A long tear in the aircraft’s fuselage billowed smoke and Kai saw the jagged stub of the cutter’s wing hanging by a collection of thick cables and dangling struts. The heavy cutter shuddered and lurched like a dying bird, dropping through the sky at high speed towards an unforgiving ground. The breath was snatched from Kai’s throat and the cold of the mountains hit him like a physical blow. Roaring winds tore through the crew compartment, fanning the flames and doing its best to sweep its occupants from within.

Kiron and Gythua clung onto broken stanchions, and Severian pressed himself to the side of the aircraft. Tagore and Subha were braced against the aircraft’s interior, while Atharva stood before him. The Thousand Sons warrior held onto the stowage racks above him and pressed himself against Kai to keep him from being snatched away by the wind.

‘I can’t hold her in the air!’ shouted Asubha from the cockpit. ‘We’re going down!’

‘How did you do that?’ shouted Kai over the deafening howl of the wind.

Atharva ignored the question and said, ‘Do not do that again. You could have stranded both our consciousnesses out there in that pilot’s skull when he hit the mountain.’

‘You made that pilot shoot down his own aircraft.’

Atharva shook his head. ‘No, all I did was show him something that more closely matched his parameters of an enemy target and let him make the decision. I altered nothing of his own essential thought processes. I am powerful, but I am not thatpowerful.’

Kai thought back to what Evander Gregoras had told him of the cognoscynths, but realised that Atharva’s abilities had only steeredthe pilot’s thought processes, not altered them.

A subtle, but important difference.

Right now it seemed irrelevant, as the ground rushed to meet them with terrible inevitability. Towers that seemed tiny and distant from the air were now horribly close, and Kai could see a rushing collage of ramshackle structures speeding below them, close enough to make out individual buildings and streets as Asubha fought to control their descent.

The cutter made a last ditch effort to evade gravity’s clutches, but that was a fight it could never win. With one wing missing and a hole blown in its side, the cutter slammed into the ground with a thunderous impact of splintering metal that seemed to go on for ever and ever.

FIFTEEN

The Hunters Assemble

Reluctant Petitioners

The Clan Lord

YASU NAGASENA IS well known in this city, and no one challenges him when he passes beneath the Obsidian Arch on his way towards the tower at its heart. It has been a long time since he trod its empty boulevards and gazed in admiration at the sublime constructions that no one beyond its walls even knows exists. The palace masons, perhaps knowing that the City of Sight’s inhabitants seldom venture beyond the walls of their prison, spared no expense and employed every subtlety of their art to render a city as beautiful and harmonious as it was isolated.

‘I wonder who named this place,’ muses Nagasena, looking up at the gilded capitals and ornamented pediment of the Emerald Ossuary. The bones of Terra’s astro-telepaths are interred within, together with those who did not survive the final rituals to render them fully capable of service. It is a place of sadness rendered in joyous architecture.

‘The Ossuary?’ asks Kartono.

‘No, the City of Sight.’

‘Someone with a perverse sense of humour.’

‘Perhaps,’ replies Nagasena. ‘Or perhaps someone who appreciated the true value of what these poor, blind souls do here.’

Kartono shrugs, uncaring and uncomfortable at being here. Nagasena does not blame him. To his bondsman, this place is anathema. Kartono is hated by most people, for reasons they can never fully articulate, but in this place, those who encounter him hate him and know exactly why.

Kartono makes them truly blind.

The streets are deserted. Everyone in the City of Sight knows they here, sensing the empty hole in the constant chatter that throngs the air with invisible voices. They are a silence in a city of voices, and they do not pass unnoticed.

Nagasena sees them first, but it is Kartono that gives them name.

‘Black Sentinels,’ he says, watching the armoured squad marching towards them with rifles held at their shoulders. ‘Golovko’s men.’

‘Led by the man himself,’ says Nagasena, spotting the bulky form of Maxim Golovko at their head. ‘We are honoured.’

‘Honours like this I could do without.’

‘Maxim has his uses,’ says Nagasena. ‘Some hunts require stealth, others require the hunters to flush their prey into the open with… less subtle means.’

Kartono nods, and falls in behind Nagasena as Golovko brings his men to halt before them with a crash of boots stamping the ground in unison. They are formidable soldiers, well trained, disciplined and without mercy, yet they are blunt instruments compared to the needle-precision of Nagasena.

‘Maxim,’ says Nagasena with a bow deep enough to indicate respect, but shallow enough to convey his superiority. It is a petty gesture, but it amuses Kartono, and Maxim will never realise its significance.

‘Nagasena,’ replies Golovko. ‘Why are you here?’

‘I am here for the hunt.’

‘You received a summons?’

Nagasena shakes his head. ‘No, but I am needed, yes?’

‘We can catch these traitors without your help,’ states Golovko. ‘I’m assembling a team right now, and this will all be over by day’s end.’

Nagasena looks up as a long cloudbank covers the sun.

‘Show me this team,’ he says.

THERE ARE THREE of them of note, and Nagasena considers them all.

Saturnalia is Legio Custodes, and his anger is matched only by his shame. The astropath, Kai Zulane, and the warriors of the Crusader Host escaped from his gaol, and such a grievous lapse can only be erased by their immediate recapture. He is angry, but he is steady. Nagasena knows he can count on a Custodian to follow instructions and Saturnalia will be the only one who stands a chance against the hunted warriors if they turn and fight.

Adept Hiriko is uncomfortable here, and Nagasena knows why. Her neck is bruised and her eyes are dotted with red pinpricks of blood where her former colleague attempted to strangle her. Though she feigns indifference, Nagasena sees his death has affected her more deeply than she will admit. She is no hunter and has only one skill that will be of use in the hunt. Hiriko is a psychic extractor, and she believes she can remove the secrets that make Kai Zulane so valuable.

Athena Diyos is a crippled astropath whose presence on such a hunt Nagasena would not normally countenance. Her body is broken, and her life-sustaining chair will only slow them down, but she has been into Kai Zulane’s mind and that gives her a unique insight. She can guide them to him when he is near, and though she is an unwilling participant in this hunt, she knows she has little say in the matter.

They are gathered in the chambers of the Choirmaster, and Nemo Zhi-Meng paces the length of his sumptuous chambers with nervous energy, his white robes flapping around him like the wings of a panicked bird.

‘You must get him back, Yasu,’ he says, pausing in his pacing long enough to address Nagasena. His white hair is unbound and his beard is ragged. The last few days have taken a heavy toll on him, and the strain of holding an inter-galactic communications network together is visible in every strained gesture and barked utterance.

‘I will, Nemo,’ promises Nagasena with a bow of deep respect. ‘Now tell me why this man is so important. Why did seven Space Marines put their own escape at risk by bringing him with them? There was no need for them to do such a thing.’

Zhi-Meng hesitates before answering and Nagasena tries not to read too much into that pause. ‘Before the loss of the Argo, Kai Zulane was one of our finest operatives,’ says the Choirmaster. ‘He has the synesthesia codes for our highest tiers of communication. If he sends that information to traitors in service to Horus Lupercal then our entire network is compromised.’