Текст книги "The Outcast Dead"

Автор книги: Грэм Макнилл

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Текущая страница: 18 (всего у книги 26 страниц)

SEVENTEEN

Death is Coming

A Snare Slipped

Antioch

KAI WORE A mask of blood and oil and coolant fluids. Subha held him up as they plunged deeper into the city, moving as fast as the wounded Gythua allowed. Tagore and Kiron supported the wounded Space Marine, and no amount of his demands to be left to die would make them drop him. Kai had given up screaming. The pain was shocking, and showed no sign of fading. He didn’t think that was a good sign.

Wires flopped on his cheeks, and though he was suddenly plunged into the world most astropaths lived in daily, he was finding it hard to adjust after such a sharp trauma. Yet for such an apparently senseless and brutal act, the removal of Kai’s eyes was as precise as any augmetic specialist could have managed.

Blurred lines of smudged light flashed past Kai as his blindsight struggled to reorient itself to being his primary mode of perception. He travelled in a world of sound and smell, of taste and touch. He felt the rough cobbles beneath his feet, and the cold air of night on his skin. The smell of cooking fats and precious woodsmoke drifted through covered alleyways, and the warm reek of close-packed humanity was a pervasive odour that overlaid every other ingredient.

‘Why did he do that?’ hissed Kai between strangled sobs and pained gasps as Severian halted them at a junction of three streets.

‘What?’ said Subha. ‘Who?’

‘Your twin, why did he take my eyes?’

Subha was visible as an angry blur of red and gold, a confused jumble of sharp edges and confusion, his aura rippling with almost crippling sense of isolation. Subha missed the brotherhood of his Legion, and that weakness was killing him inside.

‘You were a spy,’ said the warrior.

‘What? No! I wasn’t. I don’t understand.’

‘Your eyes,’ explained Subha. ‘The people hunting us were using your eyes to watch us. They heard and saw everything in that ruined place.’

He took a breath and forced the pain down to a manageable place.

‘How could they do that?’ he asked.

Subha shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Asubha’s the clever one, not me. He was going to be sent to Mars to train as a Techmarine before we got posted to Terra.’

‘Your augmetics were provided by the Telepathica?’ asked Atharva, taking hold of his head and peering into the caverns of his eye sockets. Kai wanted to close his eyes, but he had no lids to close, and he could not turn away from the golden brightness of Atharva’s outline. Where the rest of the world was subtly out of focus, the warrior of the Thousand Sons was a crystal clear silhouette of shimmering light and wonder. So realwas Atharva that it set off a roiling nausea in Kai’s belly.

‘No,’ said Kai. ‘House Castana arranged the implants.’

‘The Navigator House?’

‘Yes,’ nodded Kai, and instantly regretted it as the motion made him sick to his stomach. He grabbed onto Subha’s arm, feeling the colours and light of the world swirl around him like a shimmering rainbow whirlpool. His legs gave out and he retched glistening wads of bile.

Subha lowered him to the ground and let him heave until there was nothing left to come up. Kai felt as weak as a newborn, the strength that had sustained him until now pouring from him in each expulsion. Atharva knelt beside him.

‘Our hunters are cunning,’ he said. ‘They must have been given the specifications for your augmetics from House Castana and acquired the feed from your optic conduits. The Eye alone knows how much they heard and saw, but we must assume they are close.’

Kai felt himself lowered to the ground and propped up against a rough wall of poorly-formed adobe bricks. The texture was rough, but simply to pause for a moment was the most sublime sensation. He rested his head on the bricks, feeling the pulse of life behind it. This was a dwelling place, a home where people lived, loved and dreamed. Kai missed his clifftop home, perched on the smooth rock of what had once been an ancient king’s brow. He missed the sad smile of his mother and the warm embrace of the very notion of home.

‘I want to go home,’ he said, as a welcome peace settled upon him. ‘I miss my home… it was a nice home. You would have liked it, Athena. It had floors of pearl-smoked marble and domed ceilings painted with replicas of Isandula Verona’s work.’

