Текст книги "Vulkan Lives"

Автор книги: Ник Кайм

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 4 (всего у книги 23 страниц)

‘I am starting to understand, Curze,’ I muttered, finding all the imperfections in the metal with my fingertips, rising like a feline predator from my prison.

I slipped, fell a half-metre, my knuckles scraping against the wall, but managed to grip where one of the weld points jutted almost imperceptibly in a shallow lip of metal. No one berated me or willed my death. I glanced down.

Ferrus was gone. For now at least.

Making sure of my grip, I set my mind to the task ahead.

Above me, with every painstaking metre I climbed, the oval of light that cast down into my cell widened.

Once I neared the end of the shaft, no more than two metres from the summit, I stopped and waited. Listened.

Two voices, low and grating, emanated from above. The rough tonality came from vox-grilles. Curze had positioned two guards to watch my cell. I briefly wondered if they were amongst the legionaries who had stabbed me so grievously before. I could still feel the presence of the blades as they pierced my body, but it was a phantom pain and no scars marred my skin other than those rendered by the branding iron.

During the Great Crusade, there were few occasions I could remember when the VIII and XVIII Legions had fought together on campaign. Kharaatan was the last time, and that hadn’t ended well for me or Curze. Whatever bonds of loyalty I felt towards him, whatever fraternal love and respect I might have borne for him, ended on Kharaatan. What he did there… What he made me do…

I shuddered, and one of the guards laughed in such a way as to suggest the nature of their discussion: death and torture, and how they had meted it out to those weaker and smaller than them. Murderers, rapists, thieves, the children of Nostramo came from spoiled stock.

I felt my anger boil, but kept my fury in check. This needed to be swift, silent.

From the resonance of their footfalls against the metal floor, I gauged each legionary’s position relative to the opening of the shaft. One was close by – bored, as he shifted around often. The other was farther away, perhaps a few metres between each warrior. Neither of them was watching the opening. I suspected they thought I was dead or dying. Certainly, they had plunged enough steel in me to see it done.

I am a primarch, and we do not die easily… or well, I reminded myself, thinking of poor Ferrus. And for a moment, I felt his presence again below me, but he did not stir or speak.

I eased out of the shaft.

Two guards, midnight-clad in their legionary colours. Night Lords both. One had his back to me. Moving silently I slipped my hand around his gorget, smothering his vox-grille with my palm, and twisted.

The other saw me too late, a little farther down the corridor. He saw my eyes first – he saw them when I chose to open them after I killed his comrade. Two fiery orbs, burning vengefully in the darkness. Shadows were the province of the VIII but they were not the only Legion who could dwell in darkness. Balanced on the edge of the shaft, dropping the body of the first guard to land with a dull metal-hitting-metal thunk, I pounced.

The second guard was raising his bolter. It must have felt like gravity had exerted itself fourfold over his muscles; every movement glacially slow in the face of a primarch’s concerted attack. He aimed for my chest, going for the centre mass as instinct would have urged him to. I carried the guard down as I landed upon him, my fingers clamping around his trigger hand and mashing it into the stock of his bolter so he – and it – would never fire again.

He hit the ground, grunting as my sheer weight and power dented his chest plate and cracked the fused ribcage beneath. I masked his scream with my hand, crushing the vox-grille, breaking teeth. Blood geysered up through his ruined war-helm, splashing hot and wet against my face. I kept squeezing, immune to the guard’s panic.

Then it stopped, and silence followed.

Still straddling the dead guard’s body, I looked up and tried to get my bearings.

A long corridor stretched out in front of me: bare metal, faintly lit, nondescript. I could be anywhere on Isstvan. I remembered little of my abduction from the battlefield. What happened between when Curze appeared and my waking in the cell might never return.

A sense of enclosure as I touched the metal wall on my left made me suspect I was underground. Perhaps Horus had ordered the construction of tunnels beneath the surface. I wondered if there were cells for Corax and Ferrus too. I dismissed the idea almost as soon as it was formed. Horus did not take prisoners of war, it wasn’t in his nature – though I had much cause to question exactly what his nature was over these last few months. This was Curze’s doing.

I knew then he hadn’t forgiven me for Kharaatan, for what I did to him.

My brother was a petty-minded, shallow creature; this was his way of evening things up between us.

