Eisenhorn Omnibus by Dan Abnett
Bakunin appeared, looking desperate, with Alizebeth close behind him. He put his hands to his mouth in shock at the sight of me torn and bloodied.
‘Where is it?’ I snarled.
‘Third shelf up, above the workbench,’ he stammered. The green bottle. ‘I needed tincture of mercury, years ago, years ago, and an old woman in one of the villages gave it to me and said it would do as well. I use it all the time now. The emulsions it mixes are perfect. My work has never been better.’
He looked down at the grass, shaking and horrified. ‘I should have realised,’ he muttered. ‘I should have realised. No matter how much I used, the bottle never emptied.’
‘Third shelf up?’ I confirmed.
‘I’ll show you,’ he said, and sprang to the trailer, clambering in through the hole I had smashed.
‘Bakunin! No!’
I followed him inside, tumbling back into the jumble of landscapes and the maelstrom of screaming ghosts. Just for a moment, a brief moment, I saw Aen Froigre amongst them.
Then I was falling through another wedding, a hunting scene, a stockman’s meeting, a farrier’s smithy, the castle of Elempite by moonlight, a cattle market, a
I heard Bakunin scream.
I deflected three more deadly hololith plates, and slashed through the thicket of howling ghosts. Spectral, as if it wasn’t there, I saw the workbench and the shelves. The green bottle, glowing internally with jade fire.
I raised Barbarisater and smashed the bottle with the edge of the shivering blade.
The explosion shredded the inner partition wall and lurched the trailer onto its side. Dazed, I lay on the splintered wall, sprawled amongst the debris of glass and wood.
The screaming stopped.
SOMEONE HAD CALLED the local arbites. They moved in through the crowds of onlookers as the last of the rain fell and the skies began to clear.
I showed them my credentials and told them to keep the crowd back while I finished my work. The trailer was already burning, and Alizebeth and I threw the last few hololith prints into the flames.
The pictures were fading now. Superimposed on each one, every portrait, every landscape, every miniature, was a ghost exposure. An afterimage.
Bakunin, screaming his last scream forever.
HERETICUS
BY ORDER OF HIS MOST HOLY MAJESTY
THE GOD-EMPEROR OF TERRA
SEQUESTERED INQUISITORIAL DOSSIERS
AUTHORISED PERSONS ONLY
CASE FILE 442:41F:JL3:Kbu
Please enter your authority code > ********
Validating…
Thank you, Inquisitor. You may proceed.
To Gregor Eisenhorn, a communiqué
Carried by Guild Astropathica (Scarus) via meme-wave 45~a.639
triple intra Path detail:
Origin: Thracian Primaris, Helican Sub 81281 origin date:
142.386.M41
(relayed: divergent M-12/Ostall VII)
Received: Durer, Ophidian Sub 52981 reception date: 144.386.M41
Transcript carried and logged as per header
(redundant copy filed buffer 4362 key 11)
Author: Lord Inquisitor Phlebas Alessandro Rorken Master of the Ordo Xenos Helican, Inquisition High Council Officio, Scarus Sector
My dear Gregor,
In the name of the God-Emperor, and of the Holy Inquisition, greetings.
I trust the elders of Durer have welcomed you in a manner befitting your status. Hierarch Onnopel has been charged by my officio to ensure that you are provided with all requirements for the long task ahead. May I take this opportunity to express my gratitude to you again for agreeing to conduct this Examination in my stead. My health, so it would appear to everyone but me, is still a matter for concern. My physician clucks over me night and day. They have changed my blood a number of times and talk of further surgery, but it is all for naught. I am healthy and sound and would be on the road to recovery but for their coddling. Indeed, I would be on the road to Durer too but for that.
Yet it seems a quack from the Officio Medicae has authority over even one such as I. The work I have done to bring the heretics of Durer to trial must be finished in my absence, and I can think of no surer hand than yours to steer the business.
I write to you for two reasons – apart, that is, for expressing my thanks. Despite my efforts, Sakarof Lord Hereticus has insisted on sending two of his own delegates to the Examination: Koth and Menderef, you know them both. I’m sorry, Gregor, but you must tolerate them. They are a burden I would have spared you from.
