Anarch

Nineteen: Whose Voice Drowns Out All Others

The hooded V’heduak magir strode down the companionway straight towards them.

‘Shit,’ Mkoll whispered to Brin and Mazho. ‘Let me do the talking.’

He turned to face the magir, trying to frame the formal constructions of the Blood-fare caste.

The V’heduak grinned down at him.

‘You bastard,’ Mkoll murmured.

‘I acquired a disguise,’ said Kater Holofurnace.

‘Clever,’ said Mkoll.

‘I was slowing you down,’ said the Snake. ‘Now we can move freely.

‘Where did you–?’ Mazho began.

Holofurnace shook his head. ‘One of them was fool enough to walk away alone. They won’t find his corpse.’ He parted the edge of the robes slightly, and let them see the belt-fed .20.

‘We know where to go,’ said Milo. He had the fold of deck plans.

Holofurnace nodded. ‘That show any weapons lockers?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ said Mkoll. ‘But they’re secure and we–’

Holofurnace held up a ring of notched metal bars.

‘The Blood-fare had keys,’ he said with a smile.

Three packsons were guarding the strong room. They saluted, hands to mouths, as the V’heduak strode past them. He slotted his keys into the heavy door’s lock without comment.

The packsons watched him for a moment.

‘Magir,’ said one tentatively. ‘The orders are to leave all weapon rooms locked and secure while–’

Mkoll glared at them.

‘You question the magir’s authority, stool-worm?’ he asked.

‘No, sirdar. No. Your pardon.’

Holofurnace pushed open the hefty door, and they went inside, pulling it shut behind them. The locker was small, the walls shelved and racked. A small metal bench stood in the centre of the room. The plans had showed there was a locker like it on almost every deck, stocked for the quick distribution of arms to the ship’s crew in the event of a boarding action.

‘Not much,’ murmured Holofurnace, glancing around. ‘It’s crude stuff. I was hoping for something with some punch. Plasma or cyclic.’

‘It’s just crew-issue small-arms,’ said Mazho. He stared at a rack of boarding hatchets.

‘Be selective,’ said Milo. ‘There’s reloads at least. Pack your pockets with cells.’

‘Think small and useful,’ said Mkoll. ‘Concealable.’

‘If we’re going to kill the devil in his own lair,’ said Holofurnace, ‘we need power.’ He looked at them. ‘He’s a magister. He won’t be human now, if he ever was.’

‘We don’t know what he is,’ said Mkoll.

‘I saw his face,’ said Milo quietly. ‘In the vortex. I saw his face.’

Mazho shivered. He’d glimpsed it too.

‘He’s definitely not human,’ said Milo.

‘So he won’t die like one, which is my point,’ said Holofurnace. ‘Carbines? Blades? Even this?’

He put the heavy sentry gun down on the table.

‘I have grenades,’ said Mkoll.

‘How many?’ asked the Iron Snake.

‘Two,’ said Mkoll. ‘One smoke, one anti-personnel.’

‘Two,’ sighed Mazho.

Holofurnace looked at Mkoll. ‘Oh, my brother,’ he said with a smile. ‘Scout and hunter. Best of both. You move light but you think small. You can hunt this prey, I don’t doubt that, but can you kill him when you run him to ground? Straight silver won’t be enough here.’

‘This might help,’ said Milo. He’d spotted a battered crate on a lower shelf, and dragged it out. It was heavy, but he lifted it clean to the table. Mkoll watched him. Milo wasn’t the boy piper any more. He was strong, and he was tall. He handled weapons with complete familiarity. He had become a seasoned warrior in the years after the Ghosts. And that had been more years than Mkoll could accept. Thanks to the warp incident that had broken the Armaduke’s return voyage to Urdesh, Milo was ten years older, relative. That made him over thirty standard. Mkoll knew he had to stop thinking of Milo as some boy, some eager but harmless adolescent lasman like Dalin Criid, or the Belladon bandsman Arradin. He wondered if that, in part, was why the regiment had welcomed Dalin when he became old enough to pledge in. A little of Boy Milo about him. A return to the early days.

He wondered where they were now, how they were faring. Had they held the batteries that night? Was the retinue safe in a new billet? He hoped Dalin was safe. He’d grown fond of him. A brave lad. Just like Milo had been.

All those years, he’d thought of Milo often, and prayed he was safe at the Saint’s side. He’d never pictured him as a grown man.

Milo unlatched the crate.

