Текст книги "The Outcast Dead"

Автор книги: Грэм Макнилл

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Текущая страница: 16 (всего у книги 26 страниц)

Kai thought back to what Evander Gregoras had told him of the cognoscynths, but realised that Atharva’s abilities had only steeredthe pilot’s thought processes, not altered them.

A subtle, but important difference.

Right now it seemed irrelevant, as the ground rushed to meet them with terrible inevitability. Towers that seemed tiny and distant from the air were now horribly close, and Kai could see a rushing collage of ramshackle structures speeding below them, close enough to make out individual buildings and streets as Asubha fought to control their descent.

The cutter made a last ditch effort to evade gravity’s clutches, but that was a fight it could never win. With one wing missing and a hole blown in its side, the cutter slammed into the ground with a thunderous impact of splintering metal that seemed to go on for ever and ever.

FIFTEEN

The Hunters Assemble

Reluctant Petitioners

The Clan Lord

YASU NAGASENA IS well known in this city, and no one challenges him when he passes beneath the Obsidian Arch on his way towards the tower at its heart. It has been a long time since he trod its empty boulevards and gazed in admiration at the sublime constructions that no one beyond its walls even knows exists. The palace masons, perhaps knowing that the City of Sight’s inhabitants seldom venture beyond the walls of their prison, spared no expense and employed every subtlety of their art to render a city as beautiful and harmonious as it was isolated.

‘I wonder who named this place,’ muses Nagasena, looking up at the gilded capitals and ornamented pediment of the Emerald Ossuary. The bones of Terra’s astro-telepaths are interred within, together with those who did not survive the final rituals to render them fully capable of service. It is a place of sadness rendered in joyous architecture.

‘The Ossuary?’ asks Kartono.

‘No, the City of Sight.’

‘Someone with a perverse sense of humour.’

‘Perhaps,’ replies Nagasena. ‘Or perhaps someone who appreciated the true value of what these poor, blind souls do here.’

Kartono shrugs, uncaring and uncomfortable at being here. Nagasena does not blame him. To his bondsman, this place is anathema. Kartono is hated by most people, for reasons they can never fully articulate, but in this place, those who encounter him hate him and know exactly why.

Kartono makes them truly blind.

The streets are deserted. Everyone in the City of Sight knows they here, sensing the empty hole in the constant chatter that throngs the air with invisible voices. They are a silence in a city of voices, and they do not pass unnoticed.

Nagasena sees them first, but it is Kartono that gives them name.

‘Black Sentinels,’ he says, watching the armoured squad marching towards them with rifles held at their shoulders. ‘Golovko’s men.’

‘Led by the man himself,’ says Nagasena, spotting the bulky form of Maxim Golovko at their head. ‘We are honoured.’

‘Honours like this I could do without.’

‘Maxim has his uses,’ says Nagasena. ‘Some hunts require stealth, others require the hunters to flush their prey into the open with… less subtle means.’

Kartono nods, and falls in behind Nagasena as Golovko brings his men to halt before them with a crash of boots stamping the ground in unison. They are formidable soldiers, well trained, disciplined and without mercy, yet they are blunt instruments compared to the needle-precision of Nagasena.

‘Maxim,’ says Nagasena with a bow deep enough to indicate respect, but shallow enough to convey his superiority. It is a petty gesture, but it amuses Kartono, and Maxim will never realise its significance.

‘Nagasena,’ replies Golovko. ‘Why are you here?’

‘I am here for the hunt.’

‘You received a summons?’

Nagasena shakes his head. ‘No, but I am needed, yes?’

‘We can catch these traitors without your help,’ states Golovko. ‘I’m assembling a team right now, and this will all be over by day’s end.’

Nagasena looks up as a long cloudbank covers the sun.

‘Show me this team,’ he says.

THERE ARE THREE of them of note, and Nagasena considers them all.

