The daemon moved to sate his new hunger.
The tremors eased, but didn’t cease. Still, Ishaq was thankful for small mercies. Nonessential bulkheads were grinding open now. The red light staining everything flickered back to standard illumination. He assumed De Profundis was pulling free of the main battle for... some reason. To rearm? To regroup? Whatever, he didn’t know and it didn’t matter. He was bolting through the corridors the moment he heard the first bulkhead unsealing.
Many were still shut tight, blocking off voided sections of the deck. This, too, didn’t matter. He didn’t want to explore any more, he just wanted to get out of here alive.
It was strangely worse to slow down and walk solemnly past Euchar infantry patrols than it was to pick and weave between the dead bodies that adorned some of the more damaged corridors. The Euchar squads were here to clean up, and he didn’t envy them that job. On several occasions, he moved past them in a dignified walk, seeing them gathering the fallen and bagging them up. He made sure his face was covered by the serf hood, and did his best to seem as if he paid little heed.
Once he was free of the monastic deck, he made his way to the Cellar, shaking loose the Legion robe on his way. His picter scanner was kept in a white-knuckled grip that would’ve broken a cheaper, less sturdy model.
The doors opened before him, revealing the Cellar in all its bustling slum hole glory. Even in the midst of the battle, the remembrancers and civilian crew had gathered here, gambling and drinking and doing their damndest to ignore the war raging outside. In truth, he didn’t blame them. He’d done it himself in smaller battles before.
His hands were shaking when he reached an empty table. A passing girl brought him something he didn’t order, and wouldn’t like even if he was in the mood to drink it. He scattered the few coins he had left, not caring that he overpaid. He just needed to be around people. Normal people.
‘Ishaq Kadeen. The imagist. I have your pict of De Profundis. A masterpiece, young sir.’
Ishaq looked up to meet the speaker’s dark-ringed eyes. He recognised the old man immediately.
‘You’re the astropath. The astropath for the Occuli Imperator.’
‘Guilty,’ the old man performed a strangely courtly bow, ‘as charged.’ He gestured to the chair. ‘Absolom Cartik at your service. May I sit?’
Ishaq’s grunt passed as a yes. The elder seemed nervous in the Cellar, just as he had last time Ishaq saw him in here. ‘I’ve not seen you in a couple of weeks. There was talk you’d be forsaking this place for good.’
‘I do not fit in well, but at times, the quiet gets to me. I feel the need to be around other people.’ Cartik gestured to the walls. ‘The battle,’ he swallowed. ‘They always get to me.’
‘I know that feeling. Sorry, but I’m not exactly wonderful company right now,’ Ishaq said.
The astropath was watching him with unwavering focus. ‘Your thoughts are very loud.’
All the blood drained from Kadeen’s face. ‘You’re reading my mind?’ He stood up fast enough to make himself dizzy. ‘Is that legal?’
The astropath waved his concerns aside. ‘I could never read a mind as you would understand it. Suffice to say, you are broadcasting your emotion with great intensity. Just as someone might see you laugh or cry, knowing your thoughts from your face, I can see the distress in your mind. No details, but it is very... loud,’ he finished lamely.
‘I don’t need this right now. I really don’t.’
‘I meant no offence.’
Ishaq took his seat again. The ship shook under enemy fire – enough to spill people’s drinks. Most pretended to ignore it. A few faked laughter, as if it were all part of the adventure.
‘Might I ask if you have any more masterpieces in the making?’ the old man asked. Ishaq glanced at his picter rod.
‘I’m not sure. Maybe. Look, I have to go.’ He squeezed his eyes shut, but everything looked the same when he opened them again. ‘I don’t want to be around anyone after all. And I’m not going to drink this, so consider it a gift.’
He slid the glass across the table. As Cartik took it, the astropath’s finger brushed the imagist’s knuckles. The elder jumped if kicked, staring with wide eyes. He looked as suddenly unwell as Ishaq felt.
