Half-unconscious with pain, the Librarian opened his vox-link.
First Master Auguston heard the roar of bolter fire and turned.
*That sounds like a whole d.a.m.ned squad unloading!" he roared. *Where is that?"
The sergeant beside him checked his auspex.
*Locator places the weapon discharge in the western walkway, my lord," he reported. *Beside the Praetorium."
Auguston"s squad turned, weapons raised, as warriors approached along the hallway. It was the Lion"s man Holguin, and a band of his Dark Angels.
They faced each other uneasily for a moment.
*Anything?" asked Auguston.
*He left grenades seeded in the beds of the ornamental garden," replied Holguin, *and two more of yours dead outside the Sacristy."
*I will have his head on a spike," said Auguston.
The vox crackled.
*This is Prayto! Respond!"
*Auguston," the First Master replied.
*He was here, Phratus! At the Praetorium. Where are you?"
*In the hall of the Eastern Communication."
*Then he"s coming your way, Phratus. I can sense him. He"s coming your way and he"s coming fast."
*t.i.tus? t.i.tus?"
The link was dead. Auguston looked at Holguin, his combi-bolter raised.
*You hear that, Dark Angel? It appears we may be the ones to end this."
Holguin was holding his executioner"s blade.
*It is an honour I am happy to share," he replied.
Auguston gestured, and the Ultramarines spread down the long, high-ceilinged hallway. The Dark Angels moved to the left, covering the closest of the doorways.
*This is Auguston," the First Master said into his vox. *I have it on good authority that our tormentor is moving into the Eastern Communication, heading towards the Chapel of Memorial. Available squads close in. Block access to the Sword Hall and the Temple of Correction."
He waited.
*Respond!" he hissed.
There was a shiver on the vox, distant static, like the dry skeleton of a voice.
*Roboute..." it said.
*Who speaks?" Auguston demanded.
*Roboute..." the dry crackle repeated. It was almost crooning the name.
*Flames of Terra," Auguston said, looking at Holguin. *He"s even inside the d.a.m.ned vox."
A bang made them all turn. The light bank at the far end of the Communication went out. Quickly, in sequence, the other light banks along the hallway went out, each one with its own bang. Darkness marched towards them along the hall.
The lights went out overhead, and then behind them. Then the lights were extinguished all the way to the far end of the Communication.
Silence. No emergency power cut in. No secondary lighting. It was as though the darkness had obeyed Konrad Curze, and all light had fled from him in panic.
Every helm visor lit up, Ultramarines and Dark Angels alike. High resolution enhancement searched the darkened Communication for movement. Auguston and his men saw the area as a green twilight.
*Roboute..." the vox whispered.
Suddenly, Holguin was moving. The ma.s.sive, round-tipped executioner"s sword caught the infralight on its edge as it swung. There was a shadow, just a shadow... No, even less than that. Just the hint or memory of a shadow. The blade caught something, a tatter of night.
Then there was an impact, b.l.o.o.d.y and crunching. Holguin lurched backwards and crashed against the wall. The Dark Angel beside him seemed to pivot oddly. His side came open, armour and torso parting to release blood and slippery organs.
Auguston began firing. They all began firing.
In the rapid, h.e.l.lish flash of the multiplying gunfire, Auguston turned full circle, hunting for his foe.
He suddenly found a face immediately in front of his, just centimetres away, staring straight into his soul. The face had eyes like black suns, and skin as white as a bone desert, made sickly by the green infralight. Long, ragged, black hair half-stuck across the cheek and nose, glued by the blood of dead men. The mouth leered, revealing blackened teeth and blue gums. The leer stretched the mouth open impossibly, inhumanly wide.
Auguston heard laughter.
He lunged at Curze, firing his combi-bolter. The face and the shadow, even the insane laughter, all vanished in a moment. In dismay, Auguston saw that his shots had felled a Dark Angel on the far side of the hall.
