Dan Abnett - Eisenhorn Omnibus

Far below us, it tore through two other platforms and spilled men and debris into the air.

The jolt of the blast had come at the wrong moment for me. Our platform shuddered and yawed out like a boat at a dock, and I was still halfway across, forcing my stiff, heavy limbs to carry me.

I was going to fall. The brace around my body felt as heavy as an anchor, pulling me down.

Cherubael grabbed me under the arms and hoisted me neatly into the entrance.

I was grateful, but I couldn't find it in me to thank it. Thank Cherubael? The idea was toxic. Then again, just as unlikely was the notion of Cherubael voluntarily saving my life…

Gustine was fighting his way forward down the entrance, which we saw now was a long tunnel that matched the dimensions of the opening. Crates of equipment were piled up in the mouth, and floating glow-globes had been set at intervals along the wall. They looked like they went on for a long way.

Four or five meres and servants of our adversary were dead on the tunnel floor and half a dozen more were backed down the throat of it, firing to drive us out.

Cherubael swept forward and obliterated them. We came after him. I so dearly wished I could run.

The tunnel opened on the other side of the tomb face. We set eyes on the interior. By now, I had become numb to the inhuman scale of things. The tomb was a vault in which one might comfortably store a continent. The inner walls and the high, stone-beamed roof were lavishly decorated with swirls of script and emblems that I swore I would never allow to be seen by other eyes. This was the crypt where Yssarile lay in death, and the walls screamed his praise and worship.

I could make out little of the dark gulf below, but there was something there. Something the size of a great Imperial hive city. I discerned a black, geometric shape that was fashioned from neither stone nor metal nor even bone, but, it seemed, all of those things at once. It was repellent. Dead, but alive. Dormant, but filled with the slumbering power of a million stars.

The barque of the daemon-king. Yssarile's chariot of unholy battle, his instrument of apocalypse, with which he had scoured the warped

fortresses and habitations of his own reality in wars too dreadful to imagine.

Glaw's prize.

From the globe-lit tunnel, we could make our way out onto a massive plinth of dark onyx that extended from the edge of the inner wall. There was a block raised there, a polished tooth of dark green mineral forty metres tall, set deep into the plinth. It was wound with carved spirals.

Glow-globes floated around it and tools and instruments lay at its foot. Pontius Glaw had been studying this discovery himself. But the noise of our violent entry had alerted him. He was waiting for us.

He emerged from behind the standing block, calm, almost indifferent. His tall, gleaming machine body was as I had remembered it from the auto-seance. The cloak of blades clinked as he moved. The ever-smirking golden mask smirked.

'Gregor Eisenhorn/ he said softly. 'The galaxy's most persistent bastard. Only you could scrabble and slash and claw and crawl your way to me. Which, of course, is why I admire you so.'

I stomped forward.

'Careful!' Gustine hissed, but I had long passed the point where being careful was a high priority.

I faced Glaw. He was broader than me and a good deal taller. His blade-cloak jangled as he stroked a perfectly articulated duralloy hand across the surface of the green block. Then he raised the same hand and held it up for inspection.

'Magos Bure did a fine job, didn't he? Such a craftsman. I can never thank you enough for arranging his services. This is the hand I killed him with.'

There's more than his blood on your hands, Glaw. Do you answer to that name now, or do you prefer to hide behind the title Khanjar?'

'Either will do.'

'Your daughter didn't take either of your names/

He was silent. If I could get him angry, I could perhaps force an error.

'Maria/ he said, 'so headstrong. Another reason to kill you, apart from the obvious/

He was about to say something else, but I had waited long enough. I blasted my will through the runestaff, and lunged forward, swinging my blade.

The psychic blast knocked him back, and he half-turned, his cloak whirling out and turning Barbarisater aside with its multiple edges. His turn became a full spin and I lurched back to avoid the lethal hem of his blade-cloak.

Gustine moved in, firing bolts of light that simply reflected off Glaw's gleaming form.

Cherubael came in from the other side. Its searing attack scorched Glaw's metal, and I heard him curse. He slashed at Cherubael with his open hand, extending hook blades from slots in the fingertips.

The hooks ripped into Cherubael's flesh but it made no cry. It grappled with Pontius Glaw, psychic power boiling the space between them and flaring out in spasming tendrils of light. The very air crisped and ionised. Glaw's dancing metal feet chipped flakes of onyx off the plinth beneath him. I tried to get in, to land a blow in support of the daemonhost, but it was like approaching a furnace.

Gustine simply looked on, open-mouthed. He was so far out of his league it wasn't funny.

Glaw tore out a savage blow that spun Cherubael away for a second and followed it up with a lance of mental fury that actually made the daemonhost tumble out of the air. Cherubael got up slowly, like a thrown rider, and rose up off the ground again.

In that short break, I rejoined the struggle, driving at Glaw with alternate blows of staff and sword, keeping the most powerful mind wall I could erect between us.

Glaw smashed the wall into invisible pieces, struck me hard and tore the staff out of my hand. His blades lacerated my arm and ripped my cloak.

I exerted all the force I had and rallied with Barbarisater, cutting in with rotating ulsars and heavy sae hehts that chimed against his rippling cloak armour. The runestaff had fallen out of reach.

I ducked to avoid a high sweep of his razor-hem, but I had forced myself too hard. I felt cranial plugs pop and servos tear out of my back. Pain knifed up my spine. I barely got clear of his next strike. My sword work became a frantic series of tahn feh sar parries, as I tried to back away and fend off his hooks and cloak-blades.

Cherubael charged back at Glaw, but something intercepted it in midair. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Cherubael locked in aerial combat with an incandescent figure. They tumbled away, off the plinth, out over the gulf of the tomb.

'You don't think you're the only one to have a pet, do you?' Glaw jeered. 'And my daemonhost is not restricted in its power like yours. Poor Cherubael. You've treated him so badly/

'It's an "it", not a "him"/ I snarled and placed a high stroke that actually notched his golden mask.

'Bastard!' he squealed and swept his cloak around under my guard. The thick metal of my body-brace deflected the worst of it, but I felt blood welling from cuts to my ribs.

I staggered back. The agony in my spine was the worst thing, and I was certain my already limited motion was now badly impaired. My left leg felt dead and heavy.

Ironhoof. Ironhoof.

He thrust at me with his talons and nearly shredded my face. I blocked his hand at the last second, setting Barbarisater between his splayed fingers and locking out his strike.

He threw me back. I was off-step, out-balanced by my slow, heavy mechanical legs.

Laser shots danced across Glaw's face and chest as Gustine tried vainly to help out. Glaw pirouetted – a move that seemed impossibly nimble for such a giant – and his cloak whirred out almost horizontally with the centrifugal force.

Hundreds of fast moving, razor-sharp blades whistled through Gustine, so fast, so completely, that he didn't realise what had happened to him.