‘Cut the engines,’ Bacler called into the driver’s compartment. The commissar was clearly deranged, but that was hardly surprising. There was no harm humouring him for a minute or two.

  The Salamander came to a halt, rocking on its tracks. Criid’s ride came to a halt behind it, engine revving. ‘Everything all right, sir?’ the officer aboard the second Salamander voxed crisply.

  ‘Stand by, Leyden,’ said Bacler into his mic.

  Hark dismounted, jumping down into the dust. He took a few paces forward. The melody hung in the air, or in his head, he couldn’t decide which. He felt a sudden, terrible feeling of sadness and regret. It was like a dream breaking, a buried dream he could finally remember.

  He looked back at the other Salamander. Criid and Twenzet had dismounted and were staring at him.

  ‘Hark?’ Criid called out.

  ‘Just… just a minute, Tona,’ he called back. He started forwards, walking down the line of the column ahead, past rows of tanks with idling engines and Cadogus troopers sitting at ease on the tops of transports. They watched him walk by, amused by the sight of the ragged, one-armed commissar with the hopeless look on his face.

  Hark.

  Hark walked on, gathering speed, past the tank and transport elements into the next section of the waiting column. He walked between two rows of Trojan tractors towing canisters of fuel on low-loader trailers. Their engines throbbed, but did not drown out the thin, floating melody.

  Hark.

  The Trojan drivers, sitting up in the top hatches, watched him stride past through the dust. Several more Trojan tractors stood in a line behind the fuel carriers. The machines were painted black and towed a far more volatile cargo in their trailers. A cluster of men in caps and black leather coats stepped out in front of Hark. They were commissars wearing Special Attachment emblems on their collars and epaulettes.

  ‘Let me pass,’ said Hark.

  They hesitated, and then stood aside.

  Help me.

  Heavy cages with thick, iron bars sat on the trailers towed by the ominous black tractors. Dark, spavined shapes lurked behind the bars, chained hand and foot, lashed to bare metal frames in the centre of each cage. Some of the cages were studded with spikes and barbs that pointed inwards. Despite the stink of exhaust wafting from the tractors, Hark could smell the pain. Blood, sweat, faeces, gangrene and the wretched tang of static filled the night air.

  The pipes grew louder.

  Each cage was attended by dark, silent figures: Special Attachment commissars, servitors, armed guards in black uniforms with curiously full helmets, their visors down, and men and women in dark robes armed with handling poles and electric prods. Pale, grim faces and closed visors followed him as he toiled along the line.

  Help me, Hark.

  Hark came to a halt. He realised there were tears running down his face. The sadness that had eaten away at him for years had finally broken out, cracking the frozen surface of his emotional reserve. He looked up at the cage in front of him. The inward turned spikes were matted with dried blood.

  A hunchbacked man in black leather came and stood in front of Hark. ‘You cannot approach the cage,’ he hissed through rotten teeth.

  ‘Go feth yourself,’ said Hark.

  A woman stepped forwards beside the hunchback. She was old and stiff, her thin face disfigured with a large red birthmark. She wore a long, austere dress of black lace that rustled in the desert wind.

  ‘Custodian Culcus is quite correct,’ she said. ‘You may not approach the cage or the specimen. These are the rules of the Sanctioned Division. It is for your own safety, sir. Psykers, even sanctioned ones, are dangerous animals.’

  ‘Get out of my way,’ said Hark.

  ‘Let him pass.’

  Hark looked around. Bacler had followed him up the line of vehicles with Criid limping at his side. Criid had tears in her eyes. She can probably hear the frail, plaintive music too, Hark thought.

  ‘Let him pass,’ Bacler repeated.

  The old dam in the black lace dress nodded and backed away, pulling the hunchback aside.

  Hark clambered up onto the greasy bed of the trailer. He knelt down in front of the cage, his hands clutching the filthy bars.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he whispered.

