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from behind. It was a desperate ploy. Unarmoured as I was, I stood little chance of overwhelming his brute force or hurting him. He

got a steel-gloved paw round behind himself, grabbed me by the coat and tore me off him.

My coat ripped. I bounced hard off a pillar and crashed awkwardly through the delicate fretwork of a confessional screen. I had barely

pulled myself out of the flimsy wooden wreckage when the chainsword swooped in again and chewed a deep gouge in the cathedral

floor.

I ran from him then, across the south aisle towards the feretory. Two men of the cathedral's Frateris Militia, clearly seeking

advancement by coming to the aid of the fearsome Ministorum witch-hunter, closed in to block my escape. They were both clad in

Ezra's yellow and carried short stave-maces in one hand and temple lanterns in the other.

I think they both quickly regretted their enthusiastic involvement.

I didn't even bother with the will. I think my rage was too great to have used it cleanly anyway. I side-stepped the first mace, caught

and broke the wrist that wielded it, and kicked the man down. The mace turned in the air as it flew from the sprawling oafs useless

hand, and I caught it and turned it cross-wise in time to block the down-stroke of the other man's club. As he bounced back with the

recoil of his own, negated strike, I smacked him in the side of the knee with my captured weapon. He fell over with sharp wail of pain,

losing hold of his own mace and trying to beat me with his temple lamp instead. I took the lamp away from him and kicked him in the

belly so he doubled up on his side, sobbing and trying to remember how to breathe.

The first man was back up, running at me. I spun and smashed the temple lamp in his face, sideways. Both its light and his went out.

The paving shook as Tantalid hove down on me. I used the captured mace like a sword, double-handed, to deflect his first strokes. It

was iron-banded hardwood, and tough, but no match for a chainsword. After three or so clashes, the mace was chewed and mangled. I

threw it aside and tore a church standard down from the wall beside the feretory door. Theo-phantus immediately shredded the old

embroidered cloth and wood-frame titulus from the end, but that left me with three metres of cast-iron pole.

I held it like a quarterstaff, striking Tantalid hard on the side of the head with one end and then square on the opposite hip with the

other. Then I stabbed the end at him viciously, like a spear-thrust, and managed to dent the chest-plate of his armour.

In response - and frothing mad with anger himself now - he put up Theophantus and shortened my pole by about half a metre. I

wrenched the remaining pole around one-handed and struck him on the other side of the head. Blood was spilling from his ears. He

howled and made an attack that almost took my arm off.

My third attempt to clip his miserable head missed. He was wise to it now, and blocked with his chainsword. The chain teeth caught in

the pole and plucked it from my hands, throwing it up ten metres into the air. It landed behind some pews with a loud, echoing clang.

I rocked back from the follow up, but the murderous saw caught my right shoulder and gashed me deeply. Clutching the wound, I

ducked again, and Theophantus decapitated a statue of Saint Ezra's pardoner.

No matter what I did, it was going his way. He had the weapons and the armour on his side. And now I was bleeding badly, which

meant I would progressively slow and weaken, and it was just a matter for him to keep pressing the onslaught and he would triumph.

I became aware of another commotion near the main doors of the great church. Many startled worshippers and hierarchs had retreated

and gathered there to watch the holy combat. Now they were spilling aside, their huddle breaking. A figure stormed through them.

Medea.

She ran down the main aisle, calling to me, firing her needle pistol over the tops of the pews at Tantalid. The lethal rounds pinged and

clicked off his armour, and he turned in annoyance.

Tantalid dragged out his boltpistol and fired at this new attack. Medea hurled the object she had been carrying in her other hand and

then disappeared from view as she dived to evade the hammer blows of the bolt rounds. At least, I prayed it was a deliberate dive. If

he had hit her…

The object she had thrown bounced off a pew near me and landed on the floor, spilling from its yellow cloth.

Barbarisater.

Risking dismemberment from the chainsword, I hurled myself at the Carthaen blade. My hands found its long grip and I rolled twice

to avoid the next downstrike of Theophantus.

Barbarisater purred in my grip as I came up. The runes blazed with vengeful light.

Tantalid realised that the nature of the battle had suddenly changed. I saw it in his eyes.

