by Dan Abnett
I edged down the corridor with my back to the wall and my weapon raised in both hands, almost as if I was praying. There was a light shafting out from under the next door. The bathroom.
I heard water gurgle and light suddenly flooded me as the door opened.
I aimed the gun.
'Oh god! Golden Throne, sir! What the hell are you d-'
I slapped my hand across Eleena's startled mouth and pulled her into the shadows.
'You scared the hell out of me,' she whispered once I relaxed my grip.
'Sorry/
'I was just going to the bathroom.'
'Sorry. Something's wrong.'
'Gregor? What's the noise?' Crezia's voice floated down the landing.
'Get back in your room!' I hissed.
In a typically Crezia Berschilde manner, she did the opposite. She was pulling on her silk robe as she padded down to join us.
'What is damn well doing on?'
'For once, just shut up, Crezia,' I snapped.
"Well, excuse me all to hell.'
I pushed them both behind me and crept down towards the door of the box room.
'Nice rump/ said Crezia. I was only wearing a wrap.
'Will you be serious just for a minute?' I snarled back.
'Please, doctor/ urged Eleena. 'This is serious/
The box room door was shut and dark.
'See?' said Crezia. 'No problem.'
I felt the doorknob and realised it was loose. Crezia jumped as I kicked the door in, and aimed my gun at the bed.
The empty bed.
Eleena turned on the light. The wispy, fraying strands of Tarl's bindings were still tied to the bedstead. He'd bitten through them or tugged them off.
'Golden Throne, he's gone!'
'Oh no...' Crezia murmured. 'I only loosened his bonds a little.'
'You did what?'
'I told you! I told you I was worried about the constriction. The lividity in his hands and his-'
'You didn't tell me you'd slackened them off!' I raged.
'I thought you'd understood what I meant!'
I ran downstairs. The unlit hall was pale with moonlight that slanted in through the half-open front doors.
'He can't have gone far! What does it matter any way?' Crezia called after me.
I stepped out into the street. There was no sign of any one or anything. The cool shadows of the night spread fluidly across the flagstones.
Tarl, I was sure, was long gone.
I went back inside and Crezia turned on the hall lights.
And screamed.
Phabes was bent over in the corner, like a man who has fallen asleep sitting up. But he was very dead. His throat had been slashed. A wide pool of blood was leaking outwards slowly from his hunched form.
'Do you see now, Crezia? Do you?' I yelled up at her.
Tarl was loose. He knew who I was and where I was. We had to leave.
Fast.
TWELVE
Into the night, into the mountains.
The Trans-Atenate Express.
A prompt from the dead.
'No,' said Crezia. 'No. No way. No/
This isn't up for debate, Crezia. It's not a suggestion, it's a... an instruction/
'How dare you order me around like one of your staff lackeys, Eisen-horn. I am not leaving!'
I opened my mouth, then closed it again. The brutal murder of her man Phabes was causing her great distress. Getting through to her would be hard.
I turned to Aemos and Eleena. 'Get dressed. Collect up everything and stow it in the flier. I want to be away from here in under half an hour/ They both hurried away.
It was difficult to know how long the janissary had been gone. Phabes, whose body Aemos had covered with a sheet, was still quite warm, so I reckoned Tarl only had an hour's head start, ninety minutes worst case. Given his Vessorine pragmatism, I figured he had headed straight for a vox-station to report our location to his brethren. That's what I'd have done in his position. He could have tried to kill me himself, but by then he knew not to underestimate my abilities. There was a decent chance I'd have taken him down, in which case the secret of my location would never have got out.
No, he'd gone to find means of sending the message. It was impossible to know how close elements of his party were, but if we were still here in sixty minutes' time, I didn't much rate our chances.
It also occurred to me that once he'd got his message off safely, he'd be clear to come back and have a try at me himself.
I took Crezia by the hand and led her back upstairs. Her eyes were puffy and red, and she was a little vacant with shock. She sat on the end of my bed as 1 got dressed.
