Blonsky had been watching for such a move, he was taken by surprise and floored.
“When you can prove an accusation like that,” growled Gavotski, standing over him, “then I
expect you to shoot me dead. Until then, you will keep your mouth shut and do as I tell you. Is that
understood, trooper?”
“They were praying,” said Pozhar in a small voice. “They were praying to the Emperor.” The
resentment had drained from him, and he looked confused, even afraid. Gavotski hadn’t expected
that. He had expected Pozhar to disapprove of his decision as vociferously as Blonsky had.
And the mutants — the human-looking mutants — were picking themselves up, re-emerging
from their hiding places, and closing in around the Ice Warriors, emboldened by their inaction.
Gavotski brought up his gun, and focused it on the nearest of them.
“That’s far enough!” he snapped, and the mutant came to a halt, raised its hands.
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“We understand your… suspicions, blame you for being… repulsed.” The voice was a
lumbering baritone, and it came from behind Gavotski. He turned, and felt his throat tightening. The
speaker stepped out of the shadows: a shambling monster with grey fur, its fingers twisted into
claws, its eyes a burning red, its brow unnaturally pronounced. “We repulse ourselves,” it said, “but
none of us… chose this. Didn’t want to be this way. Chaos, so… so strong… in the water, the air…
It has taken a hold of… our bodies.” He swallowed painfully.
Gavotski remembered what Tollenberg had said.
“But you’re fighting it, fighting to keep your minds pure.”
“If you are so loyal,” grumbled Blonsky, massaging his jaw as he climbed to his feet, “then you
know your duty. The Emperor’s edict on impurities is clear. There is only one way you can be
purged.”
“And we know we must… die,” the mutant said, “but want it to be for a… purpose. We want
to… want to strike against the heretics. They did this to us. They did this to our… world, to
Cressida.” It was having trouble breathing, and it broke off its speech as it groaned and wheezed,
sucking air into its lungs.
“You knew we were coming!” Grayle realised. “You sent out spies, into the mountains and the
forest. I saw one of them. You’ve been watching us!”
“Just… sorry,” said the mutant, “we could not approach sooner… before the sniper on the lake,
before you lost your… comrade at the landing site… before the Traitor Guardsmen… Had to choose
our moment carefully, as you will… as you will appreciate. So hard, these days, to know who can
be… trusted.”
Gavotski followed the mutant’s sorrowful gaze, down to the floor, to the body of the Ice
Warriors’ erstwhile guides, and to the others — six of them — cut down before he had called for his
ceasefire.
“We can’t save your world,” he said quietly. “That’s not what we’re here for. But with your
help, we can save one man. An important man.”
“Then we will give… what help we can,” the mutant promised. “We will fight in the
Emperor’s… service, and pray that, when we reach the afterlife, He will… look upon our tainted
souls with… with understanding.”
The Ice Palace was as huge as Grayle had described. It rose up high above Steele — higher than he
could see, held as he was.
He was starting to get his strength back, though he was concealing this fact from his captors,
letting them half-carry him, letting them think him still weak.
The traitors bustled him down a stone staircase, flight after flight — all the way down, he
guessed, to the next hive level. As they stepped out into another street, as the traitors repositioned
their grips on him, Steele was let go for a second and he feigned a collapse, taking the chance to
steal a glance upwards.
He saw grand towers and turrets, and the broad undersides of bridges of ice.
The air was more than cold, it was like invisible daggers were being driven through his bones.
Steele rued the damage done to his greatcoat, though he suspected that even it would not have
afforded him a great deal of protection. He knew cold, natural cold, and he knew that this was
something different. The traitors, in contrast, seemed perfectly comfortable in their flak jackets.
They were taking him to an archway in the base of the palace’s front wall. As they drew closer
to it, the white surface took on a translucent quality, and Steele could see faint veins of the familiar
purple fungus crazing through it.
The archway was protected by four Traitor Guardsmen — and by a heavy portcullis, this too
formed from the ice. Steele remembered Barreski’s confident words in the forest: “Just give me a
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couple of flamers, and I guarantee you there’ll be nothing left standing here in ten minutes.” If only
it could be so easy.
