307

A WARHAMMER 40,000 NOVEL

PAWNS OF
CHAOS

Brian Craig




^

PROLOGUE

IT WAS NOT until he saw the wall dissolve that Zarcon realised
how stupid he had been to imagine that men like him could
possibly make a stand against the invaders. The man to his left
was blown apart by a shot that went clean through the stones,
and then through him. The billowing grey dust seemed,
absurdly, to be mopping up the blood and shredded flesh in
mid-air.

The man to his right died barely a second later, having raised
his head above the parapet to measure his throw. A searing
flash of light drilled a hole through his right eye a moment
before bits of his brain sprayed through an improbably neat
exit-wound above the nape of his neck. The snapping sound
which might or might not have been the discharge of the
weapon responsible had arrived a split second later. By then
the dead body had already begun to fall back, its lifeless limbs
crumpling.

The firepot which the defender had been intending to hurl
down at the enemy truck went the wrong way, but the arm
holding it had lost its strength so abruptly that the primitive
bomb dropped to the sandy ground with a dull thud. The stone

8                             Brian Craig

jar cracked. The wick set fire to the oil that leaked out. It looked
more like a broken lamp than a weapon of war.

That's all we are! Zarcon thought, his mind in a panicked
whirl. Not fighting men - just pathetic broken lamps, matching our
light against the blaze of the noonday sun.

The ugly cloud that had been blasted out of the first dying
man's shattered body stretched as far as a dozen feet behind
him before beginning to settle and dissipate. Zarcon could
make out two severed legs, and an unsightly lump that might
once have been a head, but the arms had been catapulted out
of sight, while the torso and abdomen had both been ripped
into ridiculously tiny shreds.

The men further away to Zarcon's left and right were faring no
better. Those who had not been blasted apart by bolters or holed
by lasguns were in the process of being crushed and maimed by
falling stones. Some of them were screaming, but not many. No
one was running away. It had all happened too fast.

Zarcon realised, far too late, that the only reason he was still
standing, still able to see what was happening to either side of
him for a few moments longer, was that a section of wall in
front of him, no more than four or five feet wide, had been
haphazardly spared by the first careless sweep of the heavy
bolter.

He knew that the respite was momentary, and that the sec-
ond sweep would slash him down as easily as the first had cut
down his companions.

He had never, even in his wildest nightmares, imagined such
destructive force. He had been told that there were such things
as bolters and lasguns - and he had been told what they could
do - but his imagination had been unable to turn the words
into accurate images.

He knew now how foolish he had been to think of the wall
as a real defence. It had seemed a protected vantage point, from
which he and his fellows could rain down missiles upon the
invaders' vehicles, but it was not. There was not a wall in
Culzacandra that could provide adequate cover against massed
Imperial firepower.

This was not a skirmish; it was a massacre. If it were to be
conducted on these terms, the defence of Gulzacandra would
not be a war but a mere folly: an endless series of savage sacri-
fices offered to the hungry war-machines of Kalazendra.

Pawns of Chaos                     9

Zarcon had known all along, of course, that the missiles the
defenders possessed - arrows, rocks, javelins and firepots -
were pitiful by comparison with the guns the enemy possessed.
While the enemy were numbered in their thousands, though -
tens of thousands at the most - and the defenders of
Culzacandra in their hundreds of thousands, he had clung
naively to the opinion that no matter how many battles the
defenders lost, the invaders could not possibly win the war.

Now he knew different.

Pie had been told that the invaders had only a few bolters,
and only a few lasguns, and that the vast majority of their
troops would be armed with cruder weapons churned out by
the factories of Kalazendra. But he knew now that even a hand-
ful of bolters and lasguns would be more than enough to take
the invaders into the deepest heart of Gulzacandra.

Once they had taken the city of Rintrah and the port of
Chemosh, it would be impossible to be rid of them. Even if
they exhausted every last bolt shell and every last power pack
in attaining that primary objective, they would be impossible
to dislodge once they had the heartland. What could possibly
stop them? Not men like him, that was certain. Not even
magic, of any kind to which he had ever been a witness.

Determined to make one last effort before he fell, Zarcon
hurled his own javelin with all his strength - but even though
he knew that he would die within seconds, he could not quite
bring himself to expose his head long enough to take proper
aim. He heard the head of the javelin strike solid metal, and
knew that it had bounced harmlessly from the vehicle's
armour.

Even if he had taken the risk of raising his head, it was
unlikely in the extreme that he could have done better, but as
he saw the last section of the wall implode, and knew that he
was about to be torn to pieces by the blast, he cursed himself
for his failure.

Once he was dead, of course, it did not matter at all what the
last thought to cross his mind had been, or the last emotion to
stir his heart. It would not have served Gulzacandra or
Gulzacandra's god any better had he died with a prayer on his
lips, or with the futile hope in his heart that the invaders' inten-
tions were not as violent as the Wisdom of the Dreamers had
prophesied.

10                       Brian Craig

It did not matter, as Zarcon's own severed head bounced on
the ground, haloed with bloodstained dust, whether his fate
were his alone or far more, a symbol of the fate of an entire
continent. There was no one left to see it fall but the implaca-
bly advancing gunners, who had seen such things happen far
too often to read more than the slightest significance into any
single death.

Had they had a better idea of what they were, or what they
were supposed to stand for, the invaders might have thought
Zarcon's death even less significant still. For what could the
death of one mere man on one mere world possibly mean, in
the context of a battleground that extended across four hun-
dred billion stars, and a war that might last a billion years and
never be won?




ONE

DATHAN WAS sriTiNt; under a dombeny tree on Metalion Hill
when he noticed the great plumes of dust way out in the Amber
Waste. As soon as he saw them he knew that there was some-
thing odd about them. He had often seen riders approaching
the village from that direction, usually horsemen moving in
small groups at a trot or the gallop, or sedate pack-trains of
camules. Twice he had seen camule-trains moving much faster,
pursued by brigands, but even they had not stirred up as much
dust as whatever was approaching now.

It must, he told himself uneasily, be some kind of freak wind.
Perhaps it was the beginning of a violent but localised storm,
or even an earthquake.

Dathan had only lived fifteen years, and had never experi-
enced an earthquake, but he had heard of them. He had lived
through a hundred dust-storms without ever seeing one like
this, but he had never actually seen the start of a storm, so he
could not be certain that they did not begin in this fashion.

Either way, the phenomenon was new and deserved close
attention, so he stood up and stepped out of the shadow of the
dombeny's crown, shading his eyes against the mid-moming
sun as he peered into the distance.

11

12                       Brian Craig

The Amber Waste was awkward territory for travellers. The
crystalline sand-particles that rendered the land incapable of
growing crops were often sharp as well as hard, and if a partic-
ularly nasty specimen became trapped between a horse's shoe
and hoof it could pierce the homy part of the hoof and prick
the living flesh within. The seemingly soft-footed camules,
which had always lived in the wastelands rather than sharing
the territories occupied by the human colonists, were better
equipped by nature to resist such penetration, but even they
preferred the higher and harder ground that was regularly - if
rather ineptly - swept by the wind. For this reason, there were
trails across the Amber Waste that every experienced traveller
followed. The plumes of dust that Dathan was watching were
fanned out broadly and indiscriminately, so they had to be
some kind of weather formation.

Or had they?

Dathan began to feel a peculiar sick feeling deep in his stom-
ach, and he couldn't help wondering whether it might be a
kind of premonition. He had never had a premonition before
- and not for want of trying - so he didn't know what they
should feel like. He had often asked Hycilla, who had them all
the time, but she had never been able to give him a clear
answer. Hycilla had so many premonitions that Pater Saltana,
the local priest, had declared her a sensitive and marked her
out for early initiation into the Mysteries - but that had come
as no surprise to anyone, given that her family was said to be
distantly related to that of Gavalon, the most powerful coven-
master in all Gulzacandra.

Dathan and Hycilla had been close friends when they were
children, but that was because they had been bom within days
of one another. Now they were almost adults they were bound
to grow apart, and would have been directed towards different
goals even if Hycilla had never shown the least talent for wise-
dreaming.

The ochre dust-clouds continued to rise higher and higher,
billowing and spiralling in such an uncanny fashion that
they seemed almost alive. Occasionally Dathan caught a
glimpse of a half-formed shape suggestive of a leering face,
but such semblances of order flattered only to deceive, dis-
solving into confusion as soon as he tried to make sense of
them.

Pawns of Chaos                    13

Long ago, so legend had it, the Amber Waste had been a very
different place - not a desert at all but a fabulous land so full of
life that the very rock had been animate. The 'amber', shards of
which gave the waste its name, was said to be the remnant of
some exotic life-form, half-plant and half-animal, which had
dominated the landscape before the human colonists arrived. It
fed on multitudinous creatures too tiny to be seen by human
eyes and provided food in its turn for all kinds of exotic walkers
and flyers, of which only a handful that were useful to man -
including camules - had been allowed to survive. Perhaps it was
true and perhaps it wasn't; there was no way to know, even
though wise-dreamers sometimes claimed to have returned to
that magical time while they slept, to see the world as the first
humans had seen it - except, of course, that according to those
same wise-dreamers, the first humans in the world were not the
very first, but only new arrivals from some other world, which
had in turn been seeded by humans from elsewhere.

According to the Wisdom of the Dreamers, the stars in the
Great Cluster were suns, with worlds of their own. Dathan
doubted this. Given that the stars moved like coloured fireflies
in the night sky, how could they be suns? If they really were dis-
tant suns, similar to the great light that stood above him in the
sky, why was there so much strange colour and confusion in
the shades of night? The Wisdom of the Dreamers undoubt-
edly had much wisdom in it, but Dathan had begun to wonder
of late whether his ancestors had contrived to sift out all that
was merely dreaming, of the kind that anyone might do.

He had, of course, kept such thoughts entirely to himself; it
was direly unwise to challenge Wisdom that even coven-mas-
ters revered.

As he realised at last what he was looking at, the hand that
had been shading Dathan's eyes began to tremble.
Premonition or not, the sick feeling in his stomach had been
right to give him warning.

The plumes of smoke were not the result of some freakish
limited storm, nor were they the produce of an earthquake.
They were like any other plumes of dust, raised by the passage
of travellers - but these newcomers weren't riding horses or
camules. They had vehicles.

The travellers' tales that told of the wondrous vehicles of
Kalazendra had never seemed to Dathan to belong to the same

14                       Brian Craig

class as those legends which spoke of the time before there
were men on this world or in these distant reaches of the Great
Cluster. Tales of wondrous vehicles that could cross deserts
were only a few generations old at most, and whether or not
the men who had arrived on the world to fuel such stories were
its second wave of invaders or its first, there was little doubt
that they were invaders. These men had never crossed the
Amber Waste in force before, but they were crossing it now, and
one thing upon which every rumour that spoke of them agreed
was that when invaders like these arrived, they would not come
as traders, let alone as friends.

Dathan was terrified, but he knew that he had to fight his ter-
ror. He was fifteen years old, and the one thing that frightened
him more than any other was the possibility that he might
seem childish to others. He was an adult now, and he had to
act and react like an adult. Yes, he could let his fear show - but
only if it seemed like mature concern, born of a dutiful worry
for others rather than a paralysing and crippling dread of what
might happen to him. Yes, he could run, but he must not sim-
ply run away, screaming and sobbing. He must run to the
village, waving his arms so that no one would know that his
hands were trembling, and he must shout a warning in a voice
that was clear and loud and forceful.

So he turned and ran westwards, back towards the village,
waving his arms and calling the alarm in a voice that was
clamorous without ever quite falling into hysteria. The fact
that he was moving helped him, channelling the energy of his
fear into appropriate action and away from merely childish
expression.

Although travellers who were passing through it some-
times called the village Odienne, to Dathan and everyone
else who lived there it was merely 'the village', just as the
world was merely 'the world'. It was where he and everyone
else he knew had always lived. He had expected that he
always would live there, as a journeyman of some sort: a car-
penter, perhaps, a roofer or even a baker. His own father was
long-dead so could provide him with no craft to follow, so he
had become everybody's helper and nobody's apprentice, but
the village looked after its own and a firmer place would
have been found for him soon enough. Now, all of a sudden,
he had to face the possibility that the map of his life would

Pawns of Chaos                    15

have to be torn up, and that the village might be reduced to
rubble before the sun set.

He was surely entitled to be terrified. Was this not the most
terrifying possibility imaginable?

The Imperium!' he cried, as he ran pell-mell down the slope
towards the gap between the Negram farm and the forge. The
Imperium is coming!'

Dathan had little idea what 'the Imperium' was, but he had
been taught from infancy that the Imperium was the ultimate
enemy, and that the worst thing in the world that could ever
happen to his village or to the entire land of Culzacandra was
that the Imperium would come. He had been taught, too, that
he would know the Imperium when it came, because the
Imperial forces would come in vehicles. So large had the bug-
bear loomed in his imagination that he had always conceived
of the vehicles in question arriving in thousands, manned by
giants twice as tall as ordinary men, but the fact that they were
far less in number did not matter.

Just speaking the ominous words 'the Imperium' aloud
seemed to make the threat fully real, and the sound of the syl-
lables made tears rise into Dathan's eyes.

The Imperium!' he howled, trying with all his might to con-
vert all of his ravening fear into furious anger. 'Imperial
vehicles are coming across the wastes! They'll be here within
the hour!'

His shouts provoked an instantaneous response as he ran
past the forge and the blacksmith's cottage towards the
thatched houses on the road to the village square. The smith
must have been in the stables behind the forge, because his
brazier had not been lit - nor had the fires beneath the kilns
which the village wives used to harden their pots. Most of the
people who came running from the smaller houses were
women and children, because their menfolk were at work in
the fields, but when Dathan came closer to the square, where
the houses were made of wood instead of earth, with sealed log
roofs, the craftsmen left their tools and followed their wives.
Caborn the carpenter and Relfthe baker ran past Dathan, obvi-
ously intent on making sure that what he had seen really was
an Imperial force, but neither challenged him as they went.
They allowed him to continue on his course, shouting his
chilling warning.

16                          Brian Craig

Dathan knew that if anyone who heard his shouts doubted
the truth of them, that doubt would not be allowed to stand in
the way of quick action. The mere possibility that it was true
would be enough to set all everyday matters aside. Every man
who had a weapon would run to fetch it, and every man who
had never had money with which to buy a machete or a crafts-
man's bow would go to fetch a club or a pitchfork. There was
little enough money in the village - the resident craftsmen had
to make almost everything that was needed by its people - but
the harvest had been good enough in five out of the last eight
years to allow the bigger landholders to sell their surpluses over
in Mancip and Elvenor, so the village's stocks of keen blades
were by no means restricted to its spades and kitchen-knives.

The Imperium, it was rumoured among menfolk whose con-
versations Dathan had occasionally overheard, had guns that
shot forth lightning and liquid fire. It was also said, however,
that the Imperial masters had sunk mines in Kalazendra and
built factories there to turn out guns of much simpler design
which fired metal bullets, and mechanical bows that fired darts
like shortened arrows.

Every child in Gulzacandra was told that the Imperium's
wheeled metal vehicles could move faster than a galloping
horse, but it was also said that the Imperium was training cav-
alry to use lances, and conscripting sucars from the far south to
turn the loxodonts they used as massive beasts of burden into
living engines of war. From which it seemed to follow, so far as
Dathan could deduce, that the Imperium could not have very
many guns that shot forth lightning and liquid fire, nor very
many wheeled vehicles, nor the means of easily making more.

In which case, Dathan had to suppose, there was a possibil-
ity that the Imperium could be fought, even with the crude
kinds of weapons that hunters and farmers kept. Perhaps there
was even a possibility that the Imperium might be beaten, if
only there were enough hunters and farmers in Gulzacandra to
force the invaders to use up their best resources and make them
fall back on makeshift reinforcements.

The Imperium!' Dathan yelled again and again, as he ran
through the square into the lane between two other rows of rel-
atively mean dwellings, heading for the huts whose inhabitants
were said to keep cleaner straw for their animals than they did
for themselves. Even the disreputable were entitled to be

Pawns of Chaos                    17

warned, and even men who were said to be too fond of the ale
their wives brewed to be good labourers would fight with all
the ferocity they could muster to defend their homes.

By this time, Dathan had delightedly discovered that his fear
really was turning to anger, and that the excitement pumping
through his blood as he ran was three parts fighting instinct
and only one part impulse to keep on running. Take arms
against the Imperium!' he cried - and others were crying the
same, now that Cabom and Relf had seen what he had seen.

Alas, Dathan's instincts could not keep that brave balance
once he came in sight of his own petty hovel and saw his
mother hurrying to meet him. Other people called his mother
Ora, but to him she was simply his mother, and in her presence
no words were enough to stir aggression. In her presence, he
would always be a child, even if he grew to the ripe old age of
forty and she somehow clung on to life long enough to reach a
venerable fifty-five.

'Dathan!' she shrieked. She had made no effort at all to hold
back her tears and negotiate her terror into wrath. She did not
ask him whether it was true, because she trusted him. She had
heard him coming while he was still at the forge, and she was
already thinking of the next move - but her mind was on flight,
not fight.

'I need a blade!' Dathan shouted, but he knew as he spoke
that it was useless to hope that his mother might find one for
him.

'Run!' she said. 'Run to Pater Saltana. You must help him
with the children. He knows where to hide them.' At least she
had the sense, or the courtesy, to commission him to help with
the children rather than to be one, but it was still no job for a
real man.

'I must find a weapon,' he gasped, as he came panting to a
halt. The village must be defended.'

The men will defend what they can,' she told him. 'But what
must be defended above all else is the children. That is the
most important duty. Go to Pater Saltana - he too has need of
men. Go!'

He had no time to answer, because Kanak the headman was
now at his shoulder, demanding to know exactly what Dathan
had seen. Kanak already had a blade in his hand - perhaps the
only blade in the village that really qualified as a sword,

18                       Brian Craig

although there were a dozen men who claimed to be swords-
men and took a very generous view of the nature of their
machetes. Many villagers carried knives far bigger than was nec-
essary for the simple task of cutting bread and meat, but
Dathan's own eating-knife was a miserable thing with a blade
no bigger than his little finger, fit only for a child.

'I saw six clearly,' Dathan said, although 'clearly' was a slight
exaggeration, 'but there must have been many others obscured
by the dust. There was so much dust there must have been at
least twenty, perhaps more than thirty. They were coming faster
than the fastest horse. An hour away, I thought - not much
more, and possibly a little less. These hills slow tired horses,
but they won't slow these things.'

Kanak didn't need to know any more, and he didn't have
time to thank Dathan for the information. He was already
turning away, shouting orders - but he did pause long enough,
after barking three or four instructions to his fellow elders, to
bark one at Dathan. 'Help Saltana!' he said. 'Get the children
into the cave!'

'I need a weapon,' Dathan said, again.

There's none to spare,' was the headman's abrupt response.

You heard him,' Ora said. 'Now go!'

What about you?' Dathan protested, his voice sudden small
again.

'I have work to do,' she said.

It was something she had said a thousand times or more, but
in the past she had always meant everyday work: the work that
every village woman did as a matter of routine, over and over
and over again; the work that maintained the uniformity and
continuity of life. Today, she meant that she had to do what she
could to preserve what she could, to make provision for life
after disaster - if there were, indeed, to be life after the disaster.
Like everyone else, she had to assume that there would be -
what other assumption could she possibly act on? - but she
had to know that there might not.

Dathan ran off, towards Pater Saltana's house. The children
of the village were already running behind and ahead of him.
Like everyone else in the village, Dathan knew exactly how
many there were: twenty-seven. It was a figure that did not
include babes-in-arms, although it did include a handful who
had learned to walk so recently that they hardly knew how to

Pawns of Chaos                    19

run and could not possibly keep pace with their elders. They
would have to be carried, some by the eleven- and twelve-year-
olds, some by men - men like Pater Saltana, and Dathan - and
some by unwed women.

By the time Dathan drew up at the priest's house, Hycilla was
already there, counting and organising. She didn't waste time
with a greeting before thrusting a two-year-old boy into
Dathan's arms. It was Houime, Kanak's son: a responsibility
and a half.

What was the point of Hycilla's supposed talent for premo-
nition, Dathan wondered, if it couldn't give adequate warning
of a life-threatening event like an Imperium attack? Where
was the virtue of wise-dreaming if the Wisdom of the
Dreamers could not provide for the end of the world? Where
was the much-vaunted generosity of Gulzacandra's almighty
god, if all the sacrifices offered to him in the past had served
merely to maintain the harsh and difficult life that all vil-
lagers led, while their worst enemies lived in great cities like
legendary Sostenuto, possessed of all manner of miraculous
machines?

Such thoughts were, of course, treasonous and terrible, but
Dathan had never been able to believe that they were unusual.
Surely they were questions that every man must ask himself.
Surely they were questions that many a man had even dared to
voice, at one time or another, to his most trusted confidants.
Papa Saltana, who was supposed to be every villager's most
trusted confidant, must have heard their like a hundred times
over, though not from Dathan - who had only ever voiced his
more trivial doubts, and then only to Hycilla, having sworn her
to a secrecy she had presumably respected.

Little Houime began crying as Saltana led the party out of
the village on the westward side. He was not alone, and all of
the other sobbing children were older than he was, but
Houime was old enough to know that he was the headman's
son and old enough to know the meaning of shame, and he
tried so valiantly to stem his sobs that Dathan was almost
ashamed to comfort him. Dathan had a vague notion that his
duty was to tell the child that everything would be all right,
but he had a much sharper conviction that such words would
be a lie, and he did not want to be a liar, even for the sake of
the headman's boy.

20                       Brian Craig

While they moved through the orchard towards the edge of
the judeye forest, Hydlla asked him how large the Imperial
force was. Dathan repeated what he had told Kanak.

That many!' she gasped. That's an army!'

What she meant was that a force of twenty vehicles might
be carrying as many as a hundred and fifty fighting men. The
village could just about muster a hundred and thirty men, if
the labourers from the outlying farms could respond to the
summons in time - but any significant difference in
weaponry, Dathan knew, would make a mockery of a near-
equality of numbers. If the invaders had guns of any of the
kinds that featured in the tales he had heard, they would not
need to be giants to slaughter villagers armed with clubs and
pitchforks.

Twenty trucks isn't an army,' Pater Saltana said, glancing
back over his shoulder at them. 'It's just a raiding party. A far
bigger force is said to be making rapid inroads in the north,
and 1 suspect even that's but a fraction of the whole. I fear that
this is the invasion of which our wise-dreamers have been
warning us for many years. If so, the great bulk of the Imperial
forces will follow the shock-troops at their own pace - the pace
of marching men, not even that of horses and camules. What
the invaders will want to begin with is a series of beachheads
and supply-points, but their ultimate aim is to destroy us all.
We have to prevent them from establishing a secure base here.
If Kanak can empty the granary and torch the fields...'

Dathan could complete Pater Saltana's unfinished sentence
as easily as he had been able to finish Hycilla's. If Kanak could
destroy the village's reserves of food, the headman could pre-
vent the marauders from getting the supplies that they needed
to feed themselves in the coming weeks and months - for they
couldn't have carried very much cargo across the foodless and
waterless expanse of the Amber Waste - but if Kanak suc-
ceeded in that, the invaders would make the village pay in
blood.

