Eisenhorn Omnibus by Dan Abnett
A stray dog, coming up from the town centre towards me, paused to sniff my cloak hem and then trotted on its way, uninterested.
The house was as I remembered it, halfway down the lane. We had passed it on the way up, and now I made certain. Four storeys, with a terrace balcony at the top under the eaves of the copper-tiled roof. The windows were shuttered and the main entrance, a pair of heavy panelled wooden doors painted glossy red, were bolted shut.
There was no bell. I remembered that. I knocked once and waited.
I waited a long time.
Finally, I heard a thump behind the doors and an eyeslit opened.
‘What is your business so early?’ asked an old man’s voice.
‘I want to see Doctor Berschilde.’
‘Who is calling?’
‘Please let me in and I will discuss it with the doctor.’
‘It is early!’ the voice protested.
I raised my hand and held my signet ring out so its design was visible through the eyeslit.
‘Please,’ I repeated.
The slit shut, there was a rattle of keys and then one of the doors opened into the street. Inside was just shadow.
I stepped into the delicious cool of the hall, my eyes growing accustomed to the gloom. A hunched old man in black closed the door behind me.
‘Wait here, sir,’ he said and shuffled away.
The floor was polished marble mosaic that sparkled where scraps of exterior light caught it. The wall patterns had been hand-painted by craftsmen. Exquisite, antiquarian anatomical sketches lined the walls in simple gilt frames. The house smelled of warm stone, the cold afterscents of a fine evening meal, smoke.
‘Hello?’ a voice filtered down from the stairs above me.
I went up a flight, onto a landing where shutters had been opened to let the daylight stream in.
‘I’m sorry to intrude,’ I said.
‘Gregor? Gregor Eisenhorn?’ Doctor Berschilde of Ravello took a step towards me, registering sleepy astonishment.
She was still a very fine figure of a woman.
I think she was about to hug me, or plant a kiss on my cheek, but she halted and her face darkened.
‘This isn’t social, is it?’ she said.
I WENT BACK to the speeder and flew it round to the private walled courtyard behind her residence where it was screened from view. The doctor’s old manservant, Phabes, had opened the ground floor sundoors, and stood ready with a gurney for Medea. Eleena, Aemos and I followed them inside. I left the pilot, still in his will-induced fugue state, tied up in the flier.
Crezia Berschilde had put on a surgical apron by then, and met us in the ground floor hall. She said little as she examined Medea and checked her vitals.
‘Take her through,’ she told her man, then looked at me. ‘Anybody else injured?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘How is Medea?’
‘Dying,’ she said. All humour had gone from her voice. She was angry and I didn’t blame her. ‘I’ll do what I can.’
‘I’m grateful, Crezia. I’m sorry I’ve troubled you with this.’
‘She ought to go to the town infirmary!’ she snapped.
‘Can we avoid that?’
‘Can we make this unofficial, you mean? Damn you, Eisenhorn. I don’t need this!’
‘I know you don’t.’
She pursed her lips. ‘I’ll do what I can,’ she repeated. ‘Go through into the drawing room. I’ll have Phabes bring some refreshment.’
She turned on her heel and disappeared into the house after Medea.
‘So,’ said Aemos quietly, ‘who is this again?’
DOCTOR CREZIA BERSCHILDE was one of the finest anatomists on the planet. Her treatises and monographs were widely published throughout the Helican sub-sector. After years of practice in Dorsay and, for a period, off-world on Messina, she had taken up the post of Professor of Anatomy here at Ravello.
And, a long time ago, I had nearly married her.
One hundred and forty-five years earlier, in 241 to be exact, I had lost my left hand during a firefight on Sameter. The details of the case are unimportant, and besides, they are recorded elsewhere. I was fitted with a prosthetic, but I hated it and never used it. After two years, during a stay on Messina, I had surgeons equip me with a fully functioning graft.
Crezia had been the chief surgeon during that procedure. Becoming involved with a woman who has just sewn a vat-grown clone hand onto your wrist is hardly a way to meet a wife, I realise.
But she was quick-witted, learned, vivacious and not put off by my calling. For years we were involved, on and off, first on Messina, then at a distance, and then on Gudrun once she had moved back to Ravello to take up her doctorate and I had based myself at Spaeton House.
I had been very fond of her. I still was. It is difficult to know if I should use a word stronger than ‘fond’. We never did to each other, but there are times I would have done.
I had not seen her for the best part of twenty-five years. That had been my doing.
We sat in the drawing room for over an hour. Phabes had opened the windows and the day’s brilliance blasted in, turning the tulle window nets into hanging oblongs of radiant white. I could smell the clean, fresh chill of mountains.
The drawing room was furnished with fine old pieces of furniture, and filled with rare books, surgical curios and display cases full of immaculately restored antique medical apparatus. Aemos was quickly lost in close study of the items on display, murmuring to himself. Eleena sat quietly on a tub chair and composed herself. I was fairly sure she was inwardly reciting the mind-soothing exercises of the Distaff. Every few minutes she would absently brush a few strands of brown hair off her slender face.
