Eisenhorn Omnibus Read online

  There was a bulkhead door on this side, too.

  I went through it, low.

  The gunman was waiting behind the other door on the far side of the moving belt. He saw me, cursed, and turned with his autocannon. I was firing already. Even at this shorter range, the pathetic stopping power of my auto was evident. His drum-barrelled autocannon was about to roar out my doom.

  I dived headlong, thumbing my weapon to auto and ripped off the entire clip of small slugs in a shrill, high-pitched chatter.

  What I lacked in power I made up for in numbers. I hit him six or seven times in the left arm and collar and staggered him backwards, his bonded armour torn open. The heavy cannon flew out of his hands and landed on the moving belt between us to be carried out of view.

  He was far from dead, though he was bleeding profusely from the multiple small calibre grazes and impacts. He was probably glanding some stimm that kept his edge.

  Snarling a Necromundan oath, he drew a military-issue las-pistol from his webbing, and climbed up on the work-line foot rail on his side of the rolling belt to get a better angle at me. I threw the empty gun at him and made him duck, and then grabbed one of the hose-suspended work lances hanging by the line-edge.

  He got off a shot that barely missed my shoulder. I swung the lance at him, the chain-blade tip chittering, reaching out across the belt. But it was hard to manipulate it with one wrist smashed.

  So I turned the swing into a throw and launched the long tool like a harpoon.

  The chain-tip impaled him and he died still screaming and trying to drag the industrial cutter from his chest. As he went limp, the tension in the rubberised power-hose pulled the lance back towards its rest hook on my side of the line, dragging the body onto the conveyor. The belt carried it along as far as the hose would allow, and then it stuck fast, the belt moving under it.

  Piles of wet plant fibre began damming up against it and spilling over onto the floor.

  Eisenhorn, a voice said in my mind.

  I wheeled round and saw Lyko standing on a grilled gantry that formed a walk-bridge over the belt. The plasma gun he had used to burn the fake

  Esarhaddon was aimed at me. I could see the battered psyker, his head still masked and visored, lashed to a wall-pipe on die far side of the line.

  You should have left well alone, Eisenhorn. You should never have come after me.

  I'm doing my job, you bastard. What were you doing?

  What had to be done. What needs to be done.

  He came down the walk-bridge and stepped towards me. There was a hunted, terrified look in his face.

  And what needs to be done?

  Silence.

  Why, Lyko? The atrocity on Thracian… how could you have allowed that? Been part of it?

  I… I didn't know! I didn't know what they were going to do.

  Who?

  He squashed my cheek with the muzzle of his potent weapon.

  'No more/ he said, speaking for the first time.

  'If you're going to kill me, just do it. I'm surprised you haven't already'

  'I need to know something first. Who knows? Who knows what you know?'

  'About you and your little pact with the daemonscum? About your theft of an alpha-plus class psyker? That you stood by while millions died on Thracian? Hah!' Everyone. I added the answer psychically for emphasis. Everyone. I informed Rorken and Orsini himself before I left on your trail

  'No! There would have been more than just you after me…'

  There is.'

  'You're lying! You're alone…'

  You're doomed.

  He stormed his mind into mine, frantic to tear the truth out of me. I think he was truly realising how far into damnation he had cast himself.

  I blocked his feverish mind-assault, and countered, driving an augur of psychic rage into his hind brain. It was in there. I could feel it. His true master. The face, the name…

  He realised what I was doing, realised that I outclassed him psychically. He tried to shoot me with his plasma gun, but by then I had shut down his nervous system and blocked all autonomous function. I scoured his mind. He was frozen, helpless, unable to stop me ransacking his memory, despite the blocks and engram locks he had placed there. Or someone had.

  There. There. The answer.

  He uttered an agonised, oddly modulated scream.

  Lyko tumbled away from me.

  Cherubael hovered above us, high in the roof space of the factory chamber, casting a glow of filthy warp-light.

  Choking, twitching, his limbs limp, Lyko was rising up towards him. Smoke was coming out of his mouth and nostrils.