Saturnalia is Legio Custodes, and his anger is matched only by his shame. The astropath, Kai Zulane, and the warriors of the Crusader Host escaped from his gaol, and such a grievous lapse can only be erased by their immediate recapture. He is angry, but he is steady. Nagasena knows he can count on a Custodian to follow instructions and Saturnalia will be the only one who stands a chance against the hunted warriors if they turn and fight.

Adept Hiriko is uncomfortable here, and Nagasena knows why. Her neck is bruised and her eyes are dotted with red pinpricks of blood where her former colleague attempted to strangle her. Though she feigns indifference, Nagasena sees his death has affected her more deeply than she will admit. She is no hunter and has only one skill that will be of use in the hunt. Hiriko is a psychic extractor, and she believes she can remove the secrets that make Kai Zulane so valuable.

Athena Diyos is a crippled astropath whose presence on such a hunt Nagasena would not normally countenance. Her body is broken, and her life-sustaining chair will only slow them down, but she has been into Kai Zulane’s mind and that gives her a unique insight. She can guide them to him when he is near, and though she is an unwilling participant in this hunt, she knows she has little say in the matter.

They are gathered in the chambers of the Choirmaster, and Nemo Zhi-Meng paces the length of his sumptuous chambers with nervous energy, his white robes flapping around him like the wings of a panicked bird.

‘You must get him back, Yasu,’ he says, pausing in his pacing long enough to address Nagasena. His white hair is unbound and his beard is ragged. The last few days have taken a heavy toll on him, and the strain of holding an inter-galactic communications network together is visible in every strained gesture and barked utterance.

‘I will, Nemo,’ promises Nagasena with a bow of deep respect. ‘Now tell me why this man is so important. Why did seven Space Marines put their own escape at risk by bringing him with them? There was no need for them to do such a thing.’

Zhi-Meng hesitates before answering and Nagasena tries not to read too much into that pause. ‘Before the loss of the Argo, Kai Zulane was one of our finest operatives,’ says the Choirmaster. ‘He has the synesthesia codes for our highest tiers of communication. If he sends that information to traitors in service to Horus Lupercal then our entire network is compromised.’

‘Zulane’s record indicates he is defective as an astropath,’ says Nagasena, sensing that the Choirmaster’s explanation is a lie. His fingers tighten on the grip of Shoujiki. The blade is his touchstone to honesty, and though Nagasena does not always need to know whyhe is hunting, he dislikes hunting for the wrong reasons.

‘He was,’ says Zhi-Meng. ‘But Mistress Diyos was working to restore his abilities.’

Nagasena turns to Athena Diyos and kneels beside her, sweeping his robes out behind him. She cannot see him with her eyes, but he knows she feels his presence.

‘And how successful had you been? Can Kai Zulane send anything off world?’

Athena Diyos takes her time before answering, but Nagasena believes she is truthful. ‘No. Not yet. He is recovering, but I think he is still too afraid to cast his mind into the warp.’

‘That may not matter if he is in the company of Atharva,’ says Saturnalia. ‘Sorcery may be able to pluck the codes from his mind.’

‘Is he capable of that?’ asks Nagasena, turning back to Nemo Zhi-Meng.

‘Little is known of the abilities possessed by Magnus’s warriors,’ admits Zhi-Meng, ‘but I wouldn’t count it beyond the realms of possibility.’

‘Then we must apprehend Kai Zulane swiftly,’ says Nagasena.

‘Can’t you just change the codes?’ asks Kartono.

‘Do you have any idea what that involves?’ snaps Zhi-Meng. ‘Developing new ciphers for a galaxy-wide network requires decades of preparation and attempting such a task in the midst of a rebellion would be madness. No, we must find Kai Zulane before the traitor Space Marines wring the information from him.’

‘If they haven’t already,’ says Saturnalia.

‘Of all the places they had to crash,’ says Golovko. ‘It had to be the damn Petitioner’s City. There’s no maps, no plan and a thousand places they could go to ground.’

‘An astropath and seven Space Marines will find it hard to stay out of sight, even in a warren like the Petitioner’s City,’ points out Nagasena.

