Graham McNeill - Killing Ground

'Ah, the confessor who stood before the tyrant during the Plague of Unbelief. Is that it? Do you think men will remember you in the same breath as Dolan? You may have been a confessor, Shavo, but you're not a tenth of the man Dolan was,' said Barbaden, lounging unconcerned on his bunk. 'You were always too much of a worm to be granted a place at the Emperor's side.'

'And you think there's a place for you? A murderer?'

Barbaden laughed. 'I'm no murderer, and as soon as this farce of an incarceration is over, I'll be back in the palace. I have the right of appeal to the Sector Governor, and do you think he's going to let me swing for killing a few terrorists?'

'If there is an iota of justice in this galaxy, then yes,' said Togandis, closing his eyes and wishing Leto Barbaden would shut up.

'There is no justice, Shavo. Don't be so foolish. There's no room for justice in this galaxy,' said Barbaden, 'and if you'll permit me to quote back to you, I think you'll find this one illuminating: ''When the people forget their duty they are no longer human and become something less than beasts. They have no place in the bosom of humanity nor in the heart of the Emperor. Let them die and be forgotten''.'

Then it shall be so.

The voice had sounded right in his ear.

Togandis opened his eyes and he cried out as he saw that their cells were filled with the ghostly figures who had stood, silent and unmoving, beyond the bars, waiting.

Fear clutched at his heart, but it was instantly replaced by a wash of relief. It was over, the waiting, the fear of humiliation and the dread that they would somehow escape retribution.

'Get away from me, damn you!' shouted Barbaden. 'Get away from me, I said!'

Togandis watched as the dead crowded in around the former governor of Salinas, eager to be part of his unmaking. Though they had been called ghosts, they were no phantom apparitions of mist; their nails could tear skin and their teeth could rip flesh from bones.

Barbaden screamed as they plucked at the soft meat of his face, bearing him to the ground and clawing his flesh. His eyes went first, torn from their sockets with a swift jerk of cold, dead hands.

They tore the skin from his face, ripping the muscles from his skull and peeling him back to the frame of bone beneath. His limbs bent and snapped and his screams filled the cells as the dead fought to bloody their hands in his entrails.

Togandis watched in horrified fascination as Leto Barbaden was torn apart before his very eyes, the meat and bone of his existence ripped asunder in a frenzy of vengeance.

In moments it was over and there was nothing left in the cell that even remotely resembled what had once been a human being. All that remained was a jumble of torn offal and a vast lake of blood and snapped bone.

The dead turned their faces to Shavo Togandis. 'Do what must be done,' he said. The dead came at him and as he felt their hands reach for his eyes, he said, 'I forgive you.'

Uriel knew it was over.

The dead light in the eyes of the Lord of the Unfleshed faded and sudden silence fell upon the House of Providence. The howling of the ghosts ceased and the filmy scraps of light began to fade. Uriel felt a tremendous wave of relief pass through him as the dead began their final journey, their spirits finally allowed to disperse into the warp.

The gloom that had settled upon Salinas was gone in an instant, and Uriel had not fully realised how oppressive it had been until it was removed.

Uriel heard a rasping sigh from the bed next to him and looked down at Sylvanus Thayer as the machine maintaining his life hiked and stuttered. The rhythmic machine noise of his life slowed until it became a single, shrill note that could mean only one thing.

Sylvanus Thayer was dead, and with him the threat to Salinas.

The wound in reality was gone, sealed up without the link between worlds that the former leader of the Sons of Salinas had provided.

Uriel took a deep, cleansing breath, looking around to make sure that he was not imagining things: that it was truly over. Pasanius stood next to him and the injured Leodegarius held himself upright with his one remaining arm.

Cheiron staggered over to his commander and Uriel turned his attention to the Lord of the Unfleshed. The last of the Unfleshed swayed on his feet, unsteady and uncertain, his head turning this way and that as though awakening from a deep slumber.

His eyes, milky and rheumy, focused on Uriel and he dropped to his knees, his massive clawed hands coming up to his face as a heartrending moan of self-loathing issued from deep inside him. Great, wracking sobs burst from the Lord of the Unfleshed's chest and Uriel felt deep sorrow that it had come to this.

Cheiron made his way across the chamber towards the Lord of the Unfleshed with his storm bolter raised, but Uriel shook his head.

'No,' he said, 'you don't need that anymore.'

Cheiron looked down at the hunched, sobbing form of the Lord of the Unfleshed and then back at Uriel. He nodded and returned to Leodegarius.

Uriel knelt beside the Lord of the Unfleshed, whose body had diminished to its former proportions. His flesh was torn with bolter craters and slashes from blades and Uriel was amazed that he was still alive. The creature was still massive, but without the enormous power of the dead, he seemed somehow smaller, more vulnerable, and infinitely sad.

'What do we do now?' asked Pasanius.

Uriel looked up at Pasanius. 'Go with Leodegarius and Cheiron,' he said. 'I have something to do here first.'

'Are you sure?'

Uriel nodded. 'I'm sure, yes.'

Pasanius looked set to argue, but he heard the firmness in Uriel's tone and turned away.

Uriel reached out and placed his hand on the Lord of the Unfleshed's arm. Too late, he remembered that the Unfleshed did not like to be touched, but there was no reaction.

Uriel knelt beside the Lord of the Unfleshed and let him weep.

'Captain Ventris,' said a voice behind him, and he turned to see Leodegarius. The Grey Knight had removed his helmet and his face was pale and wan, drained by the fury of battle and the pain of losing a limb.

Leodegarius said, 'Come to the palace when you are done. Then we shall see about getting you back to Macragge.'

'I will,' promised Uriel.

The Grey Knight held out his hand and Uriel looked down at what he held.

'I think you will be needing this,' said Leodegarius and Uriel nodded.

'Thank you, Brother Leodegarius,' said Uriel. 'It was an honour to fight alongside you.'

'No,' said the Grey Knight, 'the honour was mine.'

Leodegarius, Pasanius and Cheiron left, leaving Uriel and the Lord of the Unfleshed alone in the ward. The creature he had attempted to rescue from a hideous life of death and misery knelt before the bed of the man who had enslaved him and his tribe and wept.

Uriel could not begin to imagine the horror the memory of what it had been forced to do would be like, and did not intrude on the Lord of the Unfleshed's grief with mere words.

At last, the creature looked up and his gaze fastened on Uriel.

'Unfleshed did very bad things,' he said.

'No,' said Uriel. 'All that hatred arid killing, it was not you.'

'Yes, it was. We did it. My hand bloody. Tribe's hands bloody. I saw blood and I tasted blood. Unfleshed bad.'

'No,' repeated Uriel. 'Unfleshed not bad. You were used. It wasn't your fault.'

'Emperor must hate us even more now.'

'He does not hate you,' said Uriel. 'The Emperor loves you. Look.'

Uriel pointed to an aquila fashioned from beaten steel hanging on the wall, the earliest dawn light from a window opposite shining upon it and making it gleam like silver.

The Lord of the Unfleshed looked up at the gleaming eagle, his reflection thrown back at him. As Uriel looked at the distorted image, it appeared to ripple like the surface of a lake, and he found himself looking at the reflection of a handsome young boy, his face alight with youthful mischief.