‘What’s he talking about?’ asked a gruff voice he felt sure he should know. ‘Who is this Athena he’s talking to?’

A hand touched his brow, rough and callused from a life of hard work. It was a large hand, too large for any normal man’s hand.

‘His body is giving out,’ said another voice. ‘He was virtually dead by the time we got to him, and the crash and Asubha’s surgeryhas almost finished the job. He needs medical attention.’

‘What do any of us know about mortal bodies?’ asked a silver voice with a petulant edge to its vowels. ‘None of us are apothecaries.’

‘There will be one in this city, several probably.’

‘And you know where to find one?’

‘No, but someone here will.’

‘Someone who can heal Gythua too?’

‘Don’t be foolish,’ rasped the blunt edged voice of a chained angel in red. ‘Gythua is on the Crimson Path, and no one in this city can turn him from its end.’

Kai heard the voices, but it seemed they belonged to shimmering ghosts that gathered around him like angels of legend. He remembered tales carved into the pillars of a sunken hall discovered by agents of the Conservatory in the fjord-beds of Scandia that spoke of warrior maidens who carried the souls of the dead to a heroic afterlife of battle and feasting.

He laughed at the idea of warrior maidens coming for him. What had he done to deserve such a gathering? Warm wetness gathered on his cheeks and he reached up to one of the figures, a golden giant limned in a halo of shimmering light.

‘I saw you…’ he said. ‘In Arzashkun. You were in my dreamscape…’

‘I was?’

‘Yes, I mean, I think it was you,’ said Kai, his voice trailing into a whisper as the abuses heaped upon his already weakened body took their toll. ‘I remember thinking you must have a thousand more important things to do than talk to me.’

‘You spoke to me?’ asked the golden figure, his form leaning close.

Kai nodded. ‘You said you wanted to know your future, and that I was the key to understanding it…’

‘You are,’ said the voice, with undisguised interest. ‘And you can tell me of it whenever you are ready.’

‘I will,’ promised Kai, feeling as though his body was becoming lighter by second. He wondered if that was what these beings were waiting for. Perhaps it was easier to carry him away if he shed his mortal flesh. But there was one thing he wanted to know before they took him up.

‘Why the Outcast Dead?’ he asked. ‘Why did he say it was an appropriate name…?’

Kai felt the golden giant’s amusement and was content to know he had managed to please him.

‘When this was a world of gods, men believed that if they prayed hard enough and lived their lives according to laws handed down by mad prophets they would go to a wonderful afterlife upon their death. They would be buried in ground deemed sacred, and at the appointed hour they would rise up to take their place in this miraculous dimension. But those who these prophets deemed outcast were not afforded such bounty, and the bodies of the unwanted, the forgotten and the invisible were sunk in the liminal spaces of the world. No markers. No headstones. Quicklime and a shallow pit. Forgotten and discarded. They were the Outcast Dead, and so are we.’

‘I see…’ said Kai, happy to have learned this last fact.

Another shape appeared beside the golden angel, and his aura was like a shadow, half-glimpsed and elusive. To Kai’s fading senses it was beautiful, more akin to something animal instead of a man.

‘Can he continue?’ asked this lupine shape.

‘No,’ answered Kai. ‘I think I’m done.’

Fresh wetness rolled down his cheeks, and a finger gently pressed it away.

‘Am I crying?’ asked Kai.

‘No,’ said the lonely warrior. ‘You are dying.’

THE HUNTERS FAN out through the ruined tenement block, searching for any sign of where the escapees might have gone. Golovko paces like an angry bear, cursing the World Eater for realising they were observing them, while his Black Sentinels overturn broken pieces of furniture and ragged bundles of sodden cloth.

Saturnalia kneels beside a wet patch of cracked permacrete and dabs his fingers in it, his golden armour glistening with moisture and the red horsehair plume of his helm hanging limply at his shoulder.

‘They were here, damn it,’ snarls Golovko. ‘We just missed them. Someone must have seen them, so we need to get out there and break some heads until someone starts talking.’