Anchor mines, wrapped in wax paper, packed in plastek beads. Imperial issue, salvaged by the Sons from some overrun depot. Each one was the size of a ration tin. They packed a fyceline/D60 mix that could blow a hole through a ceramite bulkhead.

Milo took them out, handling them with care and expertise.

‘Mechanical timer,’ he said. ‘Contact-fusion anchor pad on the flat side.’

‘I know bombs, lad,’ Mazho snapped, picking one up.

‘Good,’ said Milo. ‘Then you’ll know to treat them gently. Not to snatch or shake them. They’re volatile.’

‘I know that,’ said Mazho. He put the mine down again carefully.

‘Two each,’ said Mkoll.

‘Three if we carry fewer cells,’ said Milo.

‘Heavy pockets,’ said Mkoll.

‘Bigger punch,’ said Holofurnace.

‘Because straight silver won’t be enough,’ Mkoll nodded, conceding.

Holofurnace found a musette bag and emptied out the hard round clips it contained. ‘I can take four. Maybe five.’

‘Load up,’ said Mkoll.

They stepped out of the locker, and the V’heduak sealed the door with his keys.

‘Everything’s in order,’ Mkoll said to the packsons. ‘Lucky for you.’

They followed the main spinal towards the Oratory, Brin, Mkoll and Mazho forming an honour guard escort behind the cowled Iron Snake. The whispering buzz of voices was getting louder. It vibrated their ears and made their skin crawl.

The hallways were busier in this part of the ship. Crowds seemed to be gathering: packsons, Sekkite officers, even other V’heduak magirs.

‘What is this?’ Mazho whispered.

Mkoll listened, catching snatches of conversation from the crew they passed.

‘A summoning,’ he told them. ‘The Anarch is calling them. He’s going to speak.’

‘He’s speaking all the time,’ Mazho whispered.

‘No, this is a formal declaration,’ said Mkoll.

‘Of what?’ asked Milo.

Mkoll kept listening.

‘Of victory,’ he said.

The Oratory was a spherical chamber that occupied a socket through three deck levels. The exterior was ribbed with iron-plate armour, and wrought from a pale brown, polished material.

As they came closer, Mkoll realised it was human bone. Thousands upon thousands of gleaming skull caps bonded together. The entrance was a huge doorway accessed via the middle deck. Two rows of abominable excubitors with power lances stood guard outside, forming an avenue that channelled the gathering officers inside. The low murmur of the gathering was drowned out by the rasping whisper in the air.

‘Once we’re in there, there’s no coming back out,’ whispered Holofurnace as they watched from a distance.

‘Agreed,’ said Mkoll. ‘But we knew that.’

‘Yes,’ said Mazho, clearing his throat. Mkoll could see the colonel was sweating behind his leather mouth guard. Mazho was a brave man who had served the Fourth Light ‘Cinder Storm’ with distinction. But this was no battlefield. This required another type of courage.

‘We can do this,’ Milo said to the colonel. ‘For your world. That’s all you’ve ever fought for.’

Mazho nodded. ‘I know,’ he said. ‘I’m not afraid. Not of death. Just centring my mind.’

‘You do it for Urdesh,’ Holofurnace said.

‘I do it for all worlds, sir,’ Mazho replied. ‘Fourth Light. Cinder Storm. Light on the breeze, then burning all around you.’

‘Cinder Storm,’ nodded Holofurnace.

Milo looked at the Oratory sphere again.

‘It’s a shame we can’t–’ he began.

‘I was thinking that,’ said Mkoll. ‘We might have time. It’s going to take a while for them to file inside.’

He looked at Holofurnace.

‘Give me the bag,’ he said.

Holofurnace handed it over.

‘Stay here,’ said Milo. ‘You and Mazho. Stay right here.’

‘We could all–’ Holofurnace began.

‘No, leave this to us,’ said Milo. ‘We’re Ghosts.’

They dropped a deck, keeping to the shadows, and skirted around the vast base of the bone sphere. Brin Milo hadn’t forgotten the old Tanith craft. He was silent, a shadow in the shadows.

They paused under a stanchion arch, and waited as a Sekkite platoon passed by. Mkoll opened the bag. Holofurnace had packed six mines inside it.

‘All of them?’ Milo asked.

Mkoll nodded. ‘And one from your pockets. Keep two back. We’ll see if we can set them inside, along with the ones Mazho’s lugging.’

‘Long timer?’

‘What’ll that give us?’

‘Thirty minutes. Give or take. They’re not accurate, or reliable.’

‘Longest mark, then. Go.’

