Lord Glaw wilted from the confrontation, his bravado spent. Many of the workers present were weeping with the trauma of the exchange, and two of the guards were throwing up.
Shaking, I looked round at my companions. Fischig was ashen-faced and trembling, his eyes closed. Rhizor had curled up in a ball in the ashy mud, his back against the wall.
Bequin had vanished.
FIFTEEN
Exposed in the midst of the foe
An ill-matched war.
Flight.
Ihad a second to realise that wherever bequin had gone, it had left us exposed, outside the veil of her untouchable aura. I heard a cry, a strangled warning from the old ecclesiarch that was immediately accompanied by the hoot of sirens.
In the landing yard, guards were racing towards us. Dazzo was pointing directly at the section of ruin that concealed us. Locke pulled a laspistol from his robe. Angry voices, the raucous bark of cygnids.
'Fischig!' I cried. 'Fischig! Move or we're dead!'
He blinked, still pale, as if he didn't recognise his own name.
I slapped him hard around the side of his head.
'Move, chastener!' I yelled.
The first of the guards had reached the ruins, and one was kicking his way in through a boarded-up door. I saw his staring face looking out of a dirty black visor. He raised his lasgun.
I swung the powerful carbine up and laced him and the doorway with a spray of laser shots. Stone and wood debris spat and flew from the multiple impacts.
Las-shots whined in through gaps in the stone work and exploded against the outside wall.
Fischig's heavy stubber chattered into life. He played the sweep of blazing tracer shots down the dark cavities of the ruin to our left, tearing apart two more guards who were forcing their way in.
More guards, to my right, fired their weapons. My las-carbine crackled on full auto, a blur of high-pitched whines, as I raked the narrow entrance and dropped another three.
Still firing, Fischig backed into the depths of the ruin.
'Come on!' he snarled. I backed with him, our weapons laying down a storm of explosive metal and piercing energy that rippled across the rain walls, scattering debris, spraying ash dust and bursting bodies.
Rhizor, his mind utterly gone with terror, lay on the ground. I grabbed him by the scruff of his rags and dragged him after us. He fought at me, despairing.
A large figure came leaping in though the window space in the wall through which we had observed the dealings in the yard. It was Locke. He rolled as he landed, his laspistol retching shots.
One shot clipped my left shoulder. Another three slammed into Rhizor's back and he toppled into me, knocking me flat.
Fischig saw Locke, and swung round, his finger not lifting from the stub-ber's blunt trigger. The rapidly cycling mechanism of the heavy weapon made a high, grinding metallic noise overlaid with the frenetic blasts of the shots.
The scant cover around Locke disintegrated, and he cried out as he threw himself behind a section of wall. He fired as he moved, and Fischig granted in pain as a las-shot punched into his side.
'Eisenhorn! You bastard!' Locke bellowed. I pulled myself out from under Rhizor's corpse, sad that that ragged slave had paid such a price for assisting an inquisitor. Another crime on the shoulders of Gorgone Locke.
Damning the ship master's name, I pulled a frag grenade from my pack, and tossed it in Locke's direction. Then Fischig and I moved as fast as we could out through the rear of the smoke- filled ruin.
The grenade blew out the back of the structure. I hoped to the Emperor it had torn Locke limb from limb.
Coughing and spitting, Fischig and I came out into a ditch that ran behind the rained dwellings of North Qualm and the newer modular buildings. Angled over us were the large flak-board baffles of the ash-screens.
Las-shots chipped and whacked into the screens and wailed down the dim ditch. Guards tumbled into the ditch twenty metres away, rabidly howling cygnids pouring in with them.
Fischig made the ditch his killing field, and emptied his second dram of ammunition down the length, pulverising guard and canine alike. We hurried in the opposite direction as he straggled to clamp in a fresh dram.
Guards were shooting at us through the ruins, blowing chunks from the mouldering stonework. We ran on, chased by the furious salvos.
The ditch ran out into a small yard where an eight-wheeler truck was parked. We exchanged shots with three guards who rounded the corner into the yard and dropped them, but a fourth appeared, loosing a trio of cygnids from their leashes. Baying, they pounded across the yard. I killed
one with my carbine, but the track blocked any shots at the others. The big vehicle rocked as one leapt up into its frame. A moment later, it was leaping over onto us. I put a las-round through its skull as it came down, its muscled bulk just missing me. The other came out from under the truck, filthy with axle grease, and leapt at Fischig. It knocked him over, its huge jaws locked around his armoured forearm.
I drew my powersword and thrust the crackling blade through its body.
More shots, thumping into the truck.
'Get up!' I told Fischig as we rolled the canine's dead weight off him.
The entire compound closing around us, we sprinted to the rear of a modular shed and broke the door in.
It was an equipment store, stacked with spare blades for rock drills, spools of cable, lamp-cells, and all manner of other mining equipment. We moved low between the piles of equipment, hearing shouts and running footsteps outside.
I paused, changing cells in my carbine, and keyed my vox-link.
Thorn wishes aegis, rapturous beasts below/
'Aegis, arising, the colours of space/ came the response immediately.
'Razor delphus pathway/1 instructed, 'Pattern ivory!'
'Pattern confirm. In six. Aegis, arising/
Guards burst into the back of the shed, and Fischig blew them back out through the prefab wall with a wild burst of shots.
I looked around, and saw a stack of black metal boxes raised on a pallet in the corner of the shed. The paper labels were old and faded, but I prised off the lid of one box and confirmed their contents.
'Get ready to move/ I said, arming my second grenade.
'Oh shit!' said Fischig, seeing what I was doing. He was already half out the door as I placed the grenade on the top of the boxes.
We came out firing, met by a dozen or more guards who were sectioning the street looking for us. Most were pit guards in their black, ugly armour, but three were naval security troops in black cloth fatigues, no doubt part of the traitor captain's contingent.
We fired as we ran. The grenade was on a ten-second fuse. The fact that we ran through the midst of them caught them unawares. None of them was able to get a clean shot off.