If the villagers put their fields to the torch, the Imperium
would put them to the torch - although, if what he had always
been told was really true, they would do that anyway.

Pater Saltana was quoting the Wisdom of the Dreamers when
he said that the ultimate aim of the invaders was to kill every-
one in Gulzacandra. The Imperium, it seemed, did not like

Pawns of Chaos                    21

worshippers of the god of Gulzacandra, who was supposedly a
deadly enemy of their own great deity, and of everything the
Imperium stood for.

Dathan had not the slightest idea of what the Imperium
'stood for', or why the gods were enemies one of another, but
he did understand that thieves and murderers always liked to
justify their actions. He had never heard of a man who wanted
to be thought of as evil, no matter how violent and destructive
his actions might be. To justify their slaughter, the Imperium
had to claim that the god of Gulzacandra was a bad god, utterly
undeserving of their worship.

'If there's nothing left for them here,' Dathan said, grimly, 'at
least they'll go away - and we'll be free to pray that they won't
come back for a lifetime and more.'

'If only it were that simple,' Pater Saltana said. 'If they're
crossing the Amber Waste in force as well as sending truckloads
of soldiers into the northlands and the southlands, they'll need
a base hereabouts. If they decide that Odienne's well-placed to
serve as a way-station, they might be here for a lifetime... and
more.'

'And what shall we do then?' Hycilla wanted to know. 'If any
of us is still alive?'

^

TWO

EVEN THOUGH GAVALON'S makeshift army had barely begun to
come together, let alone seen any action, the noise and the
stink of the encampment were becoming unbearable. There
were too many beastmen in it, and too many men who were
almost as careless in their hygiene.

Had the profession of sorcery been kinder to its followers, a
man like Cavalon would have been immune to all offensive
odours, and if it had been kinder still the reek of beastmen
might have seemed a delicate perfume, but the world was not
a kind place, even to the most faithful servant of the truest
god. In the end, Gavalon had to step out of his tent in search
of fresher air, but he did not find it.

In order to take his mind off the noisome quality of the air,
Gavalon looked up - with a great deal of pride and a little
trepidation - at the banner fluttering above his multicoloured
tent, which stood out bright and clear even against the cloud-
less violet sky. The image painted upon it was that of a huge
eye rimmed in red, with a thin purple iris surrounding a huge
black pupil. A cataract of white fire jetted from the centre of
the pupil, extending into a beam as wide as the banner's hem.

23

24                          Brian Craig

The fluttering device was not magically active at present, but it
was menacing even as a mere image.

The eye on the banner was the all-seeing eye, the withering
eye, whose gaze could blast minds and scorch them clean of
any vestige of rational thought when the banner came to life.
The banner that bore such an eye was more than a weapon: it
was the potent symbol of Gavalon's power and authority. It
was the badge of the most powerful sorcerer in Culzacandra,
which meant the most powerful in all the world nowadays.

Gavalon was known to everyone who knew his name as
Gavalon the Great, although his enemies had applied less flat-
tering epithets to him in the days before their extermination.

Five lifetimes ago, if the intelligence of lore and legend
could be trusted, the most powerful sorcerer in Culzacandra
would have been the smallest digit on a hand of five fingers,
each finger symbolizing one of the five civilizations which
shared the world's three continents. But four lifetimes ago the
stars had slowed their ceaseless movement in the night-sky
and the Imperium had fallen from the sky in a shower of slow
meteors.

Within ten years, Gavalon had been told, the Imperium had
taken absolute control of Kalazendra, and within a further
twenty-five years three other civilizations - Zendamora,
Bulzavara and Yevelkana - had become mere puppets, slaves
to imported law. Only Zendamora had been joined to
Kalazendra but the seas that divided the world had not been
barrier enough to protect Bulzavara and Yevelkana, or the
island of Melmayaka that lay half-way between the western-
most cape of Kalazendra and the easternmost extremity of
Culzacandra. Only the girth of the world, and the wastelands
and high mountains that divided the landmass shared by
Yevelkana and Gulzacandra, had kept Gavalon's homeland
safe from invasion... until now.

Now, the time had finally come. Yevelkanan mercenaries
were pouring through the coastal lands in the far west and
Zendamoran warfleets supplied from Melmayaka were
blockading the eastern ports, while what remained of the once
all-powerful Imperial forces were striking westwards across the
wastelands to drive deep into the heart of Gulzacandra.

The strategy was sound enough. For centuries before the
Imperium came, if not millennia, the men of Gulzacandra

Pawns of Chaos                    25

had organised their defences to withstand the raids of
Melmayakan pirates and Yevelkanan adventurers. The heart-
land, buffered by the wastelands, had never needed
significant fortification. Caravans of camules could cross the
wastes, and men on hardy horses could carry water enough to
get them across provided they carried little else, but no ordi-
nary army weighed down by its equipment could hope to
arrive in any condition to fight. Only the Imperial army itself
could do that, and for two hundred years the Imperium had
had more important things to do.

Now, with the exception of a handful of islands inhabited
by savages, Gulzacandra was the last territory to resist Imperial
law: the last territory where the true faith was openly and
gladly professed, and its customs publicly followed. There
were sorcerers still in Yevelkana, Zendamora and Bulzavara -
and more than a few even in Kalazendra - but they had per-
force to operate in the strictest secrecy. Not one of them could
ever achieve the kind of pre-eminence over his fellows that
entitled Cavalon the Great to the tribute of his surname.

Banners and standards fluttered over a dozen other tents
pitched on the so-called headland, but they all displayed open
hands rather than eyes. Some of the hands carried flaming
skulls, while others bore serpentine symbols, but Gavalon had
reserved the withering eye for himself. His thrall-wizards and
his beastmen wore various versions of it, to mark them out as
officers of his personal retinue, although his lesser servants
made do with the same annular insignia as any other gun-
fodder.

Cavalon had already begun thinking of the bulk of his
forces as 'gun-fodder', even though they had never faced guns
before. The incredibly powerful weapons that the Imperial
forces had brought with them to their epoch-making landing
were rumoured to be almost out of ammunition now, but
their owners had made the most of their temporary advantage.
The guns produced in their Kalazendran factories were by no
means as powerful as those their forebears had brought from
the star-worlds, but they were guns nevertheless. There was
nothing in Gulzacandra that could compete with them -
except, of course, magic.

If the Imperium was to be stopped, magic would be the
force that would do it.

26                          Brian Craig

Gavalon had every respect for and every faith in magic -
how could it be otherwise, given that he was the greatest sor-
cerer in Gulzacandra? - but he also had every respect for
history, and he knew that magic had not saved the sorcerers
of Kalazendra from Imperial firepower, and that magic had
not prevented the series of treasons that had brought
Zendamora, Bulzavara and Yevelkana into the Imperial fold
one by one.

For whatever reason, the god who had once been the god
of all five great nations had decided, after his impenetrably
mysterious fashion, to let his children suffer defeat after
defeat after defeat, even though the stars had begun to swim
in the night-sky like so many multicoloured fish almost as
soon as the Imperial ships had landed. No more ships had
come to reinforce the first wave of immigrants - and if the
god of Gulzacandra chose to be merciful, no more ships
would ever come - but those which had come had done
damage aplenty.

Only now was the tide to turn, if it were to turn at all - but
if and when it turned, it would surely turn with all the savage
fury of which the vengeful god of Gulzacandra was capable.

Perhaps, Gavalon thought, that was the way his lord pre-
ferred to play out the game - for what was life to the gods, and
everything else in the universe besides, but a game? The
world's misfortune might, if seen in the right light, be nothing
but a stage for his own glory. Gulzacandra had been the least
of the five civilizations, the smallest finger on the mighty
hand, but it was now the pulsing heart of the true god's
worldly kingdom, and its sorcerer-in-chief was Gavalon the
Great, Gavalon the Summoner and Cavalon the Keeper of the
Vessel: in brief, Gavalon the Midwife of the Future.

Almost as though he had summoned him up, the Vessel -
whose name was Nimian - came out of the tent behind his
keeper, looking nervously from side to side at the beastmen
which stood guard at its entrance. They were extraordinarily
ugly, even for beastmen - they had great, horned, shaggy
heads like yaks and feet like ostriches - but there was no rea-
son in the world why the Vessel should fear them.

Perhaps it was another of the god's little jests that had made
Nimian nervous of so many things, or perhaps there was
some purpose in it which Gavalon could not yet comprehend.

Pawns of Chaos                    27

Even Gavalon the Great was merely a mortal, at least for the
time being - but who could know what a favourite servant of
the true god might one day become, in the right circum-
stances?

'It has begun,' Nimian said. The boy had obviously slept late
again, as all wise-dreamers tended to do, but now he was
awake there was something about him that would have dis-
comfited any ordinary man. Even the most innocuous of
wise-dreamers grew to intimidate their fellows, and for all his
seeming feebleness and obvious trepidation Nimian was not
the most innocuous of wise-dreamers.

'Of course it has begun,' Cavalon told him. 'Why would I
take the trouble to gather an army, if the final phase had not
already begun? This is not the sort of enterprise one under-
takes for idle amusement. You can have no idea of the
planning that is required to maintain an army, even if its
members are merely sitting around, waiting for orders as to
how to dispose themselves when they march to meet the
enemy.'

In fact, he thought, it was more difficult to maintain an
army that was resting than an army on the move, because of
the inevitable problems of supply and sanitation, but there
was no point in trying to explain that to Nimian. The Vessel
was thirteen years old and not destined to get much more than
a day older - although he was not destined to die, either, in
any ordinary sense of the word.

As for the one who would come to occupy the Vessel... that
one, hopefully if not presumably, would need no explanations
of anything mundane.

Hopefully.

Presumably...

Cavalon furrowed his brow as he realised that this was an
inconvenient point of ignorance. He had no idea what expla-
nations the being he was to summon would require. But the
shadow passed quickly enough. A loyal servant of the Changer
of the Ways had to do a great deal of hopeful presumption,
and had to put up with a great deal more inconvenient igno-
rance.

What was faith but mortar to hold the bricks of certainty
together, and what was hope but the plan of the edifice to be
built?

28                       Brian Craig

'We should not be here/ Nimian told Gavalon petulantly.
This is not the place, and the time will soon be upon us.'

'When the time comes,' Gavalon said, 'we shall be exactly
where we are supposed to be. Today, I am supposed to be
here. I am the commander of this gathering host and I must
be seen. My banner must be seen, and I must be seen stand-
ing beneath it. I am the living symbol of the withering eye,
and the ritual is not my only duty, for all that it may be the
first and foremost.'

Nimian looked around at the humans and beastmen hurry-
ing in every direction. Cavalon guessed that the boy was
thinking that hardly one in ten of them had time to look up at
his banner or sideways at his face - and that even those who
had time would prefer not to do either. Ideally, the withering
eye ought to have been a flesh banner, its design inscribed on
magically-animated skin flayed from a dead enemy, but the
opportunity to make such a device had not yet presented itself.
In any case, tanned camule-skin was much more resilient than
the hide of any of the species which, if legend could be trusted,
humans had brought with them when they first arrived on this
world, thousands of years before the Imperial ships had
proved to the sceptics that there really were other worlds orbit-
ing other, distant suns, and that there really might be a million
colonised worlds inhabited by men.

Camule-skin or not, however, the withering eye banner was
a potent weapon, and an intimidating sight even in its rest-
state. It was not surprising that few men or beastmen cared to
look up at it for long. When the time came to pack up the
gaudy tents and put on armour, everyone drafted to this force
would remember that fell banner well enough. They would
march as if the gaze of that terrible eye were still upon them -
and as if the gaze of Gavalon's eyes were upon them too.

Gavalon was well aware that the years had transformed him
into a sight almost as unsettling as his banner. The chan-
nelling of his lord's dark magic had exacted its heavy penalties
upon his flesh, but he did not mind that in the least. In the
days before he had been Gavalon the Great he might have
been reckoned merely ugly, but no one would ever again think
of him as 'merely' anything. His ugliness was now spectacular,
if not sublime. People who did not know him occasionally
took him for a beastman, even though his feet still required

Pawns of Chaos                    29

boots and none could put a name to the twisted beast whose
head he now wore.

'One does not need to be stared at in order to be seen/
Cavalon assured the Vessel. 'A man to be reckoned with is a
man who impresses himself upon the mind even if he is
glimpsed for a quarter-second out of the corner of one eye. A
man fit to be more than a man impresses himself even on
those who do not know that they have seen him, to whom he
appears only as the figment of a nightmare: a shape sensed in
a shadow, or a cloud of dust but never clearly seen at all. Don't
doubt that my presence here is known and felt - and will still
be known and felt when I must withdraw my person in order
to complete the ritual that will seal the fate of this world.'

'In order, in order,' Nimian muttered, as though the phrase
harboured some obscenity. The boy was hopping up and
down on his feet, as if he needed to urinate - but the force that
animated him was far more primal. He was, in truth, an unex-
pectedly miserable specimen: short, thin and ugly. Cavalon
knew, liowever, that it was always the ugliest grubs that meta-
morphosed into the most powerful ogreOies and the most
beautiful daymoths. Even megascarabs began life as mere
wireworms - and what was the metamorphosis of such hum-
ble beings but a living testament to the sacred whimsy of the
almighty Changer of the Ways?

Cavalon sigualled to a group of beastmen who were sitting
in a circle, painstakingly but not very skilfully sharpening their
spears. The one who first responded to the summons was only
slightly less stupid than the rest, but he could be trusted to
transmit a command. 'Make ready,' Cavalon said to him. The
Vessel departs for the rock within the hour.'

The beastman only growled, its bovine throat being ill-
equipped for any other kind of reply, but Gavalon was
confident that his will would be done. The great advantage of
stupidity was that it was so easily transformed into loyalty. A
beastman might be far less capable of conversation than a
human fool like Nimian, but any in his retinue would be pre-
pared to hurl itself in front of its master in order to intercept a
deadly missile, or to charge a battle-tank armed only with a
spear if ever there was a tactical situation that demanded such
futility. Had Nimian not been the Vessel, the foolish boy could
not have been trusted to fetch a cup of water from a well.

30                       Brian Craig

A human captain strode up, carrying a parchment map, to
say that two beacon-fires had been sighted in the north-east,
signalling that the enemy had been sighted. Gavalon cursed.
lerius Fulbra's assault force was moving faster than anyone
had anticipated; it was already too close for comfort. His wise-
dreamers had revealed that a second contingent was skirting
the southern edge of the Amber Waste, and - more dis-
turbingly - that a third appeared to be cutting straight across.
If a part of that third force were somehow to reach the place
where the ritual was scheduled to take place before Nimian's
metamorphosis had been completed...

Was it possible, Cavalon wondered, that the Imperium still
had psykers powerful enough to have obtained intelligence of
his plans, and so-called inquisitors clever enough to take
proper note of such intelligence? It was far more probable,
though, that the Imperial soldiers crossing the Amber Waste
merely intended to establish a base. Even so, they might prove
troublesome.

The captain laid out his map for Cavalon's inspection,
showing him the positions of Fulbra's advance party and the
larger force plodding in its train - but Gavalon was more inter-
ested in the route taken by the third force

'What village is this?' he asked. The map had few names on
it, apart from Rintrah and Chemosh.

'It is Odienne, my lord' the captain said. 'I was there once.
It's tiny, and its fields are poor, but it does have a good well.'

'Does the headman know what to do if he's attacked?'

'Of course. But asking villagers to poison their own well is
like asking a common soldier to fall on his sword. No matter
how thoroughly he's been drilled-'

Very well,' Gavalon said brusquely. 'You'll have to move
your men north and make ready to meet Fulbra - at least fif-
teen miles, perhaps twenty.'

The captain's eyes clouded, but he made no protest. No
doubt the man thought that it would be folly to go to meet
Fulbra, and that the wisest course was not to fight a pitched
battle at all - but the captain knew nothing of the Vessel and
the ritual.

'You'd better leave a reserve here, though,' Gavalon added. 'A
couple of hundred men. We'll almost certainly have to use
them as reinforcements against Fulbra, but we might have to

Pawns of Chaos                    31

react to the presence of this third contingent before then.' He
wished that he knew how many vehicles the third contingent
had, and what kind of firepower they were carrying, but his
wise-dreamers had been unable to go into detail.

'Yes, lord,' the captain said. 'It will be done as you wish.' He
sounded slightly resentful, as soldiers led by sorcerers often
did, Cavalon knew. He would be grateful enough for magical
aid once the fighting actually started, though - he knew full
well that his ragamuffin militia wouldn't last ten minutes
against even a single Imperial platoon without it.

'Don't worry, captain,' Gavalon said, making no particular
effort to sound confident, or even sincere. 'No one will be ask-
ing you to fall on your sword, even if things go wrong when
the first clash comes. No one is expendable now, not even for
honour's sake - and the final settlement will depend on forces
far beyond your control.'

'That I know,' the captain said glumly, glancing sideways at
the Vessel. The glance almost turned into a stare, but there was
something in Nimian's seemingly-innocent appearance that
prevented it. When the captain dropped his eyes it was to the
floor. He had not even attempted to meet Gavalon's eye, or the
banner's.

'We are the destined victors!' Cavalon said, coldly.
'Gulzacandra will save the world. We are the favoured children
of the Changer of the Ways, and we shall be his instrument of
vengeance against the invaders.'

'My lord,' the captain said as he turned away. If he doubted
what Cavalon had said, he did not show it - but Gavalon
knew well enough that this man, like every other assembled
on the field, must have heard that there were a million other
worlds like this one. The captain must have wondered
whether, if that were true, and if the Changer of the Ways were
interested in every one of them what right any petty local tribe
could possibly have to think themselves his favoured children,
or the chosen instrument of his vengeance.

But the Divine Schemer is a mighty god indeed, Cavalon
told himself. If he suffers grubs and worms to become
megascarabs, ogreflies and daymoths, why should he not
suffer men to become his cherished champions, or daemons
more powerful than exploding stars? And if he has his
favourites among men, am I not one of them? Am I not, in

32                       Brian Craig

fact, far more deserving of favour than a miserable wretch like
Nimian? Surely I am destined for a better fate than he, even
though he is the Vessel. For I, after all, am the Keeper and the
Summoner, the Midwife of the Future. I am the Divine
Schemer's Chosen One, his Child, his Champion.

He believed it, firstly because he had to and secondly - or so
he had to tell himself - because it was true. The gods had to be
trusted, because they had to be trustworthy, because they were
gods. It was as simple as that.

^

THREE

THE IUDEYE FOREST was thorny but the ground was too dry and
stony to allow the plants to grow densely together, so it was
easy enough to pass between the trees uninjured. Most of the
judeyes were mere bushes, and most of the leaves upon them
were thin and wrinkled, seeming more thorn than flesh. It was
not a good hiding-place if a fugitive might lie there undetected
while small armies of ardent searchers passed them by, but it
was not the kind of place that enemies would bother to search
carefully unless they had a powerful reason.

Pater Saltana guided his party to a cave set into the side of
one of the largest rocky outcrops in the forest. It must have
been a natural cave at one time, but it had been further hol-
lowed out by metal tools at some time in the distant past - the
very distant past, long before the Imperium had fallen out of
the sky. Its entrance was poorly concealed, but it was shady
and cool and there was a water-barrel stowed in a hollow at
the rear. Once the children had been safely herded inside,
though, Dathan was enthusiastic to climb the rock-face to
keep a lookout.

'You can't see the village from there,' Hycilla pointed out.

33

34                       Brian Craig

'No/ Dathan admitted, 'but I could see smoke rising into the
air from the houses or the fields, and I could see men coming
through the forest.'

'No one will come into the forest,' Saltana assured him,
although the old man didn't seem very confident. They'd have
to come on foot, and they won't leave their vehicles. They'll
probably go straight through into the plain, hoping to catch
Gavalon's forces by surprise, before they're fully gathered and
battle-ready.'

'And if they don't?' Dathan wanted to know.

Saltana didn't answer. It was Hycilla who said: 'Kanak will
send a messenger with further-'

That was when they first heard the sound of gunfire. It was a
sound none of them had ever heard before, but Dathan knew
immediately what it was. His first impulse was to wish that he
had paused long enough at his house to find something that
could serve as a weapon, but he realised immediately that if
even a quarter of what he had heard rumoured about the guns
of the Imperium were true, nothing the village had in the way
of weaponry could provide a man with adequate self-defence.
Nothing could oppose that kind offirepower but magic, and the
village had little enough of that.

In fact, Dathan realised, almost all of what little magic the
village did possess was lodged with him here, in the person of
Saltana - perhaps also in Hycilla. That did not increase his con-
fidence at all. Pater Saltana was surely the pettiest sorcerer
imaginable, and even if Saltana's judgment of Hycilla's talent
were correct, the talent in question had hardly begun to bloom.

Dathan had thought it absurd at first when Hycilla had told
him that she might one day be a wise-dreamer. But in recent
weeks he had noticed on occasion that a certain chill entered
into places where she was, and that adolescents who had not
been such fast friends with her as he had always been had
begun to feel uneasy in her presence.

'I'm going up anyway,' Dathan said. 'I want to see whatever
there is to be seen.'

He didn't wait for any further discussion, but set about scal-
ing the rock-face. It only took ten minutes to clamber all the
way to the top, but the effort left him short of breath and he
had to lie down for a further minute or two before standing up
beside the twisted trunk of a hundred-year-old tree, craning his

Pawns of Chaos                    35

neck even though he knew that the tallest chimneys in the vil-
lage would still be invisible.

He was right about the smoke. Long columns were already
rising from half a dozen different places, and more were
appearing with every minute that passed. One column, to the
west of the village, was a beacon fire set to warn the sentries on
the look-out towers of Mancip and Elvenor of the attack. The
remainder were all in the village, testifying to the ferocity of the
assault that had been launched against it.

Saltana had, however, been wrong about the attackers stick-
ing to their vehicles and ignoring the judeye forest. Two sinister
shapes on foot were already visible, moving through the trees.

Had they not been so intent on looking to right and left, as
if they expected every last tree to conceal savagely armed vil-
lagers lying in ambush for them, the soldiers might have
caught sight of Dathan before he slipped behind the ancient
trunk of the tree - but he did not think that they had. After a
few heartbeats, he peeped around the trunk, determined to see
what he could without being spotted himself.

The uniforms the two men wore seemed little more exotic to
Dathan than the clothes worn by traders, and the men them-
selves - though they were obviously foreigners - were far more
ordinary than he had anticipated. But they were carrying guns:

heavy, wide-barrelled things that required two hands. Dathan
had no idea whether the guns produced missiles or floods of
fire, but he had no wish to find out. He had no idea, either, why
the men had come into the forest, given that Kanak's men and
the village women would have fled in any other direction but
this one - but even if the enemy knew that, they might have
considered it necessary to leave no ground uninvestigated.

The gunmen were already too close to allow Dathan to call
out a warning without drawing attention to himself, and he
knew that he could not climb down the exposed rock-face
without being seen. For one reckless moment he considered
the possibility of deliberately calling attention to himself in the
hope that he might lead the soldiers away from the cave, as a
mother-bird might lead a wolfox away from her nest, but he
discarded the idea immediately. He had no idea what the range
or power of the guns were, and if all that was needed to dispose
of him was a single shot there would be no point at all in mak-
ing himself a target.