Saturnalia and Nagasena share a wordless glance that says all that needs to be said of Golovko’s outburst. Water cascades through the cracked slabs, and the sound is soothing as Nagasena moves through the space as though stalking a prey creature. His legs are slightly bent, his head cocked to one side as if listening for a telltale crackle of a breaking twig or the rustle of leaves.

Nagasena looks towards the torn entrance to the block, sliding down to sit with his back to the wall. He leans to the side and rests his head on the floor, feeling the last lingering trace of warmth from a human body.

‘We’re on a damn hunt, and you’re lying down,’ snaps Golovko. ‘They were just here, and we need to get out there to find them.’

Nagasena ignores him and the Black Sentinel moves towards him.

‘Are you listening to me?’ says Golovko.

Kartono steps between them, and Golovko’s face crumples in disgust. ‘Get away from me, freak,’ he says.

‘Call him that again and I will let him take you to task for your rudeness,’ says Nagasena.

‘I’d like to see him try.’

‘Ulis Kartono was trained by the Clade Masters of the Culexus,’ says Saturnalia, as though speaking to a child. ‘You would be dead before you could raise your rifle, Maxim Golovko.’

Golovko spits a wad of saliva, but turns away, unwilling to rise to Saturnalia’s challenge.

The Custodian kneels beside Nagasena and follows the direction of his gaze.

‘Kai Zulane lay here?’ he asks.

‘Yes,’ agrees Nagasena.

Saturnalia nods. ‘I found blood by the entrance. Mortal blood, still wet.’

‘It is Zulane’s,’ says Nagasena, reaching beneath a pile of tumbled blocks of permacrete that fell from the roof an indeterminate time ago. His fingers encounter crushed fragments of stone and dust, but then he feels the cold touch of metal and smooth glass and pulls out the still-wet remains of a pair of augmetic eyes.

Saturnalia smiles as Nagasena holds them up, the thin cables dripping with bio-oils and optical fluids.

‘How did you know?’

‘Asubha tore out Zulane’s eyes here, and he is left handed,’ says Nagasena. ‘It seemed logical he would discard them in this direction.’

‘So you have his eyes,’ asks Saturnalia. ‘Does that help us find him?’

Nagasena stands, pats his robes free of grey dust. ‘Possibly. It is a breadcrumb that neither you nor I can follow, but perhaps others can.’

‘The telepaths?’

‘Just so,’ says Nagasena, as Saturnalia beckons Athena Diyos and Adept Hiriko to enter the ruined tenement block. Both women are frightened, and they do not want to be here: on the hunt or in the Petitioner’s City. It is an environment that is utterly alien to them, and Nagasena wonders if he will have to coerce their co-operation.

Athena Diyos looks up at the sagging roof, imagining it looks ready to collapse, while Adept Hiriko stares straight ahead, moving like an automaton. The death of her fellow neurolocutor hangs around her neck like a lead weight, but this hunt has no time for compassion. Nagasena hands the torn augmetics to Hiriko and she grimaces in revulsion.

‘Are those Kai’s?’ asks Athena Diyos.

‘They are,’ says Nagasena, and Hiriko places them in Athena’s outstretched manipulator arm as though they are poisonous serpents. The astropath brings the torn augmetics closer to her face, studying them intently.

‘And what do you expect us to do with them?’

‘I had hoped you would be able to use them in locating Kai Zulane,’ says Nagasena. ‘I understand from your file that you do not specialise in the arts of the metron, but you have some talent in that regard.’

‘Once maybe,’ says Athena. ‘But ever since the destruction of PhoenicianI haven’t been able to read things like I used to. You’d be better off getting one of the metronfrom the City.’

Nagasena cannot tell for sure if she is lying, the corrugated scar tissue of her face contorts her features in unusual ways that conceal the usual telltales of a liar. He decides she is bluffing and says, ‘You will attempt to make a reading on those augmetics or there will be dire consequences.’

‘If you’ve read my file then you know my psychological profile says I don’t respond well to threats.’

‘I did not mean for you,’ says Nagasena. ‘I meant the Imperium.’

‘You’re being melodramatic,’ she says, but Nagasena sees the crack in her reluctance.