‘By the Throneworld...’ he stammered. ‘Wh-what have you seen?’
‘Nothing. Nothing at all. Goodbye.’
Absolom Cartik’s elderly claw gripped onto the younger man’s wrist with all the tenacity of a raptor talon. ‘Where. Was. This.’
‘I didn’t see anything, you crazy old bastard.’
Their eyes met. ‘You wish to answer the question,’ Cartik said softly.
‘I saw it on board the ship.’
‘Where?’
‘The monastic deck.’
‘And you made recorded images? Evidence of what you saw?’
‘Yes.’
Cartik released the man’s wrist. ‘Come with me, please.’
‘What? No chance.’
‘Come with me. What you have seen must be shown to the Occuli Imperator. If you refuse, I can guarantee you only one thing: Custodian Aquillon will kill you for attempting to keep this a secret. He will kill everyone who has kept this a secret.’
The emergency lighting dimmed back into life. Complaints rang out across the Cellar, and the vessel around them shivered as its engines flared open again. They were returning to the battle.
‘I’ll... come with you.’
Absolom Cartik smiled. He was an ugly man – and age hadn’t helped change that fact – but he wore the kind of paternal, assured smile that stayed in a family’s memory for many years.
‘Yes,’ the old man said. ‘I thought you might.’
TWENTY-EIGHT
Aftermath
Blood is Life
An Unusual Welcome
He found Dagotal after the battle.
First, he came across his brother’s jetbike, powerless and half-buried in the Urgall dirt. Not crashed. Abandoned. Abandoned when the change took place, abandoned in favour of running and killing with one’s own claws.
He moved on, stepping over the bodies of slain Raven Guard, their white Legion symbol tarnished by mud or split by savage weapons. A warrior nearby still lived, his breath straining from a broken mouth grille. With a reaching claw, Argel Tal enclosed the Raven Guard’s neck, squeezing the soft armour there and ending the warrior’s life with the popping crackle of destroyed vertebrae.
There was no flood of endorphins from a hunger momentarily sated. With each minute that passed, Raum’s consciousness ebbed from Argel Tal’s mind with the helpless loss of sand slipping through his fingers. With the daemon’s recession, Argel Tal’s own instincts and emotions rebuilt themselves in his mind. In place of bloodlust and unnatural appetites, he felt hollow, and used, and so very, very tired.
His shadow stretched before him, made uneven by the dead bodies it fell across. Great horns curled from his helm. His body was a nightmare of protruding bone ridges and crimson ceramite. His legs were... He didn’t even have the words. They were jointed like a beast’s hind legs – a lion or a wolf – and ended in huge hooves of black bone. His warplate still covered them, leaving his silhouette like the shade of a creature from unholy myth.
Argel Tal turned from his shadow. A wet, burbling growl rumbled in his throat. That scent. He snuffed the air twice. Familiar. Yes.
He stalked away, letting his shadow fall across other bodies. There. Dagotal. A blackened thing, ripe with the scent of baked blood and life reduced to ash. Grey and red armour was strewn all about him, making his husk the cremated statue at the heart of a fallen Word Bearers pack. In the deepest distance, bolters still chattered. Why? The battle was over. Prisoner execution, perhaps. It did not matter.
Still infused with the aftermath of Raum’s inhuman perception, he sensed the others approaching. All of them resembled Argel Tal to some degree. Malnor was a twitching, brutish thing, his bunched musculature claimed by frequent spasms. Torgal hunched as he moved, his faceplate moulded into a snarling face entirely lacking eyes. Argel Tal knew without asking that Torgal was blind. Perhaps he was aided by scent and sound, but he hunted by the daemonic awareness of mortality nearby. Instead of the claws most of the Gal Vorbak now sported, Torgal’s arms ended in lengthy bone blades, hooked like primitive scimitars. Jagged, knuckly teeth roughened the surface of them, showing where they’d once been his chainblades.