Secondly, I am forced to saddle you with Inquisitor Bastian Verveuk. He was an interrogator under Lord Osma, and had come to my staff to finish his preparation. I had promised him a hand in the Examination, primarily because of his good offices in securing the central prosecutions. Please accommodate him in your counsel, for my sake. He is a good man, young and untried, but capable, though he reeks of the puritan. Didn’t we all at that age? He will arrive with you on the 151st. Make him as welcome as you can. I know you hate to incorporate unknowns into your camp, but I ask this as a personal favour. Osma will make things very difficult for me if I retard his pupil’s progress at this late stage.
I wish you speed, wisdom and success in the closure of this inspection.
Sealed and notarised by astropathicae clerk, this 142nd day of 386.M41.
The Emperor protects!
Rorken
[message ends]
To Gregor Eisenhorn, a communiqué
Carried by Guild Astropathica (Scarus) via meme-loop repeat
45~3.5611 secure Path detail:
Origin: Thracian Primaris, Helican Sub 81281 origin date:
142.386.M41
(relayed: loop navigatus 351/echo Gernale beacon)
Received: Durer, Ophidian Sub 52981 reception date: 144.386.M41
Transcript carried and logged as per header
(redundant copy filed buffer 7002 key 34)
Author: Inquisitor Bastian Verveuk, Ordo Xenos Inquisition High Council Officio, Scarus Sector, Scarus Major
Salutations, sir!
In the name of the God-Emperor, hallowed be his eternal vigil, and by the High Lords of Terra, I commend myself your eminence and trust that this communiqué finds your eminence in good health.
Great was my excitement when my Lord Rorken informed me that I was to take a part, at his side, in the formal Examination of the vile and abominated heretics of Durer. At once, I threw myself into the cataloguing of advance discovery, and assisted in the compilation of the evidentiary archive that would support the particulars of the Examination.
You may then imagine my terrible disappointment when my lord’s sudden and lamentable illness seemed to cast the very occurrence of that divine work into doubt. Now, this very hour, my lord has informed me that you are to oversee the matter as his proxy and that you have agreed to find a place for me at your side.
I cannot contain my exhilaration! The chance to work at close hand with one such as you! I have studied your holy work with awe since my earliest days in the preparatory scholams. You are an object lesson in devotion and puritanical duty, an example to us all. I look forward with great eagerness to discussing matters of contra-heretical law with you, and perhaps hearing first hand a few scraps of your dazzling insight. It is my most fervent ambition to pursue the rank of inquisitor in the Ordo Hereticus, and I am sure I would be better armed for such duty if I had the benefit of learning from your own first-hand accounts of such infamous beings as the dread Quixos.
You will find me a devoted and hard-working colleague. I count the days until we can begin this sacred work together. Hallowed be the Golden Throne!
Your servant,
Verveuk
[message ends]
To Lord Rorken, a communiqué
Carried by Guild Astropathica (Ophidia) via meme-wave 3Ql^c.l22
double intra Paul detail:
Origin: Durer, Ophidian Sub 52981 origin date: 144.386.M41
(relayed: divergent B-3,’loop Gernale beacon)
Received: Thracian Primaris, Helican Sub 81281 reception date:
149.386.M41
Transcript carried and logged as per header
(redundant copy deleted from buffer)
Author: Gregor Eisenhorn, Inquisitor
re: Bastian Verveuk
My lord, what foetid corner of the Imperium breeds these fawning idiots? Now you really owe me.
G. E.
[message ends]
ONE
The case of Udwin Pridde.
Small talk with Verveuk.
Something like vengeance.
WHEN THE TIME came, Fayde Thuring was damn near impossible to stop.
I blame myself for that. I had let him run on for too long. For the best part of eight decades he had escaped my attentions, and in that time he had grown immeasurably from the minor warp-dabbler I had once let slip away.
My mistake. But I wasn’t the one to pay.
