‘Well, I’ve seen some things,’ said Rawne, grimacing. ‘Now I’ve met the only fething pacifist objector in this whole fething galaxy.’
Varl suddenly signalled. Movement.
They hurried in against the flank of a work-shed.
‘Something,’ Varl whispered.
An object hit the wall behind them and bounced onto the floor. The grenade wobbled like an egg as it rolled.
Varl threw himself at Mabbon, driving him aside. Rawne tried to dive the other way.
The blast made a dull and hollow crump in the driving rain.
Rawne found himself lying on his side, his cheek against the wet ground. He couldn’t move. It had been almost an hour since he’d taken the hit in the yard of Camp Xenos. He’d been bleeding ever since, and he knew the loss was severe. He was too weak. Too weak for anything. His will was strong, but his body had given up.
He felt himself slipping into the dark place he’d spent his life fighting to avoid.
Mabbon stirred, and got to his feet. Small flecks of shrapnel had cut his face.
Rawne was down, curled on his side to Mabbon’s left. Varl lay to his right. The sergeant had shielded Mabbon with his own body. Mabbon saw the bloody shrapnel wounds and scorched clothes on Varl’s back and legs. He was face down, and still breathing, but the blast had thrown him into the wall and rendered him unconscious.
Mabbon saw the two figures approaching out of the rain. They were walking side by side, with no sense of haste. One carried a lasrifle, the other was empty-handed.
Mabbon sighed. He reached over and picked up Varl’s weapon, then stepped out to meet them.
Rawne saw the three figures. He couldn’t speak. He saw them side-on, the world turned on its edge. He tried to move. No part of his body responded.
But he could hear them speak. Like Oan Mkoll, he hadn’t survived a year on Gereon without learning the enemy tongue.
Mabbon faced the two Qimurah, rain streaming down his face. He held the weapon low, down at his hip, covering them.
‘Hadrel. Jaghar.’
‘Pheguth,’ said Hadrel.
‘No more grenades?’ Mabbon asked.
Hadrel shrugged, his hands empty.
‘Resources are limited,’ he said. His eyes flashed yellow and his talons crackled as they elongated into hooks. ‘But we don’t need munitions.’
‘You’d fight us now?’ asked Jaghar, his rifle raised.
‘I’d rather not,’ said Mabbon. ‘I’ve had enough. If it had been down to me, I would have submitted to you at the very start. But you threaten these men, and I will not let you kill them.’
‘What are they to you?’ Jaghar sneered.
‘Nothing,’ said Mabbon. ‘Not even friends. But they have protected me with their lives. I owe them as much. Let them live and I’ll come with you.’
‘All right,’ said Hadrel.
‘You lie so easily, Hadrel,’ said Mabbon.
‘I know,’ Hadrel replied. ‘But you know lies better than I do.’
He took a step forwards.
Mabbon raised Varl’s rifle in a quick warning gesture, adjusting the under-barrel tube.
‘No closer,’ he said. ‘You have a rifle, and you have claws. I have a grenade tube. The reworked are blessed and they are mighty, but this will make a mess of you both at close range.’
‘Indeed,’ grinned Jaghar. ‘If it was working.’ He eyed Mabbon’s gun. ‘I can see from here the mechanism is jammed.’
Mabbon was well aware of that. The launcher tube had been buckled when the blast slammed it against the wall. He’d noticed that the moment he’d picked it up.
‘Well,’ he said. ‘A bluff might have worked.’ He tossed the rifle aside.
‘I wanted to know why,’ said Hadrel.
‘All of us did,’ said Jaghar.
‘Why did you turn, Mabbon?’ Hadrel asked.
Mabbon laughed. ‘I am tired of explaining. I don’t owe you any answer, not you or anyone. I am done with war.’
‘But you sided with them,’ said Hadrel.
‘For the stones, nothing more,’ said Mabbon.
‘But they are everything,’ said Hadrel. ‘The Anarch has told us so. Enkil Vehk. A certain victory, and you brought it to them.’
‘The eagle stone key is an abomination,’ said Mabbon. ‘You know what it does. I am done with war, and it is the greatest monstrosity war has built. I cannot stop this crusade, this endless bloodshed, but I thought perhaps I could stop that.’
‘By giving it to them?’ asked Jaghar. ‘To the corpse-prophet’s chieftains? How is that not taking sides?’
‘The Anarch knows what the key does,’ said Mabbon. ‘He knows where to take it and how it works. But the men of the Throne, they know nothing. Except that the key is valuable, and must be kept from you. If they possessed it, they would guard it. Remove it from the Sabbat Worlds. Keep it from you, so that it could never be used.’
‘They would learn its secrets,’ said Hadrel.
‘I doubt it. A thing that old, that vergoht? They would never puzzle it out.’ He looked at them both. ‘They would not know how to use it, but they could keep it safe so Sek could never use it.’
‘The great magir will have the key by dawn,’ said Jaghar.
‘When his voice next speaks, it will be to tell us that the key is recovered,’ said Hadrel. ‘Corrod has been sent.’
Mabbon sagged. ‘Then it was all for nothing,’ he murmured.
The rain pattered around them.
‘It was all for victory,’ said Hadrel. ‘That was a thing you once rejoiced in. Why did that change?’
‘It changed because I was good at it,’ said Mabbon. ‘As sirdar, as damogaur, as etogaur. I rose and I conquered. I burned worlds. I was a champion of the Sekkite host, inculcated to the truths of the Anarch.’
He looked down at the ground and watched the raindrops dance around his feet.
‘He was pleased with my service. So pleased to turn a man from one side and make him its unflinching foe. So he rewarded me. He bestowed upon me the highest honour, as a favour for my service.’
‘A blessing,’ said Jaghar.
‘A curse,’ said Mabbon. ‘It let me see the truth. The deranged hell of the immaterium and those gods which dwell within it. I saw them all. I saw myself. I saw how he had changed me. I saw what he had made me. It was enough. I turned my back on war forever.’
He looked at them levelly.
‘Walk away,’ he said. ‘This does not have to happen.’
‘We will not,’ said Hadrel. ‘You are pheguth, and you will die. You and those who shelter you.’
Mabbon exhaled, a long slow breath.
‘I will not let you harm them, even if that means breaking my oath. I’ve broken many, so I suppose that doesn’t matter in the end. Last chance, sirdar magir. Walk away, and I’ll let you live.’
Jaghar fired. The las-rounds tore into Mabbon’s side and rocked him backwards. He ploughed forwards anyway, rushing into the hail of shots, flinching with each impact.
He tore the rifle from Jaghar’s hands, and sent the Qimurah flying with a fist. As Hadrel came at him, Mabbon swung and smashed the rifle across Hadrel’s face.
Jaghar bounded at him. Mabbon tossed the broken rifle away and met Jaghar’s attack with a punch that cracked teeth. Jaghar tumbled back.
Mabbon lunged after him. The pheguth’s clothing was torn, shredded by the las-fire. The flesh of his chest bubbled and dripped with yellow gore.
Neon heat welled in his tired, empty eyes. His fingers bulged. Bone snapped. The flesh broke and sprouted talons.
He smashed Jaghar down with a blow that snapped the Qimurah’s head aside and sprayed yellow gore into the air. Hadrel smashed into him, raking claws deep into Mabbon’s chest and back. Yellow plasma gushed from the wounds.