by Dan Abnett
‘No. I’m fine. Absolutely fine,’ Grammaticus replied.
THEY CAME UP out of the ruins, and followed the rutted dispersal tracks around the back of the dug-in Imperial lines. The sun was rising, crisping the lower edge of the sky. In the lea of the earthworks, for kilometre after kilometre, gun emplacements made sulking silhouettes against the dawn, and millions of bivouac tents covered the ground like blisters, breakfast fires glowing. They passed standards and banners hanging limp in the slowly heating air.
‘That’s my lot,’ the bashaw called out as they shot past a particular standard. Grammaticus turned his head to look, and saw Arachne, a mousy but surprisingly large bosomed girl, if the banner’s image was any guide, weaving her complex web of fate and destiny.
THE INSERTION POINT was an outfall of the city’s antique sewer system some eighteen kilometres west of the palace. It had been exposed by shelling about three months earlier, and was well guarded. Apart from the geno sentries, automated gun-servitors watched it, unblinking, day and night. The Nurthene guarded the other end just as proficiently, but Grammaticus wasn’t going all the way to the other end.
The bashaw introduced him to the point officer, a ruddy-faced hetman called Maryno. Maryno wanded the servitors to default/passive, and stood watching with the bashaw as Grammaticus slithered down the shattered embankment into the maw of the outfall.
Darkness, as had so often been the case in his life, embraced him.
TEN KILOMETRES AND ninety minutes later, he pulled himself out of a run-off vent not far from the rising walls and banked towers of Mon Lo Harbour.
He had already switched off his lamp, and left it in the bag, along with his canvas jacket and army boots, stuffed behind the loose bricks of a culvert.
His journey along the dark chute had provided him with almost enough time to complete his identity immersion. He was no longer Konig Heniker. He was D’sal Huulta. In all, he had taken very few real measures to disguise himself: a wrap of pink silk over his desert suit, felt shoes in place of the army boots, a desert shawl expertly pulled around his head. His skin was tanned, though not as dark as the average Nurthene, and a strict Nurthene observer of the Pa’khel would have worn his hair tied in a net under his shawl, and anointed his scalp, armpits, groin and belly with scented oil.
Grammaticus never went to such extremes, even though his Imperial spymasters recommended he should. He knew that his mind was more than capable of smoothing over most epistemological blemishes. Besides, the anointing oils smacked of a ritual offering to the Primordial Annihilator, something he was not prepared to undertake.
He fastened the hooked knife worn by all Nurthene to his under-belt, then strapped on the broad over-belt with its three pouches for fluid, mineral salt and currency. He washed his hands in the trackside dust to blacken his fingernails. Apart from the knife, he carried no weapon, except, of course, for the ring.
The sun was crawling up into the sky, having revealed itself during his trek through the dank underworld. He felt its searing heat on his head and shoulders, but he was near the sea, close enough to both feel and smell it. Fresh winds came in from the harbour shore, snaking in across the desert outland. He sniffed moisture. He began to walk towards the banked towers and enamelled walls of the port city.
Others were doing the same. War or no war, life went on. Straggles of traders and merchants, some with trains of pack animals, were heading into Mon Lo from the hinterland, hoping to do business at the city markets. Migrant workers were walking to the port in search of employment. Refugees and displaced citizens were coming to the gates, fleeing the Imperial advance. Grammaticus fell in with them.
As he walked, Grammaticus began the psychic litany in his head, the final progression towards immersion in another dialect and culture base.
I am John Grammaticus. I am John Grammaticus. I am John Grammaticus pretending to be Konig Heniker. I am Konig Heniker. I am Konig Heniker pretending to be D’sal Huulta. I am D’sal Huulta. I chey D’sal Huulta lem pretending. El-chey D’sal samman Huulta lem tanay ek. El’chey D’sal samman Huulta lem tanay ek…
‘Who are you, fellow?’ one of the echvehnurth warriors at the city gate asked as he approached. The echvehnurth had been resting his falx against his silver breastplate, but now he raised it. Some of his companions did likewise. Others were stopping and searching some water merchants heading in out of the desert through the ancient arch.