On his way here, Steele had seen at least two hundred more traitors, many of them attaching
themselves to his entourage as it passed, basking in their fellows’ victory. His comrades, he
accepted now, hadn’t a hope of beating those odds, of making it here. At best, they could keep some
of the traitors occupied outside the palace.
The rest, he feared, was up to him.
Pozhar had never felt less comfortable.
The mutants had offered him and his three comrades seats, which they had accepted, and food,
which they hadn’t. Gavotski had suggested that Grayle and Pozhar get some sleep while they could,
while he and Blonsky kept watch. Grayle had nodded off with his chin on his chest, but Pozhar
couldn’t rest.
Most of the mutants stayed well away from their guests, in deference to their sensibilities, or
perhaps just in fear of arousing their wrath again. However, the most mutated of them, the one that
had spoken to them earlier, now shuffled over to them, and announced that it had bad news.
“Your commander has been… captured,” it wheezed. “He fought… well, but was outclassed by
a… a Traitor Space Marine. However, we have found your… remaining four comrades… bringing
them here.”
Since Tollenberg, none of the mutants had introduced themselves by name. Pozhar wondered if
they had names any more. Perhaps they considered themselves unworthy, had come to think of
themselves, as he would once have thought of them—as he still thought of them—as mere monsters.
“Colonel Steele isn’t dead?” asked Gavotski.
“They are taking him to… the Ice Palace,” said the mutant, “to Mangellan.”
“Then we can still save him,” said Gavotski. “If you can do as you said, if you can get us into
the palace, we can rescue the colonel and Confessor Wollkenden. But we have to make our plans
soon. We have less than fourteen hours.”
The mutant inclined its shaggy head, graciously, and withdrew.
Blonsky watched it go with a shudder.
“They’re fooling themselves,” he muttered, “or lying to us. If a man’s faith is strong, he can
resist the corruption of Chaos, the Emperor has taught us that. To have been mutated as these
wretches have—”
“But they’re fighting it!” said Pozhar.
“Too late.” Blonsky turned to Gavotski. “We can’t trust them, sergeant. We don’t know what
they did to deserve this, don’t know if they are cowards or traitors or just weak — but whichever it
is, they are already lost. Even if they are sincere in their intentions, they cannot be cleansed of their
sins. Sooner or later, Chaos will take their minds — and when that happens, they will turn on us.”
Gavotski just nodded. “I know,” he said.
And his words were like a knife blow to Pozhar’s heart.
The interior of the Ice Palace was no less impressive than its exterior — and no less well-guarded.
Steele was guided through what seemed like legions of Traitor Guardsmen, across an enormous
hallway — formed from the ice, of course, but lushly appointed with velvet rugs and wall hangings.
The hall was festooned with elaborate ice sculptures, lent a certain beauty by soft and perhaps
sorcerous inner lights — until Steele drew close enough to make out their twisted, daemonic shapes.
A frozen staircase swept in an elegant curve upwards to the balconies and balustrades of the next
floor. He was dragged past this, into a small, dark corner, and bundled through a nondescript
doorway.
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Behind this, steps — stone steps — stretched downwards into an oppressive gloom. There was
scarcely room to descend in single file, so Steele was set on his feet and prodded in the back with a
lasgun muzzle, forced to walk with a traitor close in front of him and another close behind.
Rough-hewn stone walls opened up around them, lit only by the glows of the traitors’ lamppacks.
Steele could hear an insistent drip, echoing and re-echoing until even he could not have
pinpointed its source. He felt as if he was sinking into the depths of the underhive, except that he
knew he was still high above ground level. The cavern appeared natural enough — but Steele
suspected that, if he could have looked with his bionic eye, he would have found tell-tale signs that
it was man-made.
Mangellan had decided, it seemed, to complement the splendour of his castle above with the
traditional dungeons below.
The steps were streaked with ice fungus, some of them treacherously so. Steele contrived to slip,
and to fall backwards, toppling the unprepared traitors that followed him like a row of dominoes.
Three of them fell, screaming, over the side, and were broken on the rock floor below. It didn’t ease
the colonel’s predicament at all — the casualties were immediately replaced, new hands grasping
for him, forcing him to walk onwards — but it did make him smile.