ON THE 160TH day of 386.M41 a nobleman in his late one sixties appeared at the Examination hearings held in the Imperial Minster of Eriale, the legislative capital of the Uvege in the south-west of Durer’s third largest landmass.
He was a landowner, widowed young, and he had built his fortune in post-liberation Durer society on a successful agri-combine venture and the inherited wealth of his late wife. In 376, as a mature, successful and highly eligible newcomer amongst the gentry of the Uvege, a prosperous region of verdant farmland, he had made a socially-advancing second marriage. His new bride was Betrice, thirty years his junior, the eldest daughter of the venerable House Samargue. The Samargue family’s ancient wealth was at that time seeping away as the efficient land-use policies of Administratum-sponsored combines slowly took control of the Uvege’s pastoral economy.
The nobleman’s name was Udwin Pridde, and he had been summoned by the hierarch of the See of Eriale to answer charges of recidivism, warpcraft and, above all, heresy.
FACING HIM ACROSS the marble floor of the Minster was a dignified Inquisitorial body of the most august quality. Inquisitor Eskane Koth, an Amalathian, born and bred on Thracian Primaris, one day to be known as the Dove of Avignon. Inquisitor Laslo Menderef, a native of lowland Sancour, Menderef the Grievous as he would become, an Istvaanian with a cold appreciation of warp-crime and poor body hygiene. Inquisitor Poul Rassi, son of the Kilwaddi Steppes, a sound, elderly even-handed servant of order. The novice Inquisitor Bastian Verveuk.
And myself. Gregor Eisenhorn. Inquisitor and presiding examiner.
Pridde was the first of two hundred and sixty individuals identified by Lord Rorken’s work as possible heretics to be weighed by this Formal Court of Examination. He looked nervous but dignified as he faced us, toying with his lace collar. He had hired a pardoner called Fen of Clincy to speak on his behalf.
It was the third day of the hearings. As the pardoner droned on, describing Pridde in terms that would have made a saint blush for want of virtue, I thumbed half-heartedly through the catalogue of pending cases and sighed at the scale of the work to come. The catalogue – we all had a copy – was thicker than my wrist. This was the third day already and still we had not progressed further than the preamble of the first case. The opening rites had taken a full day and the legal recognition of the authority of the Ordos Helican here on Durer, together with other petty matters of law, yet another. I wondered, may the God-Emperor forgive my lack of charity, if Lord Rorken’s illness was genuine or just a handy excuse to avoid this tedium.
Outside, it was a balmy summer day. Wealthy citizens of Eriale were boating on the ornamental lakes, lunching in the hillside trattorias of the Uvege, conducting lucrative business in the caffeine houses of the city’s Commercia.
In the echoing, cool vault of the Minster, there was nothing but the whining voice of Fen of Clincy.
Golden sunlight shafted in through the celestory windows and bathed the stalls of the audience gallery. That area was half empty. A few dignitaries, clerks, local hierarchs and archivists of the Planetary Chronicle. They looked drowsy to me and I knew their account of these proceedings would be at odds with the official log recorded by the pict-servitors. Hierarch Onnopel himself was already dozing. The fat idiot. If his grip on the spiritual fibre of his flock had been tighter, these hearings might not have been necessary.
I saw my ancient savant, Uber Aemos, apparently listening intently, though I knew his mind was far away. I saw Alizebeth Bequin, my dear friend and colleague, reading a copy of the court briefing. She looked stately and prim in her long dark gown and half-veil. As she pretended to turn the pages, I glimpsed the data-slate concealed inside its cover. Another volume of poetry, no doubt. The glimpse made me chuckle, and I hastened to stifle the sound.
‘My lord? Is there a problem?’ the pardoner asked, breaking off in mid-flow.
I waved a hand. ‘None. Please continue, sir. And hasten to your summary, perhaps?’
The Minster at Eriale was only a few decades old, rebuilt from war rubble in a triumphant High Gothic style. As little as half a century before, this entire sub-sector – the Ophidian sub-sector – had been in the embrace of the arch-enemy. In fact, it had been my honour to witness the embarkation of the great Imperial taskforce that had liberated it. That had been on Gudrun, the former capital world of the Helican sub-sector, one hundred and fifty years previously. Sometimes I felt very old.
