‘Dammit!’ Edur cried.
‘We think the targets are heading east towards the Honorarium and the memorial enclave, sir.’
‘Follow them!’
‘Sir, there are an appreciable number of civilians in our path!’
Edur cursed again, and turned in a frustrated circle in the sunlight.
He saw Kolea and Baskevyl, and the Tanith scout squads, running towards him.
‘Back off. Back off, now!’ he yelled, raising his hands. ‘Stand down. You’re only going to make this worse!’
‘Well, great job you’re doing,’ Baskevyl yelled as he ran past.
‘Throne damn it,’ Edur screamed.
‘We look after our own!’ Kolea yelled back at him.
‘That’s exactly why this is a bad idea,’ Edur replied.
Mkoll was the first of the Tanith party to reach the western cloisters. Eszrah was close behind him.
Mkoll suddenly skidded to a halt, and looked up at the sky.
‘Something’s coming,’ he said.
‘You mean the air cover?’ Jajjo asked, running up behind them.
‘No,’ Mkoll growled. ‘Something bad, I think.’
He raised his rifle and rushed on into the cloisters.
‘Shouldn’t we just surrender to them?’ Jaume asked as they ran.
‘No,’ said Gaunt.
‘But they were Throne agents, weren’t they? Officers of the Inquisition?’
‘The answer’s still no,’ said Gaunt.
He skidded to a halt. He could hear the uproar of the fire-teams chasing them, the screams of the visitor parties scrambling out of their way.
It all seemed very distant, suddenly.
Gaunt looked up. A scatter of snowflakes, no more than three or four, was falling towards them out of the cloudless air. They fell until they were a few metres above their heads.
Then they froze in the air. They hung, impossibly, in nothingness, as if time had been suspended.
‘Now we’re really in trouble,’ murmured Gaunt.
‘She’s here,’ whispered Mabbon. ‘The witch is here.’
Heavy gunfire suddenly raked at them. They flew for cover behind the pillars of the colonnade. The throaty las-fire punched holes in the stone flags, and sent paving stones spinning into the air.
Closing in behind Gaunt’s group, the ordo fire-teams turned to blast at the sudden source of fire. They got off a few shots before the heavy gunfire turned on them, cutting many of them down. Men crumpled or jerked back, smashed off their feet. Some of them got to cover. Some of them fell, hideously wounded.
‘Into them!’ Baltasar Eyl commanded.
Gnesh moved forwards along the cloisters, hosing with his heavy las-gun. Las-bolts squealed and spat from the massive, oil-black weapon slung over his shoulder. His shots were chewing the corners off the colonnade’s stone pillars. Facing stone cracked and shattered. Brick dust bloomed like shocks of pollen. Ordo agents toppled and fell. A Sirkle, hit twice, smashed back into a pillar, and slid down, dead.
Around Gnesh, elements of the philia laid in support. Their gunfire greeted the S Company formations arriving behind the ordo units. The Commissariat storm-troopers took cover, and began to return fire with their hellguns. In less than a minute, the western cloisters of the great quad had turned into a furious, howling nightmare of a firefight.
This is the Tower of the Plutocrat I remember, Gaunt thought.
He looked around, gauging the best exit route. Las-rounds smacked into the wall above him. Somewhere, a grenade went off. Above the gunfire roar, he could hear turbofans whining.
Gaunt rose, blew a Blood Pact warrior off his feet with a single bolt, ran, and tried to reach the next archway, hoping to duck in, and provide cover for the men following him.
Imrie of the philia swung out of the archway shadows, and rammed the muzzle of his weapon against Gaunt’s forehead.
‘On your knees,’ he said in broken Low Gothic. ‘On your knees. Where is the pheguth?’
‘Tar shet fethak!’ Gaunt replied, cursing the Blood Pact warrior in his own tongue.
Imrie took a step back in surprise, and then aimed the gun to shoot.
A chunk of paving stone smacked him in the face, cracking his grotesk.
Imrie fell on his back, his weapon discharging uselessly into the ceiling of the colonnade.
Maggs appeared at Gaunt’s side.
‘Don’t give me a bloody gun then,’ Maggs said, and helped himself to Imrie’s weapon. Gaunt didn’t stop him.
Maggs checked the weapon. On the ground, Imrie began to stir. Maggs put the rifle to his head, and fired.
‘One less to worry about,’ he said.
‘We’ve got to find a way out of here,’ Gaunt told him.
Two more Blood Pact shooters opened up on them from the cloister end. Las-bolts chopped and stripped through the air. Gaunt and Maggs ducked down, and fired back.
‘Oh holy Throne!’ Gaunt heard Jaume cry out. ‘Oh holy Throne, this is insanity!’
Maggs adjusted his angle, and took out one of the Archenemy shooters. The other tried to reposition to get Maggs into his sweep of fire, and Gaunt put two bolt-rounds through him and the wall behind him.
‘Run!’ Maggs told the others. ‘Now!’
They all ran.
The Valkyries swung in low over the High Palace. Smoke was pluming up off the cloisters near to the great quad.
Strapped into the open doorway of the leading bird, Larkin looked up at Bonin, who was holding on to the door’s overhead rail.
‘It’s a fething mess down there,’ he yelled over the wind rush.
Bonin nodded. He pulled out a scope, and started spotting.
‘Get your eye in, Larks,’ he said.
‘I don’t even know what I’m looking for anymore,’ muttered Larkin, settling up to his long-las’s scope.
‘Bad guys,’ Bonin said.
‘Ah, gotcha,’ replied Larkin.
Rime and three Sirkles ran down the western colonnade, past the bodies of dead agents and at least two other Sirkles. Rime could hear the strip and slap of fierce gunfire exchanges in the precincts directly ahead of him.
‘Close in, close in!’ he yelled over his link. ‘Condition red! All forces close in and subdue. Kill shots approved, all targets!’
Crossfire ripped through the colonnade, killing both of the Sirkles, outright. Rime stumbled with a flesh wound to his left thigh. The philia warrior known as Naeme ploughed out of hiding behind the inquisitor with his weapon raised to finish his attack.
‘Then it is Golguulest,’ he was saying, ‘then it is Nyurtaloth.’ Naeme was ebullient. He knew in his heart that the mission his philia had been sent on was almost done, and he knew his rite was nearly done too. There were only a few of death’s names left to be recited.
‘Then there is Djastah,’ he said.
‘Then there is Rime,’ said Rime.
Naeme hesitated, and stared at the inquisitor in amazement. There was no denying it. Rime was certainly one of the last names of death.
‘You,’ Naeme breathed. ‘You are–’
Rime raised his hand and caught Naeme by the throat. He snapped the Blood Pact warrior’s neck with an effortless flick.
‘Yes,’ said Rime, allowing the body to fall. ‘I am.’
Karhunan Sirdar knew that the philia was losing bodies fast. The running gun battle through the High Palace was costing both sides dearly. He’d just seen his brother Barc fall, his brains splashed up the wall. The area ahead of the sirdar was littered with Imperial dead.
Ever the strategist, Karhunan reckoned he had enough men left to cut across the line of Imperial assault, and hold it long enough for his beloved damogaur to make the kill.