Taking the bodies of the guards, one by one, I threw them down into the pit. I suspected much of this place was deserted – after all, Curze had left me here to die – and no one would hear the crash of their broken bodies when they hit the ground, but a pair of dead Night Lords out in the open would arouse alarm immediately. A few seconds gained might be the difference between my escape and continued incarceration.

With the guards dispatched, I padded gently to the end of the corridor, slowing as I reached the junction and listening intently for sounds of disturbance.

Nothing.

Peering around the corner, I saw another passageway, empty like the one I was just leaving.

The peace didn’t last. After a few minutes, I was halfway down the next corridor when a door slid open along the right-hand side and a legionary stepped out.

Acting with greater alacrity than his dead brothers festering in the pit, he opened up a comm-channel and sounded an alarm.

‘Vulkan lives!’ He sounded afraid, and the irony of that fact gave me a cruel satisfaction as I ran at him. I took a glancing hit from a hurried snap shot, before I smashed the flat of my palm against his chest. It was a heart strike, which, if delivered with enough force, can kill instantly. His primary organ collapsed – so, too, the secondary back-up. The legionary crumpled and I left him for dead, racing into the chamber from where he’d come as the sirens started screaming.

Again, I was confronted with more bare metal. No weapons, no supplies, nothing. It was spartan to the point of being deserted. Except I heard them coming for me above the wailing alarms. Some were shouting in that ugly, guttural language of their home world; others hurried in silence, the drum of their booted feet betraying their urgency and panic.

I crossed the room, rushing through the only other exit, and found another corridor. It was shorter than the previous one but just as barren, yet I had begun to feel a familiarity for this place. Around the next junction I almost charged into a pair of guards who were coming the other way. I killed them both swiftly, lethal damage inflicted in less than the time it took for me to blink. I stole one of their chainblades – it was the only weapon I could take and use effectively – wondering how I would escape, trying to formulate some kind of plan.

I needed to find somewhere to stop and think, adapt to the changing situation.

I went up.

The ceiling duct was tight against my body, and I had to discard the weapon I had only just procured, but by replacing the overhead grate I could temporarily mask my point of egress.

It stank in the vent, of blood, of sweat, and I wondered where exactly it was ferrying air from and to. Crawling on my belly, using my elbows and toes for propulsion, I reached another grate that looked down onto a room below.

Banks of monitors surrounding a much larger screen showing a schematic of the prison marked it as a security station. Unaugmented human serfs were in attendance, speaking into vox-units, desperately trying to find me. No legionaries were visible. They were hunting, attempting to establish a trap.

These men and women were not warriors, but they were allied with my enemies.

If I were to escape, none could live.

Quietly removing the grate, I slid through the opening head first and dropped down amongst them. A woman, her face daubed in Nostraman tattoos, cried out and I backhanded her across the chamber. Going for his sidearm, one of the male operators tried to draw down on me but I was faster. Much faster. I killed him, too. In fewer than three seconds, all six human operators were dead. I made it quick, as painless as I could, but failing to salve my conscience in the process.

The schematic on the screen showed only a portion of the underground complex. Again, I was struck with a sense of familiarity concerning the layout and wondered how massive this prison actually was. The other monitors showed pict-feed images of the search teams, linked up to retinal lenses. Data inloaded from the legionaries’ battle-helms ran across the screens. Heart monitors on every Night Lord thrummed agitatedly below the feed from each helm-corder, graphic equalisers slaved to their voice patterns rose and fell as they breathed and hissed orders.

I ignored the pict-feeds, focusing on the half-map instead and committing it to memory.

Two doors led out of the security chamber. I took the one that, according to the schemata, led to an upper level. I had no idea how far down beneath the Isstvan surface I was, or what would be greeting me when I got there, but there was no other course for me to take.

Another corridor faced me, at the end of which was a cross-junction. Halfway down, I paused and shook my head to clear it.

‘Where am I?’ I breathed, not recognising this junction from the schematic. I had an eidetic memory – this should not have been happening. I considered going back but the risk was too great. By entering the ducts above I had gained only a few seconds against my pursuers. I had to move on. And fast.

Reaching the junction, I paused again. Two more corridors stretched away from me, the destination of each concealed in darkness. A faint breeze, detected by the tiny hairs on my bare skin, flowed from the right. I was about to take that branch when I saw a shadow seemingly emerge out of the darkness.

Gaunt, grinning, I recognised the cadaverous features of my brother.

‘Ferrus…’

Placing a finger mockingly to his lips, he beckoned me to follow him into the shadows.