They darted low between pools of shadow, running side by side, and slithered in under the curve of the sphere. The Oratory sat on huge shock gimbals, and thick trunks of cable sheaves and power ducting sprouted from its south pole into the deck.

Milo placed the first charge, using the fusion anchor to fix it to the bone. He removed the steel pin, and flipped the activator. They ran on a few metres, then fixed the second, trying to space the mines fairly evenly on a line of latitude near the sphere’s base. The fifth one wouldn’t stick, its anchor plate too old and corroded. Mkoll switched it for one of the mines in his coat pockets.

‘Hurry,’ Milo whispered.

‘I’m hurrying gently,’ Mkoll replied.

‘What’s taking so long?’ Mazho whispered. The procession of Sekkite seniors had almost finished filing into the Oratory, and the excubitor vanguard was preparing to unhook the doors and swing them shut.

‘They’re coming,’ Holofurnace assured him.

‘What if they’ve been taken?’ Mazho asked.

Holofurnace looked grim. ‘Then it’s down to us,’ he said. He beckoned Mazho, and they stepped out of the shadows and joined the last of the officers gathering before the doors.

They fell into line, the queue advancing slowly. Mazho kept looking back. He couldn’t see anyone behind them except enemy staff officers and V’heduak magirs.

‘Stop doing that,’ Holofurnace whispered to him. ‘If they’re not coming, they’re not coming.’

The whispering was getting louder, buzzing from the entrance like the sizzle of churning blow-flies.

They stepped through the doorway.

Eight Sons of Sek moved a slave gang along the walkway, then herded them through a hatch onto the main spinal.

Mkoll and Milo waited until they were out of sight, then moved out of cover and set to work attaching the last of the mines.

‘We’ve taken too long,’ Milo said.

Mkoll didn’t reply. The timer mechanism was refusing to set.

‘I need to be in there,’ Milo said.

Mkoll glanced at him.

‘You know duty, Oan,’ Milo said. ‘Better than most. This is mine.’

‘Yours?’

‘Sek,’ said Milo.

‘This is an opportunity, that’s all.’

Milo shook his head. ‘I’ve seen things,’ he said. ‘I’ve walked at her side and seen the galaxy the way she sees it. Learned to a little, at least. There’s chaos, but there’s order. An order driven by will. A grace that holds the chaos at bay.’

‘We all believe that,’ said Mkoll. He cleared the timer and tried to rewind it.

‘No,’ said Milo. ‘We believe it. But I’ve seen it. I thought they were coincidences at first. Just quirks. Chances. But I see a pattern now. She showed me that. Taught me to notice it. An orchestration. A determined force, vastly outnumbered by the immaterium, but holding it in check. Out-playing it, move-for-move, like a game of regicide. It doesn’t always win, but it moves the pieces it has, and places them where it can for the best effect.’

‘I prefer cards,’ said Mkoll. He took the mine off and blew into its corroded timer. ‘Suicide Kings…’

‘I’m serious.’

‘I know. You’re talking about fate.’

‘That’s one word. Call it what you will. I think it’s why I made it off Tanith with the First, why we found Sanian, why we… It’s why she chose me. She knew… she understood, that one day I would be here.’

Mkoll smiled. ‘To kill Sek?’

‘Are you mocking me?’

‘No, Brin. If you believe that’s why you’re here, as a chosen instrument, a weapon selected and deployed by… I don’t know… destiny, then Throne bless you. That’s the strength that drives you. Use it.’

He looked at Milo. He could believe it. There was a purity of purpose in Brin’s eyes. Not the blind fanaticism of the zealot or the pilgrim-radical, nor the howling and unquestioning fealty of the warp-corrupted Archenemy. A true faith, a certainty. He could see that long years in the company of a creature as gnomic as the Beati could do that to a man. It could affirm his purpose, give him a sense of calling that would carry him through the darkest and most hellish events. The boy piper had truly long gone. Milo had become a warrior of the Throne, as sure and committed to his function as any Astartes.

‘Don’t you feel it?’ Milo asked. ‘Aren’t you the same? You, and the Ghosts? I was there in the early years. I saw what was accomplished. And I’ve read the reports since. The deeds, the achievements. Gaunt, the regiment, you. That doesn’t just happen. That isn’t just luck. I think we’ve all been guided by that grace, all along, whether we like it or not. Whether we know it or not. It’s taken us to the places we’ve needed to be so that we could do the things it’s needed us to do. You must feel that too.’

Mkoll shrugged.

