I slid out my main weapon: a storm-bolter which I had sprayed green in memory of the prize sidearm I had lost somewhere on Eechan, may Librarian Brytnoth forgive me. This storm-gun was slightly larger and more powerful, but nothing like so well engineered as the boltpistol I had treasured.
On my hip I wore a Cadian hanger, a short, curved twin-edged sabre that replaced my beloved power sword. It was just a simple piece of sharp steel, but I'd had the hierarchs at the Ministorum of Kasr Derth make some modifications.
Still, in truth, I felt vulnerable going up that slope.
Nayl was to my left, fielding a combat-cannon. Husmaan to my right with his trustworthy long-las. Inshabel was to his right, armed with a brace of antique laspistols that had belonged to Inquisitor Roban. Fischig, hefting an old and trusted arbites-issue riot-gun, had gone wide to the far left.
Bequin, a long-barrelled autopistol in her gloved hand, was right beside me.
Behind us, Neve and her Kasrkin lurked, waiting for my signal.
Aemos was aboard the gun-cutter with Medea, hovering above the drop point, lights killed. They, rather than Neve and her elite, were my reassurance.
'What do you see?' I voxed.
'Nothing/ replied Husmaan and Nayl.
'I've got an angle into the seat of the pylon/ said Inshabel. 'I see lights/
'Confirm that/ crackled Fischig, wide to the left. There are men down there. I count eight, no ten. Twelve. Portable lights. They've got machines/
'Machines?'
'Handheld. Auspexes/
'Measuring again/ Neve whispered over the link.
Tm sure/ I said. Then I said, in Glossia: 'Thorn eyes flesh, rapturous beasts at hand. Aegis to arms, crucible. All points cowled. Razor torus pathway, pattern ebony/
My storm-gun made a loud click as I racked it.
The robed men working in the floodlights around the foot of the pylon froze and slowly turned from their work to look at me.
I walked down from the moor, through the ice-stiffened bracken, bracing my gun in a pose that could kill any one of them.
Bequin followed me a few steps behind, her pistol held loosely, ready to swing up.
I knew we were covered by Husmaan, Inshabel, Nayl and Fischig.
Who is the leader here?' I asked, panning my weapon around.
'I am/ said one of the robed figures.
'Step forward and identify yourself/1 said.
To whom?'
I raised the rosette plainly in my left hand. 'Imperial Inquisition/ Some of the robed men moaned with dismay.
The leader did not. He stepped forward. I could suddenly smell a cold, metallic scent, one that was not new to me.
A warning that came too late.
The leader slowly drew back his cowl. His angular, cruel head was hairless and a cold blue light shone out through his skin. Sharpened, steel-tipped horns sprouted from his brow. His eyes were white slits.
A daemonhost!
'Cherubael?' I said, foolishly, stupidly.
'Your witless ally is not here, Eisenhorn/ said the being, baring his teeth and gleaming with light.
'My name is Prophaniti/
FIFTEEN
Rosethorn.
What Cadians are born for.
The last thing I expected.
There were two ways for this to go. The first was for me to continue talking, and still be talking when the daemonhost killed me and tossed my smoking corpse on the piled bodies of my comrades. The second was for me to say 'Rosethorn' and place my trust in the mettle of my supporters and the ever-vigilant gaze of the holy God-Emperor.
I said 'Rosethorn.'
The thing, Prophaniti, was stepping towards me. I shot at it with my storm-gun, watching in horrid fascination as it caught the white hot bolt rounds out of the air in its outstretched hands, like a man idly catching slow-tossed racquet balls.
The bolts dulled to an ember-red in its palms, and it tossed them aside.
But its entire attention was on me.
Its mistake.
Husmaan's first hot-shot round cracked into the side of its head, and snapped its skull around. As it was reeling, its robes were ripped across by double laspistol fire from Inshabel. Then Fischig's riot-gun roared and knocked it down in the brittle bracken. Fischig liked to spend his free time hand-moulding the shot for his riot-gun's cartridges. Every pellet was silver, and stamped with a sacred sigil of warding that I had taught him long ago.
Prophaniti writhed in agony, the blessed buck-shot burning into its flesh. It started to rise, wrathful and frenzied, but a grinding whir rose from my left, a sound like a circular saw running up to speed.
Nayl's cycling drum-cannon raked the daemonhost and the earth around it, doing hideous damage. The blizzard of shots twisted it, ripping off one of its legs at the knee and the fingers off its left hand.
Eldritch power, white-cold like frost, spurted from its wounds like lava, and burned the soil.
The other cultists were moving now, pulling weapons and firing wildly into the night. The place lit up with shooting.
Las-fire came from behind us, startlingly close, whipping past our elbows and shoulders. Two of the cultists crumpled, one of them smashing over some of the erected floodlights.
Echbar and his Kasrkin charged in past us to engage.
In truth, I may say now that they were somehow more terrifying than the daemonhost. For Prophaniti was a supernatural thing, and one expected it to be horrifying.
The Kasrkin were just men. It made their actions all the more astonishing. Six white blurs, they fell upon the cultists, lasguns barking at close range. They wasted no shots. One shot, one kill. A cultist fled past me, and akasrkin swung to bring him down. his weapon refused to fire as its sight-auspex detected my bio-spoor in the range-field. A second later, I was no longer blocking the shot and the weapon spat.
The fleeing cultist tumbled over headlong in the brush.
More cultists had emerged from the other side of the pylon, and I could hear rapid exchanges of gunfire in that direction. Nayl's combat-cannon was making its distinctive metallic whir between bursts of fire. Inshabel's las-cracks overlapped themselves.
'Fischig!' I yelled. 'Lead off round the back of the pylon. See what you can find. Maybe take a damn prisoner before the Kasrkin slay them all!'
I turned back to deal with the ruined daemonhost. We had punished it badly, but I had no illusions as to its resilience.
Or rather… I had thought I hadn't.
Prophaniti was already gone, the ground still smoking and congealing where it