'If I could just go, Crezia, 1 would,' I said softly, finding a fresh shirt. 'If it was just a matter of walking away and removing all my crap from your life, that's what I'd do. But that's not what's going to happen. Mercenaries will be heading this way. They will be arriving soon, probably before dawn. They will question and kill anyone they find. You won't be able to tell them you don't know where I've gone. They will... well, they're Ves-sorine janissaries and they're being paid well. I can't leave you here.'
'I don't want to go. This is my home, Gregor. My damn home, and look what you've done.'
'I'm sorry.'
'Look what you've damn well done to my life!'
'I'm sorry. I'll make amends.'
She got up, the anger coming back and eclipsing her sorrow. 'How? How the hell can you make up for this? How the hell can you make up for all the pain you've ever caused me?'
'I have no idea. But I will. And you have to stay alive so I can. I've got the ruination of your nice comfortable existence on my conscience, Crezia. I will not add your death to that.'
'Fine words. I'm not coming. I'm going back to bed.'
I grabbed her by the arm and stopped her. I had to find a different tack. As a medic, she was almost professionally selfless. Appealing to her sense of self preservation was futile.
'I need you to come. That's the truth of it. I've got to take Medea with me. I can't leave her here, and I don't think she's in a position to travel.'
'Of course she isn't!'
'So she'll die?'
'If you move her now? In her state?'
'Better she travelled with a doctor then, don't you think?'
She shook off my hand. 'I will not allow you to jeopardise the health of my patient, Eisenhorn/ she warned.
Then consider the prognosis, doctor. If she stays here, she'll be dead by morning. They will kill her when they find her. If she comes with me without you, she'll likely die too. I think what's really in question here is your medicae oath to preserve life.'
I hated being so manipulative... well, with her anyway. She regarded me with venom, knowing that I'd cornered her.
'You bastard. You clever, clever bastard. I don't know why I ever loved you.'
'I don't know why either. But I know why I loved you. You always cared. You always did the right thing.'
She turned and walked out of my room.
I finished dressing, and tucked spare clothes and Barbarisater into a leather grip I found on top of the wardrobe. Then I picked up the rune staff and-
-stopped in the doorway.
The Malus Codicium was still in the drawer of the nightstand. I wrapped it in a pillow case and tucked it into the grip. How could I have nearly forgotten it?
The first answer that occurred to me was strange and unnerving. Perhaps it wanted to be forgotten.
The flier's interior lights illuminated a patch of the little courtyard. Aemos and Eleena had stowed everything - clothes for each of them, and the manuscripts and books we had rescued from Spaeton House. I put my own stuff aboard and ran a pre-flight. The flier was charged to optimum.
'Help me, damn you all!' Crezia said.
She was dressed in a dark green utility suit and a quilted coat, and had two travel bags with her. Medea lay on a grav-gurney, strapped in place with a resuscitrex unit and a nartheciu
m full of supplies magnetically anchored to the underside of the gurney. Crezia had slaved two med-skulls to our patient, and they hovered in the air behind the stretcher.
We got Medea aboard and then clambered in ourselves. Crezia sat beside Medea, saying nothing. She didn't even look back at the house as we rose into the night and powered away.
We flew south, towards the main Atenate range, a massif of gigantic peaks that split the centre of the continent for three and a half thousand kilometres. The Itervalle and its neighbours were just foothills compared to this great geological structure.
I didn't want to stay in the air for too long. Tarl knew we had a flier and would have informed his comrades. This was just a short hop to get us going. I studied a chart-slate and began to compose a route.
By dawn, we were about ninety kilometres to the south-west and several hundred metres higher, in the base valleys of the ragged-edged Esembo. It was a soaring black shape in the early light, with a glinting wig of ice. Its mighty neighbours lurked behind it.
We set down at a town called Tiroyere, a small place that thrived as a logging centre and a waystation for travellers heading to the resorts at the top of the Esembo Pass. I parked the flier on the edge of the town under a brake of firs that would shield it from aerial observers.
No one had said much. The air was briskly cold and I turned the cabin heater to maximum for Medea's benefit.
"We should eat/ Eleena said. 'I'd go and get something... but...'