  'Now, now, Gregor/ Cherubael said. 'Nice try, but there are some secrets that must remain.'

  With a nod of his head, he tossed Lyko aside. The traitor-inquisitor flew down to the front of the factory space, bounced hard off the inner hull and then fell down into the churning reaper blades in the factory harvester's maw.

  His body was utterly disintegrated.

  Cherubael hovered lower, grabbed the comatose, bound form of Esarhaddon like a child picking up a doll.

  'I won't forget what you did/ said the daemonhost, looking back at me one last time. 'You'll have to make it up to me.'

  Then he was gone, and Esarhaddon.was gone with him.

  TWELVE

  At Cadia, by terce.

  The pylons. Talking with Neve.

  A bitter autumn wind was coming down off the moors, and the turning ribbon-leaves of the axeltrees were beginning to fall. They fluttered past me like dry strands of black kelp, and collected in slowly decomposing drifts on the windward side of the graves and the low stone walls.

  Above, the overcast sky was full of racing brown clouds.

  I followed the old, overgrown path up the wooded slope, under the hissing axeltrees, and stood for a while alone, looking down at the wide grave field and the little shrine tower that watched over it. There was no sign of life, and, apart from the wind, no movement. Even the air-shay that had brought me here from the landing fields at Kasr Tyrok had departed. I almost missed the driver's grumbles that the place was so far out of town.

  Far away, almost out of sight beyond the glowering moors, I saw the nearest of the famed, mysterious pylons, an angular silhouette. Even from this distance, I could hear the strange, moaning note the wind made as it blew through the pylons' geometries, geometries that thousands of years of human scholarship had failed to explain.

  This was my first time on the world they called the Gatehouse of the Imperium. So far, it was not endearing itself to me.

  'So, Thorn… you were none too sharp, were you?'

  I turned slowly. He had arrived behind me, as silent as the void itself.

  'Well?' he asked. "What time do you call this?'

  'I consider myself suitably chastened/ I said.

  He was impassive, then the scar under his milky eye twitched and he smiled. 'Welcome to Cadia, Eisenhorn/ said Fischig.

  Aside from Aemos, Godwyn Fischig was my longest serving companion, though he and Bequin often disputed that record. I'd met them both on Hubris, during my hunt for the Chaos-broker Eyclone, which led in turn to the whole bloody affair of the Necroteuch.

  I'd actually encountered Fischig first. He'd then been a chastener in the local arbites, ordered to keep a watch on me. He became my ally through circumstance. Bequin had crossed my path, if my memory serves, about a day later, but I had co-opted her almost directly into my service, while Fischig had remained, technically, a serving arbites officer for some considerable time before resigning to join me.

  Which is why Bequin claimed the prize, and why they sometimes fell to disputing it when the hour was late and the amasec unstoppered.

  His was a big man, of my own age, his cropped blond hair now turning silver. But he was as robust as ever, clad in a coat of black fur, a mail sur-coat and steel-fronted boots.

  He shook my hand.

  'I was beginning to think you wouldn't make it.'

  'I
was beginning to think so too/

  He cocked his head slightly. 'Trouble?'

  'Like you wouldn't believe. Let's walk and I'll tell you/

  We wandered back down the tree-shrouded path together. He knew something of the atrocity on Thracian, which was by then some seven mondis past, but he had no idea I had been caught up in it.

  When I told him the details, especially about Ravenor, his face darkened.

  He had admired Gideon – frankly, it had been difficult not to admire Gideon – and I sometimes felt that Gideon was the man Fischig would have liked to have been.

  Fischig's great strength was his self-knowledge. He understood his own limitations. His strengths were loyalty, physical power, fine combat skills, observation and a nose for detail. He was not quick witted, and his abhorrence of book-learning meant that even the rank of interrogator was beyond him. Though he would have loved to rise formally through the ranks of the Inquisition, he had never tried, contenting himself with becoming one of the fundamental components of my staff.

  To try, he knew, would have meant failure. And Godwyn Fischig hated to fail.