My first swing severed his wrist, cutting clean through the power-armoured cuff, dropping his hand to the floor, still clutching the

smoking boltgun.

My second met Theophantus and destroyed it, spraying disintegrating chain-teeth and machine parts into the air.

My third cut Witchfinder Tantalid in two from the left shoulder to the groin. Neither half of him made a sound as they fell apart onto

the cathedral floor.

Barbarisater was still seething with power, and twitched as Medea emerged unhurt from behind a choir stall. I forced the hungry blade

down.

'Come on!' she said.

Ungish was dead. There was nothing I could do for her. And there was so much I should have done. She had been right. Right about

this. Right about her fate. I dreaded to think how much more of what she had said might prove to be true too.

Hearing my frantic glossia call when Tantalid first attacked, Medea had taken the launch up from Ezra Plain outside the city, despite

all official warnings for her to abort, and flown it right in, setting down in the courtyard outside Saint Ezra Outlooking.

As we ran out now, into the evening, through crowds of stunned onlookers who leapt out of our path, the city arbites and the Frateris

Militia were rising in alarmed response. There was no point waiting to face them.

The launch shot us skywards, back towards the Essene, to leave Orbul Infanta as fast as we could.

IT WAS A mess, and I was terribly disheartened. The confidence with which we had all set out from Cinchare seemed to have

dissolved. Orbul Infanta had been just the first part of a long stratagem, and thanks to Tantalid, it had ended badly. I'd failed to contact

Gladus, and discovered that as careful as I had been, my communiques were not secure. The third task I had planned to undertake on

Orbul Infanta, a search of the Imperial archivum for certain information relating to Quixos, hadn't even been started.

At least the weapons were consecrated. And Barbarisater had more than proved itself in combat.

FRIGATES OF THE Frateris Militia, along with several Imperial Navy guard boats, attempted to block the Essene, but Maxilla's

navigator got us out of the system and real space before they could even close range. Some ships pursued us into the warp, and we

were chased for eight days, finally losing our pursuers through a series of real-space decelerations and redirections. We went to

ground. A month at a low-tech depot on a farming world, another two at the automated station at Kwyle. I was jumping at shadows by

then, expecting enemies and rivals to loom out of every doorway. But it was quiet and we were unmolested. Maxilla had made a

career out of passing unnoticed and avoiding attention. He lent that practiced art to our cause now, and reassured me into the bargain.

THREE MONTHS AFTER leaving Orbul Infanta in such haste, we risked a run to Gloricent, an outlying but prosperous trade world in the

Antimar subsector, another division of the Scarus Sector, just two subsectors over from the Helican sub itself. Though worlds like

Gudran and Thracian Primaris were a good four months away by starship, it felt a little like being home. Disguised, Medea and I

visited the sea-lashed stone piles of one of the main trade-hives, and procured a pair of astropaths, hiring their services from the local

commercial guild on an open-ended lease.

Their names were Adgur and Ueli, both young males, both psychically capable but dull-witted and emotionless. Their young heads

were shaved and their plugs shiny and new, and they spoke to me in overly formal ways that sounded like the parrot-learned etiquette

it sadly was. But their eyes were ringed with darkness and their flesh was losing its youthful lustre. The rigour of the astropathic life

was already taking its toll.

USING THEM, I sent fresh communiques that superceded the original ones and revised certain aspects of my scheme. None of the

messages now suggested the sort of trial meetings I had attempted with Gladus. I would not give so much away now.

After a week, and no reponses, we left Gloricent and went, via Mimonon to Sarum, the capital world of the Antimar subsector. I

managed to do some useful work in its libraries, but backed off when a sour little confessor on a research sabbatical took to following

me as if he recognised me.

While at anchor off Sarum, I got my first responses, all coded: from Bequin on Messina, and from Aemos on Gudrun. Both reported

that their parts of the plan were going much more smoothly than mine had. Two days later, a partially scrambled astropathic message

came from Inshabel on Elvara Cardinal. What parts I got of it seemed to indicate some success. I was impatient to know more.

The week before we left Sarum, I received two more, both anonymous, one from Thracian Primaris, the other from a cluster of slaveworlds

that owed fealty to the Salies Province of the Ophidian subsector. From the careful code and language of both, I recognised

their senders.

