He brushed the irritant away.
“They are chained!” he insisted, leaning against the wall to compose himself, rubbing his eyes and blinking, praying to his gods that the blindness might only be temporary.
“But if their allies have come to free them—”
“Try to use your brains, Furst,” Mangellan snapped, “such as they are. Steele brought only a handful of soldiers into our hive. How could they have penetrated this palace, my palace, without our knowing about it? No, this attack has come from the inside, from someone who is jealous of all I have achieved, the power I have earned, someone who wished to sully my most glorious moment.”
“I am sure you are correct, master, but—”
“I always knew it would happen. I knew the priests were always scheming and plotting, but to act so boldly… Which of them was it? What do you say, Furst?”
“I… I wouldn’t know, master. I—”
Mangellan lashed out, trying to grab Furst by his robes. He felt his hand brush against the loathsome little mutant but failed to take hold of him.
“'You are always sneaking about,” he growled, “lurking in places you should not be, overhearing what you should not have heard. Tell me, Furst, who is to blame for this attack upon my person, this affront to the gods I serve?”
“Nobody, master. None of us would dare cross you in this way.”
“You saw him, didn’t you! If not the traitor who planted the bombs, then certainly the wretched opportunist who shot at me, who dared take my sight! I will find him, Furst, and when I am through with him, he will wish he… he…”
Mangellan hadn’t felt the knife enter his stomach, so quick and clean had been the incision. Only now, as he felt his blood spill out, as a dull pain spread through him as if he had been kicked… only now that he realised what had happened.
He was speechless, weak, dizzy. He could only listen in uncomprehending horror as Furst leaned close to his ear — Mangellan’s legs must have buckled, making him slide down the wall that was supporting him, bringing him down to the mutant’s level — and whispered to him, “You are the one to blame. You presumed too much, thought too much of yourself, and now look what you have wrought. A ‘handful’ of Emperor-lovers has humiliated us, brought you to this. I hear the gods — oh, you were so certain they would not deign to speak to one such as I, that I would not understand them — but I hear them, and they are disappointed with you. You have failed them, Mangellan.”
He was on the floor, although he didn’t remember falling. He tried to lift his hands, tried to turn his head to where he imagined his protectors might be, tried to cry out to them, “Guards! Guards, attend me!”
“They won’t help you,” Furst’s voice said through the deepening darkness. “They too know that this is the gods’ will. And they now serve a new master.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Time to Destruction of Cressida: 03.34.45
The room was small, not much bigger than the apartment blocks on the lower hive levels. It was dominated by a single bed, though there was plenty of junk piled in the narrow spaces around it: bits of furniture, clothing, broken lamps, even a couple of paintings with their corners touched by fire.
The walls were made of ice, of course. A large, eight-pointed star had been painted clumsily on one, so that black rivulets ran from it to the floor.
It didn’t surprise Blonsky that, with all the power he had, all the space available in the near-emptied hive and in the Ice Palace, Mangellan still had his followers live like this. The harder they had to work to survive, the less time they had to plot against him. Not that the occupant of this room could care much any more.
He lay crumpled beneath the window to the courtyard, through which he had been leaning when Blonsky had kicked open his door. Some Ice Warriors held that it was wrong to shoot an enemy in the back, but Blonsky disagreed. All that mattered was that the heretic was vanquished. To fail to take that shot was the sin.
He only wished he had had a few more shots at Mangellan. He had been taking aim when he had seen that Grayle was in trouble, had had to help him out instead. And the high priest’s guards had reacted too fast, faster than he had expected.
One of them was here now. The Chaos Space Marine. His bulk filled the window frame, casting the small room into shadow. Blonsky had backed up as far as the door, scrambling over the bed, wading through the junk, firing his lasgun, knowing it would do little damage, hoping at least to throw off the Chaos Marine’s balance, make him lose his grip on the outside wall and fall.
He should have given up by now, should have withdrawn.