None of us had any money.
Crezia pulled off her gloves and produced a wallet from her coat. Am I the only person who thinks practically?' she commented sourly.
Eleena took a credit bar from Crezia and walked down through the trees into the town. She came back fifteen minutes later carrying a styrene box in which were four tall, sweet caffeits in disposable flasks, hot pastries in waxed paper wraps, a loaf stick and some vacuum-sealed sausage meats.
She'd also bought a mini data-slate loaded with a touring guide of the region. 'I thought it might be useful,' she said.
'Great/ said Crezia. 'Now we can pick the best spots to ski.'
While Eleena had been gone, I had spent considerable time and effort freeing the flier's side hatch. It had been bolted open in military style for the permanent gunner position. With the weapon stowed and a fragile human cargo, I wanted the cabin sealed. It would pull to but the latch wouldn't engage. I tried brute force, but I don't think it had ever been closed in its entire service life.
We ate and drank in silence, and the med-skulls administered sustenance for Medea via the fluid drips.
I watched the sky and the long arc of the road into the town. There wasn't much traffic. A few utility vehicles and mobile dromes, the occasional fast speeder. All tourists heading for the resorts.
While I ate, I scrolled through the guide Eleena had bought.
We left Tiroyere at nine thirty, and spent the rest of the day flying further west, around the shoulders of the Esembo, over the mirrors of the high lakes and on towards the northern resort of Graj. For a long time, I was convinced we were being followed by a small, yellow speeder. I became so concerned that I diverted east, around a tract of mountain pasture and steep forest.
I lost sight of the yellow craft, but about thirty minutes later picked up a black one that shadowed us steadily at a distance of five kilometres. My anxieties returned again.
In the late afternoon, as we flew in towards Graj, the black flier turned south on a route that would take it to the spa resort of Firiol on the southern face of Mons Fulco.
I had been jumping at phantoms.
At Gruj, I landed the speeder in the cover of some pines south-west of the old city wall. I took Crezia's credit bar and walked into the town alone.
Gruj was an old town with a meandering plan like Ravello, but it was far less picturesque. Slot bars and dance parlours occupied the main thoroughfares and there was a busy stream of young, vacationing Gudrunites on every street.
I found the local chambers of the Adeptus Astra Telepathica, a tall, black windowed structure on the corner of the main square, and went inside.
A careworn female adept called Nicint debited my credit bar and provided me with access to the Aegis account. I wanted to check if anything had come in during the last day or so.
I was in for a surprise.
There was a communique from Harlon Nayl.
He had survived.
His message was quite long, and written in Glossia. The gist of it was that he had left Messina two weeks earlier, suspecting, for reasons that he didn't go into, that something bad was afoot. That didn't surprise me. Nayl had a nose for trouble. That he, of all my poor, lost agents, had been forewarned of the danger was easy to believe. He was, at the time of sending, just three days shy of Gudrun.
I had the adept send a reply, also in Glossia, telling Nayl to head for the southern capital New Gevae and, once there, to arrange passage off planet. I asked him to confirm and told him I would send again when I was close. Four days was my estimate. Four days and we would be with Nayl at New Gevae and heading off-world.
The snow-trak was essentially a luxury recreational vehicle. A well upholstered cockpit and adjoining cabin housed in a sleek grey hull and carried on a main track power unit with thick forward wheels for steering.
The rental agent was in full flow, singing the machine's praises, when I cut him off.
'I'll take it.'
A sound choice, sir.'
Two weeks' rental. I'm driving to Ontre, and I'll be leaving it there.'
'That's fine, sir. Deliver it to our offices in Ontre. There's a little paperwork to fill out. You have means of identity?'
Crezia's credit bar soaked up the cost of the deposit. I wanted to keep the transaction fairly anonymous.
I used the rental agent's palm reader to rouse another of my slumbering fake identities. Torin Gregori, a vacationing Thracian businessman with ample funds. The dealer seemed satisfied.
The snow-trak was a hefty brute with a surprising kick in its heels. I drove it back out of the town towards the flier, stopping on the way to stock up from a grocery market.