  The thing inside the cage stirred. It was just a sack of meat, rotting and sagging. Heavy shackles pinned its wasted limbs to the cage frame. Hark could see that it had undergone extensive surgery. Sutured scars criss-crossed its dirty scalp and augmetic devices had been implanted in its neck, chest and throat. Its ears had been clipped off with shears and its eyes had been sewn shut. It slumped naked in a pool of its own waste. Open, weeping sores covered the flesh of its torso.

  It’s all right.

  ‘No,’ said Hark. ‘It isn’t.’

  This is my life now.

  ‘This is no life,’ said Hark.

  The thing in the cage stirred. The chains holding its cadaverous limbs rattled.

  I felt you here.

  ‘I know. I understand that now.’

  I felt you close. All of you. My friends. My old friends. I tried to reach you.

  ‘I’m afraid you hurt us. We didn’t understand.’

  I’m sorry, Hark. I just wanted to help you. Help you to survive.

  ‘I know.’

  I just wanted you to hear me.

  ‘I heard you. We all heard you, in our dreams, in the things that haunted us.’ Hark wiped his nose on his cuff.

  I just wanted you to hear me. I just wanted to help you. You were so far away, in such danger, but I could feel you. I tried to reach you–

  ‘You reached us,’ Hark said.

  The thing inside the cage shuddered. It gurgled. Slime dripped from the slit that had once been its mouth. It was laughing.

  It’s not a precise art, this thing I do. Not cut and dried, neat and tidy, like smeltery work or soldiering. I miss both of my old professions. What I do is not precise, Hark. You were so far away, I could only reach you through your memories.

  ‘You reached us,’ Hark repeated.

  Thunder rolled. Frost had formed on the bars of the cage.

  ‘That’s enough now!’ the old dam in the black lace dress called. Bacler put a hand on her shoulder and whispered to her. She fell silent.

  My handlers are unhappy. They think I might act up now you’re here. They think your presence might provoke me. They think I might kill you.

  ‘I know you’re not going to do that,’ said Hark. ‘Although if you did, I wouldn’t blame you.’

  I only wanted to help you.

  ‘I know.’

  I only wanted you to help me. Help me. Please, Hark, help me. I can’t stand this any more.

  The thing inside the cage rattled its chains again. Icicles had formed along the roof bars.

  ‘I’ll help you,’ Hark whispered, pushing his face against the bars.

  You have to make it look right, Hark. Commissar-style, you know? Otherwise they’ll charge you for all sorts of crimes. They’ll hang you out to dry.

  ‘I know what to do. Trust me. And forgive me.’

  There’s nothing to forgive. Just help me.

  Hark rose to his feet. He drew his engraved bolt pistol and racked the slide.

  ‘By the grace of the Emperor!’ he declared, loud enough for the handlers down below to hear him, ‘You’re dead and I can’t let this go on. You’re killing my men with your ghosts.’

  He let the slide snap back and aimed the weapon between the bars of the cage.

  ‘He can’t do that!’ the old dam cried.

  ‘Yes, he fething well can,’ snarled Criid behind her.

  ‘Is there anything else you want to say to me?’ Hark whispered, his hand trembling.

  Only the same thing I’ve been trying to tell you all these last few days.

  ‘What’s that?’

  He’s alive. He’s in terrible pain, but he’s alive.

  Hark paused.

  ‘Be at peace,’ he said.

  The wretched thing that had once been called Agun Soric looked up at him with sewn-up eyes through the bars of the cage.

  Hark fired.

  He jumped down off the trailer. The sound of the pipes had faded, forever. Hark felt sick.

  ‘What did you do?’ the old dam screamed at him.

  Hark shoved her aside.

  ‘I gave him what he needed,’ Hark said.

  ‘You killed him!’ the hunchback stammered, outraged.

  ‘Only in death does duty end,’ Hark replied, ‘and he had done his duty a thousand times over.’

  He walked away from the trailer, the bolt pistol hanging in his grip. Behind him, Bacler and Criid were arguing with the handlers.

  Hark’s foot disturbed something lying in the dust. He bent down.

  It was a brass message shell.

  Hark picked it up and unscrewed it.

  There was nothing inside.