‘We need to get to that crash site,’ says Golovko. ‘Pick up the trail from there.’

‘Agreed, but to hunt with success, we must first understand our prey,’ says Nagasena. ‘We are hunting an astropath and seven Space Marines. What I want to know is why only seven? Why did they not free everyone before they fled?’

‘Does it matter?’ asks Saturnalia. ‘Seven traitors at liberty on Terra is seven too many.’

‘Everything matters,’ states Nagasena. ‘Only warriors from the Legions that have sided with Horus Lupercal were freed. I believe Atharva is the leader of these warriors, and he knew enough to recognise which of the imprisoned warriors would follow him. The question then becomes, why did a warrior of the Thousand Sons engineer such a break out? His Legion is still counted as loyal to the Throne is it not?’

Saturnalia steps forward and grips his spear in both hands. ‘No, it is not.’

Hiriko and Diyos gasp in shock, and even Kartono lets out a surprised breath.

‘Would you care to elaborate on that?’ asks Nagasena.

‘The Emperor has pronounced judgement on the Thousand Sons and its Primarch,’ says Saturnalia. ‘Even now, my fellow Custodians draw near Prospero in the company of Russ and his warriors. Primarch Magnus is to be brought to Terra in chains.’

‘Why?’ asks Nagasena.

‘For breaking the edicts of Nikaea and employing sorceries forbidden by the Emperor himself,’ says Saturnalia. ‘Valdor himself has unsheathed his blade.’

‘Then Magnus will be lucky to leave Prospero alive,’ says Nagasena, and he sees Saturnalia wonder if he is insulting the master of the Custodians.

‘We’re wasting time,’ says Golovko. ‘I can fill the Petitioner’s City with Black Sentinels in thirty minutes. We’ll take that shithole apart, brick by shitting brick until we find them.’

Nagasena shakes his head, already irritated at Golovko’s lack of subtlety.

‘Choose thirty of your best men, Maxim,’ he says. ‘More will only hinder us.’

‘Thirty? You saw how badly they mauled us when we first came for them.’

‘This time will be different,’ says Nagasena.

‘How so?’

‘This time they care if they live or die,’ he says.

AN HOUR EARLIER, Kai had woken in agony in a flaming steel coffin. His body felt broken, and he struggled to draw breath as something heavy pressed down on his chest. He coughed as acrid smoke drifted in a soft wind, and he heard the creak of twisted metal and sparking of ruptured cables over the crackle of flames.

He turned his head, even this small movement painful, to survey his surroundings.

The interior of the cutter had flattened on impact and the hull was an oval tube laced with broken spars of metal and hung with ribbed piping that spat hissing gasses or drooled hydraulic fluid. Atharva lay next to him, and Kai saw it was his arm that lay across his chest and pinned him to the ground.

Smoke-filtered light filled the cabin, the heavy fuselage torn open down the entire length of the cutter, and Kai was amazed he had survived so ferocious an impact. Across from him, a figure with dirty white hair picked himself up from the wreckage and shook his head.

‘That’s what you World Eaters call a landing,’ said Argentus Kiron.

A blackened shape at the front of the craft pulled itself from a heap of broken panels and coils of spitting wiring.

‘Any landing you walk away from is a good one,’ said Asubha with a wide grin. It looked to Kai as though he had enjoyed crashing the cutter.

‘Does it still count if you can only crawl?’ asked Subha, pushing himself to his knees and spitting a wad of teeth.

‘You are alive,’ said Tagore, wiping blood from a series of deep gashes on his chest and smearing it over his shoulders and face like tribal war paint. Kai tried to push Atharva’s arm from his chest, but he was still too weak and the warrior’s arm was too heavy. The cold-eyed features of Severian appeared above him, regarding him as a hunter might study a snared animal.

‘I’m trapped,’ said Kai, and Severian lifted Atharva’s arm from his chest. He moved on before Kai could thank him. The movement stirred Atharva, and he rolled onto his side with a groan of pain. Blood was coagulating on his face and arms, and he pulled a shard of metal the size of a dagger from his side.

