Something dropped from a balcony above us. I had just time to catch sight of the eldar. It had a blade in each hand. It had realised that Drake was immune to its ranged weapons and it intended to finish him close up. It had probably decided, quite correctly under the circumstances, that he was the greatest threat among its enemies.
I raised the shotgun and snapped off a shot at almost point-blank range. The force of the blast sent the eldar bobbing upwards. Most of its weight must have been neutralised by some sort of suspensor system. Either that or the eldar and its armour were both much lighter than they looked. Still, even wounded, the xenos sent one of its blades flashing towards me. Instinctively, I raised the shotgun and the blade clattered off its barrel. The eldar, wounded, was already arching its back and flipping down into a new landing position. It had a pistol of a strange, long-barrelled sort in its hand.
Another shot rang out. Anton fired his sniper rifle. By all rights he should have hit the eldar, but it was no longer where he had aimed. It was somersaulting away, back through one of the entrances to the chamber, too fast for any of us to catch. A storm of las-bolts and pistol fire erupted around it, but it jinked and weaved so swiftly that I would take oath that nothing hit it. By the time we reached the entrance to the chamber into which it had vanished, it was gone.
Three men were already dead. Another two died soon afterwards of their poisoned wounds. From somewhere in the distance we heard what sounded like mocking laughter but might just have been random static generated by a translation engine.
More and more of our men filtered into the building. They stepped around the corpses and glanced warily into the shadows. Like me, they could see now how it was going to be. We would seek the eldar through this haunted building, unsure who was hunter and who was prey.
Suddenly, close by, I heard a distinctive sound: the explosive impact of a bolter shell on armour. I heard a scream that was not human, and from the shadows Grimnar emerged. He looked like hell. His armour was chipped and dented, and the paintwork had flaked away. Fresh blood had splattered on his face and gauntlets and chestplate. None of it belonged to him. In his hand, he held the severed head of a female eldar. His face looked savage and feral and inhuman. His eyes were slitted. His mouth was twisted in a mirthless grin that was terrifying to see, and yet, from his manner, I had the sense that he was enjoying himself, was doing the thing he had been born to do, performing his duties in the service of his Allfather.
‘Well met,’ he said.
‘Well met,’ said Macharius. The Space Wolf lifted the head.
‘This is one of the ones who have been dogging your steps. There is only one left now.’
So few, I thought. So few of them had pinned down our entire force and caused ten times that number of casualties. It was a terrifying thought. At least there was one less of them now.
‘Where are the rest?’ Macharius asked.
‘In the tower. Their leader is there.’
‘I am surprised you are not,’ said Macharius.
‘They are tough,’ Grimnar said. The tone of his voice was grudging. He did not like making that admission. I realised that the xenos must be truly superhuman for him to describe them in such a way. ‘You are here now. We have a better chance together. Some of us must survive to take back the Fist.’
I could see that too was an admission that went against the grain. In my mind’s eye, I had seen the Space Wolves as snarling, berserker warriors, throwing themselves into battle with a howled war cry and a reckless disregard for their lives. Odd as it may sound I had not expected anything like this realistic tactical assessment. I don’t know why – even astonishingly powerful as they were, Space Marines would not be useful to the Emperor if they were not capable of reading a battlefield.
‘You’ve been inside,’ Macharius said. It was not a question. Grimnar nodded.
‘There is a vault, and around it are a series of chambers laid out in a spiral pattern, like the interior of the shell of a nautilus.’
I had no idea what he meant but clearly Macharius did. His eyes narrowed. His grip tightened on the hilt of his chainsword. ‘Traps? Deadfalls? Ambush sites?’
‘There are many balconies and alcoves, many statues and devices of incomprehensible purpose. There are places where they could lurk and take us by surprise.’
Macharius did not like the sound of that. There would be no room for the subtlety of the complex patterns of manoeuvres he favoured. It was going to be a straight rush into the vault, with the enemy waiting for us. They knew we were coming.
Macharius said, ‘It works to our advantage as well. To stop us the eldar must face our numbers.’
‘I will scout ahead,’ said Grimnar.
We moved into the tower. It was as Grimnar had said. As soon as we passed through the entrance the corridor sloped downwards to the left in a long curve. Almost immediately it widened into another huge chamber. The ceiling above us was curved and the walls of the chamber were the same. I immediately thought of the bowels of a huge beast. It was as if we were being digested by the building and passed through its interior.
There were the same great pools of shadowy darkness as outside, the same dim illumination that seemed to come from nowhere in particular. The walls were marked with glowing eldar runes.
There were fountains and mutated statues and things that might have been altars, although it was difficult to tell. We moved forwards and down, following the interior curve of the building. Once again, I felt the alienness of our surroundings. I had no idea of the purpose of many of the things we saw. I had no idea why the interior was laid out this way. Vague hints rose from the half-remembered memories of my dreams – the shape was geomantic, it affected the flows of mystical energy. Or it had done once. If that were true, surely all these alterations would have affected that. Maybe that’s why the lights were dimmer and the place had a strange, fusty atmosphere.
I entered the vault through the doorway and immediately had a sensation of falling. I felt dizzy, and I struggled to understand the reality of my surroundings. It was as if we were emerging from a trapdoor in the floor of the chamber, which was a vast sphere. Gravity seemed to twist through ninety degrees and the walls of the chamber into which we had emerged became the floor. After the brief sensation of falling, I stood upright, dizzy and nauseous, and flexed my knees as I struggled to regain my balance. I walked a little and followed the curve of the floor. I had to fight down the crazed feeling that if I kept walking I would describe a complete circle around the wall of the chamber and return to my starting point, even though that would involve traversing what was currently the ceiling far, far above my head.
Overhead was a dome of translucent stone, through which was visible the shimmering, multicoloured lights of whatever lay beyond this sub-realm of reality. A wisp of light played in the air. It swirled like water in a whirlpool and appeared to drain away even as it spun. We were in a space where the laws of gravity appeared to have been suspended, where cables of crystal, glimmering with light and shadows, rose from each wall towards a central point. Not only that, lateral cables ran amid them, forming a lattice, a web of light and shadow and colour. I reached out and touched one of the cables, and my hand tingled. It was not an unpleasant sensation, a mild shock that made the hair on my head and neck lift. Looking up along it I could see a humanoid figure, a long way above us, climbing along the cables towards a distant point, which would most likely be the central spot in the chamber.