Eisenhorn Omnibus

to our cause now, and reassured me into the bargain.

Three months after leaving Orbul Infanta in such haste, we risked a run to Gloricent, an outlying but prosperous trade world in the Antimar sub-sector, another division of the Scarus Sector, just two sub-sectors over from the Helican sub itself. Though worlds like Gudran and Thracian Primaris were a good four months away by starship, it felt a little like being home. Disguised, Medea and I visited the sea-lashed stone piles of one of the main trade-hives, and procured a pair of astropaths, hiring their services from the local commercial guild on an open-ended lease.

Their names were Adgur and Ueli, both young males, both psychically capable but dull-witted and emotionless. Their young heads were shaved and their plugs shiny and new, and they spoke to me in overly formal ways that sounded like the parrot-learned etiquette it sadly was. But their eyes were ringed with darkness and their flesh was losing its youthful lustre. The rigour of the astropathic life was already taking its toll.

Using them, I sent fresh communiques that superceded the original ones and revised certain aspects of my scheme. None of the messages now suggested the sort of trial meetings I had attempted with Gladus. I would not give so much away now.

After a week, and no reponses, we left Gloricent and went, via Mimonon to Sarum, the capital world of the Antimar sub-sector. I managed to do some useful work in its libraries, but backed off when a sour little confessor on a research sabbatical took to following me as if he recognised me.

While at anchor off Sarum, I got my first responses, all coded: from Bequin on Messina, and from Aemos on Gudrun. Both reported that their parts of the plan were going much more smoothly than mine had. Two days later, a partially scrambled astropathic message came from Inshabel on Elvara Cardinal. What parts I got of it seemed to indicate some success. I was impatient to know more.

The week before we left Sarum, I received two more, both anonymous, one from Thracian Primaris, the other from a cluster of slave-worlds that owed fealty to the Salies Province of the Ophidian sub-sector. From the careful code and language of both, I recognised their senders.

My spirits lifted.

After that improvement, things again seemed to slow and stagnate. There was no progress, and no further communications. We were forced to quit Lorwen, our next stop after Sarum, with unseemly haste, when a flotilla of warships from Battlefleet Reaver arrived. I know now that the Battlefleet manoeuvres at Lorwen – and incidentally at Sarum and Femis Major too – were part of a major precautionary deployment against a pair of space hulks that had suddenly roamed into the sub-sector. But they caused us over thirteen weeks of anxious hiding amongst the brown and black dwarf stars of an extinguished stellar nursery.

Another Candlemas went by while we were in the empyrean, en route to the Drewlian Group. Medea, Maxilla and I marked it together, just the three of us. The two astropaths and the navigator were not invited to attend. I raised a glass to toast the continued success of our mission. I don't think I would have been so hearty if I had known it would be another full year before the final act of the plan would play out.

I spent the first four months of 342 fruitlessly engaged in a search for the celebrated precog-hermit Lukas Cassian in the stinking marshes of Drewlia Two, only to learn that he had been murdered by a Monodominant cult

four years earlier. During that quest, I terminated the activities of a plague- daemon sect infesting the marshlands. That was quite an undertaking in its own right, but my full account of it is filed in the Inquisition archives separately, and it has no bearing on this record. Besides, I still regard it bitterly as an interruption and waste of time. Neither will I set down here the full story of Nathan Inshabel's ventures on Elvara Cardinal, or Harlon Nayl's frankly extraordinary experiences on Bimus Tertius, though both tales connect to this record. Inshabel has written his own, refreshingly witty account of his exploits, which may be accessed by those with the appropriate clearance, something I recommend as illuminating and rewarding. Nayl asked me not to include his story, and has never committed it to record. It may be learned only by those with the temerity to ask him and the money to pay for a long night's serious drinking.

All this while, I remained an Imperial outlaw, wanted by the Inquisition for my heresies. It is interesting to note that at no time during this period did the Inquisition formally refute or overturn the carta I had declared on Quixos.

The year 343.M41 was half gone already by the time the Essene took me to Thessalon, a feudal world near Hesperus in the Helican sub-sector. It had been chosen by Nayl as the point for our secret congregation. Commanding a twenty man field team selected from my staff on Gudrun, he arrived a week before the rest of us to secure the location and make sure we were not compromised. His preparations were thorough and ingenious. No one entered the area without him knowing it, nor could anyone have done so. At the slightest sign of outside interruption or official interference, we would have ample time to withdraw and flee. As a final precaution, I was the last to arrive.

Thessalon is a tough little world whose population lives in a dark age and knows nothing of the Imperium or the galaxy beyond its skies.

The meeting place was a rained keep in the north of the second continent, two thousand kilometres from the nearest indigenous community. A few lonely animal herders and subsistence farmers undoubtedly saw the lights of our ships in their heavens, but to them they were just the portents of the gods and the bright eyes of fabulous beasts.

Medea deposited me at the edge of a conifer forest at nightfall, and then took the gun-cutter back to stand off as air-cover, ready to redeploy at a moment's notice. For the first time in over two standard years, I was dressed as an inquisitor in black leather, storm coat and proudly displayed rosette. I also wore my faith-harness with the engraving Puritus. Damn anyone who believed I wasn't worthy of it.

Nayl, in combat armour, with a laser carbine cradled over one arm, appeared out of the trees and greeted me. We shook hands. It was good to see him again. His men, who were all around I was sure, were invisible in the gathering darkness.

Nayl led me through the black woods into a break in the trees where the pine tops framed a perfect oval of starfilled mauve. The keep, a jumbled pile of grey stone, stood in the clearing, with hooded lamps glowing from the lower slit windows.

Nayl walked me past and around the alarm-sensors, the tripwires and the beams of motion detectors that webbed the structure. Servitor-skulls from my personal arsenal hovered in the shadows, alert and armed.

Bequin and Aemos met me under the broken entrance arch. Aemos looked pale and worried, but his face broke into a warm smile as he saw me. Bequin hugged me.

'How many?' I asked her.

'Four/ she said.

Not bad. Not great, but not bad. It rather depended who those four were.

'And everything else?'

All the preparations are now set. We can begin this undertaking at any time,' Aemos said.

We have a target?'

We do. You'll learn how when we brief everyone.'

'Good/ I paused. Anything else I should know?'

All three of them shook their heads.

'Let's do it then/1 said.

Despite all the precautions, I was taking my life in my hands. I was presenting myself, voluntarily, to four members of the Inquisition. I was trusting that my previous friendships and allegiances with them would count for more man the accusations Osma had laid at my door. These four were the only four who had responded out of the original twenty communiques. Nayl had vetted each one, but there was still a very real chance that any or all of them had attended simply to execute the declared heretic Gregor Eisenhorn. I would soon know.

As I stepped into the main, candlelit chamber, a hush killed the small talk and six