice calling his name.
Calling him back.
And that was all.
Epilogues: One Week Later
Cold daylight streamed in through the preceptory windows. Hark entered the room, the empty sleeve of his leather coat neatly pinned up. Onabel held the door open for him. He nodded his thanks, and she turned and limped away very slowly with the aid of a walking stick. Her injuries had not been physical, but they would take a long time to heal.
‘Commissar,’ said Laksheema. She had been waiting. Her gown was clean and fresh, but he noticed she hadn’t had her golden augmetics repaired. The polished surfaces of her face and body were crazed and scoured. Perhaps she hadn’t had time, he thought, or perhaps she had chosen to leave the scars as they were.
One could only repair one’s self so many times.
‘Are you well?’ he asked.
‘Well enough,’ she said. ‘And you?’
Hark nodded. There was a silence.
‘Neither one of us is good at small talk,’ he remarked. She tilted her head, agreeing.
‘You’ve come to receive my report,’ she said.
‘The Lord Executor awaits it with interest.’
She lifted an actuator wand, and a screen lit. It displayed detailed picts of four eagle stones, side by side.
‘Your Major–’ Laksheema paused and consulted her data-slate. ‘Petrushkevskaya–’
‘Pasha,’ he said.
‘She delivered the recovered stones to the palace under guard,’ said Laksheema. ‘They were received by the ordos. Four had been retrieved intact.’
She flashed up another image. This showed four other shapes, broken into fragments, scorched and cracked, their ancient patterns barely visible.
‘Four other stones were recovered by a Sergeant… Ifvan. They had been subjected to intense burning. A flamer, I understand. They were severely damaged and incomplete, and much detail lost. These were also delivered, and savants are now working on restoration and reconstruction.’
‘Will that be possible?’ asked Hark.
‘Hard to say,’ she replied. ‘It is hard to reconstruct something when you don’t know what it is. Also, all the scanned details and analysis studies made after the original recovery were lost when Mechanicore Fourteen was razed. The EM Fourteen facility had the only copies of the data because it was considered so sensitive. The machine plague – Berserker – devoured it all.’
‘So… it’s all pending?’ Hark said. ‘I thought it might be. The Lord Executor will be particularly keen to know the stones are secure.’
‘They are in the central vault of the capital ship Deluge,’ she replied, ‘and that information, by the way, carries a vermilion classification. As per the Lord Executor’s instruction, the security and examination of the Glyptothek is in the hands of the ordos. The Cult Mechanicus will not be involved.’
‘As I understand, it was hardly their fault,’ said Hark.
‘The adepts failed,’ said Laksheema bluntly. ‘Their security was insufficient. We have received several formal petitions from the Mechanicus, requesting that we release the objects to them, or at least permit their full participation in their analysis. They wish, I think, to know what could be so valuable it cost an entire Mechanicore station. These petitions have been denied. That can be reviewed. It’s not my choice.’
Hark sat back and gazed at the images.
‘We knew they were important,’ said Laksheema. ‘Precious to the Archenemy, at least. I had favoured the explanation that they were of ritual or cult significance, but Sek committed everything he had to their recovery. To me, that suggests the stones have a more strategic function.’
Hark nodded. ‘We have hearsay evidence to support that,’ he said. ‘A report from the field that night. Archenemy combatants discussing the purpose of the stones. It’s not much, but it would appear they are a weapon, or the key to a weapon. A xenos device. Something so monstrous that even they were in awe of it. But something either side could use.’
‘Xenos?’
‘That’s our reading. The word used was “vergoht”. Forgive my pronunciation. I’m told it means alien, forbidden, or against natural order.’
‘Is that all?’ she asked.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It’s a start. It points us in a direction at least.’
‘But this field evidence, is it reliable?’ Laksheema asked.
‘The source is beyond reproach,’ Hark replied.
Laksheema deactivated the display. They both rose.
‘I’ll convey your report to the Lord Executor,’ he said.
‘I am at his call if anything further is needed,’ she replied, ‘and will contact his office at once if anything new emerges.’
She walked him to the door.
‘Express my regards to him,’ she said. ‘I also wish to convey my sympathies for your regiment’s losses.’
‘Do you?’ he asked.
‘Of course.’
‘Just abstract platitudes, I’m sure,’ he said. ‘You told me you don’t feel, and I believe that.’
‘I am not entirely without feeling, Viktor,’ she said. ‘Not yet at least.’
‘Then I will convey them,’ he replied. ‘I have a feeling that, from here, we will be working in close collaboration for a while to come.’
‘I look forward to it,’ she said. ‘Despite all that occurred, I enjoyed our relationship.’
‘Our working relationship?’ he asked.
‘Is there another kind?’ she replied.
‘Not that I’m aware of,’ said Hark. He smiled. ‘Good day to you, inquisitor.’
Ban Daur moved the lamp. This time there had been no mistake about it. He could hear sobbing. A woman weeping.
He got up, leaving his water bottle and food-pack on the floor, and walked along the hallway, holding the lamp high. The undercroft was empty and silent.
He didn’t dare call her name.
He heard the sobbing again. His heart began to race. Behind the wall? The walls had moved once, though now they seemed dead and solid and inert.
He followed the sound.
He found her in the hall that had served as the central billet. She was perched on the pile of rubble and stone blocks where the vaulted roof had fallen in. A narrow shaft of daylight shone down on her, spearing through the hole in the Hexagonal Court above.