  We crossed the narrow funeral lane and went into the grave field by the old lychgate in the low wall. I told him about Lyko, and Esarhaddon. I told him of the warnings from Endor and Lord Rorken. I told him

  about the bloody, inconclusive mess on Eechan. I told him about Cherubael.

  'I would have come as soon as I received your message. But Rorken practically forbade me. And then, as you have heard, matters got out of hand.'

  He nodded. 'Don't worry, I'm a patient man.'

  We stood for a moment in the middle of the vast field of graves. Several shivering priests in ragged black robes were wandering through the lines of crumbling gravestones, pausing to study each one.

  'What are they doing?'

  'Reading the names/ he said.

  'What for?'

  To see if they can be read.'

  'Okay… why?'

  'As you might imagine, a martial world like this produces many dead. Long ago, an edict was made by the planetary government that only certain fields of land could ever be used for burial. So cemetery space is at an optimum. Hence, the Law of Decipherability.'

  'Which is?'

  'The law states that once the eroding hands of time and the elements have made the last names on a field's gravestones illegible, the anonymous dead may be exhumed, the bones buried in a pit, and the field reused.'

  'So they tend the field for years until the names can no longer be read?'

  He shrugged. 'It's their way. Once the names have vanished, so has the memory, and so has any need for honour. The time's coming for this place. Another year or two, they tell me.'

  That struck me as infinitely melancholic. Cadia was a warrior-world, standing guard in the one navigable approach to the warp-tumult of the infamous Eye of Terror. The region, known as the Cadian Gate, is the route of choice for invasions of Chaos, and Cadia is seen by most as the Imperium's first line of defence. It has bred elite troops since it was first colonised, and billions of its sons and daughters have died bravely protecting our culture.

  Died bravely… then left to slowly vanish in the desolate fields of their home world.

  It was dismal, but probably entirely in keeping with the stoic martial mindset of the Cadians.

  Fischig pushed open the heavy axelwood door of the shrine tower and we went inside out of the wind.

  The tower was a single chamber, a drum of stone, with weep-hole window slits high up near the summit. A circle of rough wooden pews was arranged around a central altarpiece, above which a massive iron candelabra in the form of a double-headed eagle was suspended on a chain from the beamed roof.

  On this dark autumn day, the light from the votive candles fixed amongst the metal feathers of the aquila's unfurled wings was the only

  illumination. There was a spare, thin, golden light, an atmosphere of frugality and numinous grace. And a musty stink of rotting axel leaves.

  We sat together on a pew, both of us briefly honouring the altar with the sign of the aquila, our hands splayed together against our hearts.

  'It's strange/ sighed Fischig after a long pause. 'You sent me out, over a year ago, on yet another quest for signs of that daemonspawn Cherubael. And just when I find a trace, you run into him again, on the other side of the damn sector/

  'Strange is possibly not the word I'd use/

  'But the coincidence. Is it coincidence?'

  'I don't know. It seems so much like it. But… that thing… Cherubael… disarms me so/

  'Naturally, old friend/

  I shook my head. 'Not because of his power. Not that/

  Then what?'

  The way he speaks to me. The way he says he's using me/

  'Daemon guile!'

  'Perhaps. But he knows so much. He knows… ah, damn it! He speaks as if our destinies are irrevocably entwined. Like he matters to me and vice versa/

  'He does matter to you/

  'I know, I know. As my goal. My prey. My nemesis. But he talks like it's more than that. Like he can see the future, or can read it, or has even been there. He talks to me like… he knows what I'm going to do/

  Fischig frowned. And… what do you think that might be?'

  I rose and stalked to the altar. 'I have no idea! I can't conceive of doing anything that would please or benefit a daemon! I can't ever imagine myself that insane!'

  Trust me, Eisenhorn, if I ever thought you were, I'd shoot you myself/

  I glanced back at him. 'Please do/

  I halted and looked up into the flickering flames of the candles, seeing themany shadows and possible shadows of myself they cast, interlapping and criss-crossing the stone floor. Like the myriad possibilities of the future. I tried not to look into the thicker, blacker shadows.

