'Might it have been because you are the best shot in the entire regiment? That if anyone could get a shot at Nokad, it was you? Might Corbec, your friend, have been reluctant to take you? Might he have been afraid you could snap if the going got too hard?'
'I don't know!'
'Think about it! Might he have decided to take you in the end because, no matter what the risk and no matter how fragile your mind, you are still the best shot in the regiment? Might he have valued that in you? Might he have needed that asset despite the risk?'
'Shut up!'
'Might you have let him down?'
Larkin screamed and pressed his face into the stone floor. His wiry body began to twitch as the storm of madness, the tidal wave of anxiety, rose and crested in his thundering mind. He saw nothing but colours now: his vision was a neon kaleidoscope blur.
'And what did you do? That firefight in the canal. Close quarters. Lopra dead, head blown off; Castin disembowelled; Hech, Grosd, the others, the screaming, the misty smoke of burning blood. Corbec bellowing for reinforcements, daggers of light cutting the air. And what did you do?'
'Nothing!'
'Not nothing. You ran. You ran away. You scrambled and ran and ran and ran and ended up here. Sobbing, vomiting, soiling yourself.'
'No…' Larkin breathed, spread face down on the cold floor. He felt he was in a vacuum now. There was no sound, no vision, no pain. Just her voice.
'You deserted them. That makes you a deserter.'
Larkin looked up sharply. The Angel stood by the reliquary, lifting the studded wooden lid. She took something out and placed it upon her head, smoothing her silver-gold hair under the brim. It was a cap. A commissar's regimental cap. Gaunt's cap.
She reached into the holy box and lifted out something else, wrapped in dusty, mouldering cloth. Her perfect hands unwound it. A bolt pistol. With incongruous sureness, her slender hands slammed a sickle-pattern magazine into the slot, racked the slide and thumbed off the safety. She turned.
Her face, below the commissar's cap, was lean and angular. Larkin hadn't realised how chiselled and thin her cheeks and chin were before. Cut out of stone, firm and fierce, like Ibram Gaunt. She raised the bolt pistol in her right hand and pointed it at Larkin. Her wings opened and spread, twenty metres wide, a vast arch of perfect white eagle feathers.
'Do you know what we do to deserters, Larkin?' she said grimly.
'Yes.'
'We are created to inspire and uplift, to carry the spirit of battle forward, to maintain the sense of glory in the hearts of the Imperial warrior. But if that spirit falters, we are also here to punish.'
'Y-you sound like Gaunt…'
'Ibram Gaunt and I have much in common. A common purpose, a common function. Inspiration and punishment.'
It seemed as if the world outside the chapel had fallen silent. As if the war had stopped.
'Did you desert, Larkin?'
He stared at her, at the gun, at the terrible wingspan. Slowly, he got to his knees and then his feet. 'No.'
'Prove it.'
Every joint in his body ached, every nerve sang. His head was clear and yet racing and strange. He walked with measured care over to his fallen pack.
'Prove it, Larkin! The Emperor needs you with him at this hour! Muster your strength!'
He looked back at her. The gun and the gaze had not faltered.
'How did you know my name?'
You told me.'
'My forename. Hlaine. I don't use that any more. How did you know?'
'I know everything.'
He laughed. Loud and hard, his thin chest shaking as he stripped open his pack. 'Feth take you! I'm no deserter!'
'Tell me why.'
'See this?' Larkin slid his sniper rifle from the sling across the back of his pack. He held it up and freed the firing mechanism with a deft twist of his hand.
'A gun.'
'A lasgun. Workhorse of the Guard. Solid, dependable, tough. You can knock it, drop it, club with it, submerge it and it just keeps on going.'
The Angel took a step forward, looking at the gun he held out to her. 'It's not standard. Not a standard M-G pattern. Where's the integral optics, the charge-setting slide? That barrel: it's too long, too thin. And that flash suppressed.'
Larkin grinned and reached into his pack. 'It's the sniper variant. Same body, but stripped down. I did some of the work myself. I took out the integral optics because I use this.' He held up a bulky tube to show her for a