My spirits lifted.

AFTER THAT IMPROVEMENT, things again seemed to slow and stagnate. There was no progress, and no further communications. We

were forced to quit Lorwen, our next stop after Sarum, with unseemly haste, when a flotilla of warships from Battlefleet Reaver

arrived. I know now that the Battlefleet manoeuvres at Lorwen - and incidentally at Sarum and Femis Major too - were part of a major

precautionary deployment against a pair of space hulks that had suddenly roamed into the subsector. But they caused us over thirteen

weeks of anxious hiding amongst the brown and black dwarf stars of an extinguished stellar nursery.

Another Candlemas went by while we were in the empyrean, en route to the Drewlian Group. Medea, Maxilla and I marked it

together, just the three of us. The two astropaths and the navigator were not invited to attend. I raised a glass to toast the continued

success of our mission. I don't think I would have been so hearty if I had known it would be another full year before the final act of the

plan would play out.

I SPENT THE first four months of 342 fruitlessly engaged in a search for the celebrated precog-hermit Lukas Cassian in the stinking

marshes of Drewlia Two, only to learn that he had been murdered by a Monodominant cult four years earlier. During that quest, I

terminated the activities of a plague-daemon sect infesting the marshlands. That was quite an undertaking in its own right, but my full

account of it is filed in the Inquisition archives separately, and it has no bearing on this record. Besides, I still regard it bitterly as an

interruption and waste of time. Neither will I set down here the full story of Nathan Inshabel's ventures on Elvara Cardinal, or Harlon

Nayl's frankly extraordinary experiences on Bimus Tertius, though both tales connect to this record. Inshabel has written his own,

refreshingly witty account of his exploits, which may be accessed by those with the appropriate clearance, something I recommend as

illuminating and rewarding. Nayl asked me not to include his story, and has never committed it to record. It may be learned only by

those with the temerity to ask him and the money to pay for a long night's serious drinking.

All this while, I remained an Imperial outlaw, wanted by the Inquisition for my heresies. It is interesting to note that at no time during

this period did the Inquisition formally refute or overturn the carta I had declared on Quixos.

THE YEAR 343.M41 was half gone already by the time the Essene took me to Thessalon, a feudal world near Hesperus in the Helican

subsector. It had been chosen by Nayl as the point for our secret congregation. Commanding a twenty man field team selected from

my staff on Gudrun, he arrived a week before the rest of us to secure the location and make sure we were not compromised. His

preparations were thorough and ingenious. No one entered the area without him knowing it, nor could anyone have done so. At the

slightest sign of outside interruption or official interference, we would have ample time to withdraw and flee. As a final precaution, I

was the last to arrive.

THESSALON IS A tough little world whose population lives in a dark age and knows nothing of the Imperium or the galaxy beyond its

skies.

The meeting place was a rained keep in the north of the second continent, two thousand kilometres from the nearest indigenous

community. A few lonely animal herders and subsistence farmers undoubtedly saw the lights of our ships in their heavens, but to them

they were just the portents of the gods and the bright eyes of fabulous beasts.

MEDEA DEPOSITED ME at the edge of a conifer forest at nightfall, and then took the gun-cutter back to stand off as air-cover, ready to

redeploy at a moment's notice. For the first time in over two standard years, I was dressed as an inquisitor in black leather, storm coat

and proudly displayed rosette. I also wore my faith-harness with the engraving Puritus. Damn anyone who believed I wasn't worthy of

it.

Nayl, in combat armour, with a laser carbine cradled over one arm, appeared out of the trees and greeted me. We shook hands. It was

good to see him again. His men, who were all around I was sure, were invisible in the gathering darkness.

Nayl led me through the black woods into a break in the trees where the pine tops framed a perfect oval of starfilled mauve. The keep,

a jumbled pile of grey stone, stood in the clearing, with hooded lamps glowing from the lower slit windows.

Nayl walked me past and around the alarm-sensors, the tripwires and the beams of motion detectors that webbed the structure.

Servitor-skulls from my personal arsenal hovered in the shadows, alert and armed.

Bequin and Aemos met me under the broken entrance arch. Aemos looked pale and worried, but his face broke into a warm smile as