Something like awe or fear flashed in his eyes. Even so close to death, a mortal could not deny the existential dread of being faced with one of the Emperor’s chosen.
Meroved scowled. He needed him to talk.
‘And you knew that before you ran. How? Who are your allies? Are they down here too?’
The man laughed, though it looked painful for him and sounded more like choking.
‘It will be like drowning,’ said Meroved, losing patience, ‘except you’ll be on land and it will be in your own blood. What is your name? What does that mark underneath your eye mean?’
A few moments remained. Meroved could hear it in the man’s breathing.
‘Speak to me. You have nothing to gain now by obfuscation. Serve the Throne and in that find some redemption.’
The ex-Guardsman smiled, and looked strangely beatific before spitting up another dark gobbet of blood.
‘I am already a servant… but shall not yield…’ he rasped, every breath a supreme effort, ‘to despair… My suffering… serves… a great purp–’
He slumped back, chalk-pale, eyes sunken into hollows.
Meroved stood and cursed beneath his breath. He had found nothing, and was about to raise Zatu on the vox when he saw the parchment edge that had slipped out of one of the dead man’s pockets. Crouching back down, Meroved pulled out a map. It depicted the disused tunnels, describing a route from the eastern entrance to some kind of rendezvous point or hideout. Further inspection of the body revealed a null-collar around the man’s neck. It had been deactivated but appeared functional. Meroved unclasped it, folded it along the three hinges set around its circumference and tucked the collar into one of the large pouches on his munitions belt.
Then he looked back the way he had come to the jetbike, its anti-gravitic engines gently pushing it against the dirt, like an arrow slowly quivering in a target ring. Both the stirrups and the seat could be heavily adjusted. He reckoned it was approximately the same size as a Dawneagle, though bulkier and less refined than the jetbikes ridden by his old comrades in the Kataphraktoi.
Meroved raised an eyebrow.
Chapter Eleven
City of Vorganthian, Kobor, within Terra’s light
The air scythed past, tugging against his hood and pulling it away from his face. Meroved could not suppress a grin as he revelled in the sheer speed of the Harrower.
The tunnel sped by in a blur, lit by sweeping shafts of light from the Harrower’s forward-mounted lamps. Meroved’s mnemic abilities kept him on the route described on the map, though the deep and disused conduits through Vorganthian’s forgotten underbelly were labyrinthine. After a few miles, the turns came quickly and sharply. He could appreciate why the dead ex-Guardsman he had left back in the tunnel had needed a map, though Meroved needed only to glance at it once. What he could not fathom was why the dead man had been wearing a null-collar. As he piled on more speed, he considered the collar might relate to the supposed suicides Gedd had stumbled upon and wondered where all this might lead.
Eventually, Meroved came almost to the terminus of his journey as the tunnel network ended in a large subterranean excavation. Ditching the jetbike at the edge of a massive pit and killing its noisy engine, Meroved began to climb down a shallow slope that led into further darkness.
After about sixty feet, the slope started to level out and Meroved saw the watery light of sodium lamps strung up via cabling bolted to a low, natural ceiling. He found several large packing crates and empty promethium drums. Whoever had been down here had been in the process of moving location. Excavation tools lay abandoned, propped up against stacks of pallets. The place looked deserted. Even if the ex-Guardsman had not intended to return, he had probably been here at some point.
‘Why did you need to keep a watch?’ Meroved murmured. ‘What are your cohorts so wary of?’
The answers were not forthcoming.
Delving further Meroved found solid-slug casings, and the air still carried the faintest smell of cordite. A Custodian’s senses were greatly attuned, even more so than the Adeptus Astartes’.
His eyes narrowed. ‘You were interrupted.’
A fight had taken place here, a fierce one judging by the damage to the walls. Some of the crates had been used as cover. A few had been split in half. Others were shattered into pieces. It would take immense strength to strike such a blow. Drag marks and old bloodstains suggested that the casualties had been removed, and that the fight had taken place some time ago, possibly as long as several days.
As he went deeper the tunnels grew older, much older than the disused transit hub. Natural caverns replaced the man-made chambers, jutting with stalactites and strange bioluminescent fungus. Meroved doubted this place existed on any map. It was ancient. The sodium lamps had long since gone and Meroved pressed on into half-darkness until he caught the faintest glow of grey light. He followed it, moving slowly and cautiously, unsheathing the vibro-sword with Firebrand in his other hand, until the ceiling gave way to a grey gloaming sky.
Snow swept in from above through a natural cleft in the rock that led back to the outside world. It occurred to Meroved he must be nearing the northern district of the city, only a few miles from where he had sent Gedd.
The light was weak but limned a large cavern in an eerie pearlescent glow, sparkling where it touched cataracts trickling through fissures in the rock. The light also marked a body lying on its back in the middle of the cavern, its armour edged in silver. Spilled blood shimmered, glittering with frost. The sight of it caused Meroved’s breath to catch in his throat.
He rushed to the body and upon reaching it sank to his knees, his head heavy with grief. A light dusting of snow had fallen like a funeral veil. The thin white patina could not obscure the lustre of the armour. It shone gold. The specific manner of death was unclear, but the armour had been rent in several places. A slash carved open one side of the helm, revealing part of the face.
‘Kazamende…’ The name came out in a ghostly pall of expelled breath.
A guardian spear had fallen from the dead warrior’s grasp, and as Meroved reached for it he paused, remembering his oath. His outstretched fingers coiled into a fist.
‘How did I not see this?’
Kazamende had died here, presumably from his wounds. He may have died days ago. He wore the royal purple panoply of the Aquilan Shields.
‘What were you doing here, Kazamende?’ Meroved’s voice came out in a breath-starved rasp. ‘Who were you sent to protect?’
Deciding he could learn nothing more from the body, Meroved got to his feet. Taking off his cloak, he gently laid it across Kazamende.
‘Blood of the Throne…’ he whispered, unwilling to accept the truth of his eyes.
One of the Ten Thousand had been killed. No easy feat, and the Aquilan Shields were known for their skill in combat. They were also sworn to lay down their lives to protect an individual identified by the Emperor’s will. Meroved saw no other bodies. Either the man or woman Kazamende had been sent to protect had escaped or they had been taken. Alive or dead, it was impossible to determine.
A flicker of light caught Meroved’s attention and he looked up to see a hololithic figure resolve into being. It was a man, old but with the false appearance of youth. He looked strong and there was a slight militaristic air about his appearance, though the fatigues he wore were beneath the dark red robes of a missionary preacher. Flak armour bulked out his body. As he drew back his hood, he revealed rings on every finger, each shaped like the mark under the eye of the ex-Guardsman Meroved had left back in the tunnels – a candle with a solitary flame.