Warhammer - Eisenhorn 03 - Hereticus (Abnett, Dan) Read online

  'Gregor Eisenhorn/ he said softly. 'The galaxy's most persistent bastard. Only you could scrabble and slash and claw and crawl your way to me. Which, of course, is why I admire you so.'

  I stomped forward.

  'Careful!' Gustine hissed, but I had long passed the point where being careful was a high priority.

  I faced Glaw. He was broader than me and a good deal taller. His blade-cloak jangled as he stroked a perfectly articulated duralloy hand across the surface of the green block. Then he raised the same hand and held it up for inspection.

  'Magos Bure did a fine job, didn't he? Such a craftsman. I can never thank you enough for arranging his services. This is the hand I killed him with.'

  There's more than his blood on your hands, Glaw. Do you answer to that name now, or do you prefer to hide behind the title Khanjar?'

  'Either will do.'

  'Your daughter didn't take either of your names/

  He was silent. If I could get him angry, I could perhaps force an error.

  'Maria/ he said, 'so headstrong. Another reason to kill you, apart from the obvious/

  He was about to say something else, but I had waited long enough. I blasted my will through the runestaff, and lunged forward, swinging my blade.

  The psychic blast knocked him back, and he half-turned, his cloak whirling out and turning Barbarisater aside with its multiple edges. His turn became a full spin and I lurched back to avoid the lethal hem of his blade-cloak.

  Gustine moved in, firing bolts of light that simply reflected off Glaw's gleaming form.

  Cherubael came in from the other side. Its searing attack scorched Glaw's metal, and I heard him curse. He slashed at Cherubael with his open hand, extending hook blades from slots in the fingertips.

  The hooks ripped into Cherubael's flesh but it made no cry. It grappled with Pontius Glaw, psychic power boiling the space between them and flaring out in spasming tendrils of light. The very air crisped and ionised. Glaw's dancing metal feet chipped flakes of onyx off the plinth beneath him. I tried to get in, to land a blow in support of the daemonhost, but it was like approaching a furnace.

  Gustine simply looked on, open-mouthed. He was so far out of his league it wasn't funny.

  Glaw tore out a savage blow that spun Cherubael away for a second and followed it up with a lance of mental fury that actually made the daemonhost tumble out of the air. Cherubael got up slowly, like a thrown rider, and rose up off the ground again.

  In that short break, I rejoined the struggle, driving at Glaw with alternate blows of staff and sword, keeping the most powerful mind wall I could erect between us.

  Glaw smashed the wall into invisible pieces, struck me hard and tore the staff out of my hand. His blades lacerated my arm and ripped my cloak.

  I exerted all the force I had and rallied with Barbarisater, cutting in with rotating ulsars and heavy sae hehts that chimed against his rippling cloak armour. The runestaff had fallen out of reach.

  I ducked to avoid a high sweep of his razor-hem, but I had forced myself too hard. I felt cranial plugs pop and servos tear out of my back. Pain knifed up my spine. I barely got clear of his next strike. My sword work became a frantic series of tahn feh sar parries, as I tried to back away and fend off his hooks and cloak-blades.

  Cherubael charged back at Glaw, but something intercepted it in midair. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Cherubael locked in aerial combat with an incandescent figure. They tumbled away, off the plinth, out over the gulf of the tomb.

  'You don't think you're the only one to have a pet, do you?' Glaw jeered. 'And my daemonhost is not restricted in its power like yours. Poor Cherubael. You've treated him so badly/

  'It's an "it", not a "him"/ I snarled and placed a high stroke that actually notched his golden mask.

  'Bastard!' he squealed and swept his cloak around under my guard. The thick metal of my body-brace deflected the worst of it, but I felt blood welling from cuts to my ribs.

  I staggered back. The agony in my spine was the worst thing, and I was certain my already limited motion was now badly impaired. My left leg felt dead and heavy.

  Ironhoof. Ironhoof.

  He thrust at me with his talons and nearly shredded my face. I blocked his hand at the last second, setting Barbarisater between his splayed fingers and locking out his strike.

  He threw me back. I was off-step, out-balanced by my slow, heavy mechanical legs.

  Laser shots danced across Glaw's face and chest as Gustine tried vainly to help out. Glaw pirouetted - a move that seemed impossibly nimble for such a giant - and his cloak whirred out almost horizontally with the centrifugal force.

  Hundreds of fast moving, razor-sharp blades whistled through Gustine, so fast, so completely, that he didn't realise what had happened to him.

  A mist of blood puffed in the air. Ghustine collapsed. Literally.

  Glaw turned on me again. I'd lost sight of Cherubael. I was on my own.

  And only now did I admit to myself that I was out-matched.

  Glaw was almost impervious to damage. Fast, armoured, deadly. Even on a good day, he would have been hard to defeat in single combat.

  And this wasn't a good day.

  He was going to kill me.

  He knew it too. As he pressed his assault, he started to laugh.

  That cut me deeper than any of his blades. I thought of Fischig, Aemos and Bequin. I thought of all the allies and friends who had perished because of him. I thought of what his spite had done to me and what it had cost me to get this far.

  I thought of Cherubael. The laughter reminded me of Cherubael.

  I came back at him so hard and so furiously that Barbarisater's blade became notched and chipped. I struck blows that snapped blade-scales off his clinking cape. I struck at him until he wasn't laughing any more.

  His answer was a psychic blast that smashed me backwards ten paces. Blood spurted from my nose and filled my mouth. I didn't fall. I would not give him that pleasure. But Barbarisater flew, screaming, from my dislodged grip.

  I was hunched over. My hands on my thighs, panting like a dog. My head was swimming. I could hear him crunching over the onyx towards me.

  You'd have won by now if you'd had the book/ I said, coughing the blood from my mouth.

