Eisenhorn Omnibus by Dan Abnett

Author:Dan Abnett [Abnett, Dan]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Science Fiction
ISBN: 9781844161560
Publisher: The Black Library
Published: 2004-11-30T16:00:00+00:00

FOURTEEN

Winter brings a chance.

The damned has a name.

The pylon at Kasr Gesh.

WINTERTIDE ON CADIA.

There had been glinting ice-floes in the gun-metal waters of the Caducades that morning, and light snow had fallen on the moors. At that time of year, the foul corona of the Eye of Terror was visible even during the fleeting hours of daylight. The unholy mauve radiance of the nights became a violet fuzz in the cold daylight, like a badly-blotted ink stain on white paper.

It made us feel like we were under surveillance all the time. The Eye, bloodshot, angry, peering down at us.

Worst of all were the moor winds, cold and sharp as a Cadian’s bayonet, blowing down from arctic latitudes. The high lakes were all frozen now, and lethal pogonip fogs haunted the bitter heaths and uplands. In the Kasr itself, it seemed like the locals had a morbid fear of heaters or window insulation.

Chilly gales breathed down the hallways of the minster and the Administratum building. Water froze in the pipes.

Despite it all, the war-bells sounded every few days, and the moors rolled with the sounds of winter manoeuvres. I began to imagine that the Cadians were simply shooting at each other to keep warm.

Ten and a half long, increasingly cold weeks after we had begun our systematic search of the Kasr’s records, I was making my now habitual morning walk from the minster of the Inquisition to the headquarters of the Interior Guard. I wore a thick fur coat against the cold, and spike-soled boots to combat the sheet ice on the roads. I was miserable. The search had left us all pale and edgy, too many fruitless hours spent in dark rooms.

There had been so many promising leads. Links and traces of the Sons of Bael, unauthorised starship traffic, suspicious excise logs.

They had all dwindled away into nothing. As far as we could make out, no living member of the Sons of Bael, or any living associate or family member, remained. There had been no pylon-related cult activity, not even registered xeno-archaeological work. I had interviewed specialist professors at the universitary, and certain tech-priests from the Mechanicus who were shown in the records as having expert knowledge of the pylons.

Nothing.

With Inshabel, Nayl or Fischig, I had travelled the region, as far afield as Kasr Tyrok and Kasr Bellan. A worker in the gunshops of Kasr Bellan, who had been identified as a Bael cult member, turned out to simply have the same name, misfiled. A wasted ten hour round trip by speeder.

Aemos had constructed a codifier model by which we checked record anomalies against the timetable of past cult activity.

There seemed to be no correlation at all.

I WALKED UP the steps of the Ministry of Interior Defence, and submitted myself to the clearance check in the postern guardhouse. It should have been a formality. I had been arriving at the same time almost every day for the last seventy-five. I even recognised some of the guardsmen by sight.

But still, it was like the first time I had ever been there.

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