‘I don’t think on it, Brin,’ he said. ‘I suppose I only ever consider the immediate. The shadows around me, the foe ahead. I haven’t had the opportunity to see things the way you have, at her side. You’re a weapon. I don’t doubt that, I really don’t. We’re all weapons. I trust in the providence of the Golden Throne, but I don’t have the vision to see any great plan at work. I’m just Guard, Brin. Just Guard. I go where I go and I do my damnedest when I’m told to march or fight. I tell you this much, though… I find it hard to swallow that fate has any great plan spun out across the years. Our side or theirs. Reading the variables across a thousand worlds? Planning moves decades in advance? Plotting the future and setting players in position to execute some ingenious gambit years down the line? I don’t think it works that way, not for us or the Archenemy. I think it’s all a brawl. A free-for-all. Just carnage, and you swing when you can. Instinct. Reaction. Opportunity. What is it Hark calls it? Fight time? Shit just happens, the moment’s on you, and you just do. Then you see who walks away. That’s all there is. No transcendent plan. Just moments, one after the other, bloody and senseless. You do what you do. Duty gets you through, or you’re dead.’

He clamped the last mine in place and set it running.

‘Guess we’ll see which of us is right, eh?’ he said.

Mazho stepped into the Oratory, jostled along by the press of bodies passing through the door. Fear was almost strangling him. He could feel his rapid breathing sucking against the hand-strap across his mouth. He looked up.

The Oratory was huge, even bigger than the exterior shell had suggested. It was a vast, circular theatre. Rings of tiered stalls, each level fringed by a rail, stepped down the lower half of the sphere to a large dais in the centre of the floor. They were entering through the main doors at the equator of the sphere, around which ran a wide, railed walkway. Steep flights of steps ran down between the banks of stalls to the dais below. The place was packed. Sekkite officers, the magirs of the vessel, tribal dignitaries and arbitors of the warp-faith were filling the stalls, finding places to stand, talking and greeting and exchanging the hand-to-the-mouth salutes. Hundreds of them. Bloody hundreds of them. The weight of the mines packed in his pockets felt like they’d give him away. His mind raced. He was just a packson. All around him were seniors of the Anarch’s host. They would know he was too lowly to be present. They would know.

The press of bodies carried him forwards. He was forced onto the steps, descending from the equatorial ring into the tiers of stalls. Voices were all around him. Whispers in his ears. He’d lost sight of Holofurnace. The flow of the crowd had separated them. He shot anxious glances, trying not to look jumpy, scanning the stalls around him as they filled. Where was the Space Marine? He saw robed V’heduak giants. Each one was cowled. Was that the Snake there? Was that one?

The air stank of dry dust. Sweat was running down his spine. The whole auditorium was made of human bone: the floor, the steps, the platforms of the tiers. The handrails dividing each ring of stalls were fused from polished human long bones, fashioned not crudely but with precise craftsmanship. He glanced up. The dome above, hazed in the golden candlelight, was a mosaic of skulls. Thousands of them, fixed side by side on concentric shelves, staring out blindly, like some vast ossuary, a catacomb’s bone house displaying the relics of the dead. So many staring sockets. So many gaping jaws. The whole ceiling, the whole dome, was solid with yellowed skulls.

He was forced into one of the stalls halfway down the tiered bowl. The Sekkites around him spoke to each other, nudged him impatiently to move along and make room. He ran out of space, boxed in by packson damogaurs and V’heduak giants. He got a place at the rail, gripped it to steady himself, then took his hands away. Bone. He didn’t want to hang on to bone.

Below him, the dais was a platform raised on a scaffold of bones, turned, shaped and jointed like the work of the finest cabinet maker: interlocked femurs, some laminated to form thick post uprights, the cross-braces secured with shoulder blades and sacral plates, inlays of carved finger-bones. The railing around the edge of the dais was a basketwork of ribcages supporting a top-rail made of vertebrae carefully matched for size, and fitted together to make one long, continuous spine. The joinery had been done with experienced precision. Everything was polished, and delicately carved and veneered, like an exquisite ivory sculpture. It gleamed, a warm glow.

It was the most appalling thing Mazho had ever seen.

The dais faced the main doors. Behind it, the lower stalls were a reserved quire, the curved bench seats were packed with lekts, the Sekkites’ macabre psyker caste. They chattered and gibbered, their mouths covered by hand-print brands. Many were veiled. Mazho could feel the scalding throb of their minds, amplifying the whispers that buzzed and crackled in his ears.

