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his blunt face in the colours of his old regiment, the 90th Vladislavan.

Arianrhod and I tailed him. She'd dulled her sabre's blade with brick dust but still it hooked the light as she turned it in her hands.

Arianrhod Esw Sweydyr was well over two metres tall, quite the tallest human woman I have ever met, though such stature is

common amongst the people of far away Carthae. Her long-boned frame was clad in a leather bodysuit embossed with bronze studs,

over which she wore a long, tasselled cloak of patchwork hide. Her silver hair was plaited with beads. The sabre was called

Barbarisater and had been carried by women of the Esw Sweydyr tribe for nineteen generations. From the braided grip to the tip of the

curved, engraved blade, it measured almost a metre and a half. Long, lean, slender, like the woman who wielded it. Already I could

sense the vibration of the psychic energies she was feeding into it. Woman and blade had become one living thing.

Arianrhod had served with my staff for five years, and I was still learning the intricacies of her martial prowess. Ordinarily I'd be

noting every detail of her combat trance methods, but I was too fatigued, too drawn out with hunger and thirst.

Bequin and Zu Zeng brought up the rear, side by side, Bequin in a long black gown with a ruff of black feathers around the shoulders,

and Zu Zeng in her unreflective robes of Vitrian glass. They stayed back far enough so the aura of their psychic blankness would not

conflict with the abilities of Arianrhod or myself, yet close enough to move forward in defence if the time came.

The Inquisition - and many other institutions, august or otherwise - has long been aware of the usefulness of untouchables, those rare

human souls who simply have no psionic signature whatsoever and thus disrupt or negate even the most strenuous psychic attack.

When I met her on Hubris, a century before, Alizebeth Bequin had been the first untouchable I had ever encountered. Despite her

unnerving presence - even non-psykers find untouchables difficult to be around - I had added her to my staff and she had proved to be

invaluable. After many years of service, she had retired to form the Distaff, a cadre of untouchables recruited from all across the

Imperium. The Distaff was my own private resource, although I often loaned their services to others of my order. They numbered

around forty members now, trained and managed by Bequin. It is my belief that the Distaff was collectively one of the most potent

anti-psyker weapons in the Emperor's domain.

THE RUINS WERE festering with shadows and dank salt. Rot-beetles scurried over the flaking mosaic portraits of long-dead worthies

that stared out of alcoves. Worms crawled everywhere. The steady chirrup of insects from the salt-licks was like someone shaking a

rattle. As we probed deeper, we came upon inner yards and grave-squares where neglect had shaken free places-tones and revealed the

smeared bones of the long interred in the loamy earth below. In places, rot-browned skulls had been dug out and piled in loose

pyramids.

It saddened me to see this holy place so befouled and dreary. Kiodrus had been a great man, had stood and fought at the right hand of

the sacred Beati Sabbat during her mighty crusade. But that had been a long time ago and far away, and his cult of worship had faded.

It would take another crusade into the distant Sabbat Worlds to rekindle interest in him and his forgotten deeds.

Qus called a halt and pointed towards the steps of an undercroft that led away below ground. I waved him back, indicating the tiny

strip of red ribbon placed under a stone on the top step. A marker, left by Ravenor, indicating this was not a suitable entry point.

Peering into the staircase gloom, I saw what he had seen: the half buried cables of a tremor-detector and what looked like bundles of

tube charges.

We found three more entrances like it, all marked by Ravenor. The Beldame had secured her fastness well.

'Through there, do you think, sir?' Qus whispered, pointing towards the columns of a roofless cloister.

I was about to agree when Arianrhod hissed, 'Barbarisater thirsts…'

I looked at her. She was prowling to the left, towards an archway in the base of the main bell-tower. She moved silently, the sabre held

upright in a two-handed grip, her tasselled cloak floating out behind her like angelic wings.

I gestured to Qus and the women and we formed in behind her. I drew my prized boltpistol, given to me by Librarian Brytnoth of the

Adeptus Astartes Deathwatch Chapter on the eve of the Purge of Izar, almost a century before. It had never failed me.

The Beldame's minions came out of the night. Eight of them, just shadows that disengaged themselves from the surrounding darkness.

Qus began to fire, blasting back a shadow that pounced at him. I fired too, raking bolt rounds into the ghostly opposition.

