More exotic were the modified queue-folk. Wienand spied a tele-bless. The woman’s eyes had been replaced with optical lenses and the bulky, cable-pierced box of a storage drive jutted from the side of her skull. She had been inside the holy sepulchre of the Cathedral and was willing to allow others to access her sights and memories for the right price, thus passing on the holiness of the sanctuary without the irksome waiting.
Messenger cherubs — vat-grown winged creatures with angelic faces and dead eyes — flitted back and forth through the haze of incense above the milling crowd, carrying missives to and from the Cathedral offices. She decided to follow their course to keep her bearing as the crowd surged and rippled around her, edging ever closer to unity with the Emperor.
Although the mass of pilgrims gave her plenty of cover in which to hide, it also prevented Wienand from seeing if she was still being pursued. She was sure that whoever had followed her down the tunnel would have been close enough to track her progress into the multitude, and if they were in communication with others sworn to Veritus and his allies she might well be at the centre of a converging net.
She needed to get into the hab-blocks, effect a change of clothes — and preferably dye her hair — before disappearing altogether. Over the heads of the throng around her the inquisitor could see the top of an arched entrance to the nearest hab-block, about three hundred feet away. She started to head towards it, stepping past an elderly couple who had sat down on the ferrocrete with a small stove to brew a pot of some hot beverage or other. They were dressed in mendicant robes — undyed smocks given out for those that needed to sell the last of their belongings, including their clothes, for food and water.
‘Tai, dear?’ asked the old lady, offering up a much-chipped ceramic cup and saucer. ‘You seem in an awful hurry. Why not relax a moment and have a nice cup of tai?’
Wienand couldn’t help but grin at the lady’s attitude. To keep a tai set whilst dressed in charity rags demonstrated an adherence to a certain level of standards that gave Wienand a momentary lift in spirits.
‘No, thank you, but I appreciate the offer,’ said Wienand. She delved into a secret pocket inside her jacket and produced a brassy coin. On one side was the Inquisitorial symbol and on the other her personal mark. She handed the token to the old man and pointed to an Adeptus Arbites watch-tower about half a mile ahead. ‘When you get to the way-station, show them this. Say that Inquisitor Wienand instructs that they escort you to the front of the queue.’
The couple looked at her wide-eyed, caught between shock and fear. Wienand winked and turned away.
At that moment she saw a commotion in the crowd about a dozen feet ahead of her. Someone was bulldozing their way through the pilgrims straight towards Wienand, smashing aside people in their haste.
With surprised shouts and angry yells the crowd parted, revealing a well-muscled man bulging out of the seams of a mendicant robe. The hood was thrown back as he sprinted towards her; he had an ageing, broad face with a squashed nose, and his bald scalp was crossed with three faint scars.
Wienand dragged free her bolt pistol but her attacker was shockingly fast and she did not have time to aim before he had reached her — she could not risk a wild shot with so many others around. The man’s hands were empty of weapons, she realised, and an out-thrust palm struck Wienand in the chest, hurling her back several yards, crashing through the brew set of the old couple, skidding and rolling across the rough ferrocrete.
The old man gave a shout, of pain rather than surprise, and lurched to his feet clutching his shoulder. Blood spurted between his fingers as he staggered a few steps and fell down to his knees.
Only here, as she lay on her back, did Wienand realise what was happening. The man’s face flashed from a memory of Rendenstein’s reports: Esad Wire, known as Beast Krule. It seemed that Vangorich was making his own play.
However, in the next instant she happened to look up and saw what it was that the Beast had also seen. In one of the hab windows on the far side of the avenue, about five hundred feet away, light glinted from a lens of some kind. Probably a telescopic gunsight.
Wienand rolled to her right out of pure instinct a moment before the sniper fired again, the high-velocity bullet cracking from the roadway where she had been moments before. Still dazed, Wienand did not resist when Beast Krule snatched the bolt pistol from her hand and turned towards the firer. There was something about his pose, the set of his shoulders and legs, the raw sturdiness of the man, which suggested some kind of endoskeletal bracing.
Beast Krule fired back at the sniper, a salvo of three bolts. From this range Wienand would have thought the shot impossible, but the trio of bolts arced over the crowd and dropped into the window. Krule had some kind of optical imaging and had even allowed for the decay rate of the bolts’ internal propellant. The flash of detonations illuminated a gaunt, shocked face within the dorm cell.
Wienand rolled to her feet, pulling free her laspistol. Other figures were converging on them from the crowd. Some of the pilgrims were rooted in horror, others were screaming, while many were trying to push their way back into the packed throng, trying to get away. The old woman had crawled over to her husband and was cradling him in her arms, a patch of wet red spreading through the crude grey weave of her smock.
‘Watch out!’ Wienand’s warning came just in time as a woman in a dark red Imperial Guard uniform lunged from the crowd at Krule, her hand clutching a gleaming power sword. The Assassin turned just in time, the shimmering blade slicing through the folds of the robe around his neck but missing flesh. Krule snapped out his right hand, fingers extended. The woman’s throat disappeared in a welter of foaming blood.
Another assailant dressed in the same manner, tall and lean, erupted from the panicked people to Wienand’s right. The inquisitor fired and there was a flash of light as a conversion field absorbed the energy of the las-shot. She didn’t have time for another, but Krule was there again, a kick snapping the legs from under the man, shattering shin bones. The Beast was on top of him in moments, driving reinforced fists through his chest and ribs.
Someone barrelled into Wienand from behind. She squirmed and twisted as she fell, firing the laspistol point-blank into the person’s gut. Hot breath warmed the inquisitor’s neck as the two of them hit the ground hard, forcing the air out of Wienand’s lungs. She stared into the red lenses of a pair of bionic eyes inches from her face, and was distantly aware of a sharp pain just above her right hip.
Suddenly the weight on Wienand was lifted away. The man seemed to rise into the air, blood drops falling from the blade of the long knife in his left hand, a scorch mark on the flak armour covering his torso beneath the layers of a preacher’s vestments. At first Wienand thought it was Krule who threw her assailant a dozen feet, but the robed, hooded figure was too slender. Her saviour stooped down, extending a hand with well-manicured fingernails and a small tattoo of a skull between thumb and index finger that Wienand recognised immediately.
‘Rendenstein? I knew you were alive!’
Wienand’s aide nodded inside the hood and stepped past, delivering a skull-smashing punch to a man swinging a maul at Beast Krule’s exposed back. The Assassin reared up, bloodied hands flinging gore. He spun around but stopped himself as he pulled back his right fist.