I knew I could not trust my own mind. By manifesting this apparition, here and in my cell, it had already betrayed me.

Weak,he mouthed as I paused before the threshold to the right-hand branch. S o weak.

I took the left branch, trusting my instincts over my mind, and as I turned I saw another figure. Incorporeal, a wraith in form and features, it wore gossamer-thin robes that appeared to float as if they were suspended in water. Its eyes were almond-shaped and the runes crafted about its person were eldritch and alien. The eldar flickered once as if captured on a bad pict-cording and disappeared.

My brother or my enemy; it was not much of a choice. I felt the jaws of the rusty trap closing around me again, their teeth pinching my flesh.

I raced down the left branch, finding its terminus was a bulkhead. It was the first of its kind I had seen since my escape, more robust and inviolable than the doors I had passed through so far. Metres thick, triple bolted, I wasn’t able to just rip it from its hinges.

Pressing my hand against the metal, acutely aware of the shouts of my pursuers getting closer, I felt coldness. Then the light glaring from the bulkhead’s inbuilt access panel went from red to green.

Klaxons sounded as the amber strobes above the door kicked in; I noticed the black-and-yellow chevrons delineating it.

Backing away, too late, far too late, realising now where I was and why this place was so familiar to me, I watched as a jagged crack formed diagonally in the bulkhead and its two halves slid apart to reveal a second emergency door.

The coldness intensified. Tendrils of it touched my skin, freezing me. Knowing it was pointless to run, I waited as the second door split just like the first. Invisible force shields collapsed and I was wrenched up off my feet as the pressure inside the corridor began venting outwards, taking me with it.

I was not on Isstvan. I had never been on Isstvan.

It was a ship, Curze’s ship.

The emergency door opened and I had a few seconds to behold the void of deepspace before I was wrenched out.

CHAPTER FIVE

Blood begets blood

Valdrekk Elias crouched at the bottom of the shaft. Masked by shadows, he surveyed the dig site.

‘What were they looking for?’ asked one of the Word Bearers in the hole with him. His name was Jadrekk, a loyal if unimaginative warrior. He was pacing the edges of the site, bolter locked across his chest.

‘Whatever it was, they found it,’ Elias replied.

Tools lay strewn about the subterranean chamber, and doused phosphor lamps were still suspended from cables bolted into the cave roof. A cup of recaff sat next to an upturned stool and there were scuff marks in the dust made by the hurried passage of booted feet.

In the middle of the chamber – some kind of reliquary if the presence of bones and skulls was any guide – the flagstones had been upheaved. They were cracked apart, blackened at the edges and not by the action of any digging tool. Through careful excavation, through the use of micro-trenchers and the application of debris-thinners to gently extract extraneous layers of dirt and granite, a crater had been revealed. And in its core, half a metre down, was a void.

Elias leaned in to the hole cut into the crater, exploring the unusual cleft in the rock where the fortune hunters, or whatever they were, had been digging.

‘And it was removed from here,’ he added, standing and dusting off his armour.

Amaresh dipped his horned helmet towards the mess surrounding the crater.

‘I’d say they left in a hurry.’

He knelt down to touch the cup of recaff.

‘And not that long ago, either.’

‘Agreed,’ said Elias, activating the arcane-looking flask attached to his belt.

‘ I have their trail,’ Narek reported without having to be asked.

‘How many?’

‘ Not enough.’

‘Don’t kill them all, Narek. Not until we know what they took from the catacombs and why.’

‘ I can’t swear to that.’

Narek ended the communion, allowing Elias to appreciate the primitive architecture of the room. Though much of it had been destroyed, collapsing in on itself as entropy was exerted upon stone and steel, he could still discern the eight-sided structure, the weave and weft of the arcane in its construction. Primitive, centuries old, he felt the latent power in this temple. It was nothing but a shadow, the artefact that had been taken from the crater having destroyed it and robbed it of its potency long ago.

Elias felt the distant touch of the Pantheon on this place and knew that whatever secret it held was worth discovering for himself.

‘Come,’ he told the other two. As he ascended the ramp back to the surface, Elias looked up at the light coming down through the opening and the raindrops caught in its shaft, sparkling like stars. It reminded him of the constellations in the night sky, and how they were changing.

‘Brothers,’ Elias said, ‘I sense there is more to do here than taint the False Emperor’s sacred earth.’ He smiled. ‘A revelation is near.’