A sudden cry of alarm made Kai jump and he smacked his head on the buckled side of the cutter. He saw Kiron kneel at the edge of the hole torn in the side of the cutter, presumably by a missile impact or the crash itself. He clambered over the crumpled interior of the cutter to the light and saw Gythua sitting upright in a pool of blood with torn spars of metal jutting from the centre of his stomach and chest.

‘Looks like the Goliath was right,’ said Subha. ‘He candie.’

‘Don’t say that!’ snapped Kiron with a venomous glare.

Severian knelt beside the Death Guard warrior and probed the bloody mess of his guts.

‘The wound is mortal,’ he said. ‘We should leave him.’

‘He’s right,’ said Gythua with a grimace of pain.

‘I’m not abandoning you,’ said Kiron.

‘I meant about the wound being mortal,’ said the Death Guard. ‘I’m dying, but you’re not going to bloody leave me here for the hunters.’

‘We leave no one behind for the hunters,’ agreed Tagore.

Kai was surprised to hear such a sentiment from a World Eater. From all he had heard, Kai had assumed Angron’s warriors to be brutal killers, without compassion or mercy. It was hard to believe a warrior that looked so feral and brutal could have any mercy in him, but the steel in Tagore’s voice brooked no disagreement.

Severian saw the same thing and gave a small shrug of acceptance.

‘Then we need to get him off these spikes of metal,’ he said.

‘Lift him clear,’ said Tagore, waving Asubha and his twin forward. Kai turned away as they bent down to pull Gythua free.

‘Do it quickly, World Eaters,’ said Gythua.

‘Don’t you worry about us,’ Subha told him. ‘You just mind your own self.’

Kai put his hands over his ears, but could still hear the terrible scraping of metal on bone, the awful suction of pierced flesh. The World Eaters strained with the effort of pulling Gythua clear, but to the Death Guard’s credit, no more than a grunt of pain escaped his lips as he came free of the metal spars.

Kai felt pressure on his arm, and let himself be guided from the wreckage. Gythua gave out great shuddering breaths as his body tried to fight the inevitable, and Kai let out an involuntary cry of horror as he saw the monstrously bloody ruin of Gythua’s body.

‘Don’t know what you’ve got to be bothered about,’ said Gythua, climbing to his feet with help from Kiron. ‘It’s me with the hole right through me.’

‘Sorry,’ said Kai, stepping from the remains of the crashed cutter.

Kai blinked his augmetic eyes, and he smiled at the simple pleasure of sunlight on his skin. The cutter had come down in a wide courtyard space between a series of abandoned structures that might once have been warehouses. The ground was hard-packed earth and bare rock, the buildings that clustered close like curious onlookers at the scene of an accident.

No two were the same, constructed from sheets of corrugated metal and crudely shaped stone. Even over the reek of scorched iron and burning fuel, Kai could smell the wretched aroma of human waste, sweat and bad meat. How far had they travelled from the gaol? This surely could not be part of the Emperor’s palace.

‘Where are we?’ he asked, as Atharva joined him.

‘My guess would be the Petitioner’s City.’

‘It’s awful,’ said Kai. ‘People actually live here?’

Atharva nodded. ‘A great many of them.’

‘A good place to stay hidden,’ said Severian, moving to the edge of the courtyard in which they had crashed.

‘Hide?’ said Tagore. ‘I don’t plan on hiding from anyone.’

‘No? Then what isyour plan?’

‘We make our way to the nearest port facility and capture another flyer, one capable of getting into orbit without getting its arse shot off.’

‘And then what?’ asked Severian.

Tagore shrugged. ‘We have an astropath,’ he said. ‘We get him to send for our brothers.’

‘You make it all sound so simple,’ said Severian with a wry grin. ‘And I was worried for a moment that it would be difficult to escape from Terra.’

‘I am World Eater,’ said Tagore, a warning in his tone. ‘Do not mistake simple for stupid.’