He tried to control his frantic breathing. Iron bars of terror were locking him rigid.

A loud boom caused a temporary hush. The towering excubitors had closed and barred the doors. They took their places amongst the crowds on the equatorial walkway, gazing down, their power lances held upright.

He was in now. The only way out was shut. It had become a dream that didn’t belong to him.

A figure stepped up onto the dais. Mazho had no idea where it had come from. It had just emerged from the crowd packing the auditorium.

It was the Anarch. It was Sek.

Holofurnace found a place to stand at the bone-railing of the equatorial walk. He’d lost Mazho. From under his cowl, he surveyed the tiers below, his acute, post-human eyesight searching for detail. Where was he? Where–

There. Off to the right and down in the thick of it. A tiny figure, packed into an overcrowded stall. The poor damn bastard.

The excubitors were preparing to shut the doors. What of Mkoll and the Saint’s man? Had they come back in time? He studied the crowd again. Damogaurs, etogaurs, packson tribunes with tribal standards, a quire of cackling lekts, excubitors, cult shamen, Blood-fare officers and steersmen. The host was still taking its places, thronging the staircases, shuffling into stalls, milling around the base of the obscene dais.

‘D’har voi vehen kha,’ the V’heduak beside him said, and laughed.

Holofurnace nodded. He knew none of the words. He made a laughing sound and hoped it would be enough.

There. There was Milo. He was moving down one of the staircases, slipping through the crowd. Holofurnace watched. Unnoticed by those around him, Milo paused to re-strap his boot. Just a feint. Holofurnace saw him quickly, furtively slide a small object under the lip of the stall. A mine. Milo rose again. He threaded his way on down the steps.

Good boy.

The Snake scanned the throng. There. And there was Mkoll. Down on the floor beside the dais, moving through the gathering, pausing, looking out into the Oratory as he fished a hand behind his back and anchored a mine to a dais post. Right in plain sight, but no one saw. Mkoll moved with confidence, as if he was supposed to be there.

Mkoll looked up. He’d spotted Holofurnace across the packed chamber. A hunter’s sharp eyes. No chance to sign or signal. Just an exchanged nod.

‘Voi vehtah sahk!’ the V’heduak beside him exclaimed, nudging him.

‘Kha,’ Holofurnace said.

He’d lost sight of Mkoll. There was Milo again, though. Three-quarters of the way down the stairs. Another casual stoop to adjust his boot. A quick pass, sleight-of-hand. Another mine set, locked in the shadows of a stair riser. Milo rose again. Holofurnace tracked him as he edged into a lower stall. There was Mkoll too. They jostled through the press until they were side by side.

The main doors shut. The excubitor guards stepped to the rail. One pushed in just metres from Holofurnace, a terrible ghoul with stub-horns, taller than any Adeptus Astartes, his ornate lance held proud and straight.

There was a figure on the dais suddenly. The buzzing whispers grew louder.

Sek was here.

A hush fell. They watched him take his place.

‘Oh, Throne,’ Milo whispered.

Mkoll said nothing.

Fifty metres from them, and higher up, Mazho gazed in silent horror. This wasn’t the thing he had glimpsed through the madness of the vortex at Oureppan. It was worse.

A skeletal giant, its skin a mummified and flaking brown stretched taut and paper-thin around its bones. A ragged robe, decayed from centuries in a tomb. A crown of iron spikes. No lower jaw, just a yawning void.

Mazho sank deeper into the numb depths of terror. He tried to mumble a penitential prayer, but he couldn’t remember any of the words.

Holofurnace watched too. From the high rail, he saw his enemy in person for the first time. He considered the sheer bulk of the Anarch, the ungodly mass, a lumbering daemon that hauled itself into place. It was female in aspect, throat, shoulders and hunched back fledged in iridescent plumage. A carrion bird’s beak, big as a power-claw, snapped and yawned to reveal the blue, rasping dagger of its tongue. A spiked silver crown formed a band above its dozens of glittering eyes. Neon-yellow pupils flashed and shone. It spread its arms, its daemon wings. It possessed a terrible beauty that speared Holofurnace’s heart like a cold blade.

He could not look away.