He kneels beside her silver chair and places his hand over hers. The skin does not feel like skin, it has the unpleasant hairless texture of artificially grown flesh.

‘Do you think we are hunting Kai Zulane?’ he says. ‘We are not. We are hunting seven of the most dangerous men imaginable. Men who have killed hundreds of loyal soldiers of the Imperium. Kai is their prisoner, and they mean to take him to Horus Lupercal. You understand? Whatever it is that Kai knows, the Warmaster will know. None of us know for sure what Mistress Sarashina placed within Kai’s mind, but do you really want to risk it falling into hands of our greatest enemy?’

‘Is that really true?’

Nagasena stands and draws his sword in one smooth motion. The blade glitters in the half-light of the ruined tenement, the blade an arc of polished silver and its black and gold wrapped handle wound in soft leather and copper wire. Athena and Hiriko’s eyes widen at the sight of the weapon, but Nagasena has not drawn it with violence in mind.

‘This is Shoujiki,’ he says. ‘Master Nagamitsu crafted it for me many years ago, and its name means honesty in a dead tongue of a long lost land. Before this sword came to me, I was a fool and a braggart, a man of low morals and wicked temperament. But when Master Nagamitsu presented this blade to me, its truth became part of me, and I have never spoken falsely or dishonoured its name since. I do not do so now, Mistress Diyos.’

He sees the acceptance of his words as she nods slowly and transfers the eyes from her augmetic arm to her other hand.

‘Hiriko,’ she says. ‘I’ll need your help.’

‘Of course,’ says the neurolocutor. ‘What do you need me to do?’

‘Place your hands at my temples and focus your mind on everything you learned from Kai, every dream you shared, every word you spoke. All of it.’

Hiriko nods and does as Athena says, standing behind her and placing a hand on either side of her head. Athena’s fingers close over Kai’s plucked eyes and she rolls the glassy orbs dextrously around in her palm like a conjurer. Dried spots of blood smear her skin, and Nagasena wonders if that will help her divine Kai Zulane’s location.

‘How long will this take?’ asks Saturnalia.

‘As long as it takes,’ says Athena. ‘Or perhaps you would like to try?’

Saturnalia does not reply and Athena’s head sinks to her chest as she enters a nunciotrance. Her breathing deepens, and Nagasena moves away, feeling a sudden chill as her mind reaches out into invisible realms he cannot even begin to understand.

While Golovko’s men kick down nearby doors and barrage any inhabitants they find with questions, Nagasena casts his eyes around this squalid refuge, and feels nothing but remorse for the fate that has seen these men condemned as traitors.

Nagasena scabbards his sword as Saturnalia approaches. Though their goals are aligned, it is never wise to bear an unsheathed blade in the presence of a Custodian.

‘How could the World Eater have known they were being observed?’

Nagasena shakes his head. ‘I do not know, but in the end it is irrelevant. These men are Space Marines and I am coming to realise that we have underestimated them.’

‘How so?’

‘They were created to be the ultimate warriors, and it is easy to assume they are nothing more than gene-bred slayers whose only purpose is to kill and destroy. But they are far more than that. Their minds have been enhanced beyond mortal comprehension and their brains work in ways I will never be able to replicate.’

‘Are you saying you cannot hunt them?’ asks Saturnalia.

Nagasena allows himself a small smile. ‘No, nothing of the sort. For all their genhancements and physical superiority, they are still men at heart.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘What is the biggest factor slowing their escape?’ asks Nagasena.

‘They are carrying a wounded man,’ replies Saturnalia. ‘The Death Guard will not survive much longer. They should have left him at the crash site. To risk everything by keeping him with them is illogical.’

‘Would you leave an injured Custodian behind?’ asks Nagasena.

‘No,’ admits Saturnalia.

‘They are still bound by their oaths of brotherhood,’ says Nagasena sadly. ‘They are acting with honour. Not behaviour I would expect from traitors.’

‘What are you saying?’

‘And you were mistaken,’ says Nagasena, ignoring Saturnalia’s question and pointing to the spattered trail of blood on the ground. ‘They are carrying twowounded men.’

