‘And where is Skhallax?’ asked Crowl.
Navradaran illuminated the enclave-city, and it became immediately clear that the trail of bodies traced a path from the northern edge of Skhallax towards the hab-zone complexes south of the wall itself. Once close to the Palace precincts, however, the scatter of blood became more diffuse, as if the impetus had run out, and the pattern dissolved.
‘What have you done with this data?’ Crowl asked.
‘Observe where the attacks have neared the walls,’ Navradaran said. ‘Extra patrols have been employed, and soundings made of the pits below. The entire southern rim between bastions thirteen and thirty-one has been reinforced with psycho-screened Militarum shock units. Six of my comrades have been taken from the Gate to oversee further strengthening of the outer watch. By any normal metric, it remains impregnable.’
Crowl looked carefully at the ancient schematics. The hololith showed some of the old catacombs like worming lines of light, twisting down into the crust like parasites. The Custodian was right — those uncharted depths were dangerous. Something determined enough might discover a way in, given enough time, enough power, and a great deal of luck. He scanned across the sites Navradaran had identified, and saw immediately how closely they aligned towards the warrens gnawing at the base of the ancient walls. It was as if a tentative hand were feeling along the expanse of wall, probing for weakness.
‘Why did they kill so often?’ mused Crowl.
Navradaran looked at him. ‘What is your concern?’
Crowl watched the light-points turn, and his unease grew. ‘Order the servitors out,’ he said. ‘Is this chamber secure?’
Navradaran dismissed the attendants, who shuffled and dragged themselves through the doorway. Once it was sealed, the Custodian turned back to Crowl. ‘Perfectly.’
Crowl indicated the distribution of kill-sites. ‘We have fugitives making their way towards the Palace. To say this place is heavily guarded would be a ludicrous understatement, and so their only chance of survival, let alone success, is to remain hidden. And yet they leave a smear of bloody corpses everywhere they go.’
‘They were ritual kills. There can be power in them.’
‘Of course, but how much? Seriously? There are wards on this place capable of halting the greatest servants of the Archenemy — sacrificing a few mortal souls would not dent them.’ He walked around the map table, drumming his fingers absently as he studied the topography of the Outer Palace. ‘We are looking for xenos, or someone using a xenos weapon,’ he said.
‘How do you know this?’
‘Information taken from the Rhadamanthys. The dark eldar. Consider what this means. There cannot be many of them, and so they will not take any of the major portals by force. Their purpose here cannot be sorcery, for their people shun it, and in any case the defences against unholy magicks are immense. They only have subterfuge. So I say again, why make so many kills?’
‘It is believed that they live for pain.’
‘Yes, yes, that is believed.’ Crowl ran his hands over his brow, rubbing the skin. He could feel his own pain levels growing again, but dared not gland in case it slowed him. ‘But they could hunt anywhere. Down in the tunnels, where the arbitrators don’t go. Were we wrong about the Angel’s Tears?’
Crowl felt his mind working sluggishly, perhaps a residue of his experience at the Gate, and worked to clarify his thoughts.
The Angel’s Tears. What were they? Never mind. Concentrate on this. Put yourself in their mind. They have to get in, but all ways are barred. How do they do it?
He looked over the parapets, the turrets, the immense laser batteries, all defined in glowing lines of force. Navradaran was surely right — any attack would have to be underground, where the old foundations of old citadels crumbled under the weight of ten thousand years of accumulated construction. But that left hundreds of kilometres to survey.
‘You showed me that the Eternity Gate was a distraction,’ he said at last. ‘All eyes will be on it. That is the purpose with the other sites too. Create havoc, create terror, pull troops to watch over the murder-sites. The xenos grow stronger from the kills, true, but they have no other significance. When the attack comes, the true attack, it will be nowhere near them. It will be in a place where the walls are strongest and attack unimaginable, from where watchers have been pulled in order to guard these bloody fingerprints.’
‘There are no unguarded walls.’
‘There are a million guards within this place and still it is not enough. You said it yourself.’
Crowl looked harder, analysing the scatter of the sites, the relationship to Skhallax, the arteries, the tunnels, the insane intricacy of transitways and shafts. Taken together, it was impossible. But there were limitations — the xenos cargo had been landed twenty days ago. Its bearers had remained within a radius of about a hundred kilometres of Skhallax, rarely straying much further in pursuit of kills. Perhaps they needed to. Perhaps they could not move too far, because they were building something, or working on something, or…
‘They do not just feed on pain,’ said Crowl, rapidly now, growing more confident. ‘They use it. They can create monsters, creatures to aid them, but that takes time, so there are limits to where they can move.’ He shuffled further along the map table, watching as the hololith’s gradual rotation brought fresh detail into view. He saw long, straight subterranean transit tunnels running north-south, then snaking under the titanic foundations of the hive complexes — Boreates, Romandus, Clytemstrata, and then further into the industrial wastes of Armengand leading up to the Xericho waste-sinks.
‘It would need to be out of the way,’ he muttered, seeing what his prey would have seen. ‘Hidden, far away from the visible kills, but with access to the southern walls when the moment came. Somewhere… there.’ Navradaran moved to stand beside him. ‘Those foundations are deep,’ he said. ‘No known weaknesses.’
‘That’s the point. Can troops be moved there?’
‘Not soon. So many have already been drawn to the Gate.’
‘And that’s the problem.’ Crowl’s eyes narrowed, committing the layout to memory. ‘I’ll travel there. Ensure I have sanction — if someone shoots me down I’ll be very annoyed.’
‘What can you do?’ asked Navradaran, his deep voice unconvinced.
‘What I spend all my time doing. Hunting.’
‘This thing has killed many times.’
‘So have I. And I’ll have Revus, unless you’ve caged him again.’
‘It will not be enough.’
‘Then come too.’
Navradaran looked at him for a long time. The ruby-red of his helm-lenses gave nothing away. For the first time since meeting the Custodian, Crowl sensed doubt there, a conflict between instincts. Navradaran would have been raised and trained in a world of ancient, immutable protocols, steeped in the arcane rituals of the unchanging Inner Palace. To leave the holiest sanctums now, when the great Feast beckoned and the population of an entire planet surged towards the epicentre of its austere faith. Perhaps he asked too much.
‘I sought to punish you by showing you the Gate, Crowl,’ the Custodian said at last. ‘And to test you — only the devout withstand it. Despite it all, despite what you wish the world to think, you passed. And now I am tested in turn. So His will unfolds.’
Crowl laughed. ‘Is that a yes or a no?’
‘I will show you to your vessel,’ said Navradaran, hefting his guardian spear and moving towards the doorway. ‘In the time it takes to reach it, I will decide.’
The hunters broke out from the catacombs under the shadow of Boreates, divided into platoons and jogged down narrow capillary tubes. It was pitch-black, and coil-powered lumens bobbed on makeshift helms, throwing meagre pools of illumination across a scabrous landscape of ruin. The fighters ran surely, their eyes used to the eternal gloom, their feet used to the slippery metal floors and the toxic pools of sludge. Just as before they carried improvised weapons, rifles and shotguns, combat knives, the odd power saw looted from a production line, masonry drills and claw hammers.