36                       Brian Craig

The best thing to do, he decided, if he could possibly man-
age it, was to work his way around behind the two men. If they
would only draw far enough apart, and if only he could creep
up on one, and take him by surprise, and stab him with his eat-
ing-knife in such a way as to penetrate an artery...

He discarded that notion too. It was .stupid, because it was
impossible.

He looked around for a weapon, however makeshift, but
there was nothing. Fallen boughs never lay long on the ground
even in a place like this, given the village's ever-urgent need for
firewood. There were a few loose stones of a convenient size for
throwing, but they were mere pebbles, and it would have
required more than a slingshot to make them into useful mis-
siles. He picked up a couple anyway, simply because they were
close at hand, lodged between the gnarled roots of the judeye
tree.

Dathan had never felt so helpless. He had to hope that the
gunmen would pass by the cave without suspecting that it was
occupied. He prayed that Saltana and Hycilla had enough
magic between them to keep the children quiet and contrive
some kind of subtle concealment.

Perhaps it would have worked out that way, and perhaps not,
but events took another turn. The gunmen had not seen any of
the village's defenders running into the judeye forest, but the
village's defenders had seen them, and had known what was at
stake. The plan that Dathan had rejected as impossible clearly
did not seem so to others, for the two enemy soldiers already
had a pair of stealthy pursuers creeping swiftly up behind
them, clearly visible to Dathan from his elevated position but
quite invisible to their quarry. One was Relfthe baker, the other
a labourer named Pavot from the Tahiri farm.

Alas, though the men were as yet invisible to the invaders,
they were not inaudible.

Dathan saw one of the soldiers start and turn, and knew
that he was about to call out a warning. Instinctively, he
hurled one of the stones he had picked up - not at the soldier,
which would have been futile, but at the crown of a judeye
away to the soldier's left. As the gunman voiced his warning
the pebble rattled the thorny leaves, immediately drawing the
man's attention away from the direction in which the threat
actually lay.

Pawns of Chaos                   37

Without pausing for thought, Dathan hurled the other stone
at a tree to the right of the other soldier, and immediately
dropped to his knees in search of more.

No sooner had he put his hand on another stone than he
hurled it high and wide with all his might, not bothering to
search for a target. He hoped that the confusion he sowed
might persuade the gunmen that they were surrounded, and
might perhaps create a margin of opportunity for their pur-
suers to attack.

The troops had not the slightest idea how many adversaries
they might be facing, or how well they might be armed. In all
likelihood, they had never seen even a judeye tree before, and
had no idea what creatures might be lurking in a forest of
them. They were taking no chances. They raised their guns -
and what their guns unleashed was a kind of fire.

Living judeye trees were resistant to the heat of the sun, and
to the kinds of fire-making apparatus the villagers had, but this
kind of fire was something else. The crowns of the trees agitated
by Dathan's stones, and two or three others besides, were
instantaneously transformed into huge balls of flame. Their
trunks exploded one after another, sending burning wood in
every direction. The noise was frightful, all-consuming, like
nothing Dathan had ever heard before. It only required those
two shots to start a conflagration that promised to engulf the
entire forest, and the two soldiers realised that almost immedi-
ately.

They did what must have seemed to them to be the sensible
thing. They turned back.

The two villagers who had been attempting to creep up
behind the gunmen would have had little or no opportunity to
get dose enough to use their blades, but there was no chance
now of their being heard and the gunmen had set their own
ambush by turning back towards them. No matter how power-
ful the guns might be, they were rather unwieldy, and the
gunmen were momentarily off-guard.

Relf and Pavot pounced, their blades red with reflected fire-
light.

The Imperial soldiers reacted, but their first response had to
be to use their guns as clubs. Had the villagers carried spears,
or even real swords, one thrust might have been enough, but
their blades were short, edged rather than pointed. Dathan

38                          Brian Craig

thought that Relf, at least, had inflicted a serious cut, but nei-
ther man got the chance to inflict a second. The soldiers were
trained; they had practised hand-to-hand fighting.

One soldier smashed the barrel of his weapon into Pavot's
face. The labourer was a big man, well-used to heavy work, but
he could not take a blow like that and remain standing. He fell
on to his back, his arms sprawling. He kept his fist clenched
about the hilt of his knife, but the weapon was virtually useless
unless he could get up again. He could not: the Imperial sol-
dier was far too skilled in his murderous trade to let an
opportunity go, and he struck again with the barrel of his gun,
driving it into Pavot's groin with all the force he could muster.

Relf, meanwhile, had been struck so sharply on the right arm
that the bones had cracked. He dropped his weapon, but he
could not have used it even if his nerveless fingers had main-
tained the grip. A second sweep of the heavy flame-gun took
his legs away. He fell even more heavily, and even more awk-
wardly, than his bigger companion.

Now that both would-be ambushers had been laid flat, the
Imperial soldiers calculated each further blow. Although they
continued to use their bizarre weapons as instruments of crude,
brute force, they did so with ruthless efficiency.

As Dathan watched the bodies jerk reflexively and the blood
pooling on the dry soil, he knew that neither villager would
ever get up again. It did not require much of his imagination to
picture similar scenes repeated twelve or twenty times over. He
could hear the sound of guns of a different kind, blasting and
stuttering, and he could hear the sound of distant screaming,
but in his mind's eye the massacre of his friends and neigh-
bours was an endless series of repetitions of what he had just
seen; strong men, well-trained and well-armed, beating the life
out of helpless innocents - and then adding a few extra blows,
for the sake of insult.

In the meantime, the children fled.

Saltana and Hycilla must have realised very quickly that they
could not stay where they were in the middle of a forest fire,
and they must have decided that their best chance of survival
lay in running as quickly as possible in (he direction opposite
to the village - westwards. Whether they had actually decided
to scatter, or whether it was mere panic, Dathan did not know,
but scatter they had.

Pawns of Chaos                    39

It would have been better, Dathan realised, if the Imperial
soldiers had not been attacked. In that case, they would prob-
ably have continued their retreat without looking back. As
things were, they were still looking around for other possible
dangers when the children tried to make their escape.

The noise of the burning trees and the sounds of the conflict
in the village was easily loud enough to cover the sound of run-
ning feet, and acrid smoke was already building a screen, but
one of the troopers saw something, and immediately set off at
a run in the direction the fugitives had taken. His companion
hesitated, then followed.

The thick smoke rising up the rock-face forced Dathan back
from the edge. His eyes were already smarting, and he knew
that he had to find better air to breathe, so he too moved west-
wards, knowing as he came down the further slope of the
outcrop that he would have to be very wary indeed when he
reached the forest floor.

For the next ten minutes everything was confusion. The chil-
dren were running as fast as they could, but Dathan did not
dare to do likewise. He was too far behind them, and that put
him far too close to the gunmen who had gone after them. He
had to make more careful progress, taking whatever precau-
tions he could, so he stayed close to the tree-trunks whenever
he could, in spite of the thorns that were always reaching out
to scratch his face and arms.

Unfortunately, the fire seemed to be travelling almost as fast
as he was. He could hear its awful clamour behind him, and
the pungent odour of smoke kept getting worse and worse.

He heard the soldiers before he saw them, and what he heard
was the word: 'No!'

The sound was far too close for comfort, and he dropped to
a crouch behind an unusually squat bush before manoeuvring
himself into a position from which he could see the speaker
and the companion to whom the speaker had spoken.

One of the soldiers, who was bleeding profusely from a cut
in his shoulder at right-angles to the collar-bone, was stand-
ing over Pater Saltana, who was crouched on the ground with
his arms protectively wrapped around Houlme. It seemed
that the soldier had been about to dash out the priest's brains
with the butt of his weapon, until he had been ordered to
desist.

40                         Brian Cray;

Dathan was glad to note that the other trooper also seemed
to have been cut, if only superficially - his cheek had been
slashed by a thrust that must have been less than a finger's-
breadth away from taking out his eye.

Take him alive!' said the man with the cut cheek, although
he did not seem certain of his own instruction. 'Can't you see
that he's some kind of priest? Look at his face, if his costume
doesn't tell you. We might need the information he can give
us.'

'What for?' demanded the other. 'If he's a sorcerer, all the
more reason to kill the heretic scum!'

Dathan realised that the second man's voice was taut with
anxiety, and that the reason the first had lacked conviction as
to the reasonableness of his own argument was that he was
afraid: afraid of Pater Saltana! Dathan had been afraid of Pater
Saltana himself, but only in the way that any child might be
afraid of his teacher. These were strong men - ruthless killers.
Why should they look at an old man with such horror and
trepidation?

Dathan thought again about the effect that Hycilla had
begun to have on people who did not know her as well as he
did. Was it possible, he wondered, that long familiarity had
tamed his awe of Pater Saltana, making it seem less ominous
than it really was?

'Don't be stupid,' the first soldier said, although there was
still a manifest unease in his tone. 'We need local knowledge if
we're to establish a supply-point here, and the rest of these stu-
pid peasants probably don't know which way's up. We need
everything he has in his head, and we need to tease it out very
tenderly. We have to deliver him to the inquisitors.'

Dathan took the remark about 'stupid peasants' very person-
ally. He had heard enough of town life to know that his people
were poor, and he had heard passing merchants speak conde-
scendingly of the ignorance of those who had never seen what
lay beyond the horizon, but he was not stupid. The village had
its craftsmen, who were legitimately proud of the quality of
their work, and even its ploughmen and livestock-tenders knew
more than the particular secrets of their work and worship.

What about the child?' asked the man with the bleeding
shoulder, although he must have known the answer.

That we don't need.'

Pawns of Chaos                    41

The soldier with the wounded shoulder had already reached
out to yank Houime out of Saltana's protective grasp. Saltana
would not give him up, but when the second man joined in,
the priest could not hold on.

The man with the slashed cheek took Houime from his com-
panion, held him by his ankles and swung the child's head
against the bark of a tree, so forcefully that his neck snapped.
Dathan heard the horrible crack quite clearly in spite of the
background roar.

'Shit and corruption!' said the man with the wounded shoul-
der, clinging hard to Pater Saltana's limp body. 'It's not going
to be easy getting out of here, even without this kind of bur-
den.'

'Give him to me,' the other commanded. 'You lead the way.
Just make sure you don't take us into any more ambushes -
and if you have to shoot again, try not to devastate the entire
landscape. That way, if we steer around the fire, we'll get back
to the village easily enough.'

The man with the bleeding shoulder didn't wait before set-
ting off, although he did say What about the others?' as he
marched off.

They're just brats. We can tidy them up later, if need be. In
all probability, the fire will take care of most of them, and thirst
and hunger will do for the rest. This is the one we need, for
now. With luck, we'll have a few others, so there's a couple to
spare when the questioning starts. And the women, of course.'

By the time this last sentence was completed the two soldiers
had passed out of Dathan's sight.

If he had had a weapon, of any sort, Dathan might have fol-
lowed them. As it was, he had enough sense to let them go. He
went to stand over Houlme's broken body, feeling an impotent
rage more terrible than any emotion that had ever possessed
him.

He didn't notice Hycilla coming up behind him until she
touched his shoulder. Then he whirled about, wishing that it
might be an enemy - albeit an enemy that he was capable of
fighting.

When he saw that she was not, he lowered his hands, but his
fists were still clenched, the nails digging into his palms. He
shuddered, but it was not because Hycilla's presence was dis-
turbing - or so he told himself.

42                          Brian Craig

'We have to go,' Hydlla said. 'We have to go as far and as fast
as we can - to Elvenor, if we can find the way. We have to tell
someone who can get a message to Gavalon that the Imperium
is establishing a supply-base here. It might be important.'

We never had a chance,' Dathan whispered. 'None of us.
Relf, Pavot, Pater Saltana - we're all as helpless as Houime, just
things to be destroyed, or tortured, or-'

Hycilla grabbed his arms and pulled him.

'If we don't go,' she said, 'we'll be meat. Cooked meat. Come
on!'

Dathan knew that she was right. Even so, she had to lead him
away, and he did not begin to run until she forced him.




FOUR

ORLOC MELCARTH STOOD on the balcony of the Governor's
Apartment in the Imperium Tower, looking out over the city of
Sostenuto, capital of the Civilization of Kalazendra. The news,
relayed from lerius Fulbra by a chain of vox stations spanning
half a world, was good.

Fulbra's main forces had skirted the Amber Waste to the
north and south, and his own company was now making rapid
headway into Gulzacandra. The invaders had met no signifi-
cant opposition, and Fulbra's armoured corps had been able to
blast its way through the makeshift barriers that had been set
up to impede its progress. Fulbra had left his slower-moving
cavalry and loxodonts far behind, although they would have a
great deal of valuable work to do in tidying up after him and
making sure that the supply-routes across Yevelkana were prop-
erly maintained.

In the meantime, Fulbra had sent a smaller contingent of
trucks racing straight across the Waste, with a view to estab-
lishing a supply-base at an insignificant village identified on
the maps as Odienne. Melcarth knew that the decision to do so
had been encouraged by Ragan Balberith, whose psykers had
allegedly detected signs of trouble brewing in the wasteland

43

44                       Brian Craig

west of the village, but that was a petty annoyance. If Balberith
wanted Fulbra to mount an exploratory 'Operation Probe', he
might as well have his way - it might keep his mind off more
problematic matters.

The cultists' forces, which seemed to have been given no use-
ful forewarning by magical means, were reported to be
gathering together, although Fulbra had not managed to find
out where, or what their plan of campaign was likely to be.
Melcarth could not see that it mattered much. Fulbra would be
on them soon enough, and even if they had contrived to
muster ten thousand fighters they would be crushed. Many of
them would be unintelligent and poorly-armed beastmen;

even the human conscripts would be pathetically ill-equipped.

Everything was going to plan - and not just to Fulbra's plan,
but to his.

Within a matter of weeks he, Orloc Melcarth, would be the
ruler of the world: the emperor of the world, in all but name.
Sostenuto would be the capital city of an Imperium that
embraced the whole world, on which the sun never set, and he
would be able to ride through it in triumph, celebrating his
ascension to absolute power, with Fulbra at his side. He had an
aircraft standing ready, first to carry him to the battlefield -
once the crucial victory had been well and truly won - and
then to bring him back with the general by his side, to estab-
lish him in the mind of every man in Kalazendra as a hero in
his own right, and a great leader.

Once Gulzacandra was purged, Melcarth believed, the fugi-
tive covens of Bulzavara, Zendamora and Yevelkana would be
isolated and unsupported, easy targets for Ragan Balberith's
agents and hirelings - or, more likely the agents and hirelings
of the more reasonable man who would presently be replacing
Ragan Balberith in the position of Chief Inquisitor.

Melcarth wondered, briefly, whether the title of Chief
Inquisitor could be discarded along with its occupant. Perhaps
the notion of a 'Chief Inquisitor' had too much of the True
Imperium wrapped up in it. Perhaps it demanded - and, alas,
commanded - rather too much respect. The cultists had to be
hunted down, of course, and killed. They were too vile to live,
and their magic posed a threat to the worldly Imperium -
Melcarth's Imperium - but the memory and methods of the
True Imperium were a little too carefully preserved by

Pawns of Chaos                    45

Balberith's Inquisition. Perhaps it was high time for the entire
institution to be replaced by something more suited to local
circumstances. The way would then be clear for Orloc Melcarth
to be emperor in name as well as in reality.

It was not the fact that he had not yet conquered
Gulzacandra that had prevented Melcarth from claiming that
title before, but rather that it would have caused such offence
to the inner circle of Balberith's inquisitors, their agents and
their allies. Given the way inquisitors worked, Melcarth could
not be entirely certain how wide that circle was - although he
was quite sure that its members would certainly regard his use
of the title as a usurpation and a blasphemy, if he did not han-
dle the matter with the utmost delicacy. Even Balberith was
prepared to tolerate the fact that the aborigines had been
encouraged to call the political institutions and armed forces at
his disposal 'the Imperium', but that was because he still con-
sidered the worldly Imperium to be nothing more than a
humble instrument and representative of a much grander
Imperium: an Imperium that spanned the stars. That Imperium
was, however - at least in Orloc Melcarth's opinion - nothing
more than a distant memory, quite irrelevant to the world as he
knew it.

Balberith always insisted on referring to the world as
Sigmatus, but Melcarth preferred to think of it simply as the
world - or, even more pleasantly, as his world. He was already
the effective overlord of four-fifths of its land surface, and the
conquest of Gulzacandra would deliver the greater part of the
remainder. The rest - consisting of islands covered by impene-
trable jungles, ice or volcanic ash - was not worth having, even
though a few of the islands in the southern sea were inhabited.
Aborigines were happy enough to scratch out a living any-
where.

In the distance, as he looked to the west, Melcarth could see
the shell of one of the ships that had brought his ancestors to
Sigmatus. The four that had been stranded when the stars began
to shift again - or when the warpstorms of the Eye of Terror
extended their outer fringes to embrace it again, as Balberith
insisted on putting it - remained on display outside the four
gates of the city, to remind everyone who passed through those
gates of the proud heritage of their rulers. They were potent
symbols of the awesome power that existed outside the world,

46                          Brian Craig

in the great wilderness of the universe - but Orloc Mdcarth was
a determined realist, who knew that symbols were only
symbols, and that real power had to be exercised within the
world, with an immediacy that had to be obvious to anyone
who ever thought to resist it. Once the Inquisition had been
reformed, redesigned in a more subservient role, it would be
time to begin dismantling the hulls of the ships, reclaiming the
valuable metals bound up therein. It would be easy enough to
turn the symbols into scrap, and once that was done the
memory of the True Imperium would continue to fade, until it
finally became no more than a myth.

The Chief Inquisitor is here, excellency,' a voice murmured
from the room behind him. 'He desires....'

'I know what he desires,' Melcarth said, casually interrupting
the guardsman. 'Please ask him to join me.'

He liked entertaining Balberith on his balcony, because
Balberith was slightly acrophobic. Heights made him nervous,
and nervousness put pressure on him to cut his interference
short. Unfortunately, devotion to imagined duty put pressure
on him too, and that always encouraged him to extend his
interference to the limit.

And that, no doubt, was why Ragan Balberith stepped out
boldly onto the high balcony overlooking the capital city,
despite the quiver of vertigo that must have run from head to
toe as he did so. His bodyguards remained discreetly inside.

Under the gaze of Balberith's angry eyes, Melcarth had to
remind himself that the title of Chief Inquisitor was merely an
echo ofsomeuung at best half-remembered, an imitation of a
very distant original. Doubtless there had once been real
inquisitors - men of authentic power and sanctity - but here in
the real world there were only men who pretended to be
inquisitors: men who merely played at being inquisitors, no
matter how eager they might be to root out corruption, nor
how efficient they might be in slaughtering the supposedly-cor-
rupt.

The news is excellent!' Melcarth said, before the other man
had time to speak. 'Our plans are proceeding exactly as they
should - all praise to the Emperor Magnificent.'

'All praise to the Emperor Magnificent,' Balberith echoed,
dutifully - although his flashing eyes declared his awareness
that Melcarth's use of the formula was tokenistic. 'I am told

Pawns of Chaos                    47

that General Fulbra has asked for the aircraft. He needs it for
reconnaissance, to examine the enemy's disposition - but it is
still in Kalazendra.'

Balberith had drawn himself up to his full height as he
spoke, trying to make the most of the one-inch advantage he
had over the governor. Melcarth observed that the inquisitor
had even combed his hair in such a way as to make it stand up,
trying to gain an extra quarter-inch that way - but the governor
was not a man to be intimidated by an accident of stature. In
any case, the inquisitor's ascetic habits ensured that he could
not get the full benefit of his exercise regime, and Melcarth's
muscles were much more solid.

'General Fulbra always has a tendency to overestimate his
needs,' Melcarth said, smoothly. 'Soldiers rarely see very far
beyond the next battle, and never see beyond a war's end.'

'But you've taken elaborate steps to ensure that the chain of
refuelling stations is intact, and Fulbra's engineers are under
orders to clear landing-strips wherever they make camp, in
order that the aircraft can always get to them within twelve
hours,' Balberith complained. 'Why do that, if the aircraft is not
to be placed at the general's disposal?'

Melcarth wondered whether Balberith might have guessed
the real reason for the careful preparations he had listed -
which was, of course, to allow Orloc Melcarth to claim the
fullest possible share of Fulbra's triumph. It did not seem to
matter, either way: Melcarth was the only man who could order
it to take off. The aircraft was the most potent example of
Original Technology left to the Imperium of Kalazendra, and
Melcarth had always been careful to reserve its use entirely to
himself.

The aircraft is too precious a resource to waste in mere
reconnaissance,' Melcarth told the inquisitor. 'If it were a mat-
ter of life and death, of course... but it is not. Our tech-priests
have had to work virtual miracles to maintain the craft's air-
worthiness, given the dearth of native resources, and we owe it
to their loyalty and devotion not to squander the rewards of
their endeavours.'

That was the way Melcarth had to talk to Balberith: it was the
kind of language the inquisitor understood. Melcarth
understood that Kalazendra's so-called tech-priests were mere
tinkerers, whose forebears had remembered the prayers and

48                       Brian Craig

rituals associated with the use of weapons far better than they
had remembered the manufacturing skills necessary to
reproduce and maintain them, but Balberith saw things
differently.

'I don't think you fully realise, excellency, what kind offerees
General Fulbra might be up against,' Balberith said. This is the
cultists' last stand, and the coven-masters must have kept a few
of their best tricks in reserve. Our forces are a long way from
home, and it will be impossible to reinforce them if they get
into serious difficulties. Worse than that - if they should get
into difficulties it would undoubtedly affect the morale of our
troops in the other conquered territories. The cultists may have
been driven underground in the subject states, but they are not
extinct even here. Corruption is far more widespread than you
seem to believe, and the threat it poses far more insidious. If
our communication-links were to be weakened...'

'But they aren't being weakened, Ragan,' Melcarth pointed
out, stressing the name because he knew how much Balberith
hated to be addressed in that manner rather than his title, espe-
cially by one who had the notional right to do it. 'Radio
reception has never been better - every message comes through
as clear as a bell, no matter how many relay stations are
involved. Imagine what it would have been like ten years ago!'

That's because the warpstorm appears to be abating,'
Balberith said. 'But it's something over which we have not the
slightest control. The enemy...'

'Have no more control than we have, for all that they have
been tainted by the warp themselves. In any case, you've been
exceedingly enthusiastic to see the stars stand still for as long as
I've known you. Surely you're delighted that the warpstorm
seems to be abating.'

'If it allows us to re-establish contact with the Imperium, it
will be the most fortunate thing that has happened on
Sigmatus for two hundred years, but...'

'Would that be local years,' Melcarth put in mischievously, 'or
Imperial years?'

The year defined by Sigmatus's orbit around its sun and the
day defined by its own rotation - the real year and the real day,
as Melcarth thought of them - were both a little longer than
the 'year' and the 'day' that had been built into the time-calcu-
lations of his ancestors, which Balberith still insisted on using

Pawns of Chaos                    49

in assertions about the supposed antiquity of what he thought
of as the real Imperium.