Other men were still firing. It was madness, confusion. All discipline was lost. It had scarcely been seconds since the first instant of the fight. Auguston realised he was bellowing, expressing his fury as desperate non-words.
Was this fear? Was this actually fear?
He saw a legionary, an Ultramarine, struck into the air. The warrior had been touched by nothing more than a piece of shadow, the tatter of a butcher-bird"s black, ragged wing, but the impact was as though he had been fired from a cannon. Flailing, he struck one of the hall"s great windows, shoulders first, and went through it in a blistering cascade of broken gla.s.s.
The helm of an Ultramarines sergeant rolled along the stone floor at Auguston"s feet.
There was still a head in it.
*Face me!" Auguston roared. *Face me like a man! You coward! You night-thing!"
Curze"s answer was a clawed hand that punched through ceramite, armoured under-mail and fibre-sheaves into the living gut.
Auguston fell forward, blood spewing out of the eviscerating wound. So much blood had come out of the dead Ultramarines and Dark Angels that there was almost a pressurised tidal flow along the Communication"s floor. The darkness stank of blood a the blood of good s.p.a.ce Marines.
Curze paused for a second, a towering, skeletal shadow in the twilight, one clawed hand raised, clutching steaming ropes of Auguston"s viscera as some ragged trophy.
*I"m not dead yet, you b.a.s.t.a.r.d," Auguston spluttered, bubbles of blood-froth bursting at his lips. Soaked almost head to foot in his own gore, he came at Curze with the executioner"s sword clenched in his right fist.
From inside the candle-lit Chapel of Memorial, the sounds of the Night Haunter"s campaign of terror could be distinctly heard: the alarms, the frantic vox, the sounds of running feet, gunfire, the random detonation of grenades and other devices from the east, the west, from every quarter.
*It sounds as though a war rages through the Fortress," said the vision of Warsmith Dantioch.
*Be thankful you are not here," replied Alexis Polux. *I have heard many tales of Curze"s malevolent and vicious talents, but this night he seems to be excelling himself."
Polux glanced around as power failed in the hallway outside the chapel. He could smell burning. He drew his bolt pistol, favouring his right hand, not his healing new one.
*I believe our audience for the day is over," said Polux. *I must take my leave and a.s.sist my brothers in halting this madness."
*Then I bid you farewell in your efforts, Polux," said the warsmith.
Polux glanced back at Dantioch icily, as if the earnest wishes of an Iron Warrior were more of a d.a.m.nation than a blessing.
Three Ultramarines suddenly entered the chapel, weapons drawn, hunting for targets. When they sighted Polux, they lowered their aim.
*Has he come this way?" demanded the officer.
*Curze? No," replied Polux.
*This area must be secured," the officer told the two legionaries with him.
*You think he"s close?" Polux asked, walking towards him.
*He"s everywhere," the officer replied grimly. *The order came "Kill all the shadows". I thought... I thought that was nonsense at first. But he is like a daemon."
*He is a son of the Emperor," Dantioch said from the l.u.s.trous vision of Sotha"s tuning floor behind them. *He is a demiG.o.d. It is not possible to overestimate his potential."
Dantioch had risen uneasily from his high-backed chair and come to the very edge of the communication field.
*Beware," he said suddenly, looking around as he responded to the empathic vibrations of the quantum field. *My dear brothers, bewarea"
All the candles in the chapel blew out. The sudden gloom was wreathed with tendrils of grey smoke roiling from the wicks. Now the greater proportion of light came from the polished cavern on Sotha, falling into the night-struck chapel through the communication field, and illuminated the room in an uncanny fashion.
The chapel had four sets of double doors, one at each compa.s.s point. The doors at the north end splintered open, demolished by brute force. Two figures came through, locked together, reeling across the chapel"s broad, paved floor. One was First Master Auguston, a raw-headed spectre drenched from head to foot in blood, Holguin"s long blade in his hand. The other was darkness manifest a a bigger, crueller, more elongated shape, an insubstantial horror, the fleeting ragged shadow left on the ground when a rook flies fast across a winter sky.