‘I am D’sal Huulta,’ Grammaticus replied in Demotic Nurthene, making the obeisance of all-the-sunlight to the echvehnurth. ‘I am a merchant.’
Falx held ready across the left shoulder to strike, the echvehnurth stared at Grammaticus. ‘Show me your palms, your face, and your brands.’
Grammaticus made as if to do so.
+I’m safe and you’ve seen all you need to reassure you,+ he sent at the same moment.
The echvehnurth nodded, and waved him into the city, already sweeping the incomers for his next subject.
Grammaticus had shown him nothing.
MON LO WAS waking up. As a city girded to the expectation of assault, it never truly slept, but its habits followed a circadian ebb and flow.
The outer walls were well defended by squadrons of echvehnurth, by iron mortars and bombasts, and by platoons of the regular nurthadtre ground troops. They loitered in unruly, spitting gatherings around the heavy steps of the city’s thick walls, or stood on the wall’s fighting platforms, watching the distant, unmoving enemy through spyglasses.
Deeper in the city, the rhythmic pulse of life was easier to discern. Markets woke up. Merchants announced their wares. Morning devotions were declaimed by strong-lunged priests. Water-carriers called their services as they wandered the plazas and the winding, cobbled streets and lanes.
Grammaticus retraced his steps, trying to recall the specific layout of the place as he had experienced it the first time. Passing merchants and elders nodded and made the all-the-sunlight gesture to him as they acknowledged his status.
He made the gesture back.
Grammaticus wanted to get into the northern suburb, an area called Kurnaul, so he could get a good look at the city’s north wall. Tuvi would appreciate his efforts. lie stood aside to let a grox-cart trundle past. Street washers cleaned the cobbles with bristle brooms and pails of water, using spades for the animal dung. They sang as they worked.
The faience tiled walls of the port city glimmered around him in the morning sun, showing reeds and reptiles in mosaic. The Nurthene had no street names, just pictorial emblems. He looked at a particular symbol, a great monitor lizard delineated in cherry red tiles, and knew, with a trained certainty, that he had never seen it before. He’d made a wrong turn. Mon Lo was so complex, so interwoven, it was hard to recall the specific plan. It was like Arachne’s web; mousy, big-bosomed Arachne.
He was the needle, he fancied, her needle, moving through the net of fate.
He halted and took a moment to consider. His internal compass was out. He checked with the rising sun and established where east was. He slowed his breathing, and allowed himself to perspire for a minute, just to stabilise his body. He had his bearings again. He’d just gone a street too far west, that was all. Kurnaul district was over to his left.
Except it wasn’t. He halted again, refusing to allow panic to dig in.
A water-carrier came up to him and offered a ladle of water.
‘No, thank you,’ Grammaticus said. ‘God love you anyway,’ the carrier replied, moving on.
Grammaticus shuddered. What the water-carrier had actually said literally translated as, The Primordial Annihilator immolate your living soul.
What’s wrong with me, Grammaticus thought? Last time I was here, I slipped easily from street to street. This time, I’m behaving like an amateur. My head is swimming. This is… this is stupid.
He crossed through two more busy streets, looking for familiar landmarks. It felt as if Kurnaul district was further away than ever. It was as if something was distracting him,
baffling his abilities.
On impulse, he reached into the bag of mineral salts hooked to his broad over-belt, and closed his fingers around the memeseed hidden in the salt inside. The seed was the size of an earlobe, set into a small silver clasp. Gahet had given it to him. The seeds, fruited from some xenotype tree on a world somewhere in the Cabal’s range of influence, were psychically sensitive. If they grew warm, or desiccated in any way, it was a sign that psychic activity was close by.
Grammaticus looked at the memeseed. It was always a little warm and dry, because it reacted to his own talents. In his hand, the seed was positively hot, like a burning coal. It had shrivelled in its setting.
He was in trouble. The memeseed screamed a warning that something was nearby, perhaps something hunting him.
‘D’sal? D’sal Huulta?’
Grammaticus looked over his shoulder and saw a portly merchant waving to him. The man had been standing in conversation with a group of his brethren on the steps of a counting house, but he left them to hurry over. Grammaticus quickly put the memeseed away.