'It doesn't matter/ Balberith said. 'If we can re-establish con-
tact with the Imperium - as everyone should devoutly desire -
then General Fulbra's exploits will become irrelevant. The
Adeptus Terra will send more ships, and they will decide what
needs to be done about the taint of the warp that affects
Sigmatus. If they decide that the planet can be safely purged,
and that its resources might then be useful to the Imperium,
they will doubtless have the men and the tools to do the job. If
the warpstorm recovers its vigour, on the other hand, it will be
up to us to oppose the forces of Chaos with all our might. We
must consider the possibility that the tide may turn against us,
and prepare as best we can for that contingency.'

'Whether the stars will ever stand still again or not,' Melcarth
told him, wearily, 'we must prepare for the contingency that we
and our children and our children's children will have to rule
this world for centuries, if not millennia. The weapons and
equipment that our ancestors brought to this world are a very
precious resource that must be conserved. We have contrived to
manufacture trucks of our own, and guns of our own, but any-
one who has ever used them knows how primitive they are by
comparison with those our ancestors brought with them.
Clearly, our tech-priests - good and worshipful men though
they are - have only contrived to retain a few of the rituals and
prayers that the manufacturers of the True Imperium know. Of
course General Fulbra wants me to give him more and better
guns, more and better ammunition, more and better vehicles
and the use of our one and only aircraft. He's a general, and he
hates to think that anything he might use should be kept in
reserve for future contingencies - but you and I must acknowl-
edge a higher duty, must we not?'

Balberith scowled at that, knowing that he was being
mocked. Melcarth knew full well that the Chief Inquisitor took
the prayers and rituals of the so-called tech-priests entirely seri-
ously - as did the great majority of the tech-priests, whose
status depended on the mystification of their work.

'I believe that you might be underestimating the enemy,
excellency,' Balberith said, doggedly. 'My psykers-'

You have not an atom of evidence for saying so,' Melcarth
interjected, casually leaning back on the balcony, revelling in

50                       Brian Craig

his own lack of anxiety. "Your inquisitors have done a magnifi-
cent job of suppressing the agents of Chaos in Kalazendra and
the subject civilizations. At every juncture, the magic of these
so-called sorcerers has been defeated. We have suffered losses,
of course, but they have always been acceptable losses. If there
really is something brewing in the wastelands west of the
Amber Waste - in addition, of course, to the gathering of a
ragged army - then Operation Probe will tell Fulbra what it is,
and Fulbra will deal with it.'

'It may not be so simple. My psykers-'

'Are as crazed as their counterparts on the other side, espe-
cially since you've taken to dosing them with the same drugs.
You worry too much, Ragan. We have always generated resent-
ment by the harshness with which we have opposed the cults -
although I cannot pretend to understand why the aborigines
feel so strongly about the children we put down when they
seem quite oblivious of all those murdered by their own wiz-
ards or marred by their vile gods - but we always withstood
their attempts to take vengeance, material and magical. History
is on our side, as it certainly should be, given that ours is the
side of right and justice, the side of the Imperium. We shall win
this war, and win it gloriously.'

'If we had more history we might be better served,' Balberith
retorted, resentfully. His eyes were fluttering from side to side
now, as the mere consciousness ofMelcarth's position began to
excite his vertiginous imagination. The problem is that it is not
merely the original artefacts that have been a wasting asset
these last two hundred years. The knowledge and wisdom that
our ancestors brought to this world was but a fraction of the
wisdom and knowledge of the Imperium. They did not expect
to be stranded here, and did not come prepared to be colonists.
No doubt their efforts were heroic, and they must have done
everything they could to tell their children everything they
would need to know to fight the Eternal Enemy even on its own
ground - but we do not know how much we do not know. We
do not know what tricks this so-called Cavalon the Great might
have up his sleeve.'

Melcarth sighed. It was all true, of course, but it was all
irrelevant. No one could prepare for the unforeseeable: no
general; no inquisitor; no governor; no emperor, even of the
universe. 'We can only act on what we do know,' he said. 'Yes,

Pawns of Chaos                    51

it is possible that all the defeats our enemies have so far
suffered were accepted in order to lull us into a false sense of
security. Yes, it is possible that the last sorcerer we have to
dispatch really is more powerful than all the rest. It is even
possible that he has the power to move the stars or make their
fire rain down upon this miserable world, turning every womb-
held embryo into a ravening monster that will eat its mother
alive. But all our experience tells us that we are the strong ones:

the ones with the power to rule this world. We have the
strength of will and purpose to exterminate all the residual
stains of evil that are gathering together even now in their last
wilderness redoubt. Fulbra does not need my aircraft yet.'

'Your aircraft?' Balberith was quick to pounce in the slip of
the tongue, but the Chief Inquisitor's nerves were at full stretch
now. There was cold sweat on his brow. He was edging back
into the doorway, in spite of the fact that he could not confront
the governor from that position while Melcarth insisted on
standing sideways at his balcony, leaning out into empty space.

Melcarth decided that it was time to score a point, to con-
tinue the arduous process of securing his psychological
ascendancy over his only possible rival for authority over the
world. 'Yes,' he said. 'My aircraft. I am the governor, after all,
sole heir to the authority of the First Governor, the star-born.
You are the Chief Inquisitor, and the instruments of the
Inquisition are yours. I make no claim upon them and would
not dream of instructing you in the delicate arts of torture and
the arcane mysteries of priestly magic. But I am the governor,
and the apparatus of government is mine. The aircraft is mine.'

'Perhaps,' Balberith said, through gritted teeth, you think the
whole world is yours, save for the monstrous manifestations of
Chaos that I must dispose of for you.'

Perhaps! Melcarth echoed, in the privacy of his own thoughts.
The man has known me all my life, and has worked alongside
me for more than twenty years, and still he thinks that perhaps
I think the whole world is mine. So great is his reverence for the
Imperium of the stars - the Imperium from which we have not
heard a whisper since my great-great-grandfather was born -
that he can barely imagine the temerity of a mind that could
leave it out of its calculations of ambition.

Aloud, he said: We are human, Ragan, and part of the
Imperium of Mankind. Even the aborigines, who were here

52                       Brian Craig

before the Imperium existed, are humans of a sort, however
miserable that sort may be - and that means that they too are
part of the Imperium of Mankind, even though they do not
know it and are direly reluctant to be persuaded. It is our duty
to save them from their ignorance, and to raise them to the
same level of awareness of virtue, necessity and love of the
Emperor that we possess. Whatever I must do to secure that
aim, I will do, and I expect no less of you.'

Balberith had to know that Melcarth was insincere, but the
governor knew that the Chief Inquisitor did not have the
strength of will to quibble over such subtleties in a situation
like this. Balberith continued backing away into the room,
making strangled noises that were presumably supposed to
indicate reluctant agreement with everything the governor had
said.

If I have to live on this damned balcony till the campaign is
over, Melcarth thought, I'll do it. I'm too close now to let
Balberith get in my way - and once this famous sorcerer is as
dead as all the rest, the Inquisition will have lost its most pre-
cious asset. With no bugbears looming over them, the rank and
file will soon lose all respect for those who pretend to be our
last and best protection against destruction by the forces of
evil.

It was a comforting thought.

When Balberith and his bodyguards were safely out of the
way, Orloc Melcarth condescended to return to his desk and sit
down, ready to receive more obsequious visitors - or, if none
came, to attend to the routine business of government.

There was always routine business: papers to read, budgets to
approve, and orders to sign. It was even more dangerous to del-
egate too much than to delegate too little. A ruler had to be
seen to rule, especially by his immediate subordinates. If any
one of those subordinates ever got the idea that he could do
the job as easily as his master, he would immediately cease to
be a subordinate and would become a threat instead. A good
ruler had to be always busy, always attentive, always interested,
always on top.

And while there was only one original aircraft in the world,
it had to be his.

Within thirty minutes of his sitting down, however - local
minutes, not Imperial ones - Melcarth was interrupted by

Pawns of Chaos                    53

Kerforo, one of his best spies, bearing an urgent message. It
really was an urgent message, too, unlike many of those his
spies brought him out of anxiety that they might be thought to
be falling down on the job.

'One of Balberith's psykers claims to have made contact with
an Imperial warfleet,' Kerforo reported. 'Balberith will have the
news by the day's end.'

'What kind of contact?' Melcarth wanted to know.

'Only dreaming, so far,' the spy told him.

The 'so far' was probably an attempt to exaggerate the impor-
tance of the news, but Melcarth wasn't such a fool as to ignore
its implication. Balberith's psykers were optimists of exactly the
same stripe as the Chief Inquisitor, and their optimism was
always prone to pollute their dreams. It wouldn't be the first
time that a psyker had thought that he had sensed the nearness
of Imperial forces when he had only been dreaming hope-
fully. .. but radio reception was coming in as clear as a bell, and
the stars seemed to become quieter in the sky with every night
that passed. If the warpstorm were to die down, and Balberith's
psykers were actually to obtain some authentic telepathic intel-
ligence of the Imperium of Mankind, it might only be a matter
of time before they got a message out... and then everything
really might change.

'Well,' said Melcarth, pensively, 'I suppose everyone is enti-
tled to a pleasant dream now and again. Just keep your ear to
the ground, for now - but if the psyker makes any significant
progress, you'd better make sure that it comes to an abrupt
stop.'

That won't be easy,' Kerforo was quick to say. 'Balberith's
organization is too tight. We don't have ready access to the cells
- and anyone who broke cover would never get out alive.'

The subtext of what the spy was saying was that he was the
only person who had a reasonable chance to dispose of the
inconvenient psyker, but that he probably wouldn't get away
with it - and that his capture would deprive Melcarth of his
most useful pawn in Balberith's camp. Melcarth also had to
bear in mind the fact that Kerforo was terrified of psykers, and
hated being anywhere near them even when ordered to keep an
eye on them. Everybody hated psykers - even Balberith's
priestly allies, who were obliged to keep them company when
they were exercising their power.

54                       Brian Craig

'Arrange an accident,' Melcarth said, coldly. 'You're an inge-
nious man.'

There might be a possibility of food-poisoning,' the spy sug-
gested, tentatively.

'Not reliable enough,' Melcarth told him. 'What's worse, it's
said that partial poisoning sometimes stimulates psyker
power. A broken neck would be better. Even psykers use the
stairs. If he doesn't get ambitious, though, you can leave him
alone. We might need Balberith's psykers if Fulbra really does
run into trouble taking out this so-called Gavalon the Great -
and if he doesn't, I dare say we'll be able find uses for them
once the Inquisition has been reformed in the wake of the
Final Victory.'

Kerforo smiled, but there was neither joy nor humour in the
expression. 'I dare say we shall,' he said, unenthusiastically. As
he got up to go, he added: 'All praise to the Emperor
Magnificent.' He didn't go so far as to wink his eye, but
Melcarth caught the irony.

'All praise to the Emperor Magnificent,' the governor echoed,
dutifully, 'and death to all his enemies.'

The words sounded good in the mouth of a realist, he
thought. And if all went well, they would sound even better in
times to come.

^

FIVE

HYCILLA LED DATHAN directly towards the setting sun, which
grew redder in colour as it approached the flat horizon. It
seemed to grow in size as it touched the rim of the plain, and
its face was no longer so bright that it was impossible to look
at it for more than a fraction of a second.

It was possible to see, now that the sun's face was neither
still nor featureless, that the entire sphere was perpetually tur-
bulent, seething like a cauldron. As the colour of the sky
darkened from soft violet to deep purple it too began to reveal
the movements that were ordinarily cloaked by brilliance.
Even though the stars had hardly begun to shine, the sky
began to shimmer like the surface of an oily pool.

The entire- universe was restless, Dathan thought. That was
the truth of the matter. It surely could not be alive, any more
than the wind-stirred air or the desert sands were alive, but
neither was it quiet. It could no more settle into silence and
stillness than a baby racked by hunger and fear. Perhaps the
stars themselves had their hungers, and the void between
them its fears.

We should stop to rest,' he said to Hycilla, when he saw that
she was utterly exhausted - but she would not listen. The

55

56                       Brian Craig

strangeness that intimidated people had taken hold of her,
and even Dathan felt unease stirring the depths of his being.

'If we stop here we'll never get up again/ Hycilla said,
brusquely. 'We need to keep going while the light lasts. We
need to reach Elvenor, if we can, to find shelter - and if we
can't, we must find water.'

That was far more easily said than done. The plain was not
a desert like the Amber Waste: grasses grew here in profusion,
and bushes of many different sorts, but the rainfall was spo-
radic and this was the dry season. There were herds of wild
horses and pigs in the wastelands - although Pater Saltana had
told them that there had been no such creatures in the world
before the first humans came - as well as ghazals and lox-
odonts, but they were few and far between. The village men
often mounted hunting expeditions in the autumn, and the
game they sought was just about abundant enough to ensure
that they rarely came home empty-handed, but as Dathan
scanned the terrain laid out before him he could not see a sin-
gle animal of any kind. There must be water-holes somewhere,
and common sense suggested that they ought to reveal them-
selves by imparting a lusher complexion to the surrounding
vegetation, but the plain's colours made a mockery of the
other meaning of the word 'plain'. They were far too confusing
to permit easy discrimination.

The further Dathan and Hycilla had come from the burning
forest, the more confusing the plant-life had become. The
fields planted by the villagers were green, and so were most of
the plants that grew wild in their vicinity. Judeye trees - which
had been in the world long before the first humans came, a
thousand generations ago - were not so very different from
the trees that grew in the neighbouring orchards. Dathan
realised now, though, that the village might have been built
where it was precisely because the location seemed uncom-
monly hospitable, and that the plain across which he had
Hycilla were now trudging was devoid of permanent human
habitation precisely because it was not. Here, there was as
much red and purple foliage as green, and a good deal of
ochreous yellow.

The fruits on the bushes - which seemed so tempting to
Dathan, because he was hungry as well as desperately thirsty,
even though they were far past ripeness and shrivelling on the

Pawns of Chaos                    57

bough - were white and red and black and glorious sky-pur-
ple. He had been taught to avoid them, not so much because
almost all of them were bitter and a few frankly poisonous,
but because hardly any of them had much nutritional value to
human beings. Some cautionary folktales of his people told of
children lost on the plain who filled their stomachs time and
time again with tempting produce, and starved to death even
with their bellies crammed. Ghazals and loxodonts - not to
mention countless smaller creatures - grew fit and fat on such
produce, but the horses and pigs that had escaped human con-
trol in the distant past had to be more discriminating.

Even so, Dathan thought, the fact that some animals could
live out here proved that humans could too, if they could only
develop similar powers of discrimination.

The most striking thing of all about the vegetation of the
plain was not so much its colour as its variety. It was not
uncommon to see bushes which supported leaves of a dozen
different shapes, and flowers of a dozen different conforma-
tions.

The crops the villagers grew were stubborn in that regard;

each one clung to a single basic pattern. With only a few
exceptions, the plants that had developed here enjoyed a
remarkable freedom of expression, within and between gener-
ations. They seemed far more susceptible to disease,
deformation and death, but they compensated for that sensi-
tivity with exuberance.

'We could pick fruits and crush them, then throw away the
pulp and drink the moisture,' Dathan suggested, as the last
thin slice of the sun's disk slipped out of sight and left them to
twilight.

The western horizon was flat, save for a ragged semicircular
shadow just to the south of the point at which the sun had
gone down. The shape was suggestive of an artificial structure,
but there seemed to be vegetation of some sort growing on top
of it, so it was probably just an oddly-shaped hill.

We need water far purer than that,' Hycilla told him, after a
few moments' thought. 'Even if there were no poisons dis-
solved in it, there'd be other substances, which our bodies
would have to excrete. It would be like drinking seawater.'

Dathan wondered how she could possibly know this. She
wasn't talking like a village child any more; she was talking like

58                       Brian Craig

someone Co whom secrets had been revealed by some mysteri-
ous inner process. Like Dathan, Hydlla had never seen the sea,
and probably never would, so how did she know what drink-
ing seawater would be like, and why was she using a word like
excrete? Everyone liked to hear stories of piracy and adventures
in far-flung lands, of course, and of desperate castaways
marooned on desert isles, but Hycilla seemed to be speaking
with an authority derived from a very different source.

Dathan was beginning to understand why people some-
times took a step back when Hycilla was like this - and he had
never known her be like this for so long. Would she ever return
to her true self, he wondered, or had she been changed forever
by the arrival of the Imperium?

'We'll never find pure water,' Dathan said, bleakly. He
wished that he had not breathed in so much smoke when the
judeye forest caught fire. Surely he would not feel as thirsty as
he did if his throat had not been scorched.

'Yes we will,' Hycilla told him, as she marched relentlessly
towards the place where the sun had disappeared.

What's the point, anyway?' Dathan demanded. 'Everyone
we ever knew is dead, and our home is gone. Where are we
going? Where is there to go?'

There's an army out here somewhere,' she told him. 'An
army gathered to fight the invaders.'

'Pity they weren't in the village,' Dathan said, hoarsely. They
could have fought them today,'

'I doubt that this was the only place where the soldiers
crossed the wastelands. Most travellers avoid the Amber Waste.
Even if they have camules, they usually go the long way round
to the north or the even longer way to the south. These men
had trucks that could move much faster than a camule train,
but we were unlucky even so.'

'Unlucky! We're supposed to be the ones with magic on our
side. We have sorcerers and wise-dreamers, and they don't.
Why weren't we warned?'

It wasn't intended to be a personal attack, but Hycilla could
hardly help but take it personally. She was the village's most
favoured child, said by Pater Saltana to have been touched by
the true god,

'I see so much in my dreams,' she said, flatly, 'but none of it
clearly. Even the greatest sorcerer in the world can be lost in

Pawns of Chaos                    59

confusion, or betrayed by illusion.' Dathan knew that she was
quoting Pater Saltana.

'So much for the gift of further sight/ Dathan muttered, 'or
the honesty of the true god.'

'You're wrong to mock,' Hycilla told him, 'and foolish to
blaspheme.' Her voice was oddly intense. She wasn't quoting
Pater Saltana any longer, but Dathan had the impression that
her words weren't her own - at least, not entirely.

The reason the wisest dreams are so confused,' Hycilla went
on, 'is that the future is not yet made. It exists, at present, as a
near-infinite set of possibilities, whose likelihood changes
with every second that ticks away. The mere fact of looking
into that sea of possibilities affects the likelihood, so every-
thing we glimpse changes as we try to focus on it, because
we've glimpsed it, and because we're trying to focus on it. If we
saw it any other way, the god which grants us sight would be
lying.'

Dathan decided that he had liked Hycilla better when she
was just a girl, untouched by any outside force. It was only to
be expected that wise-dreamers would become wiser, but this
was definitely scary.

You might think that my talent is too uncertain to be use-
ful,' she continued, as if she were still trying, wonderingly, to
make sense of what she were saying, 'but imagine the alterna-
tive. Imagine looking into the future and seeing it all mapped
out, fixed and definite, perfectly ordered and unalterable.
What benefit could we gain from such insight as that? It would
only tell us that we were utterly helpless to change anything,
utterly impotent to make anything of ourselves other than
what's already made.'

Aren't we? Dathan thought - but Hycilla was lost in her own
private wilderness, and wouldn't have heard him if he had
spoken the words aloud.

'It would tell us that we're machines,' Hycilla said, with an
odd edge to her voice which suggested that she was beginning
to frighten herself, 'or puppets, acting out a ritual we can nei-
ther change nor understand. What kind of mind could such a
seer have? What kind of thoughts and feelings could she have?
Her experience would be pure horror, a sensation of absolute
and inescapable entrapment. That's what the enemy want to
make of the future, Dathan, and of the whole of existence.

60                       Brian Craig

They want to bring order to the world. Well, I'm glad that
when I dream wisely, I see confusion. If I couldn't see confu-
sion, I wouldn't be free and I wouldn't be human, and the god
whose gift I bear would be the most monstrous tyrant imagin-
able.'

She didn't sound at all glad. She sounded as if she felt that
she ought to be, but couldn't quite find the courage. In her
own way, Dathan thought, she must be as frightened as he was
- but the fact that her way was so different from his was fright-
ening in itself.

So much, Dathan thought, for being free. So much for being
human.

As dusk fell, though, they found their guide. While the sun
shone they had seen birds of several kinds fluttering about the
branches of the bushes or darting from one to another, but
now the dark was gathering the birds were gathering too, into
unexpectedly huge flocks which took to the air en masse,
wheeling this way and that as they piped their various calls,
and then set off for their roosts.

There!' said Hycilla, her finger following the direction taken
by one of the flocks, some way to the north of their westward
course. That's where we'll find water. It's out of our way, but I
don't think we can reach Elvenor tonight - we'd do better to
make the detour.'

'Let's hope it's not far,' Dathan said - but he swiftly realised
that if the water had been too far distant they would not have
been able to see the birds descend. He and Hycilla actually
contrived to increase their pace, in spite of their fatigue, as
urgency spurred them on.

As the night became absolute the two fugitives arrived at the
rim of a saucer-shaped depression. In the middle of the
depression was a pool surrounded by rushes and chimerical
flowering plants. They were far stranger than any that Dathan
had ever seen before.

There was a saying in the village which bade children beware
of the gardens of god. Its meaning had never been clear to
Dathan, but as soon as he saw this bizarre array of flowers he
thought he understood what kind of garden the god of
Gulzacandra might maintain. Alas, he could not exercise due
caution. The need to drink overrode all other considerations.
He forced his way through a clump of rushes and threw him-

Pawns of Chaos                    61

self down on the edge of the open water, scooping up hand-
fuls and filling his avid mouth.

All around him, the birds were chattering - but even as he
drank their conversation ceased.

When he had had enough, he made no attempt to get up,
but simply rolled on to his back and looked upwards at the
sky.

The stars were out in force now, as restless as ever. They were
shifting this way and that, apparently at random, changing
colour very slightly as the quality of their light altered.

Dathan wondered whether they were as restless now as they
had been when he was a little child. Everyone said that they
were becoming quieter - that throughout his lifetime they had
been growing steadily less irritable - but Dathan could not
tell. He could not remember a time when the movement of
the stars had been noticeably more vigorous. Was it possible,
he wondered, that it was only anxiety that made his elders
think that the stars might be settling down?

The last time the stars had stood still, it was said, the
Imperium had fallen out of the sky: a dire punishment meted
out to the world. Were they to stand still again, it was said,
then the Imperium would come again. Today, of course, the
Imperium had come - but when Pater Saltana was at his scari-
est he would sometimes speak of an Imperium beyond the
world's Imperium: a True Imperium, vaster than anyone
could imagine. The world's Imperium could be fought, Pater
Saltana had always assured them - although Dathan was no
longer able to believe it - but the True Imperium was irre-
sistible. If the god of Gulzacandra were ever displeased with
the prayers and sacrifices offered by his people, Pater Saltana
had prophesied, while his eyes had grown sulphurous and
terrible, then the god would merely rest his hand, the stars
would stand still in the heavens and death would rain down
from the sky.

According to Pater Saltana, in his quieter and gentler
moments, the stars did not really move at all, any more than
the sun moved around the world. The sun only appeared to
move across the sky because the world was turning, and the
stars only appeared to be restless because the world was in the
grip of a curious kind of storm: a storm whose winds stirred
the fundamental fabric of space, making waves in the void.