  'What?'

  The book. The damned book. The Malus Codicium. That's what you were really after when you sent your hired murderers against me. That's why you tore my operation apart and killed everyone you could reach. You wanted the book.'

  'Of course I did/ he snarled.

  I looked up at him. 'It would have unlocked the prize already. Done away with this endless, fruitless study. You'd simply have opened the tomb and taken the daemon's chariot. Long before we could ever get here/

  'Savour that little triumph, Gregor/ he said. 'Your little pyrrhic victory. By keeping that book from me you have added extra months... years, to my work. Yssarile's weapon will be mine, but you've made its acquisition so much harder/

  'Good/1 said.

  He chuckled. 'You're a brave man, Gregor Eisenhorn. Come on, now - I'll make it quick/

  His blades clinked.

  'I suppose, then/ I added, 'I'd have been mad to bring it with me/

  He froze.

  With a shaking, bloody hand, I reached into my coat and took out the Malus Codicium. I think he gasped. I held it out, half open, so he could see, and riffled the pages through with my fingers.

  'You foolish, foolish man/ he said, smiling.

  That's what I thought/ I said. With one brutal jerk, I ripped the pages out of the cover.

  'No!' he cried.

  I wasn't listening. I fixed my mind on the loose bundle of sheets in my hands and subjected them to the most ferocious mental blast I could manage. The pages caught fire.

  I threw them up into the air.

  Glaw screamed with despair and rage. A blizzard of burning pages fluttered around us. He tried to grab at them. He moved like an idiot, like a child, snatching what he could out
of the air, trying to preserve anything, anything at all.

  The pages burned. Leaves of darkness, billowing across the plinth, consumed by fire.

  He snatched a handful, tried for more, stamping out those half-burned sheets that landed on the ground.

  He wasn't paying any attention to me at all.

  Barbarisater tore into him so hard it almost severed his head. Electricity crackled from the rent metal. He rasped and staggered. The Carthean blade sang in my hands as I ripped it across his chest and shattered part of his cloak.

  He fell backwards, right at the edge of the plinth, his finger hooks shrieking as they fought to get a purchase on the smooth onyx. I swung again, an upswing that ripped off his golden mask and sent it spinning out over the gulf. The interior of his head was revealed. The circuits, the crackling, fusing cables, the crystal that contained his consciousness and being, set in its cradle of links and wires.

  'In the name of the Holy God-Emperor of Terra/ I said quietly, 'I call thee diabolus and here deliver thy sentence/

  My own blood was dripping off Barbarisater's hilt between my doubled handed grip. I raised the blade.

  And made the ewl caer.

  The blade split his head and shattered the crystal into flecks of glass.

  Pontius Glaw's metal body convulsed, jerked back and fell off the edge of the plinth, down into the gulf, into the blackness of the daemon-king's tomb, its cloak-blades chiming.

  * * *

  I was sitting on the plinth, with my back against the tomb wall, blood slowly pooling around me, when a flight flashed out in the darkness of the vault.

  It came closer.

  At last, Cherubael floated down and hovered over me. Its face, limbs and body were hideously marked with weals, burns and gashes.

  I looked up at it. It was hard to move, hard to concentrate. There was blood in my mouth, in my eyes.

  'Glaw's daemonhost?'

  'Gone.'

  'He claimed it was more powerful than you/

  'You don't know how nasty I can be/ it said.

  I thought about that. The last of the diabolic book's pages were mere tufts of black ash, scattered across the plinth.

  'Are we finished here?' it asked.

  'Yes/1 said.

  It frowned.

  'I'm going to have to carry you after all, aren't I?' it sighed.

  Dossier addendum Notes concerning the key individuals in this account

  Inquisitor Gideon Ravenor supervised the annulment of 5213X, also known in some records as Ghtil. Despite long debates amongst the Sector ordos, no attempt to recover an artefact and material from 521 3X was ever permitted. Under orders from Battlefleet Scarus, under the command of Lord Admiral Olm Madorthene, annihilated the planet in 392. M41. Ravenor continued to serve the Inquisition for several centuries, performing many notable acts, including the destruction of the Heretic Thonius Slyte, but his posthumous fame results more from the quality of his writings, especially the peerless work The Spheres of Longing.

  Inquisitor Golesh Heldane survived the destruction of the Essene at Jeganda. His bodyguards were forced to sever his leg to free him and carried him to his ship. He spent many years recovering from his horrific injuries, which required still more severe augmetic reconstruction than he had already undergone. He returned to active service, but his career was blighted by his reputation. He was killed, following injury, on Menazoid Epsilon in 765.M41.

  Harlon Nayl continued in the service of the Inquisition for many years and, along with Kara Swole and Eleena Koi, joined the staff of Inquisitor Ravenor. Their individual fates are not recorded in the Imperial archive, though it is believed that Nayl died circa 450.M41.

  * * *

  Crezia Berschilde returned to Gudrun, where she served as Chief Medicae (anatomica) at the Universitariate of New Gevae until her retirement due to failing health in 602.M41. Several of her treatise on augmetic surgery have become standard authority texts.

  Medea Betancore returned to Glavia and became the director of her family shipwright business, a post she held for seventy years. She disappeared en route to Sarum in 479. 41, although several later reports suggest she survived that date.

  Lord Inquisitor Phlebas Alessandro Rorken recovered from his ill-health and became grand master of the Ordos Helican after the disappearance of Leonid Osma. He held the post for three hundred and fifteen years.

  Inquisitor Gregor Eisehhorn is believed to have continued in the service of the ordos after the events on 5213X, though recorded details of his life and work after that date are conjectural at best. His eventual fate is not recorded in the Imperial archives.

  There is no archived mention of the being known as 'Cherubael'.