didn't know about.
My respect for Ravenor was growing daily. I had never had a disciple like him. He excelled at almost every skill an inquisitor is meant to have. I looked forward to the day when I supported his petition to inquisitorial status. He deserved it. The Inquisition needed men like him.
Single-file, we entered the crypt behind Ravenor. He drew our attention carefully to every pitfall and loose flag. The stench of salt and old bones was intolerable, and I felt increasingly weak in the close, hot air.
We emerged into a stone gallery that overlooked a wide subterranean chamber. Pitch-lamps sputtered in the darkness and there was a strong smell of dried herbs and fouler unguents.
Beings were worshipping in the chamber. Worshipping is the only word I can use. Naked, daubed in blood, twenty depraved humans were conducting a dark eldar rite around a torture pit in which a battered man was chained and stretched.
The stink of blood and excrement wafted to me. I tried not to throw up, for I knew the effort would make me pass out.
There, you see him?' Ravenor whispered into my ear as we crawled to the edge of the gallery.
I made out a pale-skinned ghoul in the distant shadows.
'A haemonculus, sent by the Kabal of the Fell Witch to witness the Beldame's practices/
I tried to make out detail, but the figure was too deep in the shadows.
I registered grinning teeth and some form of blade device around the right hand.
'Where's Pye?' asked Bequin, whispering too.
Ravenor shook his head. Then he seized my arm and squeezed. Even whispers were no longer possible.
The Beldame herself had entered the chamber.
She walked on eight, spider legs, a huge augmetic chassis of hooked arachnid limbs that skittered on the stones. Inquisitor Atelath, Emperor grant him rest, had destroyed her real legs one hundred and fifty years before my birth.
She was veiled in black gauze that looked like cobwebs. I could actually feel her evil like a fever-sweat.
She paused at the edge of the torture pit, raised her veil with withered hands and spat at the victim below. It was venom, squirted from the glands built into her mouth behind her augmetic fangs. The viscous fluid hit the sacrificial victim full in the face and he gurgled in agony as the front of his skull was eaten away.
Sadia began to speak, her voice low and sibilant. She spoke in the language of the dark eldar and her naked brethren writhed and moaned.
'I've seen enough/ I whispered. 'She's mine. Ravenor, can you manage the haemonculus?'
He nodded.
On my signal, we launched our attack, leaping down from the gallery, weapons blazing. Several of the worshippers were punched apart by Qus's heavy fire.
Whooping the battlecry of Carthae, Arianrhod flew at the haemonculus, way ahead of Ravenor.
I realised I had pushed it too far. I was giddy as I landed, and stumbled.
Her metal spider legs striking sparks from the flagstones, Beldame Sadia reared up at me, ululating. She pulled back her veil to spit at me.
Abruptly, she reeled backwards, thunderstruck by the combined force of Bequin and Zu Zeng who flanked her.
I gathered myself and fired at her, blowing one of the augmetic limbs off her spider-frame.
She spat anyway but missed. The venom sizzled into the cold stone slabs at my feet.
'Imperial Inquisition!' I bellowed. 'In the name of the hallowed God-Emperor, you and your kind are charged with treason and manifest disbelief!'
I raised my weapon. She flew at me.
Her sheer bulk brought me down.
One spider limb stabbed entirely through the meat of my left thigh. Her steel fangs, like curved needles, snarled into my face. I saw her eyes, for an instant, black and without limit or sanity.
She spat.
I wrenched my head around to avoid the corrosive spew, and fired my bolt pistol up into her.
The impact threw her backwards, all four hundred kilos of wizened witch and bionic carriage.
I rolled over.
The haemonculus had met Arianrhod's attack face on, the glaive around his right hand screaming as the xenos-made blades whirled. He was stick-thin and clad in shiny black leather, his grin a perpetual consequence of the way the colourless skin of his face was pinned back around his skull. He wore metal jewellery fashioned from the weapons of the warriors he had slain.
I could hear Ravenor crying out Arianrhod's name.
Barbarisater sliced at the darting eldar monster, but he evaded, his physical speed unbelievable.
She swung again, placing two perfect kill strokes that somehow missed him' altogether. He sent her lurching away in a mist of blood. For the first time since I had known her, I heard Arianrhod yelp in pain.
Flames belched across the chamber. Gonvax shambled forward, forever loyal to his master… and his master's lover. He tried to squirt flames at the haemonculus, but it was suddenly somehow behind him. Gonvax shrieked as the glaive eviscerated him.
With a howl, Arianrhod threw herself at the dark eldar. I saw her, for a moment, frozen in mid-air, her sabre descending. Then the two bodies struck each other, and flew apart.
The sabre had taken off the eldar's left arm at the shoulder. But his glaive…
I knew she was dead. No one could survive that, not even a noble swordswoman from far Carthae.
Bequin was pulling me up. 'Gregor! Gregor!'
Beldame Sadia, her spider carriage limping, was fleeing towards the staircase.
Something exploded behind me. I could hear Ravenor bellowing in rage and pain.
I ran after the Beldame.
The upper chapel, above ground, was silent and cold. Darknight flares glimmered through the lines of stained glass windows.
'You can't escape, Sadia!' I shouted, but my voice was thin and hoarse.
I glimpsed her as she skittered between the columns to my left. A shadow in the shadows.
'Sadia! Sadia, old hag, you have killed me! But you will die by my hand!'
To my right now, another skuttling shadow, half-seen. I moved that way.
I was stabbed hard from behind, in between my shoulder blades. I turned as I fell, and saw the manic face of the Beldame's arch-poisoner, Pye. He cackled and giggled, prancing, a spent