62                          Brian Craig

Even so, death could descend from the sky like a storm of
hail, if the people of Gulzacandra were ungenerous in their
sacrifices and unenthusiastic in their prayers.

All three moons had risen now, and all of them were full.
Dathan had seen all three of them full at the same time on two
previous occasions, but they had been far more widely dis-
tributed about the sky. He did not think that he had ever seen
them so close together, even as crescents. By the time they
reached their zenith, he judged, they would be even closer,
arranged in a tight triangle whose sides were of equal length.

'Dathan!' Hycilla screamed, so loudly that he sat bolt upright.

It was as well that he did. He heard the sound of jaws snap-
ping shut, so close that a little gust of foul breath stirred the
hairs in the back of his neck.

Dathan didn't waste time looking around. He dived away
from the poolside, sprawling among the rushes.

By the time he did turn round there was nothing to be seen
on the pool's surface but a vast circle of spreading ripples.

Hycilla's silhouette loomed above him, blotting out a few of
the stars. He couldn't see the hand that she was extending to
him, but he knew it was there. He took it, and Hycilla helped
him up. There was something in her touch that made him
quiver, but he was grateful nevertheless.

What was it?' he asked.

'Nothing I have a name for,' she told him. 'It had a long neck
and a head like a snake's, but it seemed to have a big body sub-
merged below the surface. I don't think it will come out of the
water, and it'll probably move sluggishly if it does, but we'd
better leave a wide margin just in case.'

Dathan was glad to observe that Hycilla sounded more like
herself now. There's a place forty or fifty paces that way where
we can lie down,' she added. The ground's not bare, but the
grass isn't too tall or spiky, and we can make mattresses of a
sort by cutting rushes. You have a knife, I suppose?'

'Only a little one,' Dathan told her, remembering how
dreadfully inadequate it had seemed when he had needed a
weapon. It proved, however, to be quite adequate to the task
of cutting rushes, once he had broken the rigid stems.

'We should eat something,' Dathan told Hycilla, when they
had made a makeshift bed on which to lie. 'Even if it isn't real
food, it'll stop us feeling hungry.'

Pawns of Chaos                    63

'No/ she said. The risk's too great. We'll find something
tomorrow, when we're on the move again.' She knew the vil-
lage saying as well as he did, and she must have jumped to the
same conclusion about the nature of this place as he had. She
was supposed to be a favourite of the true god, but even she
didn't dare to eat the fruit of his garden.

Dathan was sure that his hunger would keep him awake,
and not at all sure that he wanted to sleep, given that the pool
was bound to attract predators from the plain as well as those
that already lurked beneath its placid surface. He had under-
estimated the extent of his exhaustion though; almost as soon
as he laid his head down, he fell into a shallow sleep as rest-
less as the stars and full of inconvenient dreams.

Dathan had never shown the slightest sign of magical abil-
ity. Like every other village child, he had dutifully reported his
dreams to Pater Saltana almost as soon as he learned to speak,
and he still remembered how disappointed he had been to
have them rejected as items of little interest. Hycilla's reported
dreams had not sounded any different to his untutored ear,
and he had been jealous when Pater Saltana began taking a
greater interest in them.

Now, Dathan dreamed of ships in space: ships shaped like
detached fingers, or fabulous eyeballs, or chicken-bones, but
made of polished metal. He dreamed of whole flocks of ships,
wheeling this way and that in unison, shooting forth fire that
burned whole worlds and sent spears of lightning into the
hearts of the gods themselves - but he knew all the while that
this could not be wise-dreaming. It was only a froth of imagi-
nation born of horror, fed by fear, and made grotesque by the
feverish heat of his blood.

Hycilla was even more restless than he, and Dathan was very
conscious of the fact that she never fell still beside him. She
was always turning from one side to the other, drawing her
knees up to her belly at one moment and stretching her legs as
straight as she could at the next. She was muttering too,
although he could not make out what she was saying to her-
self - and the intermittent murmur wove itself into Dathan's
own dreams as the voice of some hidden companion who was
desperate to be understood but could not communicate its
warnings. The voice became ever more frustrated as the failure
continued. Dathan knew that it was not really Hycilla's voice.

64                       Brian Craig

It was the voice that had merged with hers when she made her
long speech about wise-dreaming: the voice of something
strange and scary.

Dathan wasn't at all sure that he wanted to listen to that
voice, whether Hycilla were awake or asleep, but he couldn't
stop himself.

Eventually, Dathan began to think that he could make sense
of at least a few of the words whispered into his ear, but even
when he came to that conclusion he couldn't decide whether
it was the voice itself that was becoming clearer or whether his
own dream was imposing a kind of clarity upon it.

Alas, much of what he discerned seemed to consist of the
names of people and things, some of which were familiar and
some of which were not.

Gavalon was the name most frequently repeated; that one
he knew.

Another, almost as frequent, seemed to be Sathorael; that
one he had never heard before. Kanak he knew, Fulbra he did
not, nor Ecclesiarchy. Nor ork, nor Astronomican.

The one name he did not hear, no matter how hard he tried,
was Dathan.

In the end, although the murmurous voice never died
away, Dathan's attention was distracted by something far
more disturbing: a great red-rimmed eye that seemed to fill
his field of dream-vision, as if it were the eye of the sky
itself. The iris of the eye was a thin rim of pink around a
huge black hole, which poured forth a kind of light like one
that Dathan had never seen with his waking eyes: light
which withered everything it touched; the light of instanta-
neous decay.

That light seemed to be everywhere, the glare of the eye
unavoidable.

'No matter how much confusion you see when you dream,'
his dream-self told Hycilla - although she was not present in
his dream as a listener - 'you cannot ever be free, and no mat-
ter what aspects of the future remain unmade and uncertain,
the ultimate fate of everything is fleeting decay and absolute
annihilation. Nothing endures and nothing can, and no mat-
ter what power the Imperium of Mankind may obtain and use,
it is doomed to fall apart and vanish within a single moment
in the great forever of Universal Time.'

Pawns of Chaos                    65

He knew, though, that it was only a foolish dream. Dathan
had never been touched, so far as he knew, by the god of his
people. He had neither wisdom nor magic of his own, and he
could not reasonably expect that Hycilla's whispering voice
might transform the essence of his soul, no matter how much
he loved her.

^

SIX

THE PLACE APPOINTED for the summoning was the crest of a curi-
ous semi-circular hill, which seemed very obviously out of
place in the plain that formed the heartland of Gulzacandra.
Gavalon assumed that it was, in fact, a huge circular object
that had tumbled out of the sky in the distant past and embed-
ded itself halfway into the continental bedrock.

Most meteors, Gavalon knew, exploded on impact with the
ground if they had not already been evaporated by the friction
of their passage through the atmosphere, but this one had
merely had its outer and softer layers stripped away, leaving a
dense metallic core so fiercely magnetic that it made com-
passes misleading for two hundred miles in every direction -
a fact which, he hoped, was still unknown to the invading
forces.

In spite of its awkward shape and texture, the protruding
part of the star-shot had been covered in due course by native
vegetation. Nothing could take root in the hill itself, but great
creepers rooted deep in the surrounding soil had extended
their branches over it, and the dead wood around the living
heart had become a soil-substitute in which many other
species could take root. As the leaves of the folding creepers

67

68                       Brian Craig

died and rotted into the nooks and crannies of the wooden
crown their litter provided further nourishment to parasitic
and saprophytic plants - which provided food in their turn to
a rich variety of lizards, snakes and giant centipedes, all of
which were venomous to unprotected humans.

The crown of the hill was one of the true god's most private
gardens, and had it not been for the fact that Gavalon had
extended his own magical immunity to his retinue of beast-
men - and, of course, to the Vessel - they would never have
been able to reach the place where the ritual was to be con-
ducted. Had the numerous preparatory sacrifices not been
required well in advance, it would have been a very awkward
task bringing the victims to the altar in a fit condition to be
murdered, but the all-wise and ever-patient Changer of the
Ways was always prepared to hold spilled blood to the credit
of his agents, so that they might store up power for important
rites. It was even rumoured that he paid interest on such
accounts, and that ten gallons of blood leeched by clever tor-
ture a month in advance of its magical deployment would
have the power of eleven by the time the design of the spell
was completed.

This spell was not only the most intricate that Gavalon had
ever attempted, but the most intricate that any sorcerer had
attempted since humans first arrived on the world that the
Imperium's star-maps had called Sigmatus. Cavalon had been
working on the spell - gradually divining its shape and pur-
pose as well as making the necessary preparations for the final
ritual - for seven long years. He strongly suspected that from
the viewpoint of the god he served the seven years in question
had been merely the final phase of a much longer process.

To a god, of course, seven years was a mere eyeblink, and
even two hundred years was little more than a moment.
Cavalon suspected that the roots which the ritual had within
the mysterious otherworld of the warp went back at least as far
as the brief interval of spatial calm that had allowed the
Imperial ships to land, and perhaps much further. He could
not help wondering whether everything that had happened
since those ships arrived might, in some fashion inconceivable
to merely human beings, have been part of one of the leg-
endary schemes of the Changer of the Ways. He could not help
wondering, too, whether the sorcerer appointed to bring that

Pawns of Chaos                    69

scheme to its climax might be destined for better things than
to remain merely human.

After all, Gavalon thought, if a miserable wretch like the
Vessel could be transformed into a powerful daemon - albeit
at the cost of the utter annihilation of his own personality -
why should a steadfastly loyal sorcerer of no mean ability not
be elevated at least to petty daemonhood?

Oh to be a Lord of Change!

What an ecstatic existence that must be!

The night was well advanced by the time the party reached
the summit, but the stars were bright and the three moons
were all full. The moons were all close to their zenith now,
arranged in an equilateral triangle - a narrow conjunction
which would not occur again for three hundred and twenty-
seven years. This light was more than adequate to illuminate
the ritual, in spite of the residual unsteadiness of the unusu-
ally quiet warpstorm.

The Vessel had to be stripped naked and laid out within the
cup of a vast golden flower, whose pollen-bearing anthers
obligingly made room for him, and then began to caress him
gently.

Nimian, alas, had to be conscious throughout - and being
the imbecile that he was, he could not help giggling a little as
the anthers tickled him. Mercifully, he was far too terrified to
try to say anything.

The beastmen took their places with the calm obedience
expected of somnambulists. Gavalon had not had to waste any
of his own energy in hypnotising them; the scent of the night-
blooming flowers had delivered them smoothly into a trance
while they climbed the side of the natural dome. Cavalon was
free, therefore, to concentrate all his attention on the words of
the incantation and the accompanying gestures.

In truth, this component of the spell was not as difficult as
others he had worked to much lesser effect - or so it seemed
when he struck his opening pose and began to chant.

Cavalon held a dagger with a wavy blade in his right hand
and a lighted torch in his left, both of which would have to be
introduced to his flesh at the appointed moments. He was no
stranger to constructive self-mutilation, and it would not be
the first time that he had put out an eye or cut off a designated
appendage. Provided that one had faith, and the favour of

70                          Brian Craig

one's divine master, such excisions rarely hurt as much as one
might expect, and the damage was always repaired, after a
fashion. Indeed, his twice-regrown left eye saw far more, and
far more keenly, than the one he had been bom with, even if
it was by far the uglier of the now ill-matched pair.

At least it was the right eye that he had to bum out this time,
so there was a slim chance that he would end up with two that
were not so conspicuously unalike. As for the other appendage
he had to remove - well, that had never been part of a pair and
it was so rarely on public view that it hardly mattered how
bizarrely distorted it was or how strangely complicated its
inbuilt sprinkler had become. It still remained perfectly ser-
viceable as an instrument of ravishment, and might even be
considered to be all the more effective for its thorniness.

When the appropriate points of the ritual arrived, therefore,
Gavalon the Great did not hesitate or tremble. Nor did he
begrudge the god he was proud to serve the last and least of
the many sacrifices he had offered in pursuit of this particular
end.

The pain of his newly-incandescent eye was a little worse
than usual, but that discomfort had to be offset against the
remarkable changes of colour that the torchlight underwent
while consuming it, which his left eye found quite beautiful.

The other cut hardly hurt at all as the razor-keen serpentine
blade sliced through old scar-tissue, and the blood which
fountained from the liberated veins was so thick and rich that
it reflected the starlight wonderfully.

It would have been pleasant to be able to mutilate the flesh
of the Vessel too, but that was not Gavalon's prerogative. As
the syllables of the rite spilled out into the quiet night, the
petals of the golden flower folded about the boy, drawing him
into a kind of womb - a womb from which he was destined to
be very soon reborn, the gestation of the spell having already
come to the brink of its full term.

Even before the incantation was complete, Gavalon felt his
right eye grow again within his head, and felt sight return to it.
As he looked up into the glorious sky, he knew that this was
an eye that would see far more, and far more keenly, than its
twice-renewed counterpart.

He felt his other wound turn to scar-tissue too, and felt the
scab swell with awesome pride as it was rough-hewn into a

Pawns of Chaos                    71

tumour, and then into something for which even the secret
language of sorcery had no ready-made name.

Oh to be a Lord of Change! he thought. Oh to be a master
of metamorphosis, defiant of common decay! What bliss it is
to serve the true god, and to be free!

He knew in his heart, of course, that he was not free at all -
that he was, in the final analysis, no less a slave to fate and for-
tune than the Vessel or the stupidest of beastmen - but he was
convinced that those who willingly accepted slavery, and
chose their masters very carefully, were as fortunate as any
merely human being ever could be. And he was convinced,
too, that his was the only course that could ever lead a man to
a destiny that was more than merely human.

When the penultimate phase of the incantation ended
Gavalon paused, letting a minute's reverent silence elapse -
and he looked eagerly at the tightly-closed flower, agog to see
what manner of being would be reborn therefrom. Then he
spoke the final word, and brought the spell to its conclusion.

The final word and ultimate purpose of the ritual was:

Sathorael.

Gavalon felt the rock beneath his feet vibrate very slightly.

Even through the thick detritus of many generations of
creepers and all the secondary growth that the creepers had
facilitated, Cavalon could see that the huge sphere had begun
to glow. While the vibration increased, until it resembled a
heartbeat, the glow brightened from vermilion to crimson to
vivid scarlet, and finally to a lividly luminous shocking pink.

Cavalon realised that the half-buried star-shot was some
kind of egg, and that the folded flower was more akin to a
birth-canal than a womb. That which was being seeded in the
Vessel's body was far too great a thing to be long contained in
any structure of flesh, no matter what kind of metamorphosis
it could achieve.

The petals of the flower began to unfold, peeling back with
stately slowness to display their cargo.

Gavalon had to suppress a pang of disappointment to which
he knew he was not entitled. Nimian had been laid down
within the flower and Nimian was still there, so languidly
extended that he might have been sent to sleep by boredom. His
flesh seemed fresher, to be sure, but it was just as pale as it had
been before, an egg-shell white unburnished by the sun.

72                       Brian Craig

When the Vessel began to sit up, his movements seemed
more supple, but his limbs were as scrawny as ever. It was not
until he opened his eyes and met Cavalon's inquisitive stare
that Nimian gave the slightest indication of being something
more than human.

Nimian had never dared to meet Gavalon's intimidating
eyes before, but he looked into them frankly now. His own
eyes had become pools of shadow, quite devoid of iris or
white.

'Gavalon?' he said, curiously wrapping his tongue around
the syllables, as if uncertain of their exact significance - or if
determined to savour the gift of speech.

'Your humble servant,' said Gavalon, insincerely. Given that
the daemon-to-be was still wearing Nimian's body, the words
sounded slightly absurd as well as indecent, but propriety had
to be maintained. Even if he were still addressing Nimian, the
Final Sacrifice, and not Sathorael, the Instrument of
Vengeance, he had to be polite. It was slightly galling to think
that this stupid boy had suffered so little by comparison with
his fellow sacrifices, or even by comparison with Gavalon him-
self, but the sorcerer knew that his faint resentment was
probably undue and certainly ought not to be voiced.

'Feel strange,' the boy said. 'Not myself.'

That worried Gavalon. It was obviously Nimian who was
speaking, his soul by no means fully obliterated. Was that
because the soul in question was fated to be devoured slowly,
so that it might savoured like any other experience of the
flesh? Or was it possible... could it possibly be... that some-
thing had gone wrong? Had the ritual been imperfect? Was
Nimian's metamorphosis going awry?

No, Gavalon decided. This was the way it was supposed to
happen: slowly, languorously, indulgently. It had to be. The
alternative was unthinkable.

'Better,' the Vessel said, after a moment's pause. 'Feel better.
But not myself.'

'Understandable, lord,' said Gavalon. 'Such a transformation
must be difficult, even for a daemon-to-be.'

Nimian giggled at that. 'Lord!' he repeated, wonderingly.
'You called me lord! Gavalon the Great called me lord!'

It was unthinkable, Gavalon reminded himself, firmly, that
anything could possibly have gone wrong. This must be seen

Pawns of Chaos                    73

as a test of his patience. However much of the boy remained
within the Vessel, the eyes revealed the truth. The eyes were the
windows of the soul, and there was nothing in them now but
a void impenetrable even to Gavalon's augmented sight: the
void of the warp itself.

'Your army awaits, lord,' Gavalon said, patiently. The enemy
has already crossed the wastelands, faster than we anticipated,
and the final battle will not be long delayed. It is time to show
these bastard children of the Imperium whose world this is,
and always will be.'

'Army?' repeated the boy, still making the most of every syl-
lable. 'Do I need an army?'

Did the daemon-to-be really need an army? Gavalon won-
dered. Perhaps not. On the other hand, given that he had
gone to such pains to provide the daemon with an army, it
would surely be slightly churlish of the daemon and the
Changer of the Ways to spurn its services. Was there not to be
a war of vengeance? Were the Imperial soldiers to be allowed
to put Gulzacandra to the sword without the Gulzacandrans
having the opportunity to retaliate? The dead of Culzacandra
were sacrifices of a sort, of course, whose deaths would there-
fore be pleasing to the god for whom they died - but surely
the god would not let too many of his worshippers perish,
especially while they included such worthy champions as
Gavalon the Great. Was not the daemon-to-be here to turn
the tide of battle? Should the daemon not be eager to review
his troops?

Cavalon was acutely conscious of the fact that he did not
know the answers to any of these questions. He had spent three
long years divining the sequence of the spell and the pattern of
its rituals, but he had never been shown the climax of the god's
plan. The simple and deeply embarrassing fact was that he did
not know exactly what the daemon-to-be had come to do, or
how, or to what extent it would alleviate the peril in which the
faithful of Gulzacandra presently stood. He had made the best
guesses he could, but they were only guesses.

'An army is a very useful thing, lord,' Gavalon pointed out,
anxiously. There is nothing quite so adept at spilling enemy
blood as an army. And there must be bloodshed, must there
not? The Imperium must be made to bleed, and suffer,
profusely.'

74                          Brian Craig

'Don't know,' said the boy - which was, Gavalon reflected,
quite the most disturbing thing he could have said.

Gavalon could not imagine that Sathorael would ever have
said such a thing as 'Don't know'. He reminded himself, how-
ever, that what was before him was not yet Sathorael, even
though Sathorael was plainly incarnate in those lovely eyes of
darkness. Nimian obviously still held a measure of dominion
over his own flesh, and his own mind. And why not? If this
metamorphosis had been more than two hundred years in the
making, why should it not proceed to its terminus in a leisurely
fashion. How many other opportunities would the daemon
have to taste the petty pleasures and paradoxes of a human
being?

Perhaps, Gavalon thought, a human body and soul - even a
human body and soul as miserable as Nimian's - was a meal
not to be hurried: a meal worth savouring to the full.

But the army was waiting, and the enemy was coming, far too
rapidly for comfort - and the final battle could not be long
delayed, if there were indeed to be a final battle.

There must be bloodshed, lord,' Gavalon said, deciding that
if the daemon-to-be needed help, then it was his duty to be
helpful. There must be abundant bloodshed, not only by way
of sacrifice but for the sake of delight. The outworlders have
been busy breeding for ten generations, and it is time for the
harvest. On the other hand, the descendants of the first new-
comers in Kalazendra, Bulzavara, Zendamora and Yevelkana
have been breeding for a thousand generations, and their next
harvest season is surely more than due. Yes, lord, there must cer-
tainly be bloodshed, and it must be very generously distributed.
It is time for the casual slaughter of the guns and the iron disci-
pline of the new overlords to be countered, and balanced. An
army is a very useful device for work such as that, lord. I have
put a hundred thrall-wizards, two hundred coven-masters and
all manner of beastmen at your disposal. They have the means
to provide you with a great deal of pleasure, as well as the kind
of food that you will doubtless need and desire.'

'Food,' the naked boylike thing repeated, in a tone which
made Gavalon regret his choice of the word 'doubtless'. The
sorcerer realised, belatedly, that he did not actually know what
kind of nourishment Sathorael would need to complete his
metamorphosis, or what taste-sensations he might desire.

Pawns of Chaos                    75

The daemon-to-be obviously had ideas of his own on that
score. 'Good idea,' he said. 'Want food.' He seemed a little
larger now, and a little sturdier, as if even the mere idea of
food had set him a little further along the road to daemon-
hood.

As soon as he had voiced his desire for food, the daemon-
to-be began to look around. Then he moved, pouncing upon
a snake that had been sleeping beneath the golden flower. He
lifted the snake high into the air, his illimitably dark eyes
fixed upon it with a kind of greed that only a void could man-
ifest.

The snake hissed, and opened its mouth to expose poison-
dripping fangs, but the daemon-to-be lowered its dangling
head into his mouth and closed his teeth upon it, then fed the
two-foot tail inch by inch into the same ravenous maw.

'Better,' he said, when the snake had completely disap-
peared into his throat. 'Much better.' The metamorphosis of
Nimian's flesh had clearly begun. He was still pale, but the
beginnings of a pattern had begun to emerge on his skin, like
the ghost of the snake he had just consumed.

The boy darted away to the left, then to the right. Within
five minutes he had consumed two more snakes, a warty
crested lizard and a centipede the size of a beastman's belt.
The meal seemed to give the newborn creature considerable
satisfaction.

'Water,' said the daemon-to-be, thirstily. 'Need water.'

'We shall have to go down to the plain to find water, lord,'
Gavalon said. 'I fear that I neglected to bring a flask, even for
my own use.'

He had not noticed until he said it how thirsty he had
become. Burning an eye out always made him thirsty, now he
came to think about it, but he had not yet done it often
enough to have come to a full appreciation of the correlation.
How thirsty, the,n was the daemon-thing?

The boy who was no longer a boy had found a globular
fruit half-buried in the flesh of a growth. It looked like a cross
between a giant cactus and a toadstool. He wrenched it free
without apparent effort and cracked it like an eggshell, drink-
ing the fluid contained within its core. He offered the last few
drops to Cavalon, but finished them off when Gavalon shook
his head.

76                       Brian Craig

'Still thirsty,' the daemon-child announced. 'Co down
now.'

Cavalon was quick to agree, and he signalled to the beast-
men, who had not yet recovered from their trance state - but
as he turned to lead the way the boy straightened, pricking
up a pair of ears that suddenly seemed twice as large as they
had before, lavishly tufted with orange hair. The face was
still Nimian's face, apart from the eyes and ears, and the
limbs were still Nimian's scrawny limbs, except that both
the arms and the legs now seemed at least a hand's-breadth
longer, but the patterned whole was unmistakably not
Nimian - and the voice, when it spoke again, had a very dif-
ferent timbre.