  IX

  Mkoll and the partisan entered the second prefab. The sour, metallic smell of blood hung in the air. A dozen prisoners were strung up on crude wooden frames along the tent space. It was obvious they had been subjected to intense interrogation under torture.

  The scene was appalling, even to a hardened veteran like Mkoll. He stopped in his tracks, breathing hard. The limp, naked bodies suspended on the frames were slick with blood and covered with black, clotted wounds. The torture had been vindictive, cruel and utterly typical of Blood Pact methods. Some of the prisoners had suffered amputations or organ removal. Others had been nailed to the frames by their soft tissue. The hideous tools of the torturers’ trade, goads and nails and skewers, lay in blood-stained trays on stands around the room. Branding irons stood in fuming braziers.

  Mkoll went down the line of prisoners, quickly and mercifully putting each one out of his or her misery. The deep urge he had felt to come there and enter the place had vanished as suddenly and mysteriously as it had come. He just wanted to get out and make a run for it. But he wasn’t going to leave before he’d spared these miserable beings further agonies.

  It was simple to do. Just pressing the edge of his venom-smeared blade against an open wound let toxins into the blood stream. A swift, numbing death resulted, without the need for shots or further wounding.

  He touched his blade against an open wound in the belly of a heavy-set man who had been partly skinned. The man opened his eyes briefly. He smiled at Mkoll as he died. Mkoll felt as if he was an ayatani priest, delivering a last comforting touch and a blessing.

  He moved to the next dangling body and reached out with his ministering blade.

  Eszrah caught his hand and pulled it back.

  ‘What?’ Mkoll asked.

  ‘Not him,’ Eszrah said.

  Mkoll looked up at the hanging body. The man had been whipped and flayed several times. His skin was hanging off in places. His face, hanging low, was drenched in blood. The cords holding him spread-eagled to the frame were biting into his wrists and ankles.

  ‘I need to help him,’ Mkoll said. ‘I need to end his pain.’

  Eszrah shook his head. Mkoll looked at the ruined man again. He saw the old, deep scars across his belly, the mark of a chainsword wound suffered many years before.

  ‘Oh feth,’ he murmured.

  They cut him down quickly, cradling his limp body. His eyes opened. He looked at them, blood trickling out of his mouth. Mkoll realised that he had been blinded.

  ‘Are we the last ones left alive?’ he asked, turning his head towards the sound of them. ‘Are we? Someone, anyone, please? Are we? Is there anybody out there? Are we the last ones left alive?’

  Nalwood, Nalwood, this is Elikon M.P., this is Elikon M.P. Please respond. Please respond. Can you hear, Nalwood? What is your status? Please respond.

  Elikon out. (transmission ends)

  – Transcript of vox message, fifth month, 778.

  TWENTY-THREE

  The End of the World at the House

  I

  Late on the fourteenth day, the mechanised unit Berenson, or some warp-whisper they had known as Berenson, had promised finally fought its way up the pass to Hinzerhaus. Twenty items of armour, with troop support in the van, and air cover from a string of Vulture gunships, blasted into the rear of the Blood Pact host besieging the house and scattered it in a battle that lasted fifty-eight minutes. The last twenty minutes were little more than a massacre. The Blood Pact fled into the cracks in the mountains, leaving over four thousand dead on the dust bowl and the lower escarpments of the house.

  Hinzerhaus itself was a dismaying ruin. Clotted smoke drifted up into the desert sky from a hundred separate fires. Overlooks and gunboxes had been blown out and destroyed. Several sections of the southern face had collapsed, exposing the rockcrete bunkers buried in the rock to the sky. The walls were pockmarked and chipped with hundreds of thousands of gunshots. The main gatehouse had been totally demolished. The topside ramparts along the cliff lay in ruins, each and every cloche dome ruptured and burst. Fire spewed steadily and out of control from slots of the lower casemates. The cliff walls were cratered and dimpled with the scorched impacts of heavy shelling.

  Major Kallard, commanding the relief force, clambered down from his vehicle in front of the gates and gazed at the ruin. The Vultures shrieked overhead, making another pass before peeling off to hunt for fleeing enemy units in the upper gorges of the range.