What is his name? His name? You’ve met him before. ‘D’sal, my good fellow,’ the portly merchant declared, making the all-the-sunlight gesture and adding a bow. ‘I have missed your face at the market these last few days. What news of the fire-brick deal we sketched out on our last meeting? Has your supplier delivered?’
H’dek. H’dek Rootun. That was his name.
‘H’dek, my good fellow, I am pained to respond that my supplier has become a goat’s maw,’ Grammaticus answered politely, ‘taking more than it gives. It turns out I can’t deliver on that fire-brick deal. I apologise.’
H’dek waved his pudgy hand. ‘Oh, don’t worry! I quite understand. In these times of hardship and oppression, with the alien siege at our door, things like this happen.’
He looked at Grammaticus more earnestly. ‘You have my fetish, my gene-print? Yes? Good, we can deal in future! I look forward to receiving your envoy.’
‘I am always your servant, H’dek,’ Grammaticus mumbled. He made the sign of all-the-sunlight, and added the gesture of the moons-entire as he ended the meeting.
He strode on down the length of the street feeling as uneasy and lost as before. Then he hurried into an open square, where the foot traffic was lighter, hoping the freedom of the space would give him room to clear his head, and perhaps even identify the source of the psychic activity the seed had detected. Clarity obstinately refused to come.
Grammaticus paused, and slowly raised his eyes.
He was standing in the Pa’khel Awan Nurth, the square of the pre-eminent temple in Mon Lo. High above him on the temple’s tympanum, a bas-relief frieze showed the four properties of the Primordial Annihilator: death, ecstasy, mortality and mutability, blending together into one, huge, ghastly symbol of unity.
What gross mistake had led his feet here, what clumsy mis-turn? This was the last place in the city he would have visited voluntarily.
The tympanum symbol seemed to pulse, to throb, pressing his eyeballs back into their sockets. Sunlight flared and buzzed. He gagged, and forced hot reflux back down into his gut. His previous visit hadn’t been anything like this. It was as if the city had become aware of him, and his role as an intruder, and had become a web, spun to trap him. Someone, something, was playing with him.
The vomit wasn’t going to stay down. He hurried off into an alley away from the temple precinct, and bent over in the shadows to release the acid liquid. It rushed out of him in a geyser. He barely had time to drag his head shawl off.
He sank to his knees, trembling and spitting.
Two figures, two men who were just dark shadows, were moving down the alley towards him. They weren’t rushing, but there was a purposeful, urgent stride to their gait. Grammaticus got to his feet and made off in the opposite direction, with equal purpose, not quite running.
Three more figures rounded the opposite end of the long, winding alley, and came towards him. What were they? Militia? Echvehnurth? Agents of the Pa’khel Awan, the temple’s zealous doctrinal clerics?
The alley had a couple of side turnings along its length. Grammaticus took the first, and broke into a run as soon as he was out of sight of the figures closing in on him. He reached a dead end, a closed courtyard behind some tall, fine town houses. He heard footsteps approaching behind him. He tried the doors, and found all of them bolted, except a heavy gate of painted wood, where green reptiles intercoiled and made helical patterns. Grammaticus pushed the gate open and ducked into the blessed cool and darkness of the room beyond it. He closed the gate, and drew the bolt across to hold it. He waited, listening to the muffled footsteps and voices outside.
A gigantic hand, gloved in steel, reached out of the darkness and picked him up by the neck. It turned him around and slammed him back against the wall, holding him by the throat.
Grammaticus was being throttled, his feet kicking off the ground. The steel hand pressed him back against the wall. Terracotta brickwork ground into his back.
‘I have a suspicion,’ a deep voice said, coming out of the darkness, ‘you’ve been looking for me, John Grammaticus.’
It knew his name.
‘Th-that’s possible,’ Grammaticus gasped, ‘though it m-might depend upon who you are.’
‘My name? You know my name, you treacherous bastard. My name is Alpharius.’
FOUR
House of the Hydra, Mon Lo Harbour, Nurth, continuous
THE POUNDING BLOOD vessels in Grammaticus’s head felt as if they were about to burst. His windpipe had closed.