Above the pit into the catacombs, Deriok was waiting. He had four other legionaries with him. The rest of the landing party were at large in the city; two were hunting with Narek, the others were silencing comm-stations, killing any resistance and otherwise keeping the Word Bearers’ presence in Ranos concealed. There were seven more cities, and in addition to Ranos, their populations might be needed too. For most important of all Elias’s acolytes’ duties here was the procurement of sacrifices.

‘Eight disciples, one for each of the eight points,’ said Elias, emerging into the light.

Like the statue in Cardinal Square, these ruins were a monument to the Emperor’s dominance and former presence on this world. The potency of the effigy that the natives had erected was nothing compared to this place, however. That had been easy to taint. The Emperor had unleashed his power upon the old temple that had once stood here, and reduced it to rubble. He had broken the strength trapped in its walls and overthrown it. He had literally touchedit with his godhood, and like a fingerprint it remained still. Indelible, enduring.

Here, in Ranos, did the Emperor’s power manifest and here, in Ranos, at the very site of Imperial victory, would Elias taint that power and corrupt it to the will of the Pantheon. It would take time and patience. Most of all it would take blood. As the first stage of the ritual began, he tried not to be distracted with thoughts of what had been hidden in the catacombs, forcing his mind to the matter in hand, but the mystery of it intrigued him.

‘Gather,’ he said to the other seven, the acolytes forming a circle of eight with their master. Ritual daggers glistened in fists of red ceramite. Seized in each zealot’s other hand was a mortal.

‘Blood begets blood,’ Elias uttered. He barely saw them as people any more. The men and women at his brothers’ mercy were just a simple means to an end. ‘Let the galaxy drown in it,’ he concluded and slashed the throat of the woman he was holding, spilling her blood to profane the earth.

They would need more. Much more. But the harvest of Ranos had yielded a plentiful crop. And as he listened to the plaintive cries of the cattle his warriors had herded, Elias smiled and said to Amaresh, ‘Bring forth the others.’

Varteh’s sense of direction was good, but even the ex-Lucifer Black was struggling to keep his bearings in the warren of Ranos City.

‘Are we lost, Varteh?’ Sebaton glanced over his shoulder and saw his worried expression mirrored by the thin-looking man behind him.

Gollach, the tech-adept, had railed against leaving the servitors behind but Sebaton knew the predators that were hunting them – he suspected Varteh did too – and ended Gollach’s argument at the muzzle of his pistol. The cyborgs would only slow them down. Deployed this way, they might actually prove useful, obfuscating the trail and thus gaining the others vital time on their pursuers.

‘Not yet,’ Varteh replied. He battle-signed to the man alongside him. A mercenary – not ex-Army, but as he peeled off into the shadows in response to the ex-Lucifer’s command, he was obviously well versed in a soldier’s argot.

The other hired gun stayed at the back, behind Gollach. Sebaton knew the mercenaries’ names, but they were as inconsequential as the mud under his feet, now that he had what he’d come for. Even wrapped up in cloth, centuries beneath the earth, it felt warm under his arm and emitted a very faint resonance that slightly pained him. As soon as Sebaton realised that they had been compromised, they had fled. His masters would have to wait to learn of his discovery. So far away, in all respects not merely space, there was nothing they could do to aid him anyway. Besides, he knew what he had to do.

Duugan, one of Varteh’s men, a lean-muscled pugilist with a handle-bar moustache and neck tattoos, had spotted the hunters. He was good, a sniper by trade, but caught only the barest glimpse of the warriors converging on their position. They moved after that. Quick and fast.

It was Duugan who had peeled off from the main group, running point and scouting ahead to make sure they weren’t being encircled.

Trio, so named for the bionics that replaced three of the fingers on his right hand, brought up the rear. He was clean-shaven, and thinner-faced than Duugan, previous profession unknown. He was also the group’s pilot, but then Sebaton had that covered if needed.

‘How close, Trio?’ Varteh said into the vox. They’d ditched the rebreathers, Varteh and his men switching them for throat mics and comm-beads. Up here on the surface, they didn’t need the masks. They’d only hamper their senses and ability to communicate. Sebaton had removed his too, but kept it in case it proved useful later.

‘ Haven’t seen anything in the last eleven minutes, sir. Must’ve slipped them.’

‘We haven’t,’ said Sebaton. ‘They are closing on us.’

Varteh’s grim expression hardly inspired confidence. ‘I know.’