Severian nodded and turned away as Subha and Asubha helped Gythua from the cutter. Kiron emerged from the wreckage with his upper body now bared to the elements, and Kai was reminded of the marble statues with perfect physiques that flanked the steps of the Circus Athletica on the island crag of Aegina. Where the other Space Marines were bulky to the point of being ungainly and grotesque, Kiron was more akin to the proportions of a mortal, albeit one whose body was shaped to an idealised form. The torn fabric of his bodyglove now plugged the hole in Gythua’s stomach, and Kai saw the yellow cloth was already stained crimson.

The Death Guard warrior had an arm around the twins’ shoulders, and he took in their surroundings with a stoic shrug.

‘So this is the Petitioner’s City,’ he grunted. ‘Don’t suppose there’s much chance of finding a Legion apothecary around here?’

THEY TORCHED THE wrecked cutter with three blasts from Kiron’s plasma carbine and moved into the winding streets of the city. Severian led the way, putting as much distance between them and the crash as was possible, given that the wounded Gythua limited their speed. They kept to the shadows and the farther they travelled into the city, the more Kai lost track of the age in which he lived.

The lanes were dark, cool and filled with shadow, the buildings between which they travelled ancient and dilapidated, stone facades crumbling and grimed, patched with ad-hoc repairs and haphazard necessity. Wirework traceries of cabling skeined the surfaces and roofs of the buildings, a fragile network of illicit power that looked as fragile as silken cobwebs.

Between the wires, the sky diminished to a thin brush stroke of deepening blue.

All signs of technology began to vanish, and the air grew sharper with spices and perfumes and sweat, undiminished by the stale, metallic smell of the Imperium. The sounds changed too: echoing noises of children reciting nonsense verse, the hectoring voice of a man sounding like he was preaching, the buzz and whirr of stone on stone, knife sharpeners and a hundred other hawkers.

They turned into older streets, so narrow that the Space Marines had trouble moving two abreast. Ragged awnings and sagging balconies jutted into the passageways, making it difficult for Kai to see more than a few meters in any direction. His mental map spun, flipped around and turned inside out. Everything around him looked so different, but, perversely, it all began to blur together until he had no idea in which direction they were heading.

Those few people who saw them stared in wonder at the giants, and pressed themselves to the sides of the ramshackle buildings or turned and ran for their lives. Children in bright robes and tattooed faces gawped at them as women in orange shawls hurried them away. A multitude of skin tones dwelled here, from the exotic to the mundane, and he saw styles of dress from every corner of the globe: turbans, baggy silk pantaloon, all-enclosing robes that left only the eyes open to the world, labourers’ clothes and clothes that looked fit for any royal palace. Kai wondered what these people thought to see warriors in their midst, towering figures of heroic might that now passed through their slums.

Did they fear them as much as he did?

Kai stumbled after Severian in a daze, losing track of his surroundings. He had been psychically mauled and chemically subdued by his captors, both of which had weakened his body to the point of ruination. Kai’s body felt like one enormous wound, and he put one foot in front of the other mechanically, too exhausted to care where they were going or what they were going to do when they got there.

Tagore expected to send an astropathic message to his brothers off-world, but he was going to be disappointed if he thought Kai could be that messenger. By the last test Athena had set him, Kai could barely manage to reach a receiving astropath one tower distant. What chance did he have of reaching one on a far-distant world? The World Eater did not look like the kind of warrior who would take disappointment well, and Kai felt a numbing dread take hold of him at the thought of his anger when he discovered Kai’s limitations.

How had his life taken such a strange turn?

Kai had been honoured to serve the XIII Legion, happy to be part of so vast an undertaking as the conquest of the galaxy, and content in the knowledge that there was no better astropath in the service of the Adeptus Astra Telepathica. Now he was a hunted man, shorn of his abilities and travelling in the company of warriors the Imperium counted as base traitors.

He thought back to when this had all begun, the moment his life had turned to shit.

‘The Argo,’ he said.

