'Oh, I do.' Larkin sighed. 'Not just now, before. A friend of mine, Cluggan, a sergeant, he was a bit of a military historian. He said that at the Battle of Sarolo, angels appeared over the lines just before dawn and inspired the Imperial forces to victory.'
'Were they visions, do you think? Mass hallucinations brought on by fatigue and fear?'
'Who am I to say?' Larkin replied, as the Angel finished her taper-lighting and blew the long flame-reed out. 'I'm mad. Visions and phantoms appear to me on a daily basis, most of them conjured by the malfunctions of my mind. I'm not in a position to say what is real and what is not.'
'Your opinion is no less valid than any other. Did they see angels at Sarolo?'
'I…'
'Say what you think.'
'I think so.'
'And what were those angels?'
'Manifestations of the Emperor's will, come to vitalise his loyal forces.'
'Is that what you think?'
'It's what I'd like to think.'
'And the alternative?'
'Hnh! Group madness! The meddling of psykers! Lies constructed by relieved men after the fact! What you said… mass hallucinations.'
'And if it was any or all of those things, does that make it any less important? Whatever they saw or thought they saw, it inspired them to victory at Sarolo. If an angel isn't really an angel but has the inspirational effect of one, does that make it worthless?'
Larkin shook his head and smiled.
'Why should I even listen to you? A hallucination asking me about hallucinations!'
She took his hands in hers. The feeling shocked him and he started, but there was something infinitely calm and soothing in her touch. Warmth wriggled into his fingers, palms, forearms, heart. He sighed again, more deeply and looked up into her shadowy face.
'Am I real, Hlaine Larkin?'
'I'd say so. But then… I'm mad.'
They laughed together, hands clasped, his dirty, ragged fingers wrapped in her smooth white palms. Face to face they laughed, his wheezing rattle tying itself into her soft, musical humours.
'Why did you abandon your men?' she asked. He shivered and pulled his hands out of her grip, struggling away from her. 'Don't say that!'
'Larkin… why did you do it?'
'Don't ask me! Don't!'
'Do you deny it?'
He bumped against a pillar across the debris-littered aisle and turned back to her with ferocious eyes. His vision was pulsing now, lights and alterations dancing and flexing across his line of sight. She seemed far away, then huge and upon him. His guts churned biliously.
'Deny? I… I never left them… I…'
The Angel stood and turned away from him. He could see the way her silver-gold tresses fell to waist length between the powerful furled wings which emerged from slits in her samite gown. Her head was bowed. She spoke again after a long pause.
'Commissar Gaunt sent his fire-team into the aqueduct, on an insurgency mission to enter Bucephalon. The primary target was Nokad himself. Why was that?'
'K-kill the head and the body dies! Gaunt said we'd never take this place in a year unless Nokad's charismatic leadership was broken! The whole city-state has become his Doctrinopolis, the wellspring of his cult, to seed and spread the deceitful charm of his sensibilities to the other city-states on this world and beyond!'
'And what did you do?'
'W-we entered the aqueduct channels. Rawne's company led the way to draw fire and break the defence. Corbec's slid in behind to leapfrog the fighting as Rawne met it and enter the city through the canal trenches.'
'Wouldn't you drown?'
'The canals have been dry for six months. They were mined and wired but we had sweepers.'
'You were with Corbec's company?'
'Yes. I didn't want to go… Feth! I hated the idea of taking a suicide run like that, but I'm Corbec's sniper… and his friend. He insisted.'
'Why?'
'Because I'm Corbec's sniper and his friend!'
'Why?'
'I don't know!'