I had lived, by that time, for one hundred and eighty-eight years, so I was in early middle age by the standards of privileged Imperial society. Careful augmetic work and juvenat conditioning had retarded the natural deteriorations of my body and mind, and more significant artifice had repaired wounds and damage my career had cost me. I was robust, healthy and vigorous, but sometimes the sheer profusion of my memories reminded me how long I had been alive. Of course, I was but a youth compared to Aemos.
Sitting there, in a gilt lifter throne at the centre of the high table, dressed in the robes and regalia of a lord chief examiner, I reflected that I had perhaps been too hard on that duffer Onnopel. Any reconquered territory, taken back from the taint of the warp, would perforce be plagued by heresy for some time as Imperial law reinstated itself. Indeed, ordos dedicated to the Ophidian sub-sector had yet to be founded, so jurisdiction lay with the neighbouring Officio Helican. An Examination such as this was timely. Fifty years of freedom and it was right for the Inquisition to move in and inspect the fabric of the new society. This was necessary tedium, I tried to remind myself, and Rorken had been correct in calling for it. The Ophidian sub-sector, thriving in its recovery, needed the Inquisition to check on its spiritual health just as this rebuilt Minster needed stonemasons to keep an eye on its integrity as it settled.
‘My lord inquisitor?’ Verveuk whispered to me. I looked up and realised Fen the pardoner had finished at last.
‘Your duty is noted, pardoner. You may retire,’ I said, scribing a mark on my slate. He bowed.
‘I trust the accused has paid you in advance for your time,’ said Inquisitor Koth archly. ‘His assets may be sequestered, ’ere long.’
‘I have been paid for my statement, sir,’ confirmed Fen.
‘Generously, it seems,’ I observed. ‘Was it by the word?’
My fellow inquisitors chuckled. Except Verveuk, who barked out a over-loud whinny as if I had just made the finest jest this side of the Golden Throne. By the Throne, he was a sycophantic weasel! If ever a windpipe cried out for a brisk half-hitch, his was it.
At least his snorting had woken Onnopel up. The hierarch roused with a start and growled ‘hear, hear!’ with a faux-knowing nod of his many chinned head as if he had been listening intently all along. Then he went bright red and pretended to look for something under his pew.
‘If there are no further comments from the Ministorum,’ I said dryly, ‘perhaps we can move on. Inquisitor Menderef?’
‘Thank you, lord chief examiner,’ said Menderef politely, rising to his feet.
T
He began his cross-examination.
Laslo Menderef was a slender man a century old. His thin brown hair was laquered up over his skull in a hard widow’s peak and his face was sallow and taut-skinned. He wore a long, plain velvet robe of selpic blue with his rosette of office and the symbol of the Ordo Hereticus pinned at his breast. He had a chilling manner that I admired, though I cared not at all for the man’s radical philosophy. He was also the most articulate interrogator in Sakarof’s officio. His long-fingered, agile hands found a place in the manuscript and stopped there.
‘Udwin Pridde?’ he said.
‘Sir,’ Pridde answered.
‘On the 42nd day of 380.M41, you called upon the house of an unlicensed practitioner of apothecary in Clude and purchased two phials of umbilical blood, a hank of hair from the head of an executed murderer and a fertility doll carved from a human finger bone.’
‘I did not, sir.’
‘Oh,’ said Menderef amiably, ‘then I am mistaken,’ He turned back and nodded to me. ‘It appears we are done here, lord examiner,’ he said. He paused just long enough for Pridde to sag with relief and then wheeled round again. Glory, but his technique was superb.
‘You’re a liar,’ he said. Pridde recoiled, suddenly alert once more.
‘S-sir—’
‘The apothecary was executed for her practices by the Eriale arbites in the winter of 382. She kept annotated records of her dealings which, I presume, she foolishly thought might serve as some kind of bargaining tool in the event of her apprehension. Your name is there. The matter of your purchases is there. Would you like to see it?’