He hurled a frag grenade, but the Chaos Space Marine caught it easily, and tossed it over his shoulder to erupt in the sky above the courtyard. And then he was inside the room, and Blonsky was out of both ammunition and time.
The Chaos Space Marine raised his gun and fired, and Blonsky slammed the door between them and ran as bolts punched through the wood. Barely a second later, he heard a cracking, wrenching sound as the door was torn from its ice frame.
He raced along empty passageways, sprang down a flight of steps, but his pursuer remained doggedly on his heels. Blonsky could hear his heavy footsteps, thump, thump, thumping behind him. The only thing that kept the Chaos Space Marine from closing the gap between them was the fact that the Ice Warrior was lighter, more lithe, able to corner more efficiently on the slippery, uncarpeted floors.
He sped past two shaken cultists, refugees from the courtyard, and was away from them before they could react to his presence. Next time, he knew he might not be so lucky. He rounded two corners in quick succession, and heard a great crash behind him as the Chaos Space Marine lost control and slammed into a wall. For the first time, Blonsky had a few seconds’ grace, and he knew he couldn’t wait for a better chance. He chose a door at random, and found himself in a banqueting hall, decorated in rich shades of brown and red with tapestries hanging from the walls.
He had intended to find a hiding place, and hope that the Chaos Space Marine went past. He had known that this was a long shot, but it was the best he had had. He got lucky, again. There were more doors out of the room, on opposite walls at its far end. He hurried to one of them, and was turning the handle as the main door was smashed open, quivering on its hinges.
The Chaos Space Marine leapt into the room, propelling himself over the table. Blonsky didn’t wait for him to land. He raced through a small kitchen and out into another passageway, worried that he was starting to lose his bearings, that he might not be able to find his way out. As if that was the worst of his problems.
He had gained some distance on the Chaos Marine, but it was still behind him. He could still hear its footsteps. It just kept on coming.
There were fewer heretics on their heels than Palinev had feared.
He didn’t stop to ask why, he just counted his blessings. He suspected that the explosion he had heard a moment ago, the distinctive burst of a frag grenade, might have had something to do with it. He didn’t stop to wonder what had happened to Pozhar, why he hadn’t followed his comrades out of the courtyard, because he guessed he would not like the answer.
Anyway, there were still some heretics out here — cultists and a few Traitor Guardsmen who had escaped before the Ice Warriors had, who were starting to regain their senses, to gather and to talk, and to look for the threat in their midst.
And they found it.
“It’s him!” a cultist screamed, pointing at Steele, her finger trembling. Then her eyes turned to Confessor Wollkenden, still unconscious, slung over Grayle’s shoulder. “It’s both of them. The sacrifices! They’re escaping with the sacrifices! They—”
Palinev shot her through the head, but it was too late. More cultists were coming at them with knives, while others hung back, shouldering lasguns. They must have looked like easy pickings, Steele still leaning on Palinev’s shoulder, Grayle encumbered by Wollkenden. But Steele was not as helpless as he seemed. He seized two incoming cultists b
y their robes, smashed their heads together, thrust them into the path of the first las-beams.
Taking advantage of their temporary human shields, the Ice Warriors ducked into a side passageway — but it came to a dead end, a few metres along.
Steele snatched Grayle’s lasgun from him and ordered him to keep back, to keep Wollkenden out of the line of fire. Palinev was already strafing the corridor behind them, discouraging the heretics from approaching, forcing them to run for cover. As his power pack ran dry, Steele took his place and continued the barrage. Palinev reloaded and was able to relieve the colonel in turn.
“We can’t keep this up,” Steele grumbled. “The longer we’re pinned down here, the more attention we’ll draw. And once that Chaos Space Marine gets wind of our location…” He didn’t have to complete the sentence.
“Can we burn through the walls?” asked Palinev.
“I doubt it,” said Grayle. “We could try, but remember the glacier, remember how it re-formed around the Termite.”
