I tried to make out detail, but the figure was too deep in the shadows.
I registered grinning teeth and some form of blade device around the right hand.
'Where's Pye?' asked Bequin, whispering too.
Ravenor shook his head. Then he seized my arm and squeezed. Even whispers were no longer possible.
The Beldame herself had entered the chamber.
She walked on eight, spider legs, a huge augmetic chassis of hooked arachnid limbs that skittered on the stones. Inquisitor Atelath, Emperor grant him rest, had destroyed her real legs one hundred and fifty years before my birth.
She was veiled in black gauze that looked like cobwebs. I could actually feel her evil like a fever-sweat.
She paused at the edge of the torture pit, raised her veil with withered hands and spat at the victim below. It was venom, squirted from the glands built into her mouth behind her augmetic fangs. The viscous fluid hit the sacrificial victim full in the face and he gurgled in agony as the front of his skull was eaten away.
Sadia began to speak, her voice low and sibilant. She spoke in the language of the dark eldar and her naked brethren writhed and moaned.
'I've seen enough/ I whispered. 'She's mine. Ravenor, can you manage the haemonculus?'
He nodded.
On my signal, we launched our attack, leaping down from the gallery, weapons blazing. Several of the worshippers were punched apart by Qus's heavy fire.
Whooping the battlecry of Carthae, Arianrhod flew at the haemonculus, way ahead of Ravenor.
I realised I had pushed it too far. I was giddy as I landed, and stumbled.
Her metal spider legs striking sparks from the flagstones, Beldame Sadia reared up at me, ululating. She pulled back her veil to spit at me.
Abruptly, she reeled backwards, thunderstruck by the combined force of Bequin and Zu Zeng who flanked her.
I gathered myself and fired at her, blowing one of the augmetic limbs off her spider-frame.
She spat anyway but missed. The venom sizzled into the cold stone slabs at my feet.
'Imperial Inquisition!' I bellowed. 'In the name of the hallowed God-Emperor, you and your kind are charged with treason and manifest disbelief!'
I raised my weapon. She flew at me.
Her sheer bulk brought me down.
One spider limb stabbed entirely through the meat of my left thigh. Her steel fangs, like curved needles, snarled into my face. I saw her eyes, for an instant, black and without limit or sanity.
She spat.
I wrenched my head around to avoid the corrosive spew, and fired my bolt pistol up into her.
The impact threw her backwards, all four hundred kilos of wizened witch and bionic carriage.
I rolled over.
The haemonculus had met Arianrhod's attack face on, the glaive around his right hand screaming as the xenos-made blades whirled. He was stick-thin and clad in shiny black leather, his grin a perpetual consequence of the way the colourless skin of his face was pinned back around his skull. He wore metal jewellery fashioned from the weapons of the warriors he had slain.
I could hear Ravenor crying out Arianrhod's name.
Barbarisater sliced at the darting eldar monster, but he evaded, his physical speed unbelievable.
She swung again, placing two perfect kill strokes that somehow missed him" altogether. He sent her lurching away in a mist of blood. For the first time since I had known her, I heard Arianrhod yelp in pain.
Flames belched across the chamber. Gonvax shambled forward, forever loyal to his master… and his master's lover. He tried to squirt flames at the haemonculus, but it was suddenly somehow behind him. Gonvax shrieked as the glaive eviscerated him.
With a howl, Arianrhod threw herself at the dark eldar. I saw her, for a moment, frozen in mid-air, her sabre descending. Then the two bodies struck each other, and flew apart.
The sabre had taken off the eldar's left arm at the shoulder. But his glaive…
I knew she was dead. No one could survive that, not even a noble swordswoman from far Carthae.
Bequin was pulling me up. 'Gregor! Gregor!'
Beldame Sadia, her spider carriage limping, was fleeing towards the staircase.
