Killing Ground

'You knew Thayer was alive and you kept this from me?' stormed Barbaden.

'I did,' admitted Casuaban. 'It was my penance for what we did. He was one man I would not let die through my cowardice.'

Leodegarius interrupted, turning Serj Casuaban around and saying, 'This Sylvanus Thayer? Tell me of him.'

'What do you want to know?'

'You said, ''What's left of him'', what did you mean by that?'

'I meant that the Falcatas were thorough; they thought they'd killed him and they very nearly did. When Pascal Blaise brought him to me, I thought he was already dead, but he held on to life and just wouldn't let go of it. He'd sustained burns to almost ninety percent of his body and had lost both his legs and one of his arms. His eyes had burned away and he'd lost the power of speech. I think he can hear, but it's hard to tell. A machine breathes for him and another feeds him, while a third takes away his waste. Like I said, it's not much of a life.'

'Imperator, you'd be better off letting him die!' said Pasanius.

'I know,' said Casuaban, his voice close to breaking, 'but I couldn't. After the Killing Ground Massacre, I stayed sane by telling myself that I hadn't killed anyone, hadn't even fired a shot, but if I killed Sylvanus Thayer or just let him die, I'd be as bad as those who had burned Khaturian.'

'If anyone would have enough rage within him it would be the man whose family was killed in Khaturian,' nodded Leodegarius. 'Being trapped in the flesh of his destroyed body… that could have been the catalyst that allowed latent psychic powers to develop.'

Leodegarius gripped Casuaban's shoulders tightly.

'You say this Sylvanus Thayer is in the House of Providence?'

'Yes,' said Casuaban.

'Take us there,' said Leodegarius, 'before it's too late.'

NINETEEN

The Land Raider's engine was loud and the stink of its fuel was an acrid, yet amazingly welcome smell to Uriel. Clad in his borrowed armour and riding to battle in one of the most powerful vehicles in the Space Marine inventory was a tangible sign that their enforced exile was at an end.

Pasanius sat next to him, his attention fixed on a pict-slate displaying a grainy image of the Land Raider's exterior, while five other Grey Knights in burnished silver-steel power armour sat opposite him.

Standing at the frontal assault ramp was Leodegarius, who was once again clad in his colossal Terminator armour. The Grey Knight stood with his long polearm clutched tightly in his enormous fist. In place of his wrist-mounted storm bolter, he bore a weapon that he had informed Uriel was a psycannon. Instead of bolt shells, this weapon fired consecrated bolts of purest silver that were the bane of the daemonic and unnatural.

Uriel held the bolter that Leodegarius had given him tightly, the fine lines and exquisite workmanship far exceeding anything he had ever seen. It was a gift of incalculable worth and Uriel hoped he would prove an honourable bearer of such a fine weapon in the coming fight.

He was under no illusions - blood would be spilled tonight.

No sooner had Uriel stepped from the palace and into the dusk of evening than he had felt the smothering gloom of the looming threat. The presence of the vengeful dead saturated the air and scraped along the nerves like a discordant vibration.

With no time to waste, Leodegarius had mustered his warriors and, together with Uriel and Pasanius and Serj Casuaban, they had set off through the streets of Barbadus towards the House of Providence. Two Rhinos followed behind the Land Raider and despite the sheer bulk and terror a Land Raider inspired, it was slow going, for the streets of Barbadus were thronged with people: shouting, agitated and scared people.

'It's a mess out there,' said Pasanius, looking at the pict-slate.

'No one knows what's happening, but they know that something is terribly wrong,' said Uriel.

'Aye, you're right, you don't need to be psychic to know that,' agreed Pasanius, looking towards Leodegarius's vast bulk. The warrior's blade gleamed red in the light of the troop compartment and Uriel shivered as he felt its potency as a shrill prickling along the length of his spine.

'It is a Nemesis weapon,' said Leodegarius, as if sensing Uriel's scrutiny, 'a blade forged by the finest artificers of Titan and quenched in the blood of a daemon.'

'The Unfleshed?' asked Uriel. 'Will it kill them?'

'It killed two of them in the plaza before the building I pulled you out of.'

'Two,' said Uriel sadly, 'that leaves maybe five or six left.'

'Youfeel sympathy for them?' asked Leodegarius.

'I do,' agreed Uriel. 'They didn't deserve this.'

'Perhaps not, but few people in this galaxy get what they deserve.'

'He will,' said Pasanius, jerking his thumb at Serj Casuaban, looking wretched and miserable in the far corner of the compartment.

Pasanius turned away from the dejected medicae and addressed Leodegarius. 'I still say we should bomb this place from orbit. You've got a ship up there, haven't you?'

'I have,' said Leodegarius without turning, 'and if we cannot stop Thayer then I will order a lance strike from orbit.'

'No, you can't!' cried Serj Casuaban. 'There are innocents in the House of Providence, not to mention all the people you'd kill and maim in the city with a strike like that! Give that order and you're no better than Barbaden.'

'Or you,' said Pasanius. 'You were at Khaturian as well.'

'I killed no one,' said Casuaban defensively.

'You let Barbaden give the order,' said Pasanius. 'Did you even try to stop him?'

'You don't know him. Once Leto has his mind made up, there's not a thing in the world can make him change it.'

'Fine,' said Pasanius, turning to Uriel, 'then why don't we give these dead folk what they want? Barbaden and Togandis are locked up in the cells and we have this one here, so why not just put a bullet in the backs of their heads? Wouldn't that solve the problem?'

'You'd kill me in cold blood?' demanded Casuaban.

'If it would save the planet, aye,' nodded Pasanius, 'in a heartbeat.'

'Pasanius, enough,' snapped Uriel. 'We're not shooting anyone. This is about justice, not revenge. We stop Sylvanus Thayer and then the three of them will face a court martial for war crimes.'

Uriel paused as a sudden thought came to him and turned to face Leodegarius. 'Is it safe to keep Barbaden and Togandis in the palace cells? Won't the dead be able to get to them there?'

'No, I am maintaining an aegis sanctuary over them,' said Leodegarius. 'No power of the warp will be able to touch them.'

Uriel wanted to ask more, but the Grey Knight held up his hand. 'We are here,' he said.

'How does it look?'

'Bad.'

Despite the fact that he was languishing in a cell beneath the rock of the Imperial Palace, Shavo Togandis was more at peace than he had been in the last ten years. All the guilt was, if not gone, at least less of a burden now that the truth of the Killing Ground was known.

The air in the circular prison complex was cold, and for the first time in as long as he could remember, Togandis was not sweating. Stripped of his ceremonial robes, he had been permitted to retain the undergarments of his vestments, as none of the prison issue tunics were large enough for him.

He knelt before the bars of his cell, facing the featureless guard building in the centre of the chamber, his hands clasped before him, reciting prayers that rushed to fill the void in his mind that had been left by the fear of discovery.

'You think praying will do any good?' asked Leto Barbaden from the cell next to his.

Togandis finished his prayer and turned his head to face the man who had lived in his nightmares for the past decade. Looking at him now, he wondered what he had found so terrifying. Leto Barbaden might be a monster on the inside, but to look at him he was just an ordinary man. Not too strong and not too clever, just an ordinary man.