'Soldiers are coming, Cavalon,' the newborn said. '[ can
hear and see them, only a few miles off. The trucks are driving
through the night, using their headlights to find a way across
the plain. They will be here before morning - a little too
late... but the margin of that lateness might be inconve-
niently little... or perhaps inconveniently great...' The voice
trailed off, as if the mind behind it could not bring all the
possibilities into focus.

'Yes, lord,' Gavalon said, feeling a distinct undercurrent of
anxiety mingling with the tidal surge of his relief. 'Your army
awaits you, lord.'

'Cavalon,' said the embryo of the daemon Sathorael, slowly
and rather dreamily, 'you have not the slightest idea what
awaits me, and nor have I. Let us hope that we shall both have
an interesting time finding out.'

And without waiting for an answering comment, the Vessel
suddenly set off down the precipitous slope, running at a
reckless pace that no mere man or beastman could hope to
match.

Suppose he falls! Gavalon thought - but the idea that the
Vessel might be broken before the daemon it had been bom to
contain had time to emerge was too horrible to contemplate.
The dawning awareness that the Vessel was already out of
sight, and that Gavalon had not the faintest idea where he was
going, or why, was quite bad enough to be going on with.
Gavalon was not vain enough to think that the daemon-to-be
really needed him, but he was not in the slightest doubt that
he needed the daemon-to-be. Without the daemon to help

Pawns of Chaos                    77

him, even an army led by the greatest sorcerer in Gulzacandra
could not hope to make a stand against the kind of weaponry
lerius Fulbra had.

'Well, don't just stand there,' Gavalon howled at the stupe-
fied beastmen. 'Follow him!'

^

SEVEN

DATHAN WOKE in' with a start, astonished and alarmed to dis-
cover that he had been asleep. Hycilla was sleeping beside him,
deeply but not restfully. She lay still, but she was muttering
feverishly, as if engrossed in some tense argument. He could
see her face quite clearly, illuminated as it was by the lamps of
the three full moons. They had passed their zenith now and
their tight formation had begun to break as the nearer ones
gradually pulled ahead of the most distant.

How long would it be, Dathan wondered, before they came
so close to a perfect alignment again? But he had no time for
such abstract questions; the more urgent issue was what had
woken him up. Dawn was still some way off, and the environs
of the pool seemed perfectly still. The only sound he could
hear was a muted hum, like a swarm of bees around a hive.

Bees? In the dead of night?

Dathan sat up, trying to figure out which direction the noise
was coming from. He settled on east. Then he stood up - and
once he was upright peering over the bushes, he saw the lights.
There were three bright ones, arranged like the midnight
moons in a tight triangle with a horizontal base and a bright
apex - but there were others behind, half-hidden.

79

80                       Brian Craig

The muted hum was the sound of distant engines; already it
was growing towards a roar.

Dathan knelt down and began shaking Hycilla urgently.

Wake up!' he begged her. They're coming after us! A convoy
of trucks, using headlamps and a searchlight to guide them
across the plain.'

It wasn't easy to rouse her; wise-dreamers slept more deeply
than ordinary folk, even when they were dreaming as foolishly
as anyone else, and Hycilla had matured as a wise-dreamer dur-
ing the last few hours. Once Dathan had dragged her to her
feet, however, and pointed to the approaching lights, Hycilla
soon realised the extent of their danger.

That's silly,' she said. 'Why chase us?'

Dathan had already realised that his first assumption was
probably wrong. They must be heading for the water-hole,' he
said. They must have a map. An invasion force would need
good maps - and they must have been preparing to invade
Gulzacandra for a long time.'

Hycilla didn't answer immediately - her lips were forming
the shapes of numbers as she tried to count the trucks, but it
wasn't easy while the others were lined up behind the lead
vehicle.

There aren't that many,' Dathan told her. 'Five or six, maybe
seven. An advance party - probably scouts. There's a hill up
ahead - maybe they want to occupy it for use as an observa-
tion-post. It's the only high point for many a mile, and they
won't know that there's nothing to be seen from the top of it
but more wild country.'

'We don't know that,' Hycilla pointed out. 'For all we know,
Gavalon's army might be camped within a mile of it.'

'If it were,' Dathan retorted, 'our people would probably have
occupied it already. The point is, what do we do? The best hid-
ing-places are close to the pool, but if we don't get far enough
away and they decide to stop for water, they'll be far too close
for comfort.'

'We ought to try to find out what they're up to,' Hycilla said,
although she didn't sound very positive. 'It might be impor-
tant.'

'It won't do any good to find out if we can't pass the infor-
mation on,' Dathan said - but he knew that they had already
argued too long. The way the trucks ate up the ground was

Pawns of Chaos                    81

quite amazing to someone used to watching caravans of
camules plod across the Amber Waste. He grabbed the sleeve of
Hycilla's shin and pulled her in a direction directly opposite to
the pool - which happened to be a little east of north.

The further they went the less cover there was, but Dathan
knew that they had to make the best compromise they could,
without any further hesitation. The searchlight was already
within range, and although their blue and brown clothing was
reasonably dark, the light only had to pick out their pale faces
to alert the approaching Imperial soldiers to their presence.

'Here!' Dathan said, as he found a clump of bushes that
seemed reasonably dense but not at all thorny. Hycilla ducked
down readily enough, but stiffened suddenly.

They'll see the cut reeds,' she hissed, anxiously. They'll know
we're here.'

It was far too late to do anything about their makeshift beds,
and Dathan wasn't sure that they could have done very much
even if they had thought of it sooner. The only alternative they
had now was to run as fast as they could into the night and
keep on running - but they might not be able to outrun the
reach of the searchlight no matter how quickly they moved.

The trucks fanned out as they approached the pool. More
searchlights came on, raking back and forth across the fertile
patch of ground. Half a dozen animals broke cover and ran
from the light, and there was a brief crackle of gunshots.
Dathan heard one creature come crashing to earth, and shud-
dered slightly at the realisation that he had not had the
slightest idea that anything so massive was lurking nearby.

'I hope the meat poisons them,' Hycilla muttered - but wild
pigs were good eating, even though they often fed themselves
on plants that were not, and ghazal meat was harmless even
though it was somewhat lacking in nutritional value.

They heard orders barked back and forth as the men disem-
barked from the trucks - orders which suggested that the
enemy soldiers did not intend to pause for long once they had
laid in stocks of water. Some, however, were told to take torches
and search the bushes for 'anything useful' - presumably
meaning anything edible.

The trucks had so many lights that Dathan could see the
Imperial soldiers quite clearly. Like the two men he had seen in
the judeye forest they wore tightly-fitting grey uniforms. The

82                       Brian Craig

weavers in his village were skilled, but they could not turn out
clothing so neatly-tailored. Dathan had always thought his
clothes perfectly adequate, but he had never been able to com-
pare their fabric with such cloth as this.

The boots and belts the soldiers wore were even more
impressive. There was no tanner in the village, so all the
leather-goods its people possessed had to be bought, but
Dathan was lucky enough to have a pair of boots that no more
than a dozen boys before him had discarded, having recklessly
grown out of them. By comparison with the high boots these
men wore, though, Dathan's were horribly shoddy. In addition
to their well-stocked belts, the soldiers' uniforms had pockets
and buttons. They were decorated with all manner of insignia,
whose meanings Dathan could not begin to guess.

Dathan had not had time to study the men in the forest
before hurrying to distract them with stones, and he had kept
his head so fixedly down while they were murdering Houime
that he had hardly caught a further glimpse of them. Now that
he could see them clearly, though, he realised how very unlike
him the Imperial soldiers were. Everything they wore or carried
was better-designed and better-made.

Culzacandra was a civilized land, Dathan had always been
told. It had preserved a useful measure of the learning brought
to the world by the very first humans - but he doubted that
there was anything in Culzacandra's cities to match the clothes
the Imperial soldiers wore, let alone the guns that they carried.

'Lie low and lie still/ Dathan warned Hycilla. 'Don't look up
if the light shines our way.' It was obvious enough, as much a
reminder to himself as an instruction to her. She didn't answer,
and didn't bother to tell him to be as silent as he was still.

Dathan heard splashing sounds as soldiers gathered by the
pool-side, doubtless jockeying for position as they lowered
containers into the water. They seemed greatly relieved to have
found the pool, and Dathan wondered why their supplies were
so low when less than fifteen hours had passed since they had
captured the village well. Could Kanak possibly have spoiled
the well? If so, then the village was dead as well as defeated;

without a reliable well it could never be rebuilt.

The night was rent by a sudden scream, and Dathan remem-
bered his lucky escape. There was a quick blast of gunfire,
combining the rattle of a dozen shots with the sinister, sizzling

Pawns of Chaos                    83

hiss of a kind of weapon to which he could not put a name.
There was a new fusillade of orders and curses. Even the curses
the Imperial soldiers used seemed more impressive than those
Dathan had heard in the mouths of labourers and tradesmen,
referring to an Emperor and a Throne. Was there an Emperor in
Kalazendra, Dathan wondered, or were the soldiers preserving
lore of their own, which their ancestors had brought with them
when they fell from the sky?

Most of the shouted orders were reminders of the need to
conserve ammunition. When the panic had died down,
though, there was a residual moaning which suggested that the
lurker in the pool had not only drawn blood but inflicted a
serious casualty on the enemy.

Gulzacandra strikes back! Dathan thought, exultantly.

His exultation did not last long. Two soldiers were coming in
his direction, shining their torches about them - all the more
urgently, now they knew that danger lurked in the shadows.
These were not the feeble torches that villagers occasionally
improvised from oil-soaked rags. Their beams were white and
penetrating. They were machines which had seemingly domes-
ticated the light of the sun.

Unfortunately, there were animals hiding in the under-
growth, whose instincts commanded them to lie low until they
were exposed - and then to run in panic.

No animal that was not panic-stricken would ever have run
into a thicket where humans were hiding, but these torches
were too obvious a breach of normal circumstance. A sow and
a litter of half a dozen piglets broke from their own hiding-
place and ran straight for the densest cover around - which
was, alas, exactly what Dathan had picked out as an ideal hid-
ing place.

The sow ran right into him, pursued by gunfire. He had no
alternative but to roll sideways as the animal realised her mis-
take and turned to fight as only a desperate mother would. Had
two gunshots not taken her down immediately she would
probably have done him some damage, but as it was she only
contrived to give him away to the men with torches, who were
as quick to pounce on the two villagers as they had been to
shoot the pig.

'Lie still, peasant!' Dathan was ordered, as a booted foot
came down heavily on his back, pinning him down. He heard

84                          Brian Craig

a second and identical order, and knew immediately, even
though his face was pressed down into the soil, that Hycilla
had suffered the same fate.

Moments later, he was hauled to his feet as his captor
shouted back the news that 'two hostiles' had been cap-
tured.

The Imperial soldiers dragged Dathan and Hycilla to the
back of one of the trucks, and shoved them up against the tail-
board. Six or seven torches were shining in their faces, and they
were blinded by the dazzle.

They're unarmed,' one voice pointed out.

There may be more!'

There's some rushes over there, sir, cut to make a mattress of
sorts. Only big enough for two.'

'Doesn't mean there weren't four or six - might have been
taking turns to sleep.'

'Just make sure you cover the area, sector by sector. You!
Where do you come from?'

There didn't seem to be any point in lying. The village,'
Dathan said.

Which village?'

The village.'

Whoever had asked the question didn't like that answer. The
shadow of a rifle-butt flickered in the blaze of light and dipped
Dathan on the chin - but the man who had struck out at him
had already been interrupted and hauled back.

'He's just an aborigine kid. His village is the whole bloody
world. He's probably never seen a map, let alone heard the
names on it. Which way were you coming from, kid? Away
from the sun or towards it?' They obviously thought his igno-
rance extended to not knowing east and west by their proper
names, which just went to prove that they were the stupid ones
- city-bred merchants always assumed that farmers and rural
tradesmen were idiots, and soldiers must be even more confi-
dent of their intellectual superiority.

We're from the village you attacked yesterday,' Dathan told
them, his voice fractured by anger and despair. 'We were in the
judeye forest when you set it on fire. There was only one way
to run.'

'And only one place to aim for, at least on day one,' his ques-
tioner concluded, seemingly satisfied that his powers of

Pawns of Chaos                    85

deduction were little short of awesome. 'Did you meet the crit-
ter in the pond? Or did you know it was there?'

'I didn't know/ Dathan said grimly. 'If Hycilla hadn't
screamed, it would have got me.'

More than one of them laughed at that.

'You ever been this far from home before?'

'No,' Dathan said.

'You're Hycilla?' the questioner said, turning his attention to
his second captive. 'You ever been this way before, Hycilla?'

'Not this far,' Hycilla said. Dathan didn't know whether she
was lying, but he suspected that she might be. He hadn't had
to, but she had spent time alone with Pater Saltana lately, and
not in the village.

There's supposed to be a hemispherical formation west of
here - that's like half a ball, as if the ball were buried half-way
deep in the soil. You see anything like that before the sun set?'

Hycilla didn't answer, and Dathan sensed movement within
the blaze, as if the rifle-butt were being readied for another
blow.

'I saw it,' he said, quickly, knowing that it couldn't possibly
make any difference. 'It's a long way off.'

'If you could see it/ the questioner said, still exceedingly self-
satisfied, 'it's close enough. We aren't savages walking barefoot
- we have trucks... horseless carts. Vroom vroom.'

Dathan didn't bother to point out that he and Hycilla were
wearing boots. He had already realised that the soldier's opin-
ion as to what might constitute a serviceable pair of boots was
likely to be different from his own.

'Should we kill them now?' another voice wanted to know.
There's something weird about the girl - might be a mutant.'

'No,' said the questioner, who was presumably an officer.
We've got water now - and we can assume it's safe to drink, as
these two must have tried it out hours ago - but we still need
food. They know better than we do what's edible.'

'We've got a converter.'

'Sure we do - and the prayers to go with it. But even the tech-
priests admit converters aren't much good if they're only
converting local crap that's as much use to us as wood-shav-
ings. This place is full of mutants, plants and animals alike. I've
been out in the wilderness before, and I know the value of local
knowledge.'

86                       Brian Craig

What local knowledge? They said themselves they haven't
been out here before. They grow their own, just like aborigines
everywhere. Even if they did know anything, they'd lie. I can see
the point of keeping the girl a while, unless she really is a
mutant, but we ought to kill the boy regardless.'

'Didn't you kill enough kids yesterday? Have a bit of
patience, why don't you? He's a farm-boy, not a sorcerer. So
how do you fancy jobs as head interpreter and number one
poison-taster, kids? Bearing in mind that you just heard the
alternative.'

'It won't help you,' Hycilla said, her voice unnaturally calm.
'Your leaders shouldn't have sent you out here like this. You'll
never get back alive, with or without our help. You'll all be
dead by sunset.'

That changed the mood of the men who were ranged about
them in a semi-circle. Such good humour as they had exhibited
was only a defence against their anxiety. They knew well
enough that theirs was the riskiest position of any so far taken
up by the invading army. 'May the Emperor protect us,' mut-
tered one man, reflexively. 'Praise Him,' echoed another.

Who's going to kill us?' the officer who had been asking the
questions wanted to know - but his voice had changed slightly
now that he had heard Hycilla speak. He could not possibly
know that the voice she had used was not entirely her own, but
there was something in it that had disturbed him. He was
apprehensive.

'You won't even see them,' Hycilla continued. Her voice was
thick, as if she had not fully emerged from the wise-dream
whose confusion had overflowed into the mutterings Dathan
had heard.

'Are you talking about your precious coven-masters?' the offi-
cer demanded. 'Or the horde of beastmen they're supposed to
be gathering? Is that what they tell you, to keep you in their
thrall - that when the evil day comes, they'll use their power to
destroy your enemies? Well, I've got news for you. We've got
inquisitors and tech-priests, and prayers that work, and our
power outweighs all the petty tricks your hedge-wizards can
turn. We're the Imperium.'

That you are not,' Hycilla replied, gravely, in a voice so
unnaturally deep that Dathan could find none of the old
Hycilla in it at all.

Pawns of Chaos                    87

'What do you know about it?' the officer wanted to know -
but his unease seemed to have increased.

'I said she was a mutant/ another voice put in. 'I say kill them
both, now.' This time it was the barrel of a rifle that came out
of the wall of light to prod Dathan in the chest and thrust him
painfully back against the tailboard of the truck.

'He's right - we ought to kill them now,' said a third voice.

'Wait!' said the officer. 'If she really does know something, I
want to leam what she knows about this thing that's going to
kill us all before next nightfall. If you want to live, girl, you'd
better tell me something 1 need to hear. Give me a reason to
hold on to you a little while longer.'

As promises went, Dathan thought, it was distinctly lacking
in generosity - but Hycilla was still in the same trance-like
calm.

'Nothing I can tell you will be the least use to you,' the voice
that was not hers said, indifferently, 'but if you think differ-
ently, your exterminator is already within two hundred paces,
approaching very quickly from the west.'

'What?' The officer plainly didn't believe it - but even if he
had, Hycilla was right. The information was no use to him.
Neither the officer nor any of his men had time to begin
another sentence before the screaming and the shooting
started.

The noise was coming from the west side of the camp - and
Dathan suddenly felt certain that whenever the name of the
Emperor was voiced now, it was voiced in desperation and
superstitious terror, not in careless and casual disregard of its
true meaning.

Dathan knew that he hadn't a second to spare - and he knew
that he couldn't trust Hycilla to act rationally while she was in
this state. He ducked down, dragging her down with him, and
then he folded his arms tightly around her as he rolled between
the back wheels of the truck, under the chassis.

The lights had moved away in alarm; where there had been a
wall of light directed at him there was now only confusion as
the turning soldiers dazzled one another. The group had
already begun to scatter, its members getting their weapons
ready to fire.

It would only have required one of the soldiers to kneel
down and unleash a quick burst of any kind of fire beneath the

88                       Brian Craig

truck - but no one gave that order and no one took the burden
of responsibility upon himself. Like the sow that had betrayed
the two villagers, the soldiers were creatures of instinct and
trained reflex - and Hycilla's melodramatic announcements
had pressed all the right buttons. As soon as the screaming
broke out, the soldiers ran to face the prophesied enemy that
had come to kill them.

What is it that's coming?' Dathan whispered, urgently, in
Hycilla's ear. 'What in the world is it?'

'I don't know,' Hycilla said, in her own voice, while trembling
with stress and more than a little fear, 'but I felt it coming, and
it's powerful. The trouble is - I don't know if it knows the dif-
ference between them and us. We're hardly big enough to be
noticed, and if it doesn't notice us...'

The tenor of the multiplying screams and the wild despera-
tion of the gunfire persuaded Dathan that Hycilla might well
be right. He did not need an atom of talent to tell him that
whatever had come had not come to save them, no matter how
convenient its timing had been.

It had come for its own reasons, the first and foremost of
which was to kill.

^

EIGHT

'INCREASE Till; DOSAGE.'

The priest, whose name was Carro Alpalhao, looked up anx-
iously at Ragan Balberith. He maintained his position,
kneeling beside the bed of the stricken man, although the cell
was so small that he had to crane his neck awkwardly to meet
the Chief Inquisitor's gaze.

'It's dangerous,' he said, fearfully. The objection was highly
ambiguous, although the statement was undoubtedly true. The
drug that Alpalhao was using in the hope of stimulating the
psyker's ability was a local product, identical to the one that the
cultists used to stimulate their own 'wise-dreamers'. Even their
priests - who had used the stuff for centuries, if not for mil-
lennia - occasionally overdosed their charges, with fatal results.

The drug was doubly dangerous. It was toxic, and its toxicity
was a mutant product of the warp. The second danger opened
up the possibility that any information a psyker of pure immi-
grant stock derived by means of its use might be tainted at the
most elementary level. It wasn't just the possibility that the
drug would have the wrong effect that had frightened the
priest, though. Balberith knew that Alpalhao was also fright-

89

90                       Brian Craig

ened that it might have the right effect. Nobody liked being
around a juiced-up psyker, not even a priest,

The priests who had been aboard the ships that had brought
the Imperium to Sigmatus must have been made of sterner
stuff, Balberith supposed. They must have been far more stead-
fast in their faith, far more certain in their trust in the beloved
Emperor and the power of his blood. Castaways isolated from
civilization for generations, cross-breeding all the while with
aborigines who were faithless at best, could hardly help losing
knowledge, but the gradual loss of faith was surely the more
dangerous erosion. He and his predecessors had done every-
thing in their power to ensure that the aborigines with whom
Imperial blood was mingled were only faithless, not actually
tainted by the creeping corruption of Chaos, but how could he
be certain of his own success, let alone that of his forebears? If
contact with the True Imperium were not restored soon, so that
authentic inquisitors and priests could be put in place of those
who presently bore the name, Sigmatus might be doomed even
if lerius Fulbra's campaign in Culzacandra were successful.

That was a thought that Balberith could not tolerate.
Sigmatus must be reunited with the True Imperium, and prop-
erly purged. Only the priests and inquisitors of the True
Imperium could be trusted to judge the exact extent to which
corruption had permeated Kalazendra, Sostenuto, and Orloc
Melcarth's so-called palace.

Balberith knew that Orloc Melcarth must have heard by now
that the psyker had reported the approach of the Imperial Fleet.
He had spies everywhere.

Although Balberith had no proof, he was certain in his own
mind that Melcarth had ordered the assassination of other
psykers, not so much because he feared what they might learn
as because he feared what they might communicate. Orloc
Melcarth believed that his army was winning the war of con-
quest - and so it was, if one took a limited view of what
'conquest' meant - but he must know perfectly well that the
men who were still proud to call themselves the Imperium
could not win the war against the forces of mutation that had
contrived the slow corruption of this world, unless they had
help.

Melcarth might pretend that Gulzacandra was the last refuge
on Sigmatus of sorcerers and coven-masters, but it was only

Pawns of Chaos                    91

pretence. The governor was no fool, and he knew perfectly well
that the sorcerers and coven-masters of the puppet states had
merely been driven underground, and that Sostenuto was by
no means free from the taint of Chaos, despite being the capi-
tal of Kalazendra and the first base of the immigrant
community.

Orloc Melcarth, to whom the word 'Imperium' meant power
of a perfectly straightforward kind, saw no problem in describ-
ing himself as the Planetary Governor and his administrative
apparatus as the Imperium. Ragan Balberith, by contrast, knew
that the word Imperium meant faith, purity and discipline, and
he was very keenly aware of the vanity of describing himself as
a Chief Inquisitor, even though he was heir to a long chain of
appointments that must have begun with an authentic inquisi-
tor.

Balberith often wondered what that authentic inquisitor
would make of the present situation on Sigmatus. When for-
mulating his own strategies, he often asked himself: What
would the First Inquisitor of Sigmatus want to achieve, and
how would he go about it?' Sometimes he thought that he
knew the answer. Mostly, alas, he knew only too well that he
did not.

