She was just to the rear of her warriors, and the xenos before her had seen off a probe by the Punisher armoured fighters who might once conceivably have been Adeptus Astartes. There were eldar dead lying around, and one of their kind was gathering the spirit stones from their armour. The others were seeing to their weapons, making repairs to the light wargear they wore, and as they did so, they were singing a low threnody, a lament for their fallen comrades.
Male and female voices joined together, and Te Mirah stood and watched them, raising one slender hand as though she were receiving a salute, or conducting the song. She did not turn around as Kerne approached, but lowered her arm.
‘Ainoc is dead,’ she said.
‘Yes,’ Kerne told her.
She bent her head. ‘I hope he was fighting, at the end. He would have wanted to leave this world with a blade in his hand.’
Kerne said nothing. Fornix had not elaborated on the warlock’s death, and he had not thought to ask.
‘But he did not die in vain, did he, captain?’
Te Mirah turned around at last. She lifted her helm so he could see the pale blur of her long, severely beautiful face in the night.
‘You have it with you.’
‘My brothers brought it up. Only two of them survived. It was guarded.’
Te Mirah was breathing quickly, though her face was quite composed.
‘None of your kind has ever seen such a precious treasure before, much less held it. You have in your hands the fate of a great number of my people, captain. And yet you come here alone, holding it. To threaten me?’ She was breathing fast now, and her eyes had begun to glow. About her feet, a cold wind began to circle and stir up the dust.
‘Brother Laufey,’ Kerne said.
From the ruins, a voice said: ‘Here, captain.’
‘Do not fire unless I give you an express command, brother.’
‘Acknowledged.’
Te Mirah scanned the surrounding ruins. Behind her, the other eldar warriors rose to their feet and cocked their weapons, the thin shriek of the shurikens quite different from the solid sound of bolter mechanisms.
Three red dots appeared on the farseer’s torso, and another travelled up her body to rest on her forehead.
‘I am not alone,’ Jonah Kerne said.
‘You had best kill me quick, mon-keigh,’ Te Mirah shrilled.
‘I am not here to kill you.’
The light in her eyes steadied. She held up a hand, and the warriors behind her went very still, the shuriken catapults poised to fire.
‘I gave you my word,’ Jonah Kerne said in the same low, calm voice. ‘I mean to keep it.’
He stepped forward and held out the cloth-wrapped bundle he carried to the eldar woman.
She gasped, and over her face a whole gamut of emotions came and went, flitting like leaves before a wind. Then she gently reached out with both hands, and took the Infinity Circuit from the towering Space Marine.
The glow in it intensified, beaming through the fabric which enwrapped it. Te Mirah looked down upon the artefact, and from her mouth there came something which might have been a sob, bitten back instantly. Her voice when she spoke was thick and raw.
‘You give it to me freely, you, one of the fanatics we have despised and feared for tens of thousands of your years. It is… inexplicable.’
‘Some of my brethren think so also,’ Kerne said dryly.
‘Why?’ she asked, baffled. ‘Those I sent to retrieve it are all dead. Your own people brought it to the surface – you could have kept it. By your beliefs you should keep it.’
‘I gave my word,’ Kerne repeated simply.
The farseer studied Kerne as though seeing him for the first time. ‘You are not like the others of your kind, Adeptus Astartes. There is a wisdom in you that is uncommon in your species. But I still do not understand why you do this.’
Kerne frowned. ‘That thing you hold, it encompasses the memories, the souls of an entire world.’ He raised a hand to the ruined city which surrounded him.
‘Tens of millions once dwelled here, my people and yours, and now they are nearly all dead – at the hands of the same enemy. It occurred to me that if I had this relic of yours destroyed, then I would be doing that enemy’s work for him. Chaos wishes to see an end to both our races. I will not help those Ruinous Powers to their goal.’
‘My enemy’s enemy is my friend,’ Te Mirah said with a slight smile.
‘I would not go quite that far, xenos. You probably meant to deceive and betray us at some point – it is in your nature. But now you do not have to, and my brothers do not have to fight your kind as well as the Great Enemy which surrounds us.’
‘I could just leave, now, with all my folk, and sail away from this system.’
‘Yes, you could.’
‘Are you actually telling me you have faith in the eldar, captain?’
‘No. But I sense in you a kind of honour.’
‘Perhaps we are both singular examples of our peoples,’ Te Mirah said.
‘Perhaps. In any case, I have kept my word. What will you do now?’
The farseer stroked the bundle she held as though it were a dear child lately recovered. She turned and spoke in her own tongue to the eldar behind her, and handed it to one of them, a leader of his kind judging by the elaborate horns and antlers upon his helm.
‘The Circuit will be sent off-world to my ship at once,’ she said. ‘As for myself, I and my kind will remain here. You have made me curious, captain. I think I will have to reappraise your people. I will stay here, and see if I cannot help you hold back the tide of destruction which is enveloping them – for a while at least.’
They stood looking at one another. ‘Stand down, Brother Laufey,’ Kerne said at last. ‘I wish to inform our allies of tonight’s plans.’
The red laser-dots winked out. The Adeptus Astartes captain and the eldar farseer drew closer, and began to confer. They planned together how to defend the last corner of a ruined world, and how to keep at least one part of it free of the encroaching darkness.
TWENTY-TWO
Infractus vallo
All through the night, the retreat went on. The defenders of Ras Hanem abandoned their positions in the south of the city trench by trench, leaving behind many of the wounded who could not walk and had no hope of healing. These unfortunates among the Guard and the militia snapped off a shot now and again to convince the enemy that the lines were still fully manned, and they were also left with a fistful of grenades, to use upon themselves when the end came and the Punishers saw through the charade. Everyone knew now that to be captured alive was worse than any death imaginable.
Fornix supervised the withdrawal from the Armaments District, and Dietrich’s remaining engineers set booby traps linked to piles of munitions all over the manufactoria. The thousands of workers who remained in the district were shepherded north in the last transport convoys of the night, hundreds of them clinging to every edge and angle of the big munitions haulers and ore carriers.
Fornix supervised the loading of the vehicles. The civilians climbed onto the vehicles silently, with only some muffled sobbing. The big haulers could carry two hundred at a time, and they ran all night, bringing thousands north to the citadel through the lines. This would sound like nothing new to the enemy; supply columns had been running endlessly between the Armaments District and the citadel since the start of the fighting.
Of necessity, the sick, the old, and the worst wounded were left behind, and once they understood what was happening, they clustered around such munitions stores which remained, the more responsible among them given detonators by Dietrich’s engineers, so that they might set off the charges when the end came. After all these weeks of living in a kind of endless hell, they seemed to accept their fate with a kind of dulled relief. At least it would be over.