  The warp-spawned bastard's just playing games with you/ said Fischig. That's all it is. Games to put you off the scent and keep you at bay/

  'If that's the case, why does he keep saving my life?'

  We went back out into the moorland wind. The moaning of the pylon seemed louder to me now.

  'Who's with you?' Fischig asked.

  'Aemos, Bequin, Nayl, Medea, Husmaan… and a lad you've not met, Inshabel. We came here directly from Eechan/

  'Longride?'

  'Best part of six months. We got as far as Mordia on a free trader called the Best of Eagles, and then came the rest of the way as guests of the Adep-tus Mechanicus. The super-heavy barge Mons Olympus, no less, carrying virgin Titans to the garrisons of the Cadian Gate.'

  'Quite an honour.'

  'The inquisitor's rosette carries its benefits. But I tell you, the tech-priests of Mars are damned surly company for a two month voyage. I would have gone mad but for Bequin's regicide tournaments.'

  'Nayl getting any better?'

  'No. I think by now he owes me… what is it? Hmm. His first born and his soul.'

  Fischig laughed.

  'Oh, it wasn't all so bad. There was one fellow, a veteran princeps from the Titan Legion. Old guy, centuries old. At the point of retirement, like those men ever retire. He was supervising the transfer of the new war-machines. Name of Hekate. We got to drinking some nights. Remind me to tell you some of his war-stories.'

  'I will. Come on…'

  He had a land speeder parked down off the lane under the swaying axel-trees. We brushed fallen ribbon-leaves off me hood and got in.

  'Let me show you what I found. Then we can all meet and greet in a safe place/

  'How safe?'

  The safest.'

  We flew over the moorlands, into the biting winds, hugging the terrain. The light was fading. The grim glory of Cadia was spread out below us. This was the merciless, windblown wilderness mat raised one of the Imperium's hardiest warrior breeds. Here were the scattered islets in the Caducades Sea where they were left naked as pre-pubescents to survive the ritual Month of Making. Here were the hill-forts where the Cadian Youth armies winte
red and toughened and waged mock wars on their neighbour forts. Here were the crags, ice-lakes and axel-forests where they learned the arts of camouflage.

  Here were the wide, sundered plains where their live firing exercises were staged.

  There is a saying: 'If the ammo ain't live, this ain't no Cadian practice'. Right from the time they are issued with their own las-guns, which is about the same time they are given their first primary readers, the young warrior-caste of Cadia are handling live ammunition. Most can fire, and kill, and perform most infantry field drills before they reach the age often standard.

  Little wonder that the shock troops of Cadia are among the Imperium's best.

  But we weren't here to gawp at the rugged crucible of landscape that had formed the Cadians.

  We were here to look at the pylons.

  * * *

  'Cherubael's been here/ said Fischig, jockeying the control stick and eyeing the windspeed gauge. 'Far as I know, nine times in the last forty years/

  You're sure?'

  'It's what you pay me for. Your daemonhost – and whatever he's working for – is fascinated by Cadia/

  Why have the Inquisition not had a hint of it?'

  'Come on, Gregor. The galaxy is big. Aemos once told me that the weight of data generated by the Imperium would fry all the metriculators and codi-fiers on Terra in a flash if it was input simultaneously. It's a matter of making connections. Sifting the data. The Inquisition – and you – have been looking all over for signs of Cherubael. But some things just don't flag. I got lucky/

  'How?'

  'I was doing my job. Old friend of mine, Isak Actte, from the old arbites day. Used to be my boss, in fact. He rose, got promoted, wound up on Hydraphur as an arbites general and then got stationed here as watch overseer to the Cadian Interior Guard. I contacted him years ago, and got a message I had to check/

  You're intriguing me/

  He ran us low over a headland and our speeder made a small, sharp shadow on the glittering ice-lake below.

  'Actte said the arbites had closed down a heretical cell here on Cadia about ten years ago. Called themselves the Sons of Bael. A fairly worthless lot, by all accounts. Harmless. But under interrogation, they'd admitted to following a daemon they called Bael or the Bael. The local inquisitor general spent some time with them and had them all burned/