Beldame Sadia was a heretic witch and consorted with xenos breeds. She had a particular fascination with the beliefs and

necromancies of the dark eldar, and had made it her life-cause to tap that foul alien heritage for power and lore. She was one of the

only humans I knew of who had struck collaborative pacts with their wretched kabals. Rumour had it she had been recently initiated

into the cult of Kaela Mensha Khaine, in his aspect as the Murder-God beloved of the eldar renegades.

As befitted such a loyalty, she recruited only convicted murderers for her minions. The men who attacked us in that blighted yard were

base killers, shrouded in shadow fields she had bought, borrowed or stolen from her inhuman allies.

One swung at me with a long-bladed halberd and I blew off his head. Just. My body was tired and my reactions were damnably slow.

I saw Arianrhod. She was a balletic blur, her beaded hair streaming out above her flying cloak. Barbarisater purred in her hands.

She severed the neck of one shadow with a backward slash, then pirouetted around and chopped another in two from neck to pelvis.

The sabre was moving so fast I could barely see it. She stamped hard and reversed her direction of movement, causing a third shadow

to sprawl as he overshot her. His head flew off, and the sabre swept on to impale a fourth without breaking its fluid motion. Then

Arianrhod swept around, the sword held horizontally over her right shoulder. The steel haft of the fifth shadow's polearm was cut in

two and he staggered back. Barbarisater described a figure of eight in the air and another shadow fell, cut into several sections.

The last minion turned and fled. A shot from Bequin's laspistol brought him down.

A pulse was pounding in my temple and I realised I had to sit down before I passed out. Qus grabbed me by the arm and helped me

down onto a block of fallen wall stone.

'Gregor?'

'I'm all right, Alizebeth… give me a moment…'

'You shouldn't have come, you old fool! You should have left this to your disciples!'

'Shut up, Alizebeth.'

'I will not, Gregor. It's high time you understood your own limits.'

I looked up at her. 'I have no limits,' I said.

Qus laughed involuntarily.

'I believe him, Mistress Bequin,' said Ravenor, stepping from the shadows. Emperor damn his stealth, even Arianrhod had not seen

him coming. She had to force her sabre down to stop it slicing at him.

Gideon Ravenor was a shade shorter than me, but strong and well-made. He was only thirty-four years old. His long black hair was

tied back from his sculpted, high cheek-boned face. He wore a grey bodyglove and a long leather storm coat. The psycannon mounted

on his left shoulder whirred and clicked around to aim at Arianrhod.

'Careful, swordswoman,' he said. 'My weapon has you squarely.'

'And it will still have me squarely when your head is lying in the dust,' she replied.

They both laughed. I knew they had been lovers for over a year, but still in public they sparred and sported with each other.

Ravenor snapped his fingers and his companion, the festering mutant Gonvax, shambled out of hiding, drool stringing from his thick,

malformed lips. He carried a flamer, the fuel-tanks strapped to the hump of his twisted back.

I rose. 'What have you found?' I asked Ravenor.

'The Beldame - and a way in,' he said.

BELDAME SADIA'S LAIR was in the sacrarium beneath the main chapel of the ruin. Ravenor had scouted it carefully, and found an entry

point in one of the raptured crypts that perhaps even she didn't know about.

My respect for Ravenor was growing daily. I had never had a disciple like him. He excelled at almost every skill an inquisitor is meant

to have. I looked forward to the day when I supported his petition to inquisitorial status. He deserved it. The Inquisition needed men

like him.

SINGLE-FILE, WE entered the crypt behind Ravenor. He drew our attention carefully to every pitfall and loose flag. The stench of salt

and old bones was intolerable, and I felt increasingly weak in the close, hot air.

We emerged into a stone gallery that overlooked a wide subterranean chamber. Pitch-lamps sputtered in the darkness and there was a

strong smell of dried herbs and fouler unguents.

Beings were worshipping in the chamber. Worshipping is the only word I can use. Naked, daubed in blood, twenty depraved humans

were conducting a dark eldar rite around a torture pit in which a battered man was chained and stretched.

The stink of blood and excrement wafted to me. I tried not to throw up, for I knew the effort would make me pass out.

'There, you see him?' Ravenor whispered into my ear as we crawled to the edge of the gallery.

I made out a pale-skinned ghoul in the distant shadows.

'A haemonculus, sent by the Kabal of the Fell Witch to witness the Beldame's practices.'

