We approached the great monument, crunching up the black, frost-coated steps.
I halted. Where are the tomb's custodians?'
'Making their rounds,' I was told.
I glanced at Vibben and shook my head. She slid her hand into her fur-edged robes.
'Knowing we approach?' I urged, addressing the custodian again. 'Knowing we expect to meet them?'
'I will check,' said the custodian, the one who had circulated the slate. He pushed on up the steps, the phosphor light on his pole bobbing.
The other two seemed ill at ease.
I beckoned to Vibben, so she would follow me up after the leader.
We found him on a lower terrace, gazing at the strewn bodies of four custodians, their light poles fizzling out around them.
'H-how?' he stammered.
'Stay back/ Vibben told him and drew her weapon. Its tiny amber Armed rune glowed in the darkness.
I took out my blade, igniting it. It hummed.
The south entry of the tombs was open. Shafts of golden light shone out. All my fears were rapidly being confirmed.
We entered, Vibben sweeping the place from side to side with her handgun. The hall was narrow and high, lit by chemical glow-globes. Intruding frost was beginning to mark the polished basalt walls.
A few metres inside, another custodian lay dead in a stiffening mirror of blood. We stepped over him. To each side, hallways opened up, admitting us to the hibernation stacks. In every direction, rows and rows of ice-berths ranged down the smoothed basalt chambers.
It was like walking into the Imperium's grandest morgue.
Vibben swept soundlessly to the right and I went left.
I admit I was excited by now, eager to close and conclude a business that had lasted six years. Eyclone had evaded me for six whole years! I studied his methods every day and dreamed of him every night.
Now I could smell him.
I raised my visor.
Water was pattering from the roof. Thaw water. It was growing warmer in here. In their ice-berths, some of the dim figures were stirring.
Too early! Far too early!
Eyclone's first man came at me from the west as I crossed a trunk-junction corridor. I spun, the power sword in my hand, and cut through his neck before his ice-axe could land.
The second came from the south, the third from the east. And then more. More.
A blur.
As I fought, I heard furious shooting from the vaults away to my right. Vibben was in trouble.
I could hear her over the vox-link in our hoods: 'Eisenhorn! Eisenhorn!'
I wheeled and cut. My opponents were all dressed in heat-gowns, and carried ice-tools that made proficient weapons. Their eyes were dark and unforthcoming. Though they were fast, there was something in them that suggested diey were doing this mindlessly, by order.
The power sword, an antique and graceful weapon, blessed by the Provost of Inx himself, spun in my hand. With five abrupt moves I made corpses out of them and left their blood vapour drifting in the air.
'Eisenhorn!'
I turned and ran. I splashed heavily down a corridor sluiced with melt water. More shots from ahead. A sucking cry.
I found Vibben face down across a freezer tube, frozen blood gluing her to the sub-zero plastic. Eight of Eyclone's servants lay sprawled around her. Her weapon lay just out of reach of her clawing hand, the spent cell ejected from the grip.
I am forty-two standard years old, in my prime by Imperial standards, young by those of the Inquisition. All my life, I have had a reputation for being cold, unfeeling. Some have called me heartless, ruthless, even cruel.
I am not. I am not beyond emotional response or compassion. But I possess – and my masters count this as perhaps my paramount virtue – a singular force of will. Throughout my career it has served me well to draw on this facility and steel myself, unflinching, at all that this wretched galaxy can throw at me. To feel pain or fear or grief is to allow myself a luxury I cannot afford.
Lores Vibben had served with me for five and a half years. In that period she had saved my life twice. She saw herself as my aide and my bodyguard, yet in truth she was more a companion and a fellow warrior. When I recruited her from the clan-slums of Tornish, it was for her combat skills and brutal vigour. But I came to value her just as much for her sharp mind, soft wit and clear head.