ATHARVA BATTERED A fist on the painted metal door and waited for an answer. The building was a ragged lean-to built at one end of a refuse-cloaked square partially sheltered by tattered canvas awnings. A number of narrow streets led here, and ironwork crows were perched on many of the surrounding buildings, staring impassively down into the square like mute observers. Though they remained out of sight, Atharva knew at least a hundred pairs of eyes were upon them.

‘Just kick the damn door down,’ snapped Tagore, and Atharva saw the pulse of the veins at the side of his head. The neural-implants grafted to his skull fizzed in the cold air, and Atharva wondered what damage it was wreaking in the delicate mechanisms of his brain.

‘We need this chirurgeon to help us,’ said Atharva. ‘How well disposed towards us do you think he will be if we break down his door?’

‘You say that like I give a damn,’ replied Tagore, planting a foot in the centre of the shutter and battering it down with a single kick. The door crashed down inside a room dimly lit by a low-burning lantern of crude oil and animal grease. The smell of chemicals, hung herbs and spoiled meat that wafted out was potent.

Asubha and Kiron dragged Gythua inside and deposited him on a wide cot bed that groaned in protest at his weight. Subha carried Kai over one shoulder, the astropath’s body looking limp and already dead. His aura was dull and listless, but Kai was not beyond saving and it would blaze fully once again.

‘Put him there,’ said Atharva, indicating a wooden bench pushed up against one wall.

Subha gently lowered Kai to the bench and Atharva took a moment to survey their surroundings more fully. The room was made small by their presence, yet from what Atharva had seen of the Petitioner’s City, he suspected it would be considered expansive.

The walls were hung with bundles of dried herbs, mouldering shanks of salted meat and curling sheets of paper depicting chemical structures and anatomical references. A number of tables sagged under the weight of heavy books and trays of rusting surgical equipment. Cupboards with cracked glass fronts contained hundreds of unmarked bottles of fluids, powders and crushed tablets. A bank of bio-monitors sat in the corner next to a petrochemical generator, though Atharva doubted any of them still worked.

‘Are you sure this is the place?’ demanded Tagore. ‘Looks like just another shitty house to me. You really think a chirurgeon lives here?’

‘The signs all pointed to this place,’ said Atharva, lifting a dusty copy of The Book of Prognosticsfrom a nearby table. He saw other works by Hippocrates, scattered without thought for any system he could discern, amongst the writings of Galen of Pergamon, Abscantus and Menodotus. These were ancient texts and priceless beyond imagining, though woefully outdated.

‘What signs?’ asked Kiron, wiping a smear of resin from his shoulder. ‘How can people live like this?’

‘People live how they must,’ said Atharva. ‘And the signs were there for anyone with eyes to see them. This is a Serpent House.’

‘A what?’ said Subha.

‘A place of healing,’ explained Atharva, pointing to a mural on the door Tagore had kicked down. The door was in two pieces, but it was still possible to make out the image of a bearded man clad in a long toga who bore a staff with a coiled snake entwined along its length.

‘Who is that supposed to be?’ asked Kiron.

‘He is Aesculapius,’ said a hoary old voice from the shadows. ‘An ancient deity of the Grekians. Or at least he was until your ugly bastard friend put his bloody foot through him.’

A lumpen shape rolled from a previously unseen bed at the back of the room, and Atharva now picked out the reek of the man’s unwashed body and sweat from the cocktail of chemicals hanging in the air. Tagore was on the man in an instant, lifting him up by the neck and pinning him against the wall. Killing fury lit his eyes as his fist pulled back to strike.

‘Don’t kill him, Tagore!’ cried Atharva.

Tagore’s fist slammed into the wall, breaking it apart and sending a cloud of brick dust and fragments falling to the floor.

‘Who are you?’ he demanded.

‘You’re in my house,’ snapped the man. ‘I’m the chirurgeon, who do you think I am?’

‘Tagore, let him go,’ said Atharva. ‘We need him.’

Reluctantly, Tagore lowered the man and pushed him towards Atharva.