My friends at the flier regarded my approach with caution. I discovered later that Eleena had had her laspistol drawn and ready.
I leaned out of the cab and waved at them. 'Get yourselves aboard. We're switching vehicles/
We left the empty speeder under the trees, and as soon as Medea was safely positioned in the plush, leather-padded cabin, I headed out towards the pass road.
I didn't tell the others about Nayl. I didn't want to get their hopes up.
By nightfall, we were powering up the snow-dusted highway over the pass towards Ontre. Gruj fell away behind us. I thought I saw a small yellow flier approaching the town as we left, but it was too far away to be sure.
We drove through the night, taking turns at the wheel. The weather was clear, and the cockpit vox was tuned to the climate-casts to catch snow advisories.
Crawling up the northern hem of Mons Fulco, we ran through steady squalls of snow, and had to drop speed and use the main lamps. Crezia was driving at that point. She'd lived in the mountains for long enough to know what to do.
I napped in the cabin, resting out on the long bench seat opposite the still sleeping Medea. I dreamed about her again, dreamed about saving her. Jekud Vance was in my dream too, desperate for my help. He screamed, bawling out a spear of sound and psi-pain that woke me.
I blinked over at Medea, but she was still stable. Eleena was asleep nearby.
The cabin rocked and vibrated with road noise and snow ghosts fluttered past the windows.
'Are you all right, Gregor?' Aemos asked.
He was sitting on the bench seat at the back of the cabin, surrounded by data-slates.
'A dream, that's all, Uber. It woke me last night too.'
I paused and sat up. The previous night I had assumed I had been woken by the sounds of Tarl's escape. But now it had happened again. The drea
m had woken me. Woken me both times. Jekud Vance's terrible death-scream of pain and rage and frustration.
We rumbled into Ontre in mid-afternoon the following afternoon. Heavy snow had slowed us down, and ice caked the copper roofs of the famous resort. But heavy snow had also brought the winter sports crowd into town in great numbers. The place was buzzing with activity, the roads sluggish with vehicles, the skies flecked with arriving speeders.
I drove the snow-trak into the parking lot of the Ontre Transcontinental Station, and found a place. Aemos and I went up to the concourse building where Torin Gregori purchased tickets for three connecting sleep berths. The express was due in an hour we were told.
Just as the mighty Atenate Range creases the centre of Gudran's largest continent, so the Trans-Atenate Express runs like an artery along it. The railway is famously romantic. Most who ride it do so because of the ride, vacationers who would rather travel than arrive. The young flock to centres like Gruj and Ontre to use them as a base for skiing and ice-surfing, but the wealthy choose the Trans-Atenate, where they can sit in coddled luxury and watch Gudrun's most spectacular scenery slip by outside the window.
The great, chrome, promethium-fuelled locomotive pulled into Ontre at five, pulling a string of ten double-decked carriages. Porters helped us to manoeuvre Medea aboard.
Our cabins, on the top deck of car three, a wagon-lit, were first class and spacious. We put Medea in one of them, with Eleena to one side of her and Crezia to the other. Uber and I shared a fourth. There were communicating doors between the suites and everything was finished in polished maple.
The express hooted its siren and panted out of Ontre, muscularly taking the gradient into the Fonette Pass. The huge silvery beast could reach one hundred and seventy kilometres an hour on flat sections.
I regarded the timetable. Overnight to Fonette, then a short stretch to Locastre, followed by a high speed, uninterrupted run all the way down through the Atenate Majors, across the Southern Plateau to the coast.
We would be in New Gevae in just under three days.
There was barely any sense of motion: a slight, rolling vibration that one swiftly became oblivious to. The cars were robust, thick skinned, heated and insulated against the Atenate chill, but the side effect of this was to virtually eliminate exterior sound. The massive engine, deafening from the vantage of the platform concourse at Ontre, was virtually inaudible. Only when the express hammered down a cutting or a gorge and the engine noise was compressed and channeled backwards by the steep sides, did we catch a whisper of it at all.