+Let me go,+ he sent, desperately.
The steel-gloved hand released its grip, and Grammaticus fell awkwardly onto the tiled floor. Hurt and dazed, he forced his mind to work fast. His eyes were becoming accustomed to the cold blue darkness of the chamber.
He could see the giant shadow of his captor, and the hot, red glow of a visor, but he could not read a mind. Something was screening it. Nevertheless, his urgent commands were getting through.
+Step back, and keep your hands away from your weapons.+
The giant shadow above him took a step backwards. ‘Stop him doing that,’ the shadow’s deep voice growled.
There was someone else in the room, in this bolt-hole that had not been safe at all. Grammaticus saw the second person as a hooded figure, though he could not actually see the man with his eyes. The figure was hooded in his mind.
Grammaticus tried to rise. A piercing liquid squeal, like a wet finger sliding on glass, stabbed into his neocortex. Pain fired through his autonomic nervous system and sizzled down his spine. He grunted and fell back against the wall.
‘He is fierce. Strong and well protected,’ the hooded figure said out loud.
‘Too much for you?’ asked the giant shadow.
‘No.’
‘Then keep him down.’
The squeal increased in power. Grammaticus convulsed.
‘We’re going to have a conversation, John,’ the giant shadow said, bending down and looming close. ‘I want some truth out of you, or so help me, I’ll simply crush your psyk-cursed skull. Yes? Are we clear?’
Grammaticus nodded. The agony was immense. He could feel blood running out of his nose and over his top lip.
‘Good. Shere is going to release you. That will be nice, won’t it? When Shere releases you, no mind tricks. Are we still clear?’
‘Yes,’ Grammaticus hissed, his throat bruised and sore.
‘Let him go, Shere,’ the giant commanded.
The squeal went away and took the worst of the pain with it. Grammaticus slumped forwards onto his hands, gasping.
‘Lights,’ the giant’s voice ordered.
There was a brief pulse of telekinetic effect, and several dozen wax candles arranged around the room spontaneously lit, a decent pyrokinetic display. The light from the candles was soft and yellow. It showed Grammaticus a shuttered greeting room, typical of Nurthene houses, with a faience tiled floor and mosaic wa
lls that snagged the candlelight like water. It also showed him his antagonists: an armoured trans-human giant and a standard human in black whose face Grammaticus couldn’t see, even though the man wore no physical mask or hood.
‘Your name is John Grammaticus?’ the giant asked.
‘If you say so.’
‘I can get Shere to start again, if you prefer.’
Grammaticus shook his head. Spots of his blood dappled the tiles around him. “Yes, my name is John Grammaticus. You already knew that.’
‘Look at me,’ the giant commanded.
Grammaticus looked up. The giant was clad in power armour, the metal and ceramic wargear of an Imperial Astartes. The armour was a rich purple with silver edging. Green heraldry had been marked on the shoulder plates. The helm was the very latest, baleen-snout version. Dull red light shone inside the visor slit. To the left of the towering Astartes stood the mind-hooded figure, small by comparison.
‘No, me,’ said the Astartes. ‘Look at me. Ignore my psyker. Better.’
‘I—’ Grammaticus began.
‘Quiet,’ said the Astartes, raising a massive index finger. ‘You’re going to tell me what I want to know, not what you want to say.’
Grammaticus nodded.
‘You’ve been looking for me. That’s why you keep coming into this city. You knew I’d be here.’
Grammaticus nodded again.
‘How did you know that?’
‘Because we invited you here,’ Grammaticus replied.
‘You invited me here? Who’s “we”?’
‘The Cabal I work for.’
The Astartes turned to look at the hooded figure. ‘Once again,’ he said.
The squeal speared into Grammaticus’s head and made him shriek.
‘What is the Cabal?’ the Astartes asked.
Grammaticus sobbed. He could barely answer. ‘They… I don’t know… they are eternal and… and they…’
‘That’s not really very good,’ said the Astartes. ‘Maybe I should just shoot you.’
‘The Cabal is… the Cabal is the only hope!’ Grammaticus pleaded.
