The host roared, shaking their fists, saluting, fingers to their lips.
‘All that was set in place has come to its conclusion,’ the quire hissed as the roars died back. ‘This night and the next day. My hours. My awaited moment, long foreseen. Those who hold the key of victory will pass to me what has always been mine.’
‘He’s saying,’ Mkoll whispered, ‘…he’s saying the enkil vahakan, “those who hold the key of victory”…’
‘I understand,’ Milo whispered back, unable to tear his gaze from the dais. ‘I understand what he’s saying.’
‘But he’s speaking in the Sekkite tongue…’ Mkoll hissed.
‘No, he’s not.’ Milo replied. ‘I understand every word. He’s declaring victory.’
The unclean voices of lekts swelled in exultation.
‘I have sent the blessed reworked,’ they announced.
The host roared again. ‘Qimurah! Qimurah! Qimurah!’
‘The blessed reworked, all eight times eight, have slipped like a skzerret’s blade into the heart of the foe,’ the lekts chorused. ‘By dawn, they will be returned to the sound of my voice. They will bring the Enkil Vehk, the key that was shamelessly stolen from me. This will be the victory I have pursued. The key will open the way. The key will sunder the stars. No one, no corpse-emperor, no Throne warrior, no false angel, no… not even any bold magir or preening Gaur… will stand in the fury of my wrath. The Archonate will prevail, reworked in glory. Anarch I am.’
The host roared again. A chant began. ‘Sek! Sek! Sek! Sek!’
Mazho saw the mummified titan raise a tattered hand for silence. Holofurnace saw an ethereal wing sweep for order. Milo flinched as the demiurge lifted his fist, compelling attention. Mkoll saw a silver gauntlet gesture, bidding them to indulge him a moment more.
‘For the plague of Terra is beheaded this night,’ the lekts proclaimed. ‘While the blessed reworked perform their holy ministry, I have unleashed woe upon the place called Eltath. The Herit ver Tenebal Mor. The Heritor’s bad shadow falls across the ground. The enkil vahakan will perish, all. All their chieftains. All their warlords. The crusaders of the corpse-prophet, so long a plague upon our realm, will be emasculated. Their order lost. Their authority annihilated. By dawn, this will be finished. The plague of Terra will break, as a fever breaks, lost and leaderless, and from tomorrow they will scatter, hopeless and afeared, into the farthest stars, and we will drive them before us, shattered, humiliated and put to rout.’
The host howled. The Sekkite Sons drummed on the handrails. They turned to one another in raptures, clasping hands and embracing.
Mazho gasped as the damogaur beside him turned, yelling, and hugged him.
‘Dahak enkil voi sahh, magir!’ the officer shouted in his ear. Mazho could smell his sweat, the stink of his breath.
‘Dahak enkil?’ the man asked, breaking the embrace and looking at Mazho, puzzled. ‘Dahak enkil voi?’ Mazho could barely hear him over the chanting. He didn’t understand the words anyway. He turned aside, pretending he was eager to congratulate the man to his left.
The damogaur seized him by the shoulder and turned him back. He gripped Mazho by the chin-strap and tilted his head, peering in under the helmet’s brim at Mazho’s eyes.
‘Sp-ecta-kles?’ he said, not understanding.
Up at the high rail, Holofurnace was trying to keep Colonel Mazho in sight through the forest of pumping fists and swaying banners. He glimpsed Mazho turning, a damogaur grabbing him by the face.
It was time. He threw back the folds of his borrowed robes.
‘Sp-ecta-kles?’ the damogaur hissed into Mazho’s face. Angry understanding flushed his face.
‘Pheguth!’ he snarled.
‘Fourth Light Cinder Storm!’ Mazho replied, and punched his skzerret into the damogaur’s chest. For a moment, no one around him realised anything was wrong. The cheering was too intense. The damogaur slumped, held upright by the tight-packed bodies.
Then gunfire ripped down from the equatorial walk.
Holofurnace had swept out the heavy sentry gun and opened fire, feeding the belt with his left hand. Hot shell cases bounced off the startled Sekkites at the rail beside him. The shots raked down the steep tiered bank of the Oratory, the first bursts killing cheering Sons in the front two rows. The .20 was not a sophisticated gun and, despite his strength, Holofurnace was not assisted by the automatic balancing, levelling and aiming systems of his Astartes armour.
He corrected by eye. His second and third bursts ripped across the dais.
He saw the winged daemon stagger, its golden armour puncturing. Scraps of white feather billowed into the air. Parts of the guard rail and dais platform splintered in showers of bone shards.
The massed cheering swelled and changed as one noise, becoming panic and howls of astonished horror.
Milo saw the towering demiurge shudder and reel, blood bursting from his black and yellow robes. He swung up his carbine, and blasted point blank into the Sekkites to his right, brutally clearing a space in the stall, then turned and blazed on full auto at the dais.
Mkoll vaulted the guardrail, the sirdar’s long-nosed autopistol in his hand, and landed on the bone steps. Men were already bolting from the stalls all around him in blind panic. He kicked a packson out of his way, sending the Sekkite tumbling down the stairs, and gunned down another two who came clawing for him. Then he ran down the steps towards the Oratory floor, firing as he went, zipping hard rounds across the ducking bodies in the stalls. He saw them hit. He saw the old man jerk as bullets smacked into his greasy robes. He saw blood. The porcelain mask slipped down. Mkoll glimpsed some vast and writhing maw where the old man’s face should have been. It yawned in pain and shock.
Mazho tried to get his carbine raised clear. Everyone was shouting and screaming. The lekt quire screeched in agony.
‘For Urdesh!’ he yelled. ‘For Urdesh! Cinder Storm!’
He tried to aim. The Sekkites in the stall fell on him from all sides, clawing and grappling. Mazho went down under the weight of them. A raging V’heduak wrenched the weapon from his hands. A packson hit him across the face so hard it broke his cheekbone and knocked his helmet askew. He lost his spectacles. The world became a blur of raining fists and screaming faces.
He disappeared beneath the berserk mob. His bones cracked and snapped as they kicked at him, and stamped on his helpless form.
The vicious, murderous beating jolted one of the ageing anchor mines. It went off, tripping the other two simultaneously.
The combined blast tore out the mid-section of the stalls, billowing out in a fierce, searing firestorm. Those closest to Mazho, including his frenzied tormentors, were vaporised instantly. Others were thrown headlong into the air, tumbling and falling on the rows below. Chunks of cracked ivory scattered like kindling.
The blast shook the entire Oratory. It rocked Holofurnace back. He had hosed almost all his ammunition at the dais. The feathered witch-thing had fallen to its knees, writhing, soaked in blood. Some of the quire were dead too, mown down in their seats by overshot.
The crowd around him grabbed at him, tearing his robes. He shook them off. He swung a fist that broke a packson’s neck. He grabbed a clawing V’heduak chieftain by the throat and hurled him over the rail.
‘Ithaka!’ he roared, using the name of his homeworld as a curse of defiance. An excubitor lunged at him, swinging his power lance. Holofurnace jerked clear, and the lance’s long blade splintered the bone guardrail. He put the rest of his ammunition through the excubitor’s face, blowing the fiend’s skull apart.