Palinev was firing into an empty passageway. He eased his finger off the trigger, thinking to conserve power — and immediately, four Traitor Guardsmen rushed his position. He fired in concert with Steele, counting them down, one, two, three… but the last of them refused to fall. It just kept on advancing.
The fourth traitor had hung back, using his fellows as cover so that only when he was almost upon the Ice Warriors did they have a clear shot at him. Their beams glanced off his flak jacket, failing to score that critical hit — and Palinev could see behind the traitor the shapes of more of his kind beginning to rise, to crane forward, ready to advance as soon as he engaged the enemy.
They were to be disappointed. The traitor staggered up to the corner, raised his gun, collapsed and died at Palinev’s feet.
Steele strafed the corridor for another few seconds, then turned to his two troopers. “This is what we’re going to do,” he said. “How many frag grenades do you have left between you? We’re going to pitch the whole damn lot of them out there, at the heretics, bring down the roof if we can. And then we’re going to run like hell in the other direction. Palinev, you must know where we’re going, you take point. Grayle, behind him, with Wollkenden. I’ll bring up the rear, lay down covering fire, make sure that anyone who survives the explosion doesn’t dare so much as glance after us.”
“I should take the rear, sir,” said Grayle. “It’s too dangerous for—”
“Those are my orders, trooper,” interrupted Steele.
“At least take my greatcoat. Yours is in shreds. One bull’s-eye from a lasgun and—”
Steele shook his head. 'You have the most important job of any of us. I’m not strong enough yet to carry the confessor. You have to protect him. We move on my mark. Three, two, one… Palinev, do you hear that?”
Palinev did hear it, although his ears were a second behind the colonel’s. “Gunfire, sir. To the right of us. It must be the others. They had to come this way too. They must have come up behind the heretics, taken them by surprise.”
Steele considered that news for a moment, then a tight smile pulled at his lips and he hefted Grayle’s lasgun. “In that case,” he said, “change of plan.”
Anakora had known it wouldn’t be easy. No matter how much confusion, how many distractions, the Ice Warriors could cause, no matter how good their disguises nor how skilled they were, she had not expected to get out of the Ice Palace without a fight.
Already they appeared to have lost Blonsky; having abandoned their sniping positions up above, she and Gavotski had planned to meet him at the base of a flight of stairs. They had waited as long as they could.
They had set off running at first, but slowed down as they had begun to run into heretics from the courtyard. They had tried to look less like they had an urgent purpose, less like they were trying to get out. Anakora’s stomach had tightened as a squad of Traitor Guardsmen had rushed out of a side passageway into their path, but they had drawn their cultists’ robes around themselves, bowed their heads and kept their cool, and the traitors had hurried right on by.
Not long after that, their path had converged with those of Barreski and Mikhaelev, and Anakora was glad that two comrades at least had made it this far.
And then they had heard las-fire, and she had feared the worst.
A score of heretics had gathered at a four-way junction, and more were rushing up to join them from all directions. No one had questioned the arrival of what they took to be four more reinforcements to their cause. The heretics were laying siege to an opening in the wall a few metres away, being kept at bay only by a volley of las-fire from said opening. Anakora had guessed who was wielding the guns, even before she had caught a glimpse of Colonel Steele’s face.
A dark-skinned Traitor Guardsman with narrow eyes and pinched nostrils had taken command. He was barking out orders: “Hold your fire! Let the Emperor-lovers discharge their power packs, then they’ll be defenceless.”
Gavotski moved up behind him, tapped him on the shoulder — and the traitor turned to find himself staring down a gun barrel. A las-beam stabbed into his right eye and fried his brain. The other three Ice Warriors took this as their cue to act. Anakora took another traitor by surprise and slit his throat with her knife. Barreski tried to do likewise, but his chosen victim had faster reflexes and was able to throw off his hold. And Mikhaelev was firing his lasgun on full auto, apparently indiscriminately, creating the maximum amount of panic.