Two hundred years - even if they had been 'real' years
instead of slow local years - was too long a separation. Far too
much had been lost as vital knowledge had been handed down
from generation to generation. The descendants of the colony
ships' crews had tried with all their might to learn everything
their fathers had to teach them, and to offer up their prayers
with all due conviction. Every generation had tried with all its
might to pass on the whole truth - but even the truth needed
reinforcement by context. Even the strongest faith was bound
to weaken when the power of the Emperor was not manifest in
everyday circumstance.

The raw power of the Imperium had weakened as the guns
imported by the ships developed mechanical faults, or ran out
of ammunition, but that slow decay had been visible and eas-
ily understandable. The decay of faith, purity and discipline
was far less easy to map out, and far more mercurial. No one
knew - not even the Chief Inquisitor himself - exactly how
much, or in what precise ways, the spiritual aspects of the
Imperium had decayed during the Sigmatus exile. The

92                       Brian Craig

tech-priests still said their prayers, but as the technologies the
prayers helped to maintain were subject to a slow decay, so was
the faith that sustained the prayers. That was why the dosage of
the drug that was being fed to the psyker had to be increased,
no matter what dangers the increase might involve.

If there really were an Imperial Fleet nearby, contact had to
be restored - or everything would eventually be lost.

Balberith knew that the war of conquest was necessary, given
the nourishment that Gulzacandra's coven-masters lent to their
fugitive kin in the other four continents, but he knew that it
would not be enough. No matter how well it would serve
Melcarth's selfish vanity, it could not save the Imperium of
Sigmatus - and if Melcarth's vanity were as great as it some-
times seemed, Fulbra's triumph might even serve to accelerate
that petty Imperium's decline.

In the longer term, even if Fulbra were victorious, Sigmatus
would surely be lost to Chaos. The only thing that could pos-
sibly prevent that was to restore contact with the Imperium -
and Ragan Balberith was painfully well aware of the fact that
the window of opportunity that had recently been opened by
the recent abatement of the warpstorm might not be open very
long.

There was, of course, another danger, which the Chief
Inquisitor felt as keenly as any man: the danger that if he man-
aged to alert the real Imperium to the state of affairs on
Sigmatus the response might be an order of Exterminatus.
Balberith was, however, one of very few men left in the local
Imperium who could accept that fate with philosophical resig-
nation if it were deemed necessary.

Perhaps, Balberith thought, that was the danger on the
priest's mind as he continued to hesitate, with the phial con-
taining the drug in his hand - but it seemed unlikely. The
priest was the kind of man who was more easily frightened by
obvious possibilities. Unlike the psyker, the priest was a half-
breed. There was nothing in their names to indicate the
difference - the psyker's name was Deir Ajao - but it was real
nevertheless.

In fact, Balberith thought, that might well be the real root of
the problem. The ships that had landed on Sigmatus two hun-
dred years before had been sent on an investigative mission.
They had been well-staffed with soldiers and functionaries of

Pawns of Chaos                    93

the Adeptus Terra, but their crews had been ninety per cent
male. The soldiers had left an abundance of descendants, but
nine hundred and ninety-nine out of every thousand now liv-
ing had at least one aboriginal mother in their bloodline. The
Adeptus Terra had been more careful, but there was a limit to
what caution could achieve when the original breeding-stock
had been so limited. The second pure-bred generation had
been fifty-per cent female, and so had every generation since,
but the limitation of the original stock had been too severe.
The 'immigrant community', according to its usual definition,
was less than a tenth pure-bred; the rest were half-breeds - and
the vast majority of the marginal mass of fighting-men and
privileged servants had no more than an eighth or a sixteenth
of authentic Imperial blood. The priest had only a quarter.

'Do it,' Balberith commanded, sternly.

Alpalhao could not keep hesitating forever, and he knew it.
The priest finally condescended to extend his skinny arm so
that the claw-like hand put the phial to the psyker's lips. The
psyker's eyes were closed, although he did not appear to be
asleep, but when the rim of the little bottle made contact with
his flesh he lifted his head slightly, avid to drink.

The psyker was already in the unsettling trance-state fostered
and refined by the drug. His senses were now unresponsive to
that tiny fraction of the mundane world that was confined in
the monkish cell, but they were becoming highly attentive to
the other worlds that existed in parallel to the dimension of
normal space-time.

In some of those other dimensions, Balberith had been
assured by his teachers, sight was so remarkably augmented
that a man might see clear across the void to look out upon the
worlds of other stars. More importantly, the manner in which
a man could speak his thoughts silently within the privacy of
his own head was so remarkably augmented that he could
speak those thoughts directly into the mind of another, and
hear thoughts that were spoken into his from thousands, mil-
lions or billions of miles away.

That was what was required. This pure-bred psyker had to
make contact with others of his own kind, preferably -
although the necessity was not absolute - aboard a ship of the
Imperial Fleet that was close enough to Sigmatus to reach it in
a matter of hours.

94                       Brian Craig

The psyker drank, and the room grew cold. The phial in
Alpalhao's hand cracked, and the priest laid it down lest it
should shatter. The priest's hand was shivering furiously, as if it
were being shaken by some external force. Balberith felt a fris-
son seep through his own body, causing his blood to seethe in
his veins and unusual emotions to stir in his heart. He fought
for self-control.

The psyker knew what was required of him, although
Balberith had never been at all sure that knowing what was
required was more likely to enhance the chances of success
than to diminish them.

As the drug took effect the psyker s face began to contort.
Sweat began to ooze from the pores of his forehead and cheeks,
and his eyeballs fluttered wildly behind his closed lids. Cairo
Alpalhao raised a tremulous arm to his own face, so that the
sleeve could mop his nose - but it was blood, not snot, that
stained the cloth.

'I told you so,' muttered the terrified priest, without the least
hint of self-satisfaction. 'All you've done is expose him to the
hellworids.'

Balberith had long suspected that the warpstorm enclosing
Sigmatus was a strangely delicate thing. The evil painter of des-
tiny worshipped by the aborigine coven-masters seemed to
him to be using the lightest of all his brushes upon it, to create
intricate and elusive effects whose subtlety probably could not
be appreciated by any mere mortal. Although the world was on
the fringes of the so-called Eye of Terror it had never been sub-
jected to the garish effects which legend attributed to the
worlds that actually lay within the Eye. It was, however, dose
enough for wise-dreamers to glimpse those unfortunate worlds
far more frequently and far more revealingly than the myriad
worlds of the Imperium of Mankind.

'Hellworld' was a notion which certainly had not been foi-
gotten by the inquisitors of Sigmatus; nor had its significance
been lost.

Immigrant psykers had sometimes been driven mad by such
sights. Worlds where the atmosphere was permanently aflame
and worlds whose oceans of blood were alive were of little rel-
evance to humankind, for the life they supported was entirely
alien, and worlds sculpted in the form of screaming humanoid
heads were mere cosmic scarecrows, but there were other

Pawns of Chaos                    95

hellworlds where creatures possessed of minds and souls could
exist, and did exist, in perpetual torment.

Balberith had never been entirely sure how that could hap-
pen. Surely a creature shaped by natural selection for life in a
world that seemed hellish to a human being would be adapted
mentally as well as physically to its environment, so that local
conditions would seem perfectly normal, distressing only
when they strayed towards hazardous extremes? Even if such a
creature's pain responses were permanently excited, how long
could pain endure before it became a familiar aspect of experi-
ence, impotent by virtue of its everpresence?

Alas, the Eye of Terror was part of the Empire of Chaos, and
common sense was useless in its appraisal. There were doubt-
less matters which only the Emperor of Mankind himself was
privileged to comprehend.

Balberith nudged Carro Alpalhao with his knee to indicate
that the priest should make room for him - which the quiver-
ing priest did, despite the narrowness of the space to which he
was confined. Balberith knelt beside him, and took the psyker's
hand in his own. The hand was limp and feverish, but by no
means unresponsive. The psyker's trance had not made him
any less excitable - quite the reverse. The very air around him
was beginning to crackle, as if his body were possessed of a
fiery invisible aura. When Balberith exerted pressure with his
fingers the pressure was imrp ediately echoed.

'Listen to me, Deir,' Balberith said, stifling the horror that
flowed from the other's hand into his own being. The hell-
worlds are a psychodrama - an entrancing corruption, posted
at the interface of the dimensions to distract the pure in mind
and heart. You do not need to look at them, and you do not
need to focus on them if you do chance to look. You have to
look beyond them. No matter what the Chaos-worshippers call
their rogue psykers, you are the only dreamer on Sigmatus who
can be reckoned truly wise, and you must use your wisdom. If
any part of the Fleet is nearby, you must find the ships - and
when you have found them, you must make contact with their
guiding minds. We need to know whether they are aware of our
plight - and if they are not, we must make them aware of it.'

Balberith wasn't certain that his words could penetrate the
barriers that had been erected between the psyker's dreaming
consciousness and the regular dimension, but he knew that it

96                          Brian Craig

could do no harm to say them aloud. He felt that the speech
worked to his benefit, even if it had no effect at all on the man
adrift among the dimensions, haunted by hellworlds.

Perhaps the words did have an effect, because the eyes mov-
ing behind the closed lids were no longer roaming so fervently,
and the sweat evaporating from the face was no longer being
replaced quite so profusely. Indeed, the entranced man seemed
to be trying to shut his eyes even more firmly, screwing them
up as if in concentration. He was unmistakably awake and
active, for his whole body now seemed to be alight with strange
consciousness. The walls of the cell were weeping, and so was
Carro Alpalhao - but the priest's tears were pink.

'He's trying,' Balberith whispered to his stricken companion.
'Pray for his success.'

'I am,' the priest assured him, speaking through gritted teeth.

The psyker's lips began to stir, as if he were trying to speak -
but no words were audible and Balberith could not read the
sketchily ill-formed movements of the lips.

'Louder, Deir,' he muttered. 'Louder, or more precise.' The
horror that flowed out of the dreamer had changed its quality
now: it was more subtle, less brutal. Logically, it should have
been less intense, but it did not seem so.

Balberith had to exert even more mental force to quell the
panic that was trying to take hold of him. He felt that the ves-
sels feeding his heart were trying to tie themselves in intricate
knots.

The dreaming psykers of Sigmatus were often incapable of
forming sounds, and their users had to be highly-skilled lip-
readers. Unfortunately, the psykers were often incapable of
clarity when they were miming, and even the most expert read-
ers sometimes produced garbled accounts of what they were
trying to say. Balberith did not know whether this was a uni-
verse-wide problem or some freak of local circumstance.

Gradually, though, the flutter of Ajao's lips became calmer
and more definite.

'Sigmatus,' Balberith read, aided by the murmurous sounds
spilling from the psyker's lacerated lips. 'Castaways...
Assimilated... War continuing... Possibility of redemption...
Danger... Landing may be feasible... Temporary blink...
Danger... Remain on hold... Danger... Balance of probabili-
ties... Danger... He's through, Cairo. He's through. Tell them,

Pawns of Chaos                    97

Deir. Make them hear you. Tell them that we need help - that
the world needs them desperately, but that everything would
be well if only we had their firepower and their spiritual lead-
ership. Tell them that we need reinforcements: Space Marines,
inquisitors. Tell them that the echoes of the Imperium that still
endure here deserve support and salvation. Make them hear!
Make them see! A victory might yet be won here, if they can
only act swiftly and well.'

Balberith had no way of knowing whether Ajao could hear
him, or whether the psyker was capable of following the
instruction, but he needed hope as much as he needed faith.
He was, after all, surrounded by enemies, including many of
those who were supposed to be his closest collaborators. He
needed reinforcements to help his own inquisitors and priests
against Orloc Melcarth, as well as reinforcements to help lerius
Fulbra against the sorcerers of Gulzacandra. Most of all, he
needed the hope that such reinforcements might come, and
that they might come in time.

Deir Ajao's lips were moving again, but they were not trying
to pronounce words. They were indicating pain and sore dis-
tress. There were tears of blood leaking from the comers of the
psyker's screwed-up eyes and his tremors were turning into a
full-scale fit.

'He's over the edge,' Alpalhao said, while urgently mopping
his own face with an extremely unsteady hand. 'He's falling. We
have to try to bring him out.'

'Not while he's so close,' Balberith said, through gritted teeth.
The walls of the cell were shivering feverishly, displaying a riot
of colour that no human hand armed with a paint-brush could
ever have contrived - but there were, alas, no readable graffiti.

Balberith knew, in any case, that trying was all that he and
the priest could do. There was no antidote to the aboriginal
drug, and a psyker's trance-state was not the kind of altered
consciousness that could be banished by mere shaking. Ajao
was trapped, a prisoner of his own strange nature. If he fell
within his waking dream, he was the one who had to stop the
fall. His innate wisdom was the only means by which he could
acquire the kind of wings that would let him fly, or the kind of
lightness that would let him float.

But the hand that Balberith had gripped was now gripping
Balberith's fiercely, taut with desperation.

98                       Brian Craig

'Come on, Deir,' Balberith said. Take control. You have to
take control.'

Unfortunately, it seemed to be the case that no dreamer,
however wise, was skilful enough to pilot his own dream.
Perhaps, Balberith thought, another thousand years of Imperial
dominion over the galaxy would produce a purer and more
careful breed of psyker than anything wild and corrupted
Chaos could ever produce - but that time had not yet come.

The tears of blood continued to flow, and it was obvious that
the eyes flickering from side to side behind the screwed-up lids
were looking into some sort of hell - perhaps a kind of hell far
worse than any mere world aflame or sea of boiling blood.

The psyker's complexion had always been uncommonly pale,
even for a purebred immigrant, but it was paper-white now,
The tracks of his tears looked like a line inscribed in red ink,
writing the history of civilization on Sigmatus in a long-lost
language older than the world itself.

Balberith's priorities had shifted now. As he returned the
vice-like grip of the sleeping man's right hand he began to
whisper a new and far simpler set of instructions into the
psyker's ear.

'Don't die,' he commanded. 'Hold on. Don't die. Live to
dream another day. Don't die. Try to sleep. Don't die. Close
your inner eyes and your inner ears to all the temptations of
the enemy. Come home. And above all else, don't die!'

He could only hope that it would be enough.

Tomorrow would be another day - and tomorrow might not
be too late to win salvation, for himself if not for the world of
his birth. Desperate times required desperate measures, and
Ragan Balberith was keenly aware of his own desperation.

^

NINE

IT WAS VERY dark at first beneath the truck. Half a dozen search-
lights had been quickly switched on, so that their beams could
sweep back and forth across the dense vegetation surrounding
the pool, but that only made the shadow in which Dathan and
Hycilla lay seem all the deeper. Dathan couldn't see Hycilla's
face, but he was certain that she was at least half-entranced. She
wasn't still, but her movements were spasmodic and unco-
ordinated; she made no attempt to move into a position from
which she could see a little more of what was happening.

Perhaps she had a clearer view with her eyes shut, he
thought. Perhaps, whether consciously or not, it was she who
had unleashed the forces that were blasting and harassing the
hapless soldiers, who clearly did not know which way to turn
to find an enemy at which they could fire back.

Dathan had no inner sight to rely on, so he scrambled for-
wards in a prone position, lifting his head until it bumped on
the truck's front axle-housing, then raising it again as soon as
he had worked his way past the obstacle.

There was not a great deal he could see without actually com-
ing out of hiding - and he had no intention of exposing
himself to gunfire - but he could see something of what the

99

100                      Brian Craig

soldiers on the ground were doing. They were crouching down,
keeping almost as low as he was, while the gunners on the
trucks fired over their heads. He could see the white traces of
missiles zooming into the bushes, but these weren't like judeye
trees and they didn't explode. Fires were started in half a dozen
places, but they seemed reluctant to start and even more reluc-
tant to continue. They smouldered crimson or blue, emitting
thick clouds of acrid smoke, but they didn't flare up and there
didn't seem to be any danger of the entire area being caught up
in an unstoppable conflagration like the one that had devas-
tated the judeye forest.

Dathan couldn't see any visible sign of returning fire: no
muzzle-flashes, no soaring arrows, no beams of natural light.
What he couid see, though, was that the soldiers on the ground
were taking casualties.

He saw one man rolling on the ground with his eyes bug-
ging out of his head, foaming at the mouth as if his brain
were boiling in his skull. The man was obviously trying to
bring himself to a halt, because he was scrabbling at the
ground with his hands with such urgency that he was tearing
his own fingernails away from the quick, and yet it seemed to
Dathan that it was his own muscles that were causing him to
roll over.

In striking contrast, another man was bolt upright, standing
to attention with astonishing rigidity - save only for his arms,
which were moving very slowly to reverse the direction of the
weapon he held in his two hands, bringing the barrel of the las-
rifle slowly but inexorably towards his head.

Not until the barrel was aligned did the man open his mouth
and slide the muzzle between his chapped lips and yellowed
teeth. Dathan could see his eyes quite clearly, although no light
was shining directly upon them, and he could read the terror
in them as the soldier's finger, though bent at an excruciating
angle, began to tighten on the trigger of his gun.

Dathan saw another man catch fire, as if a taper had been
applied to some mysterious fuse within his abdomen. Little jets
of flame were bursting out of the soldier's skin and burning
holes in his uniform. He, unlike the others, was free to scream,
and he took full advantage of the opportunity.

Dying quietly was not, it seemed, a dignity that many men
could maintain.

Pawns of Chaos                   101

This is magic, Dathan thought. This is the way it is supposed
to be. This is the fate that ought to befall invaders who came as
these men came, to slaughter the innocents of Gulzacandra. He
knew that he ought to be delighted, or even exultant - but it
seemed that he too must be caught by a kind of spell, because
all he felt was sick. Dathan was incapable of hating anyone or
anything more than he hated these men, but the sight of their
dying horrified him. If Hycilla really is responsible for this, he
thought, thinking himself a traitor for thinking it, then I wish
that she would stop.

On reflection, however, Dathan rejected the idea that Hycilla
might be responsible. No matter how rapidly her progress as a
wise-dreamer had been accelerated by the events of the previ-
ous day, she could not possibly have turned into a sorcerer. In
any case, none of the tales that Dathan had heard of the most
powerful sorcerers who had ever lived had included scenes like
this. Whatever was at work here was surely more than human.

An escalation of more distant screaming assured Dathan that
the men on the trucks had no protection from this kind of
assault. The fire pouring from the big guns mounted on the
machines became increasingly random as the soldiers' situa-
tion became more desperate.

Someone was shouting orders, trying to organise the firing-
pattern to cover the whole of the surrounding area, but the
response was distinctly uneven.

Dathan crept a couple of inches further forward, drawn by
curiosity, but Hycilla suddenly grabbed him round the waist
and pulled him back.

This way!' she hissed. 'No time! We stay, we die!'

Dathan realised that by 'this way' she meant that they were
to move to the left. She was already on that side, so she scram-
bled out from under the truck first, plucking at his shirt in
order to make him follow her. Dathan didn't know whether
she was entranced or not, but he had no ideas of his own and
the assurance that they would both die if they stayed where
they were rang all too true. Whatever was killing the soldiers
didn't seem to need a clear sight of them; death, like the smoke
of the reluctant fires, was in the air.

There seemed to be no alternative but to run, trusting to luck
to preserve them against the attackers and defenders alike -
except that running was not what Hycilla had in mind. Instead

102                      Brian Craig

of haring off into (he night as fast as her legs could carry her
she turned on her heel and groped for the handle of the door
that would let her into the front part of the truck - the part that
was presumably equivalent to the driver's bench of a cart.

Dathan didn't suppose that there was anyone in the driver's
covert, but it didn't seem to him to be a safe place on that
account. If the raised sides of the truck's rear couldn't protect
the artillerymen manning the big gun, the transparent shield in
front of the driver's seat was hardly likely to be able to ward off
the malign force that was wreaking havoc in the soldiers' midst.

As soon as Hycilla had the door open, though, she leapt up
into the covert and reached back to offer Dathan the support of
her arm. He took her hand and clambered up behind her.

By the time he got in, Hyciila had already scrambled across
to set herself in the further seat of a matching pair, behind the
big wheel that was the cab's most prominent internal feature.

'But you can't work a thing like this!' Dathan said, foolishly.
He had always known that such things as trucks existed, and
had heard descriptions of them from people who had actually
seen them, but no such description could have prepared him
for the reality of being inside one. This confined space
seemed to him to be an utterly mysterious and profoundly
alien environment - but when Hycilla turned towards him to
tell him to be quiet she didn't need words. Her eyes were large
and luminous, brightly lit by moist reflections even though
the pupils were widely dilated. Her lips were formed into a
ferocious snarl, making her once-lovely face into a hideous
caricature.

There was a lever sticking up from the floor of the truck
between her seat and the one into which Dathan had settled,
and Hycilla was already wrenching it back and forth as the
truck's engine roared into life. As soon as the wheels began to
turn she spun the wheel that presumably served much the
same function as a guiding-rein, forcing the vehicle into a tight
arc that carried it away to the left.

There were two soldiers lying prone in front of the truck's
new course. They leapt to their feet, but only one was stupid
enough to try to signal to the driver, imploring rather than
commanding her to halt. The other man was content to throw
himself out of the vehicle's path - which saved him from being
run down.

Pawns of Chaos                   103

Even if the driver had been one of his own men, Dathan
thought, the dead soldier had been a fool to think that he
would stop in a situation like this. Even as he formed that
thought he realised that theirs was not the only vehicle that
had come to life. Whether a retreat had been ordered or not,
men who had seen the manner in which their companions
were dying had evidently decided that any other place in the
wilderness was a better place to be than the environs of the
pool.

That's good, Dathan thought. They won't know it's us. They
won't chase us.

He worried, though, about what might be going on immedi-
ately behind them. How many armed men were in the back of
the truck? What weapons did they have? And what would they
do when they found out who it was that had abstracted them
from the battlefield?

Hycilla was in no condition to consider such niceties. She
was spinning the wheel again, sending the truck into another,
entirely different arc. Dathan had already lost track of where
the pool was, and wondered whether she might have had to
turn so suddenly in order to avoid driving straight into it. She
was making no attempt to stick to better ground, and there was
nothing visible through the windscreen but the crowns of
bushes and exotic flowers - a veritable tide of vegetation that
seemed to hurl itself forward and dive down beneath the vehi-
cle with reckless alacrity.

It was an optical illusion, of course; it was the vehicle that
was moving, mowing down the vegetable flesh as it went,
lurching madly from side to side as it bounced over the bases
of clustered stems.

Dathan heard the sounds of people - or perhaps inanimate
objects of some unidentifiable kind - being thrown about in
the back of the truck, impacting with each of the raised sides.
There was no indication that the gun mounted in the back was
still being fired.

There were no more soldiers to be seen now, but the evidence
of their presence was all around, in billows of smoke and lines
of hectic light scrawled upon the surface of the starry sky.

'Open the door!' Hycilla screamed at him. 'Move over!'

Dathan didn't understand. He would have asked why, but as
soon as he looked towards her with the question in his eyes she

104                      Brian Craig

looked towards him - and what there was in her eyes was def-
initely not conducive to asking questions. It was an order that
permitted no dissent.

Helplessly, Dathan felt his hand shoot out from his side to
grapple with the door-catch. He had never encountered one
like it, so it required a few seconds of inexpert rumbling, but in
the end he managed to spring the catch and hurl the door open
- and then, without any pause for thought or reinforcement of
the command he moved over into the narrow gap between the
two seats.