Thick iron doors had been punched into the cavern walls. They nestled in nooks, listing at odd
angles. Steele felt his heart beating a little faster at the thought that Confessor Wollkenden might
have been behind one of them. He resisted the urge to call out to him. He didn’t want to tip his hand
just yet, thought it best to bide his time, to continue the pretence that he was a broken prisoner. Not
that it was so hard to pretend.
A door was heaved open, and Steele was thrust through it. His new quarters consisted of a
windowless stone box, extending no more than a metre and a half in any direction. He had to stoop
to avoid knocking his head on the ceiling, nor was there enough space for him to lie comfortably.
A solid metal ring was set into one wall, a heap of chains draped across it. Two of the traitors
placed their hands on Steele’s shoulders, pushed him down to the ground and wrapped him, quickly
and efficiently, in the chains, passing them four or five times through the ring and securing them at
last with a heavy padlock. By the time they had finished, he was so tightly trussed that he could
neither sit nor stand, his body forced instead into an unnatural, painful hunch: the traitors’ revenge,
he supposed, for his trick on the steps.
They withdrew, and took their lamp-packs with them. The slam of the cell door plunged Steele
into an impenetrable darkness. He tried to switch to infrared vision, but his bionic eye still wasn’t
responding. Its HUD reported that the self-repair cycle would be completed in thirty-five seconds’
time.
Ten minutes later, that countdown still stood at thirty-five seconds.
The Ice Warriors were back on the move, back in the sewers — and despite their odorous
surroundings, Pozhar was just grateful to be out of that chapel. He had felt no trace of the Emperor’s
presence in there, not for him. He had felt like an intruder.
His squad was eight-strong again. Barreski, Mikhaelev and Palinev had been brought up through
the manhole together, and Gavotski had greeted them and explained the situation, explaining the
details of their unlikely alliance with the mutants.
Barreski had looked appalled, but he had kept his own counsel. Mikhaelev, however, had been
surprisingly supportive.
“They can help us,” he had said to the others, when Blonsky was safely out of earshot, “or we
can kill them, and throw away any hope of succeeding in our mission for the sake of Imperial
dogma, rules written by men who have never set foot on a battlefield. I ask you, why shouldn’t we
do this?”
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Pozhar had wanted to answer that question. He had itched to tear open his greatcoat, to expose
the fur that was crawling across his chest, to yell out, “Because you don’t want to end up like me!”
But he had no wish to die like that.
“Once we have the confessor,” Barreski had said sullenly, “we can pump these abominations full
of las-fire. We can do that, right?”
The sounds of combat from below had heralded Anakora’s approach. She had been collected by
one of the more human-looking mutants, as had the others — but evidently she had seen through its
disguise. Gavotski had sent Palinev down into the tunnels, to find her before she could flee, to
convince her that there was no threat here.
They had all listened with heavy hearts as Anakora had related the details of Steele’s last stand.
“I shouldn’t have left him,” she had sighed — to which Blonsky had retorted that of course she
should, she had been following orders.
They had all felt as uneasy as Pozhar had in the chapel — and so, although it might have been
safer to sleep there and set out for the Ice Palace in the morning, Gavotski had declined this offer.
He had also stipulated that no more than two mutant guides should accompany the Ice Warriors —
and so, two had been detailed to the task, chosen once more it seemed for their near-human looks
and ease of speech.
Pozhar was wading behind one of them, wondering how misshapen it was beneath its blue
worker’s smock.
He would almost have preferred the company of an obvious monster. At least that would have
been concealing nothing. Not like me, he thought.
The mutants had built a fire on the chapel floor, in which all of the Ice Warriors had recharged
their las-guns’ power packs. They had also provided a few scavenged frag grenades and knives, but
nothing more useful than that.
Pozhar was concerned that they seemed to have climbed a long way down, via various ladders
and sometimes short drops into underlying tunnels — but their guides had assured them that they
knew where they were going, that the best way to reach the Ice Palace was to come up from below
it.
They were sloshing their way along another stinking tunnel when Palinev brought them to a halt.
“Does anyone else hear that?” he asked. “Something up ahead.”
They fell silent, still, listening, and they could all hear it now, could feel as well, the flow of the