The doctor’s man returned with a silver serving cart. Yeast bread, fruit, oily butter and piping hot black caffeine.
‘Do you need anything stronger?’ he asked.
‘No, thank you.’
He pointed to a weighted silk rope by the door. ‘Ring if there’s anything you need.’
I poured caffeine for us all, and Aemos helped himself to a hunk of bread and a ripe ploin.
Eleena tonged half a dozen lumps of amber sugar crystal into her little cup. ‘Who did it?’ she asked at length.
‘Eleena?’
‘Who… who raided us, sir?’
‘The simple answer? I have no idea. I’m working on possibilities. It may take us a while to find out, and first we have to be secure.’
‘Are we safe here?’
‘Yes, for the time being.’
‘They were mercenaries,’ said Aemos, dabbing crumbs from his wrinkled lips. ‘That is beyond question.’
‘I thought as much.’
‘The pilot you captured. You saw the tattoos on his torso.’
‘I did. But I couldn’t read them.’
Aemos sipped his hot, sweet drink. ‘Base Futu, the language of the Vessorine janissaries.’
‘Really? Are you sure?’
‘Reasonably so,’ he said. ‘The man has a repatriation bond written on his skin.’
I considered this news. Vessor was a feral world on the rimward borders of the Antimar sub-sector that bred a small but hardy population famous for its vicious fighters. Attempts had been made to form a Guard regiment there, but the Vessorine were hard to control. It wasn’t that they lacked discipline, but they found loyalty to Terra too cerebral a concept. They were bonded into clan families, understanding simply the material wealth of land, property, homestead and weapons. As mercenaries, therefore, they excelled. They would fight, peerlessly, savagely and to the death, in the Emperor’s name, provided that name was stamped on high denomination coinage.
No wonder the attack on Spaeton House had been so direct and efficient. In hindsight it was remarkable any of us had got out alive. I was glad I hadn’t known who they were at the time. If I’d been told I was facing Vessorine janissaries, I might have frozen up… instead of charging them head on to rescue Medea.
I
‘Now,’ she said, curtly.
I pushed the weapon into the folds of the cloak on the table and followed her out, across the hall into a sitting room hung with oil paintings and hololithic prints. The shutters in here were still shut and she made no attempt to open them. She turned up the lamp instead.
‘Shut the door,’ she instructed.
I pushed the door shut. ‘Crezia—’ I began.
She held up a strong, warning finger. ‘Don’t start, Eisenhorn. Just don’t. I’m this damn close to throwing you out! How dare you c—’
‘Medea,’ I interrupted firmly. ‘How is she?’
‘Stable. Just about. She was shot in the back with a laser weapon and the wound was left untreated for several hours. How do you think she is?’
‘She’ll survive?’
‘Unless there are complications. She’s on life support in the basement suite.’
‘Thank you, Crezia. I’m in your debt.’
‘Yes, you damn well are. You’re unbelievable, Eisenhorn. Twenty-five years. Twenty-five years! I don’t see you, I don’t hear from you and then you turn up, unannounced, uninvited, armed and on the run, so it would appear, with one of your party shot. And you expect me just to take this in my stride?’
‘Not really, I know it’s a terrible imposition. But the Crezia Berschilde I knew could cope with an emergency now and then. And she always had time for a friend in need.’
‘A friend?’
‘Yes. You’re the only person I can turn to, Crezia.’
She snorted scornfully and tugged off her apron. ‘All those years, I was happy to be the one you could turn to, Gregor. And you never did. You kept me at arm’s length. You never wanted me involved in your business. And now…’ She let the words trail off and shrugged unhappily.
‘I’m sorry.’
‘You bring guns into my house—’ she hissed.
‘I probably shouldn’t tell you about the mercenary tied up in my speeder then,’ I said.
She snapped round to look at me, incredulous, and then shook her head with a grim smile. ‘Unbelievable. Twenty-five years and you roll up at dawn, bringing trouble with you.’
‘No. No one knows I’m here. That’s one of the reasons I came.’
‘Are you sure?’
I nodded. ‘Someone raided my residence last night. Razed it. Murdered my staff.’
‘I don’t want to hear this!’
‘We barely got out alive. I needed sanctuary and medical help for Medea. I needed to find somewhere I knew would be safe.’
‘I don’t want to hear any more!’ she snarled. ‘I don’t want to be tangled up in your battles. I don’t want to be involved! I have a nice life here and—’
‘You do need to hear it. You need to know what’s going on.’
‘Why? I’m not going to get involved! Why the hell didn’t you go to the arbites?’
‘I can’t trust anyone. Not even the authorities, right now.’
‘Damnation, Eisenhorn! Why me? Why here?’
‘Because I trust you. Because my enemies may have every known associate of mine on the planet under observation, every arbites precinct, every office of the Ministorum and the Imperial Administratum. But our relationship is secret. Even my closest friends don’t know we were ever associated.’
‘Associated? Associated? You know how to flatter, you pig!’
‘Please, Crezia. There a few things I need to do. A few things I need to arrange. A little help I need to ask of you. Then we’ll be gone and you’ll never have to worry about this again.’
She sat down on a chaise and rubbed her hands together anxiously.