It wasn’t a sprint, the streets were too crowded and labyrinthine for that, but the sense of urgency made their flight seem faster. Every shadow held the promise of danger, every doorway or tunnel a freshly imagined terror. Even swaying cables and hanging strips of plastek became potential enemies, transformed by fear and the dark.

Though Sebaton did not necessarily consider himself a brave man, certainly not in the same way as a soldier, he was also not so suspicious that he jumped at shadows, but the quiet, rising tension was testing his fortitude.

It had nearly broken Gollach.

The thin, hunchbacked man was fading, unable to keep the pace. He was used to his workshop, comfortable with his machines and the isolation of that existence. In this life, physical exercise had been confined to scripting doctrine-wafers or light mechanical maintenance. A crook in his spine had developed as a result of constantly stooping over some engine or device. A bad decision – or decisions – along the line had thrust him into Varteh’s employ and turned him into a man so desperate that he had no choice but to step beyond the wreckage of his old life to try and build a new one. Clearly he hadn’t envisaged that part of that would involve running for his life in a strange city, on a world he did not know, from an enemy he could not see.

He kept grabbing his chest, so much so that Sebaton slowed down in case he suddenly expired.

Don’t be stupid. Just let him fall back, maybe buy some more time… Throne! When did I become this callous?

All of his life, or rather lives, Sebaton had done what was necessary to survive. He took what he needed from people and discarded the rest. There was remorse at first, some nightmares even, but that all faded in time and he had become aware of a void developing within him, a slow hollowing-out of his soul. Not literally his soul, of course – as such things were real and could happen – but rather a moral degradation which he didn’t know how to reverse. He had become nothing more than a tool, used at someone else’s bidding. No different to a hammer or a wrench, except more subtle and less obvious. Some would describe him as a weapon.

It was a little late for redemption now, but Sebaton slowed down anyway and urged Gollach to move faster.

‘Why are we running?’ Gollach asked, trying to keep his voice from trembling. ‘I thought this was an archaeological dig. Only of interest to scholars, you said. Who could be after us?’

Sebaton tried to be reassuring. ‘It would not help if I told you. But you have to keep running.’ He looked over to Varteh, who was getting farther ahead and seemed distracted by his vox.

‘How much farther to the ship?’ Sebaton asked, though he knew the answer to that.

Varteh didn’t answer straight away. Something was distracting him.

Sebaton grew insistent. ‘Varteh, the ship?’ He was close to abandoning these men and this pretence to strike for the vessel on his own when Varteh answered.

‘Can’t reach Duugan on the vox,’ he said.

‘Meaning?’ Although Sebaton already knew the answer to that as well.

‘Either something is baffling the signal, or he’s dead.’

‘ Oh fugging hell…’ Gollach murmured, stumbling. Sebaton caught his elbow, and righted him so he didn’t fall.

Varteh dropped back, less sure of pushing ahead so aggressively now Duugan was off-vox. ‘Those landers you saw in the sky,’ he asked Sebaton. ‘Is this them? Are they looking for that thing too?’ He nodded to the cloth-wrapped bundle under Sebaton’s left arm.

‘Not sure.’

That was a lie, but as he didn’t know who the ones in the landers were or what they wanted, there seemed no point in saying anything further.

‘Who are they, Sebaton? Duugan said they were massive, armoured to the gunwales. Are we running from what I think we’re running from?’

Sebaton didn’t see the point in lying further. These men in his service had earned some truth.

‘They’re Legiones Astartes.’

Varteh ruefully shook his head. ‘Fugging Space Marines? You whoreson. How long have you known?’

‘Ever since we arrived, it was a possibility they would follow after us.’

‘A possibility? What the hell is that supposed to mean?’

Sebaton was genuinely contrite. ‘I am sorry, Varteh. You don’t deserve this.’

‘I should shoot you in the leg right now, leave you and that–’ he gestured to the cloth bundle again, ‘–and make my getaway with Trio and Gollach.’

‘It won’t help.’

‘It’ll make me feel better, you fugging twist!’ He calmed down, compartmentalising his fear to a place where it couldn’t inhibit his ability to survive. ‘That thing you’re carrying, it’s important isn’t it?’

Sebaton nodded. ‘More than you know, and more than I could ever tell you.’

‘Who are you, Sebaton? I mean really?’

Sebaton shook his head, his rueful expression saying more about his troubled mind that any words ever could.

‘Truthfully, Varteh, I don’t know any more.’