‘A helot vessel of the Ultramarines,’ said Atharva. ‘Its keel was struck in the shipyards of Calth a hundred and fifty six years ago.’

‘What?’ said Kai, unaware he had spoken aloud.

‘The Argo,’ said Atharva. ‘You served on her for eleven years.’

‘How do you know that?’

‘I know a great deal about you, Kai Zulane,’ said Atharva, tapping the side of his head.

‘You read my mind?

‘No,’ said Atharva. ‘My primarch told me of you.’

Kai searched Atharva’s face for any sign of mockery, but it was hard to read his features with any degree of accuracy. Though Kai and Atharva shared the same basic physiognomy, the features of the Space Marines were subtly different from those of mortals and the same visual cues did not quite hold true between the two branches of humanity.

‘Really? The Crimson King told you of me?’

‘He did,’ agreed Atharva. ‘How else did I know to come for you? How else would I know that you were aboard the Argowhen it suffered a critical failure of its Geller field, allowing a host of warp entities to rampage through its halls to slaughter the crew, leaving you and Roxanne Larysa Joyanni Castana as the only survivors.’

Kai felt sick to his stomach at the mention of the massacre aboard the Argo, and he reached out to steady himself on the wall of a nearby building. His stomach flipped and though he couldn’t remember the last time he had eaten anything solid, he felt as though whatever was in his stomach was about to be ejected.

‘Please,’ he gasped. ‘Please don’t talk about the Argo.’

Atharva held him upright and said, ‘Trust me, Kai, I know the dangers of the Great Ocean better than most, and believe me when I say that the loss of that vessel was not your fault.’

‘You can’t know that,’ said Kai.

‘Oh, but I can,’ said Atharva. ‘My subtle body has flown the farthest immaterial tides and plunged to the warp’s most secret dreamings. I know its limitless potential and I have fought the creatures that dwell in its darkest places. They are dangerous beyond your understanding, but to think that you alone could have doomed an entire ship is laughable. You credit yourself with too much.’

‘Is that supposed to make me feel better?’

Atharva frowned. ‘It was a statement of fact. Whether it makes you feel better or not is irrelevant.’

Kai sank to his haunches and rubbed a hand across his brow. His skin was greasy with sweat and the roiling sensation in his stomach was continuing unabated. He retched up a thick rope of acrid saliva and spat it to the ground.

‘Please,’ he said. ‘I need to stop. I can’t go on like this.’

‘No, you cannot,’ replied Atharva. ‘Pause a moment here.’

Kai took a deep breath and fought to quell the sickness in his belly. After a few minutes he began to feel better and looked up. Severian and Tagore were arguing, but he couldn’t hear their words. Asubha supported Gythua, whose features were ashen and corpse-like. Blood stained his thighs and even Kai could see he was living on borrowed time. Kiron kept watch on the rooflines with his rifle while Subha examined the Death Guard’s wound.

Of all the Legions, Kai imagined the World Eaters must know the most of battlefield injuries, that those who understood the mechanics of taking bodies apart should also understand the most about putting them back together.

‘He’s going to die, isn’t he?’ said Kai.

Atharva nodded. ‘Yes, he is.’

SMOKE AND THE smell of roasting meat filled the warehouse, gathering in a layer below the roof and wreathing the iron girders in a misty fog. The walls were hung with long strips of cloth and panelled with sheets of layered metal and ash. A long fire of glowing coals burned low in a trench in the centre of the space, and spits of questionable meat turned as the skins cracked and drizzled fat.

Hard men filled the warehouse, sitting on rough wooden benches or cleaning weapons and speaking in low voices. Each one was a broad-shouldered brute, made huge by unnatural muscle growth and a rigorous regime of fighting and tests of strength that would not have been out of place in the training halls of the Legiones Astartes. They dwarfed the slaves that served them, though none of the wretched individuals bound to the Dhakal clan were particularly diminutive.