Brin Milo shivered as he watched the magister take his place. Sek was just as he had seen him, the glaring demiurge that had haunted his dreams since the vortex. Upright, strong, with the power and build of an Astartes warrior, clad in black and yellow silks. His head was a bald mass of scar tissue. Black thorns grew from the gnarled flesh of his scalp, surrounding the top of his head like a spiked crown. The tubes and pipes of augmetic support systems knotted the back of his head and neck like vines. His face was a steel mask, sutured in place, a visage of cruel angles and sharp lines. Filthy light shone from the eye slits and the yawning, down-turned mouth. A chrome vox-mic, the tannoy speaker from some battle-engine, was fixed to his chest-plate and positioned so that the caged disc was set in front of his mouth.

Sek was about to speak.

Mkoll gazed, eyes narrowed, his gorge rising. This was the foe at last, barely six metres away. All that power, all that authority, invested in such a wretched thing. It came as little surprise. Mkoll thought of Macaroth. For all that great Macaroth was warmaster, commander of crusading hosts, they said he was just a man too, an ordinary man of flesh and blood, of weaknesses and flaws, just another mortal who happened to wield the greatest authority in the sector.

Anakwanar Sek was just a man. An old man, run to fat, of average height and sloping build. His robes were filthy and lacquered with grease. His hands were cased in shining silver gauntlets, clawed and segmented masterpieces of antique armour that he had stolen from some corpse, and wore to boast he was a figure of great importance. He looked like a gutter-gang vagabond who had chosen to wear ill-fitting, polished, regal boots he’d looted from the body of a high-hive noble. His body twitched with a palsy. His skin was scabbed and diseased. Mkoll couldn’t see his face because Sek, with one ostentatiously gloved hand, was holding up a cracked porcelain mask on a slender stick. The top of the stick was fashioned into a golden hand that wrapped across the mask’s mouth. Some twitching darkness lurked behind the serene mask.

Just a man. Just a vile old man. Mkoll could kill that.

The ceaseless chattering of the lekt quire increased. A buffet of psyker force welling out across the Oratory. Everyone winced, all of the Sekkite seniors and four Imperial interlopers lurking amongst them.

‘Let my voice drown out all others,’ the lekts hissed in unison. Now the constant, scratching whispers wove together into one set of words.

‘Anarch I am. Anarch of all,’ the lekts sang.

The host roared, shaking their fists, saluting, fingers to their lips.

‘All that was set in place has come to its conclusion,’ the quire hissed as the roars died back. ‘This night and the next day. My hours. My awaited moment, long foreseen. Those who hold the key of victory will pass to me what has always been mine.’

‘He’s saying,’ Mkoll whispered, ‘…he’s saying the enkil vahakan, “those who hold the key of victory”…’

‘I understand,’ Milo whispered back, unable to tear his gaze from the dais. ‘I understand what he’s saying.’

‘But he’s speaking in the Sekkite tongue…’ Mkoll hissed.

‘No, he’s not.’ Milo replied. ‘I understand every word. He’s declaring victory.’

The unclean voices of lekts swelled in exultation.

‘I have sent the blessed reworked,’ they announced.

The host roared again. ‘Qimurah! Qimurah! Qimurah!’

‘The blessed reworked, all eight times eight, have slipped like a skzerret’s blade into the heart of the foe,’ the lekts chorused. ‘By dawn, they will be returned to the sound of my voice. They will bring the Enkil Vehk, the key that was shamelessly stolen from me. This will be the victory I have pursued. The key will open the way. The key will sunder the stars. No one, no corpse-emperor, no Throne warrior, no false angel, no… not even any bold magir or preening Gaur… will stand in the fury of my wrath. The Archonate will prevail, reworked in glory. Anarch I am.’

The host roared again. A chant began. ‘Sek! Sek! Sek! Sek!’

Mazho saw the mummified titan raise a tattered hand for silence. Holofurnace saw an ethereal wing sweep for order. Milo flinched as the demiurge lifted his fist, compelling attention. Mkoll saw a silver gauntlet gesture, bidding them to indulge him a moment more.

‘For the plague of Terra is beheaded this night,’ the lekts proclaimed. ‘While the blessed reworked perform their holy ministry, I have unleashed woe upon the place called Eltath. The Herit ver Tenebal Mor. The Heritor’s bad shadow falls across the ground. The enkil vahakan will perish, all. All their chieftains. All their warlords. The crusaders of the corpse-prophet, so long a plague upon our realm, will be emasculated. Their order lost. Their authority annihilated. By dawn, this will be finished. The plague of Terra will break, as a fever breaks, lost and leaderless, and from tomorrow they will scatter, hopeless and afeared, into the farthest stars, and we will drive them before us, shattered, humiliated and put to rout.’

The host howled. The Sekkite Sons drummed on the handrails. They turned to one another in raptures, clasping hands and embracing.