‘What do you need?’
‘To begin with, your forbearance. After that… access to a private vox-link. I’ll need you to summon an astropath, if that’s in any way possible, and also have your man purchase clothes and other items for us.’
‘The town tailors will be closed today.’
‘I can wait.’
‘There may be clothes here.’
‘Very well.’
‘There’s a vox-link in my study.’
I WENT TO look in on Medea, who was sleeping peacefully in the scrubbed medical suite built into the basement of Crezia’s town house, and then retired to the room Phabes had prepared for me. Eleena and Aemos were in adjoining rooms, resting.
I bathed and shaved, doing both activities on automatic as my mind worked things through. I discovered my body had acquired several new bruises since the day before and a las-graze across the thigh I hadn’t even noticed. My clothes were dirty, torn and smoke-damaged, and the breeches were covered in burrs and sticky grass seeds.
Phabes had laid some clothes out in my room, several changes of male attire. I recognised they were my own. I’d kept clothes here over the years, mostly soft, informal wear to change into when I visited. Crezia had stored them. I didn’t know whether to be delighted or alarmed. All these years, and she hadn’t thrown out the possessions I’d left in her territory. They were fresh too, as if aired or laundered regularly. I realised that Crezia Berschilde had always expected me to return one day.
Perhaps it was the manner of my return that had upset her – that I came back for her help and not simply for her. I couldn’t blame her for that. I wouldn’t be pleased to see me now, considering the trouble I was in. And not if I had broken all links of friendship two and a half decades before.
The chapel bells were ringing in the town below, calling the faithful for worship. Lakeside inns were opening up, and the smells of roasting and herbs were carried on the breeze.
I chose a dark blue cotton shirt with a thin collar, a pair of black twill trousers and a short flat-fronted summer jacket of black suede. The boots I had been wearing the night before would have to make do, but I scrubbed them clean with a cloth. I wanted to tuck the pistol into my jacket, but I knew how Crezia felt about guns, so I left it, with Barbarisater and the runestaff, under the mattress of my bed. The sacks of scrolls and manuscripts Aemos and I had rescued from Spaeton were with him in his room.
I had little else with me: my signet ring, a short-range hand vox, some coins and my warrant of office – a metal seal in a leather wallet. It was the first time since Durer that I missed my rosette. Fischig still had that, wherever he was.
As I hung my leather coat up in the wardrobe, I felt a weight in it and remembered I did have something else.
The Malus Codicium.
It was an infernal book, thrice damned. I knew of no other copy in existence. One half of the Inquisition would kill me to get their hands on it, the other half would burn me for having it in my possession.
Quixos, the corrupt veteran inquisitor I had finally brought to account on Farness Beta, had built his power upon it. I should have destroyed it when I destroyed him or at least surrendered it to the ordo. I had done neither. Using it, secretly studying it, I had increased my abilities. I had captured and bound Cherubael using its lore. I had broken open several cult conspiracies thanks to the insight it had given me.
It was only a small thing, fat, soft-covered in simple black hide, the edges of its pages rough and hand-cut. Innocuous.
I sat down on the corner of the bed and weighed it in my hands. Splendid mid-morning sunlight shone in through the casement, the sky was blue, the slopes of the Itervalle visible from the rear of the house a soft lilac. But I felt cold and plunged into darkness.
I’d never really thought about why I had saved that hideous work for my own ends. Knowledge, I suppose. Curiosity. I had encountered prohibited artefacts many times in my life, the most notorious being the accursed Necroteuch. That loathsome t
But the Codicium was silent. It always had been. It had never seemed alive, like the other toxic, rustling volumes I have encountered. It had always been just a book. The contents were disturbing, but the book itself…
I wondered now. The moment it had come into my possession, things had started to change. Starting with Cherubael and on, on to the bleak events on Durer.
Maybe it was poisoning me. Maybe it was twisting my mind. Maybe I had crossed far too far over the line without realising it, thanks to its baleful influence.
Perhaps that was a measure of how evil it was. That it was painless. Invisible. Insidious. The moment you touched the Necroteuch, you knew it was a vile thing, you knew you had to resist its seductive corruption. You knew you were fighting it.
But the Malus Codicium… so infinitely evil, so subtle, seeping slowly into a man’s soul before he even knew it.
Was that how a servant of the Emperor as great as Quixos had become a monster? I had always wondered why he had never seen what he was becoming. Why he was so blind to his own degeneration.
I opened the drawer of my night stand and put the book inside. As soon as we were clear of Ravello, I would have to deal with it.
I WENT DOWN to Crezia’s study and found the vox-link. There was a hololithic pict unit too, and I tuned that in. Morning broadcasts, weather, planetary news. I watched for some time but there was no mention of any incident in the Dorsay region. I had anticipated as much, but it was still unnerving.
I used the vox and listened in to the Imperial channels, eavesdropping on arbites frequencies, PDF transmissions, Ministorum links. Nothing. Either no one knew what had happened the night before at Spaeton House, or they were staying ominously silent.
I needed an astropath. If I was going to contact anyone, it would be off-world. I had no choice.