Most of these hard men bore heavy-calibre pistols, and long, factory-stamped blades hung from their belts. The biggest carried weapons of a bygone age: leaf-bladed axes, long-hafted falchions and chain-length flails. Like the warriors who once roamed the wastelands of Old Earth, they were an anachronism in this golden age of scientific advancement and progress, but here in the heart of the Petitioner’s City, they ruled with the iron fist of might.

Weapon racks lined one wall and sheets of iron beaten into the shape of kite shields ringed a shallow pit at one end of the hall. It had the appearance of an arena, and the dark earth was stained a deep, muddy brown from the hundreds of frightened men and women who had been thrown in to die for the amusement of the hard men and their master.

Nor was this fighting pit the only indication that the occupants of the warehouse were bloodthirsty beyond imagining. A dozen long chains attached to windlass mechanisms of black iron descended from the roof, and mounted on each was a blackened corpse, pierced through by a hook intended for a meat-vendor to hang his butchered carcasses upon. The corpses reeked of putrefaction, but no one in the hall appeared to care or even notice them. In time they would be thrown out for the city’s feral dogs to devour, but there would always be fresh meat to fill an empty hook.

The master of this hall sat at the other end, upon a vast throne of beaten iron, though none of the hall’s occupants dared turn their gaze upon him.

To look upon the clan lord without permission was death, and everyone knew it.

Dim light penetrated the gloom of the warehouse as a shutter door in the centre of one wall rumbled open. The hard men barely looked up, knowing that no one would be foolish enough to come to this place with violence in mind. Even the arbitrators of the Emperor’s law did not come here.

A few heads nodded in greeting as the towering figure of Ghota entered, dragging a weeping man clad in rough, workman’s clothes. Ghota’s meaty fist was wrapped around the man’s neck, and though he was a stocky-built labourer, the clan lord’s chief enforcer carried his as easily as a man might hoist a wayward child.

Ghota was clad in a heavy bear pelt cloak and padded overalls unzipped to his muscled belly, and the crossed bandoliers of blades glittered in the red glow of the coals. His flesh shone with ruddy light that almost, but not entirely, gave his pallid complexion a more natural tone.

The tattoos cut into his flesh bunched and writhed as he approached the iron throne, and he spat a wad of gristly phlegm to the floor. Men avoided his gaze, for Ghota was a man of unpredictable moods, quick temper and psychotic rages. His blood red eyes were impossible to read, and to speak with Ghota at all was to dance with death.

Ghota halted before the throne and beat a barb-wrapped fist against his breast.

‘What do you bring me, Ghota?’ said the figure on the throne in a voice wet with the gristle of cancerous tumours. None of the dim light from the fire trench reached the speaker, as though understanding that some things were better left to the shadows.

Ghota hurled the labourer to the floor in front of the iron throne.

‘This one speaks of warriors drawing near, my subedar,’ he said.

‘Warriors? Really? Has the palace grown bold, I wonder…’

‘No ordinary warriors these,’ added Ghota, delivering a heavy boot to the labourers gut. The man screamed in pain and rolled onto his side, coughing blood and screwing his eyes shut. Ghota’s kick had ruptured something inside him, and even if the hard men didn’t kill him out of hand or toss him into the pit for a moment’s amusement, he would be dead by sunrise.

‘Speak, wretch,’ ordered the master of this hall, leaning forward so that the barest hint of light shone from a shaven scalp and glittered on six golden studs set in his thunderous brow. ‘Tell me of these warriors.’

The man sobbed and pushed himself up onto one elbow. He could barely breathe, and spoke in wheezing gasps.

‘Saw them out by the empty ranges to the east,’ he said. ‘Fell outta the sky and smashed down in a wrecked lifter. Cargo 9by the looks of it.’

‘They crashed, and yet they walked away unhurt?’

The labourer shook his head. ‘One of ’em was bloody and they had to carry him. A big man, bigger than any man I ever seen.’

‘Bigger than my Ghota here?’ asked the shadowed figure on the throne.

‘Aye, bigger than him, they all were. Like the Space Marines on the Petitioner’s Gate.’