Mazho gasped as the damogaur beside him turned, yelling, and hugged him.

‘Dahak enkil voi sahh, magir!’ the officer shouted in his ear. Mazho could smell his sweat, the stink of his breath.

‘Dahak enkil?’ the man asked, breaking the embrace and looking at Mazho, puzzled. ‘Dahak enkil voi?’ Mazho could barely hear him over the chanting. He didn’t understand the words anyway. He turned aside, pretending he was eager to congratulate the man to his left.

The damogaur seized him by the shoulder and turned him back. He gripped Mazho by the chin-strap and tilted his head, peering in under the helmet’s brim at Mazho’s eyes.

‘Sp-ecta-kles?’ he said, not understanding.

Up at the high rail, Holofurnace was trying to keep Colonel Mazho in sight through the forest of pumping fists and swaying banners. He glimpsed Mazho turning, a damogaur grabbing him by the face.

It was time. He threw back the folds of his borrowed robes.

‘Sp-ecta-kles?’ the damogaur hissed into Mazho’s face. Angry understanding flushed his face.

‘Pheguth!’ he snarled.

‘Fourth Light Cinder Storm!’ Mazho replied, and punched his skzerret into the damogaur’s chest. For a moment, no one around him realised anything was wrong. The cheering was too intense. The damogaur slumped, held upright by the tight-packed bodies.

Then gunfire ripped down from the equatorial walk.

Holofurnace had swept out the heavy sentry gun and opened fire, feeding the belt with his left hand. Hot shell cases bounced off the startled Sekkites at the rail beside him. The shots raked down the steep tiered bank of the Oratory, the first bursts killing cheering Sons in the front two rows. The .20 was not a sophisticated gun and, despite his strength, Holofurnace was not assisted by the automatic balancing, levelling and aiming systems of his Astartes armour.

He corrected by eye. His second and third bursts ripped across the dais.

He saw the winged daemon stagger, its golden armour puncturing. Scraps of white feather billowed into the air. Parts of the guard rail and dais platform splintered in showers of bone shards.

The massed cheering swelled and changed as one noise, becoming panic and howls of astonished horror.

Milo saw the towering demiurge shudder and reel, blood bursting from his black and yellow robes. He swung up his carbine, and blasted point blank into the Sekkites to his right, brutally clearing a space in the stall, then turned and blazed on full auto at the dais.

Mkoll vaulted the guardrail, the sirdar’s long-nosed autopistol in his hand, and landed on the bone steps. Men were already bolting from the stalls all around him in blind panic. He kicked a packson out of his way, sending the Sekkite tumbling down the stairs, and gunned down another two who came clawing for him. Then he ran down the steps towards the Oratory floor, firing as he went, zipping hard rounds across the ducking bodies in the stalls. He saw them hit. He saw the old man jerk as bullets smacked into his greasy robes. He saw blood. The porcelain mask slipped down. Mkoll glimpsed some vast and writhing maw where the old man’s face should have been. It yawned in pain and shock.

Mazho tried to get his carbine raised clear. Everyone was shouting and screaming. The lekt quire screeched in agony.

‘For Urdesh!’ he yelled. ‘For Urdesh! Cinder Storm!’

He tried to aim. The Sekkites in the stall fell on him from all sides, clawing and grappling. Mazho went down under the weight of them. A raging V’heduak wrenched the weapon from his hands. A packson hit him across the face so hard it broke his cheekbone and knocked his helmet askew. He lost his spectacles. The world became a blur of raining fists and screaming faces.

He disappeared beneath the berserk mob. His bones cracked and snapped as they kicked at him, and stamped on his helpless form.

The vicious, murderous beating jolted one of the ageing anchor mines. It went off, tripping the other two simultaneously.

The combined blast tore out the mid-section of the stalls, billowing out in a fierce, searing firestorm. Those closest to Mazho, including his frenzied tormentors, were vaporised instantly. Others were thrown headlong into the air, tumbling and falling on the rows below. Chunks of cracked ivory scattered like kindling.

The blast shook the entire Oratory. It rocked Holofurnace back. He had hosed almost all his ammunition at the dais. The feathered witch-thing had fallen to its knees, writhing, soaked in blood. Some of the quire were dead too, mown down in their seats by overshot.

The crowd around him grabbed at him, tearing his robes. He shook them off. He swung a fist that broke a packson’s neck. He grabbed a clawing V’heduak chieftain by the throat and hurled him over the rail.

