One swung at me with a long-bladed halberd and I blew off his head. Just. My body was tired and my reactions were damnably slow.
I saw Arianrhod. She was a balletic blur, her beaded hair streaming out above her flying cloak. Barbarisater purred in her hands.
She severed the neck of one shadow with a backward slash, then pirouetted around and chopped another in two from neck to pelvis. The sabre was moving so fast I could barely see it. She stamped hard and reversed her direction of movement, causing a third shadow to sprawl as he overshot her. His head flew off, and the sabre swept on to impale a fourth without breaking its fluid motion. Then Arianrhod swept around, the sword held horizontally over her right shoulder. The steel haft of the fifth shadow's polearm was cut in two and he staggered back. Barbarisater described a figure of eight in the air and another shadow fell, cut into several sections.
The last minion turned and fled. A shot from Bequin's laspistol brought him down.
A pulse was pounding in my temple and I realised I had to sit down before I passed out. Qus grabbed me by the arm and helped me down onto a block of fallen wall stone.
'Gregor?'
'I'm all right, Alizebeth… give me a moment…'
'You shouldn't have come, you old fool! You should have left this to your disciples!'
'Shut up, Alizebeth.'
'I will not, Gregor. It's high time you understood your own limits.'
I looked up at her. 'I have no limits/ I said.
Qus laughed involuntarily.
'I believe him, Mistress Bequin/ said Ravenor, stepping from the shadows. Emperor damn his stealth, even Arianrhod had not seen him coming. She had to force her sabre down to stop it slicing at him.
Gideon Ravenor was a shade shorter than me, but strong and well-made. He was only thirty-four years old. His long black hair was tied back from his sculpted, high cheek-boned face. He wore a grey bodyglove and a long leather storm coat. The psycannon mounted on his left shoulder whirred and clicked around to aim at Arianrhod.
'Careful, swordswoman,' he said. 'My weapon has you squarely'
'And it will still have me squarely when your head is lying in the dust/ she replied.
They both laughed. I knew they had been lovers for over a year, but still in public they sparred and sported with each other.
Ravenor snapped his fingers and his companion, the festering mutant Gonvax, shambled out of hiding, drool stringing from his thick, malformed lips. He carried a flamer, the fuel-tanks strapped to the hump of his twisted back.
I rose. 'What have you found?' I asked Ravenor.
The Beldame – and a way in,' he said.
Beldame Sadia's lair was in the sacrarium beneath the main chapel of the ruin. Ravenor had scouted it carefully, and found an entry point in one of the raptured crypts that perhaps even she didn't know about.
My respect for Ravenor was growing daily. I had never had a disciple like him. He excelled at almost every skill an inquisitor is meant to have. I looked forward to the day when I supported his petition to inquisitorial status. He deserved it. The Inquisition needed men like him.
Single-file, we entered the crypt behind Ravenor. He drew our attention carefully to every pitfall and loose flag. The stench of salt and old bones was intolerable, and I felt increasingly weak in the close, hot air.
We emerged into a stone gallery that overlooked a wide subterranean chamber. Pitch-lamps sputtered in the darkness and there was a strong smell of dried herbs and fouler unguents.
Beings were worshipping in the chamber. Worshipping is the only word I can use. Naked, daubed in blood, twenty depraved humans were conducting a dark eldar rite around a torture pit in which a battered man was chained and stretched.
The stink of blood and excrement wafted to me. I tried not to throw up, for I knew the effort would make me pass out.
There, you see him?' Ravenor whispered into my ear as we crawled to the edge of the gallery.
I made out a pale-skinned ghoul in the distant shadows.
'A haemonculus, sent by the Kabal of the Fell Witch to witness the Beldame's practices/