‘My apologies, medicae,’ said Atharva. ‘We mean you no harm.’

‘Are you sure heknows that?’ said the man glaring at the World Eater and rubbing his neck. ‘And who in the name of the Emperor’s balls are you?’

Wearing only a thin nightshirt, the medicae was an unimpressive sight. From the smell of him and the look of his eyes, he was a drunk and an imbiber of narcotics, but the signs had led them to this place, and there was likely to be no other practitioner of the healing arts close enough to be any use.

‘I am Atharva, and we need your help. What is your name, friend?’

‘I am Antioch, and I’m not your friend,’ said the chirurgeon. ‘It’s too bloody late for this kind of thing, so what are you doing here, breaking my door down and insulting my housekeeping? I’m too drunk and messed up to do anything for you just now.’

‘This is a matter of life and death,’ said Atharva.

‘That’s what they all say,’ snapped Antioch.

‘He meant yours,’ said Tagore, looming over Antioch’s shoulder.

‘Threatening me?’ said Antioch. ‘Good one. That’sthe way to get my help.’

Atharva took the diminutive chirurgeon’s shoulder and led him towards the bench and table where Gythua and Kai were laid out.

‘What’s wrong with them?’ asked Antioch, barely looking at them.

‘I thought you were the chirurgeon,’ snapped Kiron. ‘Can’t you tell?’

Antioch sighed and said, ‘Listen, tell Babu Dhakal if he wants to keep injecting his men with growth hormones and messing with their gene-code then he can count me out of helping him get them back on their feet. He’s going too far now.’

‘Babu Dhakal? I don’t know who that is,’ said Atharva.

Antioch snorted and looked up at him sharply, as though seeing him clearly for the first time. He peered from beneath bushy eyebrows and through rheumy eyes, studying Atharva and the warriors around him intently.

‘You’re not from the Babu?’

‘No,’ agreed Atharva. ‘We are not.’

Antioch came closer and craned his head upwards, the reality of his situation now penetrating the fug of whatever narcotic haze was enveloping his brain. He rubbed his eyes with a stained sleeve and blinked furiously as though clearing it of grit.

‘You are of the Legiones Astartes…’ he breathed, looking from warrior to warrior.

‘We are,’ said Atharva, guiding him towards Kai. ‘And he needs your help.’

‘Help Gythua first,’ said Kiron.

‘No,’ stated Atharva. ‘Gythua can wait, Kai cannot.’

‘Gythua is a Legionary,’ protested Kiron. ‘You would put a mortal above him?’

‘I would put him above you all,’ said Atharva, before turning to Antioch. ‘Now heal him.’

Antioch nodded, and Atharva almost felt sorry for the man, woken from a stupor to find angry giants demanding that he save two lives that hung by the slenderest of threads. Even a man as disoriented at Antioch could sense that his life hung on those same threads.

To his credit, the chirurgeon rallied well, taking a deep breath and fetching a tray of surgical instruments that probably harboured more bacteria than a Biologis gene lab from the table opposite. He bent over and began to examine Kai’s bloody eye sockets.

‘Augmetic scarring. Input jacks torn out, and bruising around the ocular cavity,’ said Antioch, dabbing away the sticky blood on Kai’s cheeks with the sleeve of his nightshirt. He removed a sealed package from a bottle filled cupboard and tore the sterile lining to expose its contents. Without looking up from his work, Antioch laid a number of smaller packets on Kai’s chest and with care and precision Atharva hadn’t expected began to apply counterseptic gel to the inside of Kai’s eye sockets before packing them with what smelled like a mix of saline and petroleum gauze.

‘How did this happen?’ asked Antioch. ‘It’s wasn’t surgical, but it’s neat.’

‘I pulled his eyes out,’ said Asubha.

Antioch glanced up, as though trying to work out whether Asubha was joking.

He shook his head and sighed. ‘I won’t ask why. I get the feeling I won’t like the answer.’

‘The people hunting us were using them to spy on us,’ said Subha.