Polux and the Ultramarines rushed forward. The combatants were so interlocked that it was impossible to take a shot without risking Auguston. Polux hesitated, watching in horror. The Night Haunter seemed as a wraith, a mosaic, a suggestion of claws, of a ragged cloak, of long hair straggled and streaming, of a face white as a bared skull, of a black leering mouth.
*He"s here!" the Ultramarines officer yelled into his vox. *The chapel! The chapel!"
Auguston fell, broken, spent. He landed on his knees and, for an instant, Polux could see the appalling damage that had been wrought upon him. The First Master had been ripped open and gutted, half his face torn off. That Auguston was still moving spoke to his courage and transhuman thresholds.
The executioner"s sword was no longer in the First Master"s hand. Hurled, it crossed the chapel like a spear, and impaled the Ultramarines officer through the neck before he could repeat his call. He fell, drowning noisily in his own blood, air whistling out of the holes in his throat.
Polux and the two Ultramarines opened fire, but there seemed to be nothing to hit.
*For Terra"s sake, Polux!" Dantioch yelled from the edge of the communication field. *Flee! You can"t fight him. Flee now! Regroup!"
Claws came out of the smoking darkness and sheared through one of the Ultramarines. The other ran forward, firing repeated shots that hit nothing except his slain comrade. Darkness twisted around him, and his head turned through one hundred and eighty degrees with a brittle crack. The Ultramarine fell across his comrade"s corpse.
*Polux! Run, brother! Run!" Dantioch yelled in exasperation.
Polux had frozen. He turned slowly, bolt pistol raised, darkness melting and flowing around him. Silence hissed and breathed like a living thing. He could feel the monster close at hand. He could feel stinking evil circling him in the darkness. Nearby, Auguston let out a terrible gurgling sound. Spasms shook his kneeling form as death finally overwhelmed him. He toppled onto his side.
*You"ve killed many tonight, monster," Polux told the darkness, still turning, still hunting. *None I doubt as great a warrior as that man now expired. None I doubt that put up so furious a fight against your evil. I hope I last half as long."
The silence breathed.
*Moreover," said Polux, *I hope I bathe in your blood before the night is done."
*To your left!" Dantioch yelled.
Polux swung and fired. He heard something. Had he actually made contact? Drawn blood?
*To your right!" Dantioch shouted.
Polux turned again and fired two more rounds. The warsmith was using the field"s empathic vibrations to read the darkness and detect the Night Haunter"s movements.
*Where now?" Polux yelled back. *Where is he?"
*At your back!" Dantioch roared.
Polux wheeled, but he was not fast enough. He took a glancing blow that knocked him to the floor, hard. The bolt pistol skittered away from him across the flagstones.
*Move!" Dantioch cried.
Barabas Dantioch, the renegade warsmith Polux rolled sideways desperately. Claws came out of nothingness, sweeping in a downstroke that split the flagstones where he had been lying.
He struggled forward on hands and knees, groping for his fallen weapon.
*No! Keep moving!" Dantioch yelled.
Polux hurled himself aside again as the claws came again and again. He was almost on top of the fallen Ultramarine. Heedless, frantic, Polux wrenched the executioner"s sword out of the man"s neck.
*Left! Left!" Dantioch cried.
Polux struck left with the long blade, once, twice.
*Ahead!"
Polux swung another blow. With this one, he felt a contact through the hilt. Speckles of black blood dotted the flagstones. He had left a mark. He would make a good account of his death, as Auguston had.
*Right! And behind!" Dantioch shouted.
Polux put his weight into the sword as he turned, and felt the heavy blade rebound off claws. There was a shower of sparks as the Caliban-forged steel deflected Curze"s talons. Polux followed the block with another swing, and then another wild strike, hoping to keep the monster at bay.