had lain.
'Damn! Damn!'
Neve limped down the slope to me. 'Eisenhorn?'
The daemonhost! Did you see it?'
She shook her head. A loud explosion rolled from the far side of the pylon.
'You killed it, didn't you?'
'Not even slightly,' I replied.
'Gregor!' Bequin shrieked.
Prophaniti was behind me, hanging in the air, incandescent with power. It was naked, and wore the terrible wounds we had inflicted like medals. The right leg, frayed at the knee, dribbled glowing white ichor. Entry wounds and burns bubbled and smoked across its chest. Its head hung slack on a neck broken by Husmaan's hot-shot. It spread its arms and a hand that was just a thumb and a mangled palm sprayed lightning into the midnight grass.
'Nice… try…' the slack head gurgled.
With its robe gone, I could see its body was strung with chains, padlocks and bindings. Stitching needles and other iron awls were pierced into its luminous flesh. Various amulets hung from the chains, or from the barbed wire looped around its neck.
'Run,' I said to Neve and Bequin. 'Run!'
Neve raised her silver cane and triggered the launcher.
The grenade hit Prophaniti in the lower torso and blew it back a few metres with a flash of fyceline.
It rushed back towards us, moaning and chattering in a warp-cursed language.
Bequin grabbed both me and Neve. Her untouchable quality was our only defence now, and she knew it.
Prophaniti stopped short of us, just a metre or so away, hovering in the air and shining like a star. I could smell the rank stench of eternal murder about it.
Its broken neck made a sound like snapping twigs as it slowly turned its lolling head to look at us. The light of dead suns billowed from its eyes and mouth.
Bequin's fingers bit into my arm. The three of us looked up at it, hair ruffled by the warp-winds it generated.
Tenacious/ it said. 'No wonder Cherubael likes you. He said you employed untouchables. A wise move. You can't hurt me with your guns, but with her around, I can't touch you with my mind.'
'Fortunately, I don't have to/ it added.
It lashed out suddenly with its maimed hand. Neve shrieked as she was hurled aside. There was blood on Prophaniti's thumb talon.
Alizebeth's psychic deadness blocked its psychic rage. But not its physical assault.
It lashed out again, and I leapt back, dragging Bequin.
Prophaniti cackled.
'Alizebeth!' I yelled, and grabbed her by the hand. 'Stay with me!'
I drew my hanger. The short curved blade shone in Prophaniti's glare. The runes inscribed on the blade by the Ministorum glittered.
I swung hard, skillessly and frantic, the blade of the hunting sword biting into its rib-meat. It howled and flew back, smoke issuing from the gash.
I circled, hanger in my right hand, Bequin clinging to my left.
'You've done your homework. Pentagrammatic runes on your blade. A nice touch. They hurt!'
It lunged at me.
'But nothing like the hurt you will feel!'
Alizebeth screamed. She fell, and I struggled to hold on to her hand. If our contact broke, I would feel the full force of the daemonhost's power.
I blocked with my falcate blade, shredding the flesh off the left part of its chest, exposing the ribs.
Its talons ripped into my left shoulder and down my flank, ripping my body- armour into tatters.
Blood cascaded down inside my clothes.
I swung again, trying for an
It clenched its teeth in pain. The wards… hurt… but they are no… stronger… than the weapon… you should learn to… make your weapons sounder… next time…'
'Not that there will be… a next time….' it added. The hanger had become so hot, I let it go with a howl. Prophaniti tossed the buckled, molten steel aside. It had burned its hand terribly, but it didn't seem to notice.
'Now comes death/ it said, reaching for me.
The next few seconds are burned in my memory. I will never see such heroism again, I am sure. Captain Echbar and two of his Kasrkin troopers assaulted Prophaniti from the rear. Their lasguns wouldn't fire because Bequin and I were in their range-field.
Echbar body-tackled the daemonhost, smashing it away from us. Prophaniti hurled him aside, and then incinerated the second Kasrkin mid-leap with its eyes. The third jammed his Cadian bayonet up to the hilt in Prophaniti's breastbone. Fire exploded back from the wound, down the trooper's arm and engulfed him.
He fell back screaming as Echbar came in again, a ragged hole in his cheek and throat. His knife, clenched double-handed, split Prophaniti open down the back bone. The warp-energies that boiled out blew Echbar apart.
Screaming, Prophaniti writhed away through the air.
I knew it wasn't dead. I knew it couldn't really die.
But the Cadian elite had given me an opening by sacrificing their lives. They had fallen in the service of the God-Emperor, which is what every Cadian is born to do.
'Aegis! By scarlet inferno! Thorn redux!'
I screamed the words into my vox, clinging on to Bequin's hand.
Prophaniti came hurtling towards us.
Lights blazing, the gun-cutter surged in overhead in a killing run. The downdraft blasted the icy bracken flat and threw us over. Medea was low, so low…
The gun-servitors trained wing and chin turrets on the charging daemonhost.
When they opened up, their firepower was so monumental, they vapourised it.
The light went out.
I pulled Bequin to me as the drizzle of liquidised host-form rained on us out of the cold night.
I could hear Fischig calling my name.
'Help her/ I said to Fischig as I rose, and he scooped Bequin up.
I looked around. The place was littered with dead, most of them cultists. Inshabel had found Neve, lacerated but alive, twenty metres up the slope, and was calling for a medic.
The aft thrusters of the gun-cutter winked hot-white in the night sky as Medea banked around out of her ran to come down again.
Nayl, who had taken a flesh wound to the arm, leaned against the pylon and shut