Antioch paused and bit his lip. ‘So who hunts seven warriors of the Legiones Astartes?’ He held his hand up before Subha could answer. ‘That’s a rhetorical question, by the way, I definitelywon’t like that answer. Now be quiet all of you if you want this man to live.’

Opening a suture kit, Antioch began sealing Kai’s sockets with deft strokes of the needle, working swiftly and methodically on each eye. Sweat like bullets popped on his forehead, and Atharva could see the effort it was taking for the chirurgeon to maintain his composure and steady hand. With the sutures complete, Antioch wrapped a bandage around Kai’s head that, miraculously, appeared to be free of stains.

‘How is it a man of your skill comes to live in a place like this?’ asked Atharva as Antioch tied the bandages off and stood upright with a groan of relief.

‘None of your damn business,’ was the curt answer. ‘So, are you going to tell me what else is wrong with him or do I have to guess?’

‘He was drugged and repeatedly psychically interrogated by skilled neurolocutors.’

‘Of course he was,’ sighed Antioch, wiping his hands on his chest. ‘And I suppose that helping you with these men makes me an accomplice in whatever it is you’re mixed up in, yes?’

‘Perhaps,’ said Atharva. ‘That depends. Save their lives and we will be gone. No one will ever know we were here.’

Antioch gave a bitter bark of a laugh. ‘Half the city will already know you are here, and the other half will know by morning. You think seven warriors like you can move through a city like this without attracting notice? However superhuman you are, you’re not thatskilled.’

‘He’s right,’ said Tagore. ‘We should not linger here.’

‘We’re not leaving before he treats Gythua,’ said Kiron.

‘I didn’t say that,’ snapped Tagore angrily. ‘Don’t put words in my mouth.’

Antioch ignored the altercation and rummaged through his cupboards to concoct a hybrid potion of chemicals from a series of unmarked bottles. He filled a cracked hypo with the end result and pressed the needle against the loose flesh of Kai’s arm. Before depressing the injector trigger, the wiry chirurgeon looked up at Atharva.

‘You’re a son of a bitch, you know that?’ said Antioch.

Atharva chuckled. ‘I have fought alongside the Vlka Fenryka,’ he said. ‘You are going to have to do better than that if you are trying to offend me.’

‘I’ll keep that in mind,’ he said, and depressed the trigger.

Kai drew in a sucking lungful of air and his back arched with an audible crack. His muscles spasmed and a geyser of noxious fluids erupted from his mouth. Kai danced the dance of the hanged man on the bench, his heels rattling on the wood as his body evacuated itself from every orifice.

‘I’d turn him on his side if I were you,’ said Antioch, stepping away from the convulsing astropath. ‘There’s some clean-ish clothes in the back he can have once he’s done shitting and puking. He’s going to need them.’

Tagore grabbed Antioch and said, ‘The astropath will live, yes?’

Antioch’s face crumpled in pain at the World Eater’s grip. ‘The chem-purgatives should clean out his system, yes, but he’s so exhausted and worn thin it’s a miracle he’s still alive.’

‘Good enough,’ said Tagore pushing Antioch towards the Death Guard. ‘Now do the same for our brother.’

Gythua was barely breathing, his body having suspended most of its surface functions to divert its energies into restoring itself. Atharva had seen Space Marines survive wounds more hideous than these, but without the facilities of an apothecarion to hand, he suspected Gythua had been broken beyond repair.

Antioch bent over Gythua and, using the same instruments with which he had examined Kai’s wounds, he made a thorough inspection of the bloody craters and valleys torn in the Death Guard’s pallid flesh. From his expression, Atharva’s worst suspicions were confirmed.

‘This man should be dead,’ said Antioch at last. ‘For starters, this wound here looks like its ruptured his heart, and I think both his lungs have collapsed. And I don’t even recognise the organ this wound’s damaged. He’s been shot by energy weapons and there’s enough bullets in him to equip an entire squad of Army grunts.’

‘Are you saying you can’t save him?’ demanded Kiron.

‘I’m saying I can’t even begin to guess at the anatomy beneath what’s left of his skin,’ said Antioch. ‘He’s beyond my help. Beyond anyone’s help would be my guess, but I think you all know that.’