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Something had killed all these people, and it had done so swiftly and terribly. A lot of the destruction was probably caused after the fact by all the usual small accidents that can happen when there is no one left to supervise a system. Fires that were not extinguished but spread, explosions caused by machines overheating and running out of control. The eldar technology looked nothing like our own, but I was willing to bet that such things could happen.

And yet there was ample evidence to the contrary. There was still illumination. Something kept the hot, humid air circulating. Lights flickered around us, and strange glowing runes shimmered in the air, obviously written in the speech of the eldar. Whether they were warnings or exhortations, I could not say.

We came to a halt when we saw the body. It was fresh. For a moment, in my weary, semi-hallucinating state, I feared that it belonged to Grimnar, but it did not. It was the corpse of one of the eldar whose kindred we had so recently fought. It was armed and armoured, and it looked as though its carapace had exploded from the inside.

‘Bolter shell,’ said Macharius. ‘It looks as though the Space Wolf has been this way.’

‘Let us hope he is still alive.’ I glanced around at the ruins. There was no sign of anything moving out there. No sound of anything living. In a human city, I would have expected vermin: cockroaches, rats, sewer-gibbons. Here there was nothing. I had a sense that even when the city was alive there probably weren’t any. My memories of the dream agreed with that, although I had no idea how much faith to place in that recollection.

I had another image in my mind now, of fierce, silent stealthy warfare, of the Space Marine stalking the eldar through the ruins and being stalked in return, of two equally terrifying opponents locked in a struggle to the death. I wondered if we would come across the Space Wolf’s tortured and mutilated corpse somewhere along the way. I prayed not, not just for the sake of the Space Marine but because it would be a terrible omen and a portent of our fate.

Ahead of us, the titanic tower rose into the strange sky. We began to move cautiously towards it, aware now of the presence of danger and preparing ourselves for battle.

4

In my life I have walked through the ruins of many cities, but none were stranger than this nameless place where so many had died so long ago. It was too warm, and I was drugged and weary and the shotgun felt heavy in my hands. Ahead of us lay that huge and ominous starscraper, where it seemed our fates would be resolved.

The wreckage of vehicles lay around us, looking like glittering broken eggshells. I pictured them flying through the air and simply crashing on the day doom had arrived. It was an image reinforced by the way some of them were embedded into the upper reaches of buildings.

I reached down and picked up a shard. It was made of a crystal of some sort. It had broken the way glass breaks, jagged edged and unevenly layered. It felt more like glass than metal. I could not imagine beating it into shape or machining it, the way I had once machined parts in the guild factorums of Belial when I was a lad.

It saved me. By pure random chance, bending over to pick up the piece of crystal lowered my head at exactly the moment the xenos took a shot at me. Something struck the wall behind me. Before I knew what was happening, reflexes developed in two decades of fighting on scores of worlds took over. I threw myself flat and scurried for the nearest cover. I noticed around me others were doing the same.

Force of habit had me looking for Macharius. With uncanny swiftness, he had ducked inside one of the crystalline eggshell remains of a vehicle. I began to wriggle towards him on my belly, keeping down, feeling terribly vulnerable as the realisation of what had happened sunk in.

Someone had shot at me. At me. They would have hit me, too, if I had not chosen the precise moment they had triggered their weapon to bend down. If I had done it a heartbeat earlier they would have had time to compensate, particularly given what I had seen of the quickness of eldar reflexes. It was possible they were looking at me now, waiting for me to raise my head so they could shoot me.

I had a crawling sensation between my shoulders. I seemed to feel alien eyes glaring at me. I kept moving, not wanting to present a still target, wanting to make sure I was in a position to do my duty if someone attacked Macharius. A shotgun is not a good weapon for a long-range firefight, and for some reason I thought that this was the sort of fight it was going to be.

I heard the faint hum of lasguns discharging as they fired. I heard a loud crack as Anton opened fire with his sniper rifle. I heard nothing else, no screams, no sounds of bodies falling. I still could not bring myself to raise my head from cover and look around. I had a very vivid image of it being reduced to bloody shreds by incoming fire.

I reached the place where Macharius was and glanced around. I could see Drake lying behind a low wall nearby. There was blood on the ground near him, and I wondered whether he had been hit. I raised myself slightly, glanced around and saw nothing except las-bolts flickering at a multitude of hidden targets, and moved over to the inquisitor to see if he needed help. I dropped into position at his side, looked at him. He shook his head.

I could see his hand was bleeding and I noticed a shard of sharp-edged crystal lying near him. He must have cut his hand on it when he took cover. This was a dangerous place to throw yourself down. He was already starting to bandage it. Storm troopers were closing in around him, taking up position to protect him from potential attackers. I sensed a feral hostility behind the visors of their helmets when they looked at me. To them, anyone was a potential threat to their master.

‘Cease fire,’ Macharius shouted, and we obeyed. The shooting stopped. Everyone held their position, though. No one wanted to be the first to stick his head up and potentially have it removed. We waited and nothing happened. I felt my heart beating within my chest. Perhaps the eldar were still out there waiting to shoot. Perhaps they were long gone.

Macharius gave orders. Squads began to shift position, sweeping through the rubble around us, moving systematically to see if they could find the eldar. I held my breath waiting for the sound of screaming that would tell me they had encountered what they sought.

Nothing came in, save, one by one, reports that the area was clear. I wondered if the eldar had just vanished or were still out there hiding and watching us. Irrationally, I began to feel as if my would-be executioner were waiting for me to stand up again, as if it had somehow singled me out to be its victim. In that spooky place, having narrowly avoided death, weary and buzzed out on the stimm drugs, it seemed all too likely to be the case.

I exchanged looks with Drake. Under his uncanny gaze, I raised myself to one knee and looked around. I hunched my shoulders to make myself a narrower target, and I held the shotgun ready to fire at the slightest sign of movement. As I did so I realised how dangerous the situation was. There were scores of tired, heavily armed men all as nervous as me in the area. All it would take would be one sudden movement, one mistake, and there would be deaths.

Even as that thought occurred to me, Macharius rose into view, weapons held at the ready. He tipped his leonine head to one side as though listening, glanced around casually and emerged from cover with confidence. Just the sight of him doing so was reassuring.

‘Well, now,’ he said. ‘At least we know there are eldar around here. Let’s see what we can do to change that.’

Chapter Twenty-Seven