‘Ithaka!’ he roared, using the name of his homeworld as a curse of defiance. An excubitor lunged at him, swinging his power lance. Holofurnace jerked clear, and the lance’s long blade splintered the bone guardrail. He put the rest of his ammunition through the excubitor’s face, blowing the fiend’s skull apart.

The belt was out. He brandished the sentry gun like a cudgel, cracking skulls and knocking Sekkites into the stalls below. Several las-rounds hit him in the lower back, shunting him forwards.

Milo’s first mine went off, annihilating a section of staircase in a blizzard of fire and bone shrapnel. The second mine detonated an instant later, obliterating another section of the staircase further down, and rippling flames along two blocks of stalls. Sekkites staggered, blundering, blinded, their clothing on fire.

The mine Mkoll had fixed to the dais fired, destroying half the spine railing and causing the entire platform to slump sideways. Upwashed flame boiled across the Anarch’s flailing figure.

Mkoll was near the bottom of the staircase. The blast shock knocked him off his feet. A body fell across him. He struggled to get the dead weight off his legs.

Milo saw Mkoll go down. He wanted to rain more fire at the Anarch, but Sekkites were rushing him from all sides. He switched furiously from target to target, chopping each one down as they came at him. Cinders and burning ash drifted around him like snow.

The exterior mines went off in a quick, staggered, uneven series of muffled roars. The Oratory rattled in its socket. Men sprawled off their feet. Dislodged skulls rained down from the dome, shattering like pottery on the floor and stalls beneath. Flames surged up in a dozen places around the dais and the lower stalls.

Gripping the rail, the Anarch hauled himself upright, braced against the drunken slope of the damaged dais. His maw uttered a roar of rage, and the remaining lekts echoed it in shrill chorus.

He had been betrayed. Deceived. Wounded in his own sanctum. His victory would only matter if he survived to see it.

Sek howled again. The uncouth noise of his voice drowned out every­thing around him. Some Sekkites simply fell dead, ears and brains pulped by the volume of his wrath.

He tore off his silver gauntlets and bared his hands. He focused his magisterial powers, invoking the dark eminences of the outer warp that he served. The quire took up his supplication, chanting words and conjurations that pre-dated mankind. The Saint had wounded him at Oureppan, and drained his psykomantic potency. He channelled all he had left to preserve himself.

The immaterium flexed, splitting the air around him. Foul winds sucked and screeched. Tendrils of yellow lightning flickered around his gesturing hands.

He was opening a gate to flee. He was folding the curtain of the warp aside through willpower alone, gouging through the subspace membranes, and throwing wide a door to step through into safety.

Milo saw reality bending around the demiurge. Another vortex. Smaller than the one at Oureppan that Sek had opened to destroy the Beati, less controlled, less stable. But a doorway all the same. A way out.

Milo yelled out, rushing forwards, hands grabbing at him from all sides, pulling him down.

Mkoll ran towards the burning dais, emptying the last of his autopistol’s clip into the Anarch’s back. They had to stop him. That had been the point of everything. They had to kill him here, now, before he slipped away and became invisible and untraceable for another decade or more.

Holofurnace punched a raving etogaur aside and grabbed the dead excubitor’s fallen power lance. Other excubitors were rushing at him, lances raised to strike.

The lance was long and heavy, more a halberd than a spear. Its blade tip was as wide as a cleaver and as long as a tactical gladius. Its weight and balance were poor.

But it was not so different from the wyrm-spears he had learned to handle back on Ithaka.

He pulled it back, right arm crooked, left extended before him, the lance horizontal beside his face. He saw Mkoll, far below, skzerret in hand, clambering onto the dais to grab at the fleeing magister.

The Tanith huntsman had been right. It had come down to straight silver at the last.

To bare blades.

Holofurnace let his fly. The cast was good. The shaft flew as true as a sea-lance. He saw it strike, slicing into the Anarch’s back, driving deep, cutting through, transfixing the daemon’s feathered torso.

He saw the daemon stumble forwards. He saw the subspace gate shatter, unfurl and then collapse in a wash of obscene light.

The excubitors fell on him, striking him down with hacking, butchering blows. He fought at them, clawing and punching. Their hands were on him, inhumanly strong, pinning him, gripping him. He could not break free.

Holofurnace looked up, blood streaming down his face, and met the eyes of the excubitor who would end him.

‘Vahooth voi sehn!’ the excubitor screamed as he brought the lance blade down.

‘Ithaka!’ Holofurnace replied with the last breath he would ever take.