Billowing clouds of spray boomed into the air, filling it with bitingly cold mist and Uriel laughed aloud as he tasted the crystal clear waters of his Chapter's home world. He soared from the valley, visualising the mountains and forests of Macragge, the sweeping, rocky coastlines and vast, depthless oceans.
'Pasanius,' he breathed, 'I'm there.'
'Hold to thoughts of home,' said Kulla. 'Speak of your desire.'
'My desire?' asked Uriel.
'To return home,' said Lalla, a note of strain in her voice.
Uriel nodded in understanding. 'We have completed our Death Oath,' he said. 'It is time to return to our battle-brothers.'
'Show us,' said Kulla, 'all of it.'
Though he hated to return there, even in memory, Uriel summoned images of Medrengard, the ashen plains, the belching continents of manufactorum and the hellish, damned creatures that dwelt there. He pictured the nightmare fortress of Khalan-Ghol, the horrific daemon-wombs of the Daemonculaba and the final victory over Honsou.
Uriel felt the twins' hands shaking and opened his eyes as the awful stench of burning flesh arose in his nostrils. Ghostly flames swelled and billowed around the chamber, but its occupants appeared to be oblivious to them.
The flames bathed everything around him in light and Uriel had the distinct impression of hungry eyes watching him from the darkness.
The cold, heatless fire reflected a strange light from everyone gathered here and Uriel gasped as he saw a measure of what the twins saw.
A shadowy darkness surrounded Eversham, and a nimbus of silver, like a moonlight reflection on a stagnant lake, bathed Barbaden's features with a cold halo. Flickering arcs of golden lightning crackled around the twins' heads and a scarlet bloom like blood in the water surrounded Pasanius's outline. Uriel saw that the red glow extended past the stump of Pasanius's arm and formed the blurred outline of a hand.
Looking down at his own body, he saw that same red glow, like the embers of a smouldering fire, around his arms and torso.
'You are warriors,' said Kulla, her voice sounding as though it came from far away. 'What other colour would you expect your aura to be but that of blood?'
Pasanius said something, but Uriel could not understand the sense of it, his friend's voice sounding as though it came from an impossibly far-off distance. As the sound of Pasanius's voice faded even further, Uriel felt his gaze drawn to the swirling, milky eye in Kulla's and Lalla's cartilage-fused forehead.
Stars wheeled in the eye's depths, planets and the endless gulfs of trackless space that separated them. Uriel cried out as he was carried into that eye, a mote in the void of space. Distances so vast that the human mind simply had not the capacity to imagine them, flew past at the speed of thought. He was part of that thought, everything he had visualised and everything he had sought carried with the psychic beacon of ideas and images that were cast across space by the power of the twins' mind.
The dizzying sense of vertigo was almost unbearable and it was all he could do to hold onto the twins' hands as they passed what he had given them to the void.
Then it was over.
Uriel gasped as the twins released his hands. He blinked rapidly, his normal sight restored, and all the colours he had seen earlier vanished like the fragments of a dream.
'Is it done?' he asked, the breath heaving in his chest.
'Your call will be heard,' said Lalla.
'By any with the wit to listen,' added Kulla.
When Eversham led Uriel and Pasanius from the Argiletum, the sky was dark and painted with a scattering of stars. The sense of relief at leaving the presence of the Janiceps was total, and as Uriel took a cleansing breath, it tasted as sweet as the crisp mountain air of Macragge.
'How long were we in there?' asked Uriel, staring up at the stars.
'Too long,' answered Pasanius as the soldiers once again flattened the razor wire to allow them to cross. 'You crouched in front of those… girls for hours.'
'I did?' said Uriel. 'It felt like a few minutes at most.'
'Trust me,' said Pasanius, scratching at the raw flesh at the end of his arm. 'It wasn't. Barbaden left almost as soon as you started.'
'Is your arm hurting?' asked Uriel, following Eversham over the bridge of sheet metal.
'A little,' admitted Pasanius. 'It wasn't exactly removed with surgical precision.'
Uriel caught the anxiety in Pasanius's tone and knew that his friend was worried. Pasanius had lost his arm fighting an ancient star god beneath the surface of Pavonis, and microscopic slivers of the living metal of its blade had entered his bloodstream and incorporated its structure into the augmetic the adepts of that world had grafted to him.
The augmetic had developed regenerative powers and Pasanius had struggled with the guilt of that for long months until he had been forced to confess the truth to Uriel. The Savage Morticians, horrific torturer-surgeons of the Iron Warriors, had later amputated the arm and presented it to the Warsmith Honsou, but the guilt was still there.
'You are free of the xenos taint,' said Uriel, keeping his voice low. 'I am sure of it.'
'What if something from Medrengard got into me?'
'You'd know if it had,' said Uriel. 'If the Ruinous Powers had corrupted your flesh, you would not be speaking to me like this. You would have turned that bolt pistol on me when we were in battle yesterday.'
'Would it be that quick? Maybe I've only taken the first steps on the path to evil.'
'I don't know for sure,' replied Uriel, hearing the fear in his friend's voice, 'but I believe that to question whether you are evil tells me that you are not. Those who have fallen to evil never question, never believe they are wrong and cannot see the truth of their actions. If you were on that path, I would see it.'
'I hope you're right,' said Pasanius.
'If you want to be sure, I will ask Governor Barbaden for a medicae scan.'
'You think that would find anything?'
'It would at least show any infection,' said Uriel.
Pasanius smiled in gratitude. 'Thank you, Uriel. Your friendship means a lot to me.'
'In these times, it's all we have, my friend,' said Uriel.
Rykard Ustel was going to die, as sure as day turned to night. Pascal Blaise could see it in the boy's eyes, the look that said his body had already given up the fight to live and that it was just a matter of time before the biological machinery shut down. They had done what they could for him, but none of them were trained medics and their imperfect knowledge of how to treat battlefield injuries had been learned by seeing others die.
Serj Casuaban had delivered the medical supplies as promised and many of those who had been wounded in the attack on the Screaming Eagles would live: many, but not all.
Unfortunately for Rykard Ustel, he was not one of the lucky ones.
Cawlen Hurq sat by the boy's bed, holding his hand and speaking softly to him, the light from the two oil-burners casting a warm, healthy glow over Rykard's pale face that belied his prognosis.
Pascal rubbed the las-burn on the side of his head and took another drink of raquir, suddenly wishing that he could drain the bottle and fall into dreamless oblivion. He knew he couldn't; there were people who depended on him and he was grimly aware that the Sons of Salinas could not continue in this way.
He had known that stark fact for years, but his hatred of Leto Barbaden had blinded him to the simple reality of it. This was a war that could not be won with violence, and the futility of the fighting and killing he had taken part in sickened him. Had it all been for nothing?