I tried to make out detail, but the figure was too deep in the shadows.

I registered grinning teeth and some form of blade device around the right hand.

'Where's Pye?' asked Bequin, whispering too.

Ravenor shook his head. Then he seized my arm and squeezed. Even whispers were no longer possible.

The Beldame herself had entered the chamber.

She walked on eight, spider legs, a huge augmetic chassis of hooked arachnid limbs that skittered on the stones. Inquisitor Atelath,

Emperor grant him rest, had destroyed her real legs one hundred and fifty years before my birth.

She was veiled in black gauze that looked like cobwebs. I could actually feel her evil like a fever-sweat.

She paused at the edge of the torture pit, raised her veil with withered hands and spat at the victim below. It was venom, squirted from

the glands built into her mouth behind her augmetic fangs. The viscous fluid hit the sacrificial victim full in the face and he gurgled in

agony as the front of his skull was eaten away.

Sadia began to speak, her voice low and sibilant. She spoke in the language of the dark eldar and her naked brethren writhed and

moaned.

'I've seen enough,' I whispered. 'She's mine. Ravenor, can you manage the haemonculus?'

He nodded.

On my signal, we launched our attack, leaping down from the gallery, weapons blazing. Several of the worshippers were punched

apart by Qus's heavy fire.

Whooping the battlecry of Carthae, Arianrhod flew at the haemonculus, way ahead of Ravenor.

I realised I had pushed it too far. I was giddy as I landed, and stumbled.

Her metal spider legs striking sparks from the flagstones, Beldame Sadia reared up at me, ululating. She pulled back her veil to spit at

me.

Abruptly, she reeled backwards, thunderstruck by the combined force of Bequin and Zu Zeng who flanked her.

I gathered myself and fired at her, blowing one of the augmetic limbs off her spider-frame.

She spat anyway but missed. The venom sizzled into the cold stone slabs at my feet.

'Imperial Inquisition!' I bellowed. 'In the name of the hallowed God-Emperor, you and your kind are charged with treason and

manifest disbelief!'

I raised my weapon. She flew at me.

Her sheer bulk brought me down.

One spider limb stabbed entirely through the meat of my left thigh. Her steel fangs, like curved needles, snarled into my face. I saw

her eyes, for an instant, black and without limit or sanity.

She spat.

I wrenched my head around to avoid the corrosive spew, and fired my bolt pistol up into her.

The impact threw her backwards, all four hundred kilos of wizened witch and bionic carriage.

I rolled over.

The haemonculus had met Arianrhod's attack face on, the glaive around his right hand screaming as the xenos-made blades whirled.

He was stick-thin and clad in shiny black leather, his grin a perpetual consequence of the way the colourless skin of his face was

pinned back around his skull. He wore metal jewellery fashioned from the weapons of the warriors he had slain.

I could hear Ravenor crying out Arianrhod's name.

Barbarisater sliced at the darting eldar monster, but he evaded, his physical speed unbelievable.

She swung again, placing two perfect kill strokes that somehow missed him altogether. He sent her lurching away in a mist of blood.

For the first time since I had known her, I heard Arianrhod yelp in pain.

Flames belched across the chamber. Gonvax shambled forward, forever loyal to his master… and his master's lover. He tried to squirt

flames at the haemonculus, but it was suddenly somehow behind him. Gonvax shrieked as the glaive eviscerated him.

With a howl, Arianrhod threw herself at the dark eldar. I saw her, for a moment, frozen in mid-air, her sabre descending. Then the two

bodies struck each other, and flew apart.

The sabre had taken off the eldar's left arm at the shoulder. But his glaive…

I knew she was dead. No one could survive that, not even a noble swordswoman from far Carthae.

Bequin was pulling me up. 'Gregor! Gregor!'

Beldame Sadia, her spider carriage limping, was fleeing towards the staircase.

Something exploded behind me. I could hear Ravenor bellowing in rage and pain.

I ran after the Beldame.

THE UPPER CHAPEL, above ground, was silent and cold. Darknight flares glimmered through the lines of stained glass windows.

'You can't escape, Sadia!' I shouted, but my voice was thin and hoarse.

I glimpsed her as she skittered between the columns to my left. A shadow in the shadows.

'Sadia! Sadia, old hag, you have killed me! But you will die by my hand!'