Then their rate-of-cycle increased dramatically. The woe machine rose and ripped into the ceiling, slicing through the ancient stone as though it was soft fat. The wailing woe machine gouged up into the ceiling, and vanished from view.
Dislodged blocks tumbled onto the chamber floor. The undercroft ceiling began to split and collapse, the integrity of its ancient vault sheared through.
‘Out! Out!’ Gaunt yelled to Baskevyl. The path to the exit and the stairs was no longer blocked. They grabbed the screaming Blenner and stumbled towards the door as the ceiling crashed in behind them.
The palace was shaking. All around, men and women called out in alarm and panic. Candle flames jerked and fluttered. Some went out in wafts of grey smoke. The lamps rattled on their hooks. Old paintings quivered in their frames. The psyber-eagle squawked as dust sifted from the jittering antlers it had settled on.
Objects on table tops trembled and shifted position. Glasses smashed. Medical trays skipped, dislodged and spilled to the floor. Cracks and splits appeared in the ancient floor tiles.
Hark and Laksheema rushed back into the wardroom where they had been treated. The Keyzon corpsman was staring out of the tall windows in amazement. They joined him, gazing down into the broad yard of the Hexagonal Court. The space was torchlit – burning tapers fixed in iron brackets. A company of Helixid troopers were loading packs into two Valkyrie carriers that had set down as part of the evacuation effort.
Hark and Laksheema could hear the men shouting, looking around frantically in an effort to comprehend the source of the shaking.
‘Is… is it an earthquake?’ asked the corpsman. ‘Is it the volcanics?’
‘No,’ said Hark. He could hear the wailing. The high-pitched metal squeal was getting louder by the second.
The woe machine reached ground level. Its whirring blades erupted through the flagstones of the Hexagonal Court, spitting splinters of stone in all directions. Some of the Helixid troops died immediately, cut down by the whizzing slivers.
Others were caught in the cloud of blades as it rose from the ruptured stone floor and expanded, blades flattening into a horizontal dish around the burning heart. The men vanished in puffs of blood vapour, or fell like parts of a broken puzzle, cut in sections.
The tail boom of one Valkyrie was lopped clean off, leaving bare metal stumps and sparking cables. The severed tail fins were hurled like a toy across the court, and punched in the wall and windows of a ground floor chamber. The other carrier, its ramp still down, tried to throttle up and lift clear. The blades shredded one side of it clean away, leaving the Valkyrie excised in cross-section. Its straining engines ignited, and it exploded in a savage fireball.
Hark slammed Laksheema down and away from the windows as the concussion blast blew them in. A blizzard of broken glass burst across the room. The corpsman stayed standing for almost ten seconds, blinded, flayed back to the bone from the thighs up. He fell sideways like a discarded kit-bag.
Down below, the woe machine had formed a new shape – a war shape, a woe shape, an octahedron four metres across made of sliding, slithering blades, the neon light glowing inside the lattice shell. The few Helixid troopers who hadn’t died or fled fired on it. The woe machine rushed at them, las-rounds pinging off its blades, one tip dilating to form a spinning, sucking maw.
Hark got up, broken glass cascading off him, and rushed to the door. Behind him, Laksheema struggled to her feet.
‘Out!’ Hark bellowed into the hallway. ‘Out now! Woe machine!’
Terrified staff and personnel began to scramble from the rooms all along the hall. The air itself was vibrating. An ancient painting of Throne-alone-knows-what fell off the wall with a crash as its ancient string snapped. Its gilt frame shattered.
Auerben appeared, people shoving past her. She looked at Hark.
‘We can’t move her,’ she said. ‘We can’t.’
By the chapel door, Meryn shrank back against the old wood panels as though he was willing the palace wall to swallow him up.
He could hear the killing, the screams. He could smell the blood.
There was going to be another slaughter. And it was going to make the first one pale into insignificance.
He started to laugh, unable to stop himself, because there was nothing funny left in the world.
Nineteen: Whose Voice Drowns Out All Others
The hooded V’heduak magir strode down the companionway straight towards them.
‘Shit,’ Mkoll whispered to Brin and Mazho. ‘Let me do the talking.’
He turned to face the magir, trying to frame the formal constructions of the Blood-fare caste.
The V’heduak grinned down at him.
‘You bastard,’ Mkoll murmured.
‘I acquired a disguise,’ said Kater Holofurnace.
‘Clever,’ said Mkoll.
‘I was slowing you down,’ said the Snake. ‘Now we can move freely.
‘Where did you–?’ Mazho began.
Holofurnace shook his head. ‘One of them was fool enough to walk away alone. They won’t find his corpse.’ He parted the edge of the robes slightly, and let them see the belt-fed .20.
‘We know where to go,’ said Milo. He had the fold of deck plans.
Holofurnace nodded. ‘That show any weapons lockers?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ said Mkoll. ‘But they’re secure and we–’
Holofurnace held up a ring of notched metal bars.
‘The Blood-fare had keys,’ he said with a smile.
Three packsons were guarding the strong room. They saluted, hands to mouths, as the V’heduak strode past them. He slotted his keys into the heavy door’s lock without comment.
The packsons watched him for a moment.
‘Magir,’ said one tentatively. ‘The orders are to leave all weapon rooms locked and secure while–’
Mkoll glared at them.
‘You question the magir’s authority, stool-worm?’ he asked.
‘No, sirdar. No. Your pardon.’
Holofurnace pushed open the hefty door, and they went inside, pulling it shut behind them. The locker was small, the walls shelved and racked. A small metal bench stood in the centre of the room. The plans had showed there was a locker like it on almost every deck, stocked for the quick distribution of arms to the ship’s crew in the event of a boarding action.
‘Not much,’ murmured Holofurnace, glancing around. ‘It’s crude stuff. I was hoping for something with some punch. Plasma or cyclic.’
‘It’s just crew-issue small-arms,’ said Mazho. He stared at a rack of boarding hatchets.
‘Be selective,’ said Milo. ‘There’s reloads at least. Pack your pockets with cells.’
‘Think small and useful,’ said Mkoll. ‘Concealable.’
‘If we’re going to kill the devil in his own lair,’ said Holofurnace, ‘we need power.’ He looked at them. ‘He’s a magister. He won’t be human now, if he ever was.’
‘We don’t know what he is,’ said Mkoll.
‘I saw his face,’ said Milo quietly. ‘In the vortex. I saw his face.’
Mazho shivered. He’d glimpsed it too.
‘He’s definitely not human,’ said Milo.
‘So he won’t die like one, which is my point,’ said Holofurnace. ‘Carbines? Blades? Even this?’
He put the heavy sentry gun down on the table.
‘I have grenades,’ said Mkoll.
‘How many?’ asked the Iron Snake.
‘Two,’ said Mkoll. ‘One smoke, one anti-personnel.’
‘Two,’ sighed Mazho.
Holofurnace looked at Mkoll. ‘Oh, my brother,’ he said with a smile. ‘Scout and hunter. Best of both. You move light but you think small. You can hunt this prey, I don’t doubt that, but can you kill him when you run him to ground? Straight silver won’t be enough here.’