The ex-Lucifer sucked his teeth, having reached an important decision. He stopped running. Sebaton slowed in turn and the others caught up.

‘Time to catch a breath, Gollach,’ he told the man, who seemed both glad and alarmed that they didn’t have to run any more. He sat down.

‘Are we safe?’ he asked in a breathless wheeze, glancing nervously over his shoulder.

‘We’ve lost them,’ Varteh lied, the truth of what he was really doing showing in his eyes and the slight, almost imperceptible shake of the head to Trio that Gollach would never see. He turned to Sebaton. ‘You go on ahead, switch with Duugan.’

Sebaton nodded, and felt his admiration and respect for the ex-Lucifer grow, while his own self-loathing redoubled.

‘I think the Army misses you greatly.’

‘Oh, I doubt that. Just another pair of boots.’

They didn’t shake hands, nothing so trite as that, but a look passed between them and in it Sebaton found some hope that he could be a better man than he was. Perhaps he could be more than a weapon.

‘He’s going?’ asked Gollach, getting agitated again. ‘Where? He’s no soldier. Why is he going? I want to go with him.’ He got to his feet.

Gollach was exhausted, and would only slow Sebaton down. Like an airship struggling for loft, Sebaton needed to drop some ballast. Only in this case, it was the men he had hired.

Holding Gollach by the shoulders, Sebaton spoke clearly and calmly.

‘ Stay here with Varteh. He’ll keep you safe.’

A sort of blankness came over Gollach’s face and he nodded once before sitting back down.

Varteh didn’t look surprised. Sebaton knew the ex-Lucifer had suspected that he was a psyker for a while.

‘You need to go,’ he said. Trio was already breaking out a pair of heavy calibre cannons from a case he’d been hauling all the way from the dig site. With the exception of the servitors that they had since abandoned, it was about all they did take with them. Sebaton counted three weapons in total. Duugan wouldn’t need his.

‘You want one?’ Varteh asked. ‘Might come in handy.’

It wouldn’t, not against them.

‘Keep it. It’ll only slow me down.’

‘Is it worth it?’ Varteh asked. ‘What we took from the hole.’

‘Worth all of mankind.’

Sebaton ran.

Though it was hard to tell from his dour demeanour, Narek relished the hunt. He used to be reconnaissance, a Vigilator, until an injury impeded his scouting abilities and saw him fall behind the others in his unit. He’d given up the squad soon after that, and rejoined the Legion proper as part of Elias’s Chapter.

It was on Isstvan V that he had been wounded. In command of a stealth unit, sent to sabotage Legion forces loyal to the Emperor before the attack began and their betrayal was revealed, his unit met some enemy Scouts who saw at once what they were doing. They killed the fledgeling Raven Guard, but at the cost of Narek’s entire squad and his left leg. A bolt shell had shattered it. He’d finished placing the charges, crawling over the bodies of his dead comrades to do so, and found his way back from the dropsite before the firestorm began.

Bionics replaced his bones and his burned-up muscle and flesh, but he wasn’t the same. That battle had left a mark on Narek that went beyond mere injury. It made him morose, prone to angry self-recrimination, even self-doubt, but he served because he was a soldier and that’s what soldiers did – they followed orders.

Elias needed a huntsman, so Narek took up the post, but never divulged how he really felt about what happened on Isstvan. It sat poorly with him, but he understood its necessity and believed in their cause, perhaps less blindly than some of his brothers.

Catching prey was the only time when his mind felt occupied enough that none of his other concerns mattered. Everything else faded back to grey when Narek was on the hunt.

Using the servitors as decoys was smart. The cyborgs went down quickly, without much fight, but the distraction absorbed precious minutes. Narek had let Dagon do it, content to look on before scouring the area for further signs. He sent Haruk on ahead to close the trap he had so artfully set for his prey.

Narek was looking down on them now as he crouched on a rooftop, obscured by steam venting from ceiling ducts and the shadows of the night. All lights were out in Ranos; the rest of the brothers had seen to that. Only this small act was left to carry out now.

A three-man hunting party. Were he younger, and without the bionic, Narek would have done it alone. As he was, he needed the others.

‘ A last stand.’ Dagon was on the opposite rooftop, about twenty metres away. Ranos was heavily industrialised, providing an abundance of hiding places from which the Word Bearers could observe their prey.

Below them were two armed men, hunkered down in cover, nervously eyeing the dark. A third man sat apart from the others, unarmed, not a fighter.