before long. That would mean a round trip of at least a year. I had no time for it. I put the wrapped sword in my safebox. It barely fitted.
As I worked my way back to health, I considered Tantalid. Arnaut Tantalid had risen from the rank of confessor militant in the Missionaria Galaxia seventy years before to become one of the Ministorum's most feared and ruthless witch-hunters. Like many of his breed, he followed the doctrines of Sebastian Thor with such unswerving precision it bordered on clinical obsession.
To most of the common folk of the Imperium, there would be blessed litde to choose between an Ordo Xenos inquisitor such as myself and an ecclesiarchy witchkiller like Tantalid. We both hunt out the damning darkness that stalks mankind, we are both figures of fear and dread, we are both, so it seems, laws unto ourselves.
Twinned though we may be in so many ways, we could not be more distinct. It is my personal belief that the Adeptus Ministorum, the Imperium's vast organ of faith and worship, should focus its entire attention on the promulgation of the true church of the God-Emperor and leave the persecution of heretics to the Inquisition. Our jurisdictions often clash. There have, to my certain knowledge, been two wars of faith in the last century provoked and sustained by just such rivalry.
Tantalid and I had locked horns twice before. On Bradell's World, five decades earlier, we had faced each other across the marble floor of a synod court, arguing for the right to extradite the psyker Elbone Parsuval. On that
occasion, he had triumphed, thanks mainly to the strict Thorian mindset of the Ministorum elders of Bradell's World.
Then, just eight years ago, our paths had crossed again on Kuuma.
Tantalid's fanatical hatred – indeed, I would venture, fear – of the psyker was by then insurmountable. I made no secret of the fact that I employed psychic methods in the pursuit of my work. There were psychic adepts in my staff, and I myself had worked to develop my own psychic abilities over the years. Such is my right, as an authorised bearer of the Inquisition's seal.
In my eyes, he was a blinkered zealot with psychotic streak. In his, I was the spawn of witches and a heretic.
No courtroom argument for us on Kuuma. A little war instead. It lasted an afternoon, and raged through the tiered streets of the oasis town at Unat Akim.
Twenty-eight latent psykers, none older than fourteen, had been rooted out of the population of Kuuma's sprawling capital city during a purge, and sequestered prior to their collection by the Black Ships. They were recruits, a precious resource, untainted and ready to be shaped by the Adeptus Astropathicus into worthy servants of the God-Emperor. Some of them, perhaps, would have the ultimate honour of joining the choir of the Astro-nomican. They were frightened and confused, but this was their salvation.
Better to be found early and turned to good service than to remain undetected and become tainted, corrupt and a threat to our entire society.
But before the Black Ships could arrive to take them, they were spirited away by renegade slavers working in collusion with corrupt officials in the local Administratum. Vast sums could be made on the black market for unregistered, virgin psychic slaves.
I followed the slavers' trail across the seif dunes to Unat Akim with the intention of liberating the youngsters. Tantalid made his way there to exterminate them all as witches.
By the end of the fight, I had driven the witchfinder and his cohorts, mosdy foot soldiers of the Frateris Militia, out of the oasis town. Two of fhe young psykers had been killed in the crossfire, but the others were safely transferred into the hands of the Astropathicus.
Tantalid, fleeing Kuuma to lick his wounds, had tried to have me declared heretic, but the charges were swiftly overturned. The Ministorum had, at that time, no wish to court conflict with their allies in the Inquisition.
I had expected, known even, that Tantalid would return sometime to plague me. It was a personal matter now, one which his fanatical disposition would fix upon and transform into a holy calling.
But the last I had heard, he had been leading an ecclesiarchy mission into the Ophidian sub-sector in support of the century-long Purge Campaign there.
I wondered what had brought him to Lethe Eleven at so inopportune a moment.
* * *
By the time I was back on my feet, two weeks later, the Darknight was over and I knew the answer, in general if not specific terms.
I was hobbling around on a cane in the private mansion I had rented in Lethe Majeure when Aemos brought me the news. The great Ophidian Campaign was over.
'Great success/ he announced. The last action took place at Dolsene four months ago, and the Warmaster has declared the sub-sector cleansed. A famous victory, don't you think?'
Yes. I should hope so. It's taken them long enough.'
'Gregor, Gregor… even with a force as large as the hallowed Battlefleet Scarus, the subjugation of a sub-sector is an immense task! That it took the best part of a century is nothing! The pacification of the Extempus sub-sector took four hundred
He paused.
You're toying with me, aren't you?'
I nodded. He was very easy to wind up.
Aemos shook his head and eased his ancient body down into one of the leather chairs.
'Martial law still dominates, I understand, and caretaker governments have been established on the key worlds. But the Warmaster himself is returning with the bulk of the fleet in triumph, setting foot in this sub-sector again for the first time in a hundred years/
I stood by the open windows, looking out from the mansion's first floor across the grey roofs of Lethe Majeure which seemed to coat the hills of the Tito Basin like the scaled hide of some prehistoric reptile. The sky was a magnolia haze, and a light breeze breathed. It was almost impossible now to picture this place beset by the filthy, permanent shadows of the Darknight.
Now, perhaps, I knew why Tantalid had returned. The Ophidian war was over, and his holy mission concluded with it.
'I remember them setting out, don't you?' I asked.
A foolish question. My savant was a data-addict, driven since the age of forty- two standard to collect and retain all manner of information thanks to a meme-virus he had contracted. There was no possibility of him forgetting anything. He scratched the side of his hooked nose where his heavy augmetic eye- pieces touched.
'How could either of us forget that?' he replied. The summer of 240. Hunting the Glaw clan on Gudrun during the very Founding itself/
Indeed, we had played a particular role in delaying the start of the Ophidian Campaign. The Warmaster, or lord militant as he had been back then, had been all but set to launch his purge into Ophidian space when my investigation of the heretic Glaw family had triggered a mass uprising later known as the Helican Schism. To his great surprise and displeasure, the Warmaster had been abruptly forced to redirect his readied forces in a pacification of his very own sub-sector.
Warmaster Honorius. Honorius Magnus they were calling him. I had never met him, nor had I much wish to. A brutal man, as are so many of
his kind. It takes a special mindset, a special brutality, to crush planets and populations.
There is to be a great Jubilation on Thracian Primaris/ Aemos said. A Holy Novena congregated by the Synod the High Ecclesiarchy. It is rumoured that the Imperial Lord Commander Helican himself will attend, specifically to bestow upon the Warmaster the rank of Feudal Protector/
'I'm sure he'll be very pleased. Another heavy medallion to throw at his officers