As in the courtyard, the cultists were confused, terrified by this sudden threat in their midst, by the loss of their leader. Some of them fled. But others chose to fight back.
At first, the Ice Warriors had the advantage. The cultists still weren’t quite sure who their enemies were, which of the robed figures around them they could trust, to whom they could turn their backs. It made them fight with one eye over their shoulders, which proved to be the downfall of many of them. Anakora bludgeoned two to the ground with her fists, and gutted a third with her blade. She smiled to herself as a disoriented cultist plunged a knife into a friend’s ribs. His fellows interpreted his mistake as an act of treachery and fell upon him.
The Traitor Guardsmen, however — the few that remained — were more perceptive, zeroing in on their true foes. Anakora found herself in a knife fight with one, straining to get her blade past his defences, aware that every second he could keep her occupied was a second longer for his allies to rally.
Sure enough, she felt hands grasping at her from behind, an arm around her throat, and she was held by two cultists. If they had been armed, she would have been dead already. But the Traitor Guardsman did have a knife, and Anakora’s arms were pinned so that all she could do to defend herself was to kick out at him, at the same time pushing backwards, trying to slam her captors into the wall, to make them release their grips. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw that Mikhaelev was in trouble too, forced onto his knees.
And then, once again, the tide of battle turned — as Colonel Steele and Palinev broke cover and came racing onto the scene with guns blazing.
They were running again.
Somehow they always seemed to be running — and Gavotski’s lungs were burning, his legs aching, and he began to wonder if he was finally getting too old for this.
They had disengaged from the melee as soon as they were able, knowing that they couldn’t win that fight, that their enemies’ numbers would just keep on growing. There were Traitor Guardsmen at their heels, sending las-beams after them. The Ice Warriors were returning fire as best they could. Barreski and Grayle, both of whom seemed to have lost their guns, were carrying Wollkenden.
And as they hurried past a junction, Gavotski saw a robed figure barrelling down the connecting corridor towards them. He whirled, brought up his lasgun… and the figure skidded to a halt, threw up his hands and whipped back his hood, to reveal the flushed face of Trooper Blonsky.
“He… he’s behind me!” the new arrival panted, gesturing over his shoulder.
They returned, at last, to the stone cellar through which they had entered the Ice Palace an hour ago. Anakora and Mikhaelev took up positions in the doorway, firing out into the corridor, as the others negotiated the slippery steps and began to squeeze themselves, one by one, through the hole in the wall.
This rearguard action would buy them time, but not much. Gavotski knew that once the Chaos Space Marine caught up with them, his two comrades would have no choice but to fall back.
He helped Grayle feed Wollkenden through the hole headfirst, to Barreski and Palinev on the far side, below. Then he wriggled through himself, and dropped down into the sewer tunnel. Colonel Steele hadn’t seen this side of Iota Hive before, and he was inspecting his surroundings in the glow of his comrades’ lamp-packs.
Palinev set off along the narrow brick ledge, Barreski and Grayle hauling Wollkenden along after him. Steele shouted at them to wait. “We need to head for the spaceport,” he said. “If there’s still a way off this planet, one we can reach in time, that’s where it’ll be. And it’s in that direction.” He pointed through the wall, and Gavotski didn’t doubt for a second that he knew what he was talking about.
“I don’t know if we can get through that way, sir,” said Palinev. “These tunnels are a maze. We might end up being cornered, and with that Traitor Space Marine on our tails…”
“Yeah,” Barreski muttered to Blonsky, “thanks for leading that straight to us.”
“And the less time we spend down here,” said Gavotski, “the better.” Catching Steele’s inquisitive look, he said, “I’ll explain later. With your permission, sir, I’d like to make our way back to the mutant chapel. I’ll, ah, explain about that too. We can get our bearings there, and strike out for the port above ground. We might even get some help, someone to run interference for us.”
[Imperial Guard 05] - Ice Guard Page 19