  ‘Holy Throne,’ muttered Kallard, surveying the burning structure. He looked around at his adjutant, a boy-faced man named Seevan.

  ‘Anything?’ he asked.

  Seevan tried his caster again and looked up at Kallard with a shake of his head.

  ‘Nothing. Link’s dead.’

  Kallard spat a curse. He waved the first detachment of his infantry forward into the place, pretty certain he knew what they would find.

  ‘Look, sir!’ one of the point men yelled.

  Kallard turned and looked.

  Figures were emerging from the demolished ruin of the gatehouse. Their dark uniforms were in tatters and their faces were plastered in dirt. They carried strange-looking, heavy rifles, which some had hefted up on their shoulders like yokes. They walked out across the dust towards Kallard.

  He watched them approach, straightening his cap. There was something about them that demanded respect.

  They came to a halt before him.

  ‘I didn’t think there’d be anyone left alive,’ Kallard spluttered.

  ‘It comes as something of a surprise to me too,’ replied the gaunt, dark-haired man in front of him.

  ‘Major Kallard, Cadogus Fifty-Second Mechanised,’ Kallard said, making the sign of the aquila. The bad rock wind moaned.

  ‘Major Rawne, commander, First-and-Only,’ the man replied, throwing a half-hearted salute. ‘These are my men… Kolea, Larkin, Daur, Commissar Ludd, Baskevyl, Bonin.’

  The men behind him nodded in turn, and showed no sign of lowering the hefty antique weapons they carried.

  ‘How… how did you manage to hold out for so long?’ Kallard asked.

  Rawne shrugged. ‘We just decided we wouldn’t die,’ he replied.

  Kallard gathered his wits. ‘What are your losses, sir?’

  ‘Forty-seven per cent dead. Eighteen per cent wounded,’ Rawne said. ‘I have two medicaes in there fighting to cope with the casualties.’

  ‘Medics forwards and in!’ Kallard yelled, waving his hand. Corpsmen and surgeons from the column hurried past him into the house.

  ‘Might I ask, sir, what are those weapons?’ Kallard asked.

  Rawne took the wall gun off his shoulder and held it out for Kallard’s inspection. ‘They’re what kept us alive. I have a feeling the Ordo Xenos will want to look at them.’

  ‘I think they might,’ said Kallard. He crunched around on the dust and gestured. ‘I have transports waiting to ferry you out,’ he said. ‘Will you follow me?’

  Rawne looked around at Kolea and Daur. ‘Lead the way. Get moving. I’m not leaving until the last man is clear.’

  Behind Rawne, a chunk of the southern cliff collapsed with a crunch and a gust of powder.

  ‘Go.’

  Rawne turned and walked back towards the house. Ludd followed him.

  ‘You can leave now, Ludd,’ Rawne said.

  ‘I’ll leave when my duty’s done, sir,’ Ludd replied. ‘Let’s get the men out.’

  II

  They filed out along the burned out corridor that joined the base chamber to the gatehouse. Man after man, carrying their wounded with them. Curth and Dorden escorted the procession, tending to the most severely injured.

  In the base chamber, Zweil cast a final blessing to the walls, and turned to hobble out of the place.

  Merrt was one of the last troopers to leave. He left 034TH leaning against a wall in the base chamber.

  ‘Don’t you want that?’ Dalin asked.

  ‘It doesn’t belong to me,’ Merrt replied.

  III

  ‘Major! Major Rawne!’ Kallard yelled, running up the pass towards the line of Chimeras.

  Rawne turned.

  ‘I’m sorry, major, I quite forgot. There was a signal for you, from Van Votyz at Elikon.’

  Kallard handed the slip of paper to Rawne.

  Rawne read it. He turned to look at the Ghosts mounting the transports along the pass.

  ‘Gaunt’s alive!’ Rawne yelled to them. ‘He’s fething well alive!’

  One by one, they began to shout.

  EPILOGUE

  Elikon

  I

  Several sets of boots came marching down the stone hallway. Sentries presented arms as the figures marched by.

  The boots crunched to a halt outside a ward room. The medicae on duty saluted and opened the door.