For a moment, Dathan could not believe that there was any-
one in the world agile enough to leap on board the careering
truck, or anyone brave enough to try. His scepticism could not
endure, however, when a human figure did exactly that, leaping
out of the onrushing vegetation to land sure-footedly on the
floor of the truck, arms extended to catch the side and top of
the door frame, so that a single fluid movement might deliver
the slender body into the space that Dathan had cleared.

The newcomer closed the door himself. He said nothing at
all, but Hycilla obviously knew well enough what to do with-
out verbal instruction. She was spinning the wheel yet again,
hurling the truck into an arc so tight that it came up on two
wheels. Dathan was scared that it might tip over, but the fear
was insufficient to override his astonishment as he stared at
their new passenger.

It was a boy, seemingly no older than himself. The boy was
stark naked, and his skin was faintly but strangely patterned.
His physique did not seem particularly remarkable, although
the appearance had to be deceptive, given the amazing gym-
nastic trick he had just performed, so it was his face that
attracted and held Dathan's attention.

It was getting much darker inside the truck now that they
were heading away from all the lights, but it seemed to Dathan
that the particular darkness within the newcomer's eyes was no
mere shadow. His ears were also unusual: they were pointed
and tufted, like the ears of a wolfox or a scrublynx.

Even in the village, which was said to be uncommonly lucky
in such matters, freak births sometimes occurred. Dathan had
been allowed to look at dead animals with seemingly human
features, but he had only heard hushed whispers regarding
human babies with animal features which had had to be taken

Pawns of Chaos                   105

away. This was the first time that he had been near a human
with animal stigmata.

'Who are you?' Dathan managed to stutter, when he got his
breath back.

'YOU and you/ was the boy's cryptic reply - and as he spoke
he reached out with both arms towards his saviours. The long
fingers of his right hand touched Hycilla's forehead, while the
knuckles of his left rested briefly on Dathan's cheek. Dathan
felt a strange thrill pass through him. It wasn't painful, but it
wasn't pleasant either; he felt as if some kind of thread had
wound itself around his heart.

What's your name?' Dathan asked, in case the boy hadn't
understood the first question.

'Don't know. Too tired/ was the only reply he received.

Even in the near-darkness, Dathan sensed that the astonish-
ing eyes were already half-closed. The boy slumped in his seat,
his strange head - tufted ears and all - coming to rest upon
Dathan's shoulder. Dathan did not dare to shrug him off, or
even to run the risk of inconveniencing him by turning his
head to look towards Hycilla, but he could and did keep stam-
mering away.

'Who is he? Hycilla? What is this? What's happening?'

'Don't know,' said Hycilla's voice, like an eerie echo. Too
tired.'

But she, at least, wasn't falling asleep. She kept right on dri-
ving, hurling the truck through the night.

They were heading out into the wilderness now, and the
ground was more even. The tide of vegetation no longer
seemed to be hurling itself suicidally beneath their wheels.
The light of the headlamps allowed them to see something of
where they were going, although the truck was surely going
far too fast to be able to stop in time if some obstruction sud-
denly loomed up out of the night within the headlamps'
span.

'Uh oh!' said Hycilla's voice, suddenly. It really did sound
like Hycilla's voice, although Dathan couldn't be entirely cer-
tain that she was the one in charge of her arms and legs.

Dathan couldn't turn around, but from where he sat in the
middle of the truck's seat he could look into the mirror that
was positioned above his head to allow the driver to look back
through the portal in the back of the cab. He couldn't see

106                      Brian Craig

anything but lights, but that was enough to tell him that the
truck was being followed - or perhaps pursued.

The lights were too bright to be mere headlamps, Dathan
concluded. He reasoned, therefore, that the spotlight on the
back of the following truck had to be working, and it was
trained on their own truck. Which meant that the gun
mounted on the back of the other truck was probably working
too, and probably trained on the target that the searchlight had
picked out. Which probably meant that if anyone on the other
truck had seen the naked boy leap aboard, or had any other
reason to be confident that it wasn't being driven by an
Imperial soldier, the three of them probably only had as long
to live as it would take any Imperial soldiers left on the back of
their own truck to jump clear... which they had probably
already done...

Dathan stared into the mirror raptly, even though there was
nothing to be seen but dazzling light. The hairs on the back of
his neck were standing up.

Then the dazzling light became even more dazzling. The mir-
ror seemed to flare up, as if it were itself a bubble of
incandescent gas.

I'm dead, Dathan thought, although he knew that it was
absurd to think it.

He wasn't dead. The gun mounted on the pursuing truck
hadn't fired - or if it had, it had misfired. The gun mounted on
the pursuing truck had exploded, and the truck itself had been
blasted to smithereens by the force of the explosion.

The shockwave tilted their own truck, but didn't tip it over.

'Uh oh!' said Hycilla's voice. Dathan had never realised
before what a wealth of hidden meanings a phrase such as that
might be able to contain. The nonsensical syllables sounded
completely different the second time around, anxiety and irri-
tation having given way to triumph and amusement. But
Dathan realised, as the truck zoomed on into the darkness, that
the triumph had been cloaked in weariness, and the amuse-
ment in exhaustion. He saw that Hycilla was slumping over the
wheel now, not even looking where the truck was going - not,
at least, with her eyes.

'Hycilla!' Dathan said, uneasily, wondering whether he could
bring her back to a normal state of being - and whether he
should if he could.

Pawns of Chaos                   107

After all, he thought, if she recovered her old self now she
might suddenly discover that she hadn't the slightest idea how
to drive an Imperial vehicle, and now would not be the best
time for her to make that discovery. Dathan decided, on due
reflection, to keep quiet. If Hycilla had been driving in a magi-
cal trance since they first got into the cab it was probably best
not to disturb her.

When a few more minutes had passed, though, the pressure
of that chimerical ear upon Dathan's shoulder, and the tickle of
its elongated hairs against his neck became unbearable. Very
gently and very carefully, he eased the other boy's body over to
the right, so that the strange head eventually shifted. It lolled
against the back of the seat, supported to the side by the frame
of the door. The position looked uncomfortable, but not
unbearable.

That allowed Dathan to turn towards Hycilla, and to watch
her as she balanced her head on her knuckles, while her hands
kept the truck on a steady course. The course in question took
them into darkness and the unknown, but seemed nevertheless
to have been carefully plotted and selected.

The darkness did not last much longer, though. Within
another twenty minutes the sky behind them acquired a silvery
glow, and then the rosy pink of sunlight reflecting off low
cloud.

They were not heading directly away from the as-yet-unrisen
sun, but their course was only slightly displaced to the south.

The war has begun, Dathan thought. 1 was present at the first
battle, and the second. I've survived both, without taking any
wound worse than a common-or-garden bruise. But this is only
the beginning. The soldiers who attacked the village were num-
bered in their hundreds, the ones in the trucks in their dozens.
When the big battle begins, there'll be thousands on each side,
and the firepower...

He realised that his world had already ended. The village had
been smashed. If the fields had been burned and the well poi-
soned, it could never be rebuilt. If his mother was lucky
enough to be alive, she would be a homeless refugee lost in the
wasteland. What had happened to the village would now hap-
pen to the smaller towns, and eventually to Culzacandra's
cities. Whoever won, nothing would ever be the same. The
world would be new, and life would be different.

108                     Brian Craig

Dathan understood that the adulthood at which his boy-
hood had always been aimed had been cancelled at a stroke,
and he would never be the man he had always intended to be.
He was a fighter now, whether he wanted to be or not. He was
an enemy of the Imperium, a defender of his homeland. He
might live or he might die but the one thing he could never do
was go back to being himself. He was different now, and he had
to discover a whole new way of being.

Dathan watched Hycilla's hands and feet, wondering if he
could figure out how to drive while he was awake. It looked
easy enough, but so many things had looked easy while he
watched others do them that had turned out not to be easy at
all, when he came to try them for himself. He knew that he
couldn't afford to entertain childish illusions now that he was
a grown man. He looked around again, to watch the dawn
through the rear window of the cab.

The pink clouds extended themselves across the sky like the
wings of a giant vulture - and then the rim of the sun peeped
over the flat and seemingly featureless plain, as if the sky had
been split by a sword-thrust to let out the blood of the stars.
The stars that shone in the night-sky were already fading out,
swallowed up by the violet blaze of day. That blaze was not yet
bright enough to seem uniform, though. The clouds that blis-
tered its face with grey seemed as solid as oatmeal gruel against
a background stirred by the restlessness of space itself.

Dathan had only the vaguest notion of what those ripples
were. He could see nothing but inexplicable uncertainty - and
he could feel ripples of a similar sort within his own inner
being, stirring his very soul.

'Well,' he murmured, just loudly enough to have been heard
if any nearby ear had been awake and attentive, 'I suppose
they'll settle, or they won't. Either way, I'll have to do the best 1
can to move in harmony with them. I certainly can't banish
them from my soul.'

^

TEN

GAVALON'S REKROWN EYE was hurting horribly, but it was not a
blinding pain. Quite the reverse, in fact. The other eye already
had better night-vision than ordinary human eyes - though
not as good as that possessed by a few of his beastmen - but
this one, perhaps by virtue of being grown by night, seemed to
relish the particular textures of starlight and moonlight.

Even so, he had not been able to keep the Vessel's fleeting
form in view once he was down on the plain. Nimian could
never have run so fast, and Sathorael had hardly begun the
process of metamorphic emergence, but their peculiar hybrid
already seemed to have acquired a number of extraordinary
powers. Cavalon had a few of those himself, but moving at
great speed across problematic territory was not one of them.
Even beastmen had their petty tricks, but none of the heavily-
built members of his personal retinue could run like mowas.

Gavalon had no choice, therefore, but to follow the Vessel at
his own pace, hoping that the limitations of a body that was
still ninety-five per cent Nimian would cause the daemon-to-be
to pause for rest before very long.

The sorcerer had glimpsed the flashes of light on the horizon
while descending the slope of the rounded hill but he had been

109

110                      Brian Craig

unable to form a firm conclusion as to what they were. Once
he was at ground level the lights were obscured by vegetation,
and he did not see them again until the firefight began, at
which time they became far more prolific. He guessed imme-
diately what had happened.

'Imperium soldiers!' he hissed to his followers. They must
have vehicles to have come so far so fast. Not battle-tanks
imported by the first invaders, just light trucks, assembled in
Kalazendran factories - but they're still dangerous.'

The nearest beastman nodded its shaggy head, but Gavalon
knew that its understanding of the danger was limited. The
creature had never seen a motor vehicle.

How sophisticated, Gavalon wondered, was Nimian-
Sathorael's understanding of the enemy he had raced off to
fight? It would be a terrible tragedy if the nascent daemon
were to lose its Vessel before it had a chance to develop more
than a tiny fraction of its power. According to the wisest of his
wise-dreamers, Sathorael was to bring about the destruction
of Gulzacandra's invaders, and of Kalazendra's cities, and
more... more, apparently, than the Divine Schemer cared to
reveal even to the most loyal and devoted of his worldly ser-
vants.

Gavalon had to suppose that if the Divine Schemer's divine
scheme somehow went awry, Gulzacandra would suffer, and so
would he. It would not matter whether or not there was any-
thing he could do to save the daemon-to-be from premature
destruction while it was, in effect, a confused infant; he and all
his followers would still be held responsible.

'Weapons ready,' he said to the beastmen, as they continued
to hurry forward. 'Approach by stealth. Seize guns as and when
you can and turn them on the Kalazendrans - but whatever
else you do, see that no harm comes to the Vessel.'

That was, he knew, far easier said than done - but they would
all have to do their utmost to turn words into action.

He had expected a few more seconds to prepare, and to select
a pathway into the heart of the battle, but the battle came to
him instead when two soldiers ran from the bushes, in full
flight from an enemy they could neither see nor number.

The enemy soldiers did not see Gavalon and the beastmen
either, at first, which gave the running beastmen time to mount
a pincer movement to either side of them. By the time they

Pawns of Chaos                   111

finally did catch sight of Gavalon and the yak-head that had
remained by his side they were too slow in raising their guns to
take aim.

One of them got off a shot at the sorcerer, but it was fired
from the hip. Cavalon needed neither luck nor magic to avoid
the bullet, which whizzed harmlessly over his head. The man
was then dragged down by the claws of a beastman, whose
talons tore the flesh from the right side of his face. The soldier
tried to bring the muzzle of his gun around so that he could
fire into the beastman's belly, but the creature's descending
mass was too great. The life was crushed out of him.

The second soldier might have done better had he actually
contrived to fire, because he had brought his gun up to his
shoulder first, but the yak-head who had remained with
Cavalon had already hurled its spear with superhuman force.
The serrated obsidian head of the weapon cut through the
human's ribs like a carving knife. The soldier fell backwards, his
body carried ten or twelve feet by the momentum of the
impact.

Gavalon let the beastmen who had felled the two men har-
vest the guns and ammunition they had carried. The weapons
were neither Imperium originals nor high-quality Kalazendran
imitations, but they would be a welcome addition to the fire-
power of his own army. Fulbra's battle-tanks were mostly crude
by comparison with their original models, their engines fuelled
by alcohols distilled from wood and their caterpillar tracks
compounded out of an unsavoury mixture ofYevelkanan rub-
ber and native plant-fibre, but armour was armour and their
advance would be inexorable if Gavalon's thrall-wizards could
not fortify their own exotic resources with the kind of brute
force that only heavy metal could deliver.

Gavalon signalled to the beastmen to spread out in both
directions, while he and his immediate companion moved
carefully forward, making full use of the abundant cover.

The next gunman to run into Gavalon was not quite so
panic-stricken, and he was alert to the possibility that there
would be enemies lurking in the outermost circle of the bushes
surrounding the pool. The Kalazendran had some kind of
light-gun, which made him at least doubly dangerous, but he
had already used it at least once, and his vision was still slightly
confused. The shot he fired would have been well-enough

112                      Brian Craig

aimed had it had an ordinary target, but Gavalon was a sor-
cerer, blessed with a deceptive presence. The hot beam was
close enough to singe his shoulder, but such little pains were
momentary spice to Gavalon and only served to sharpen the
sense of triumph he felt as he hurled himself forward to grap-
ple with the man.

The Kalazendran was tall and muscular, and might have put
up some sort of resistance even to a bull-shouldered beast-
man, but he had no chance at all against a sorcerer blessed
with as many mutations as Gavalon the Great. Gavalon
ripped the soldier's right arm clean out of its socket before
using his fingernails to slash the man's throat - a cutting blow
so effective that it shredded all the flesh in front of the back-
bone. Gavalon paused just long enough to pry the
convulsively-locked fingers of the dead arm away from the
handgrip of the exotic weapon before bringing his prize
around and charging forward.

The bushes surrounding him were already sputtering fitfully
and belching smoke, but Gavalon's new eye did not seem
prone to weeping. It stung as badly as ever but it gave him the
sight he needed to pick out enemies running this way and that.
He shot one, and watched in fascination as the soldier's uni-
form and flesh melted together as they burned. A second
returned fire, but he too was confused by Gavalon's deceptive
presence, and a beastman's blade made him pay for his confu-
sion. Gavalon shot a third himself, but he still had not caught
a glimpse of the Vessel.

The engines of at least three trucks were roaring now, and
their searchlights were probing in every direction. Gavalon
heard a frightful bellowing scream that had to be one of his
beastmen. He moved reflexively towards it, on the assumption
that it must have come from the place where the fight was
most fiercely-contested and the enemy most securely-
entrenched, but still he could not see the skinny naked form
of the nascent daemon.

The trucks were on the move now, seemingly headed in sev-
eral different directions. One was coming directly towards
him, and Cavalon poised his weapon, ready to fire. He was
confident that no single human could pose a mortal threat to
him, but a two-ton truck with a heavy gun mounted on its
back was a different matter. He could have moved sideways to

Pawns of Chaos                   113

take cover in a cluster of head-high flowering plants and let
the vehicle pass by, but that would have allowed the truck and
its personnel to get away, and at least two vehicles were
already in the process of doing that. So he stood firm and
took aim.

The truck's searchlight picked out the sorcerer almost imme-
diately. Had the vehicle not been heading straight for him
already its driver would presumably have altered course in
order to run him down. Fortunately, Gavalon's new eye was far
less sensitive to the harsh glare of the searchlight than the del-
icate tints of starlight and moonlight, and he could easily make
out the helmeted heads of the man swivelling the searchlight
and his companion stationed at the big gun.

Gavalon shot the gunman first, and then the searchlight
operator. He watched their heads explode with grim satisfac-
tion - and then turned his attention to the one with what was
now the most dangerous weapon of all at his disposal: the
truck-driver.

As the vehicle hurtled towards him, the intervening distance
vanishing yard by yard, Gavalon fired a third time.

Unfortunately, the plastic of which the windscreen was made
turned out to be somewhat resistant to the kind of fire the
light-weapon produced. It did not shatter and it did not melt -
not quickly enough, at any rate. Gavalon knew that the splash
of the discharge must have dazzled the driver, but the truck was
so close to its target that the driver's loss of sight was irrelevant.
Gavalon had only a split second to dive clear.

Had he been wearing his battle-armour he might not have
been able to do it, but the costume required by the ritual was
much lighter.

He threw himself sideways, and just managed to get his
boots out of the line followed by the off-side front wheel, thus
saving his feet from pulverization.

The truck careered on for forty or fifty yards, and for a
moment Gavalon thought that it would disappear into the
night and be lost - but then the brakes were applied and the
vehicle was thrown into a tight U-turn. The sorcerer realised
that the driver had no idea that the men on the back of the
truck had been killed; the man obviously thought that he was
still at the wheel of a powerful battle-wagon, a veritable cannon
on wheels.

114                        Brian Craig

Gavalon got up, but made no attempt to hide himself.
Instead, he backed up slowly, looking around himself all the
while for further signs of trouble. No one came at him, and
there were no more screams.

As soon as the truck was fully turned around, the driver hit
the accelerator hard. The engine screeched and the truck
lurched as its solid tyres bumped their way through a dense
thicket, but it hurtled forward nevertheless.

Gavalon knew that a second shot might well succeed where
the first had failed, the fabric of the windscreen having already
been weakened - but he also knew that it might not, and that
ammunition was precious. He kept the stolen gun in his left
hand, but his right reached down to pluck a dart from his belt.
He had not come fully-armed to the ritual, but he never went
anywhere without adequate defences, and the dart was charged
with a magical energy that would multiply its momentum a
hundredfold, if it were thrown with the proper skill.

He threw it, with the proper skill.

The dart smashed through the truck's windshield as if it were
made of spidersilk and vanished into the startled driver's open
mouth. He jerked back in his seat as the point of the dart sliced
between the base of the skull and the first cervical vertebrae
before embedding itself deeply in the steel wall of the back of
the cab - but the truck kept coming. The dead driver's hands
were still holding the wheel in place, and the truck was still
headed straight for the spot where Cavalon stood.

Gavalon cursed the necessity of diving sideways for a second
time, but he had no time to do anything but dive, so that was
what he did. This time, the tyre missed his booted foot by a
clear six inches.

The truck careered on into a huge stand of rushes, whose
brittle stalks crackled as they gave way to its mass - but they
could not slow it down sufficiently to stop it driving on into
the pool, where it arrived with an almighty splash.

The water thrown up by the impact was hurled in every direc-
tion, and Gavalon reflexively raised his arm to shield his eyes
from the fraction of the cascade that landed on him.

One last scream sounded then, but it was neither a human
scream nor the agonised howl of a bovine beastman. It was the
scream of some monstrous pool-dweller, deeply resentful of
the rude invasion of its normally-quiet home.

Pawns of Chaos                   115

After that, relative quiet resumed. The sound of the other
engines was already reduced by distance to a hum. If any of the
Kalazendran soldiers were still alive, they were not firing their
guns.

'Search the area,' Gavalon shouted, as the yak-head who had
not strayed far from his side helped him to his feet. 'Find any
fugitives and kill them - but above all else, find the Vessel.'

He did not doubt that the beastmen did their best to obey
the order, and he certainly played his own part in what became
a mopping-up operation, but by the time dawn came he knew
the awful truth.

Nimian's naked form was nowhere to be found, dead or alive.
He had come and gone. Unless the larval Sathorael had discov-
ered an altogether unexpected ability to fly - and to fly
unpractised and untrained - he must have been on one of the
trucks that had escaped the skirmish by driving off into the night.

Cavalon was certain that at least three trucks had gone, but
he could not be sure that only three had gone - and there was
no way to be sure which direction the one carrying Nimian had
taken. How could he possibly return to his gathering army with
the news that he had lost the ally who was supposed to provide
their most powerful antidote to Imperial firepower? What were
a few captured guns by comparison with a lost daemon? How
would the daemon-to-be fare without the guiding voice and
wisdom of Gavalon the Great?

The yak-head uttered a grunt of solicitous concern.

'I'm all right,' Cavalon assured the creature. 'In fact, so far as
I know, everything is all right.' He tried to reassure himself with
a few further thoughts in the same vein. What need had a dae-
mon of human guidance, when it had the grace and favour of
the great god? The plan was not his, strictly speaking, but the
Divine Schemer's - and who was he to judge that it had gone
awry? Perhaps it was proceeding perfectly. Perhaps there was
no perhaps about it. How could the gods be subject to the
whims of chance?

He was not convinced. The daemon-to-be might not need
him, but he certainly needed the daemon-to-be. The daemon-
to-be might not need to receive his guidance, but he certainly
needed to give it.

The yak-head grunted again, and three other beastmen
joined in the chorus.

116                        Brian Craig

The beastmen seemed happy enough with the pile of guns
they had gathered from the corpses of the Kalazendrans - as
well they might, given that there were more than enough for
them to take one each, and that their own casualties amounted
to no more than two walking wounded.

If I knew how to control one of these abandoned vehicles,
Gavalon thought, looking at the three trucks that remained and
were seemingly still usable, I might return to my army in such
style that they would applaud my triumph.

What he eventually said out loud was: *We need more than
the guns and ammunition. We need all the supplies they were
carrying. What we cannot carry ourselves we'll gather into a
cache, and send a detachment of pack-horses out to collect it.
When you have done that you can sleep for an hour, perhaps
two if you're quick. We cannot spare any more time than that.
The enemy is moving fast, hoping to get at us before we're
ready. We have to move fast too.'

The beastmen's nods and grunts of agreement were over-
enthusiastic, as was invariably the case when he told them
things they were too stupid to understand fully.

Once the beastmen had returned to work, though, Cavalon
could not help reverting to his original train of thought. If the
gods were not subject to the whims of chance, he thought, then
the world would surely be a much more predictable place than it
was. A good deal of its disturbance might be due to the conflicts
of the gods, but the unpredictability of circumstance was no mere
matter of opposed and contending wills. As a sorcerer, with a sor-
cerer's powers of foresight, he knew better than any mere dullard
how wayward the ways of chance really were, and how vulnera-
ble even daemons might be to freaks of circumstance.

As a man who aspired to become a daemon himself, if he
could only serve his god bravely and cleverly enough, Gavalon
was desperately well aware of how little he knew about the
ways and powers of daemons, but one thing he did know was
that they could only enjoy worldly existence for a brief time
before returning to whatever dimension it was that they were
entitled to call home.

As Sathorael grew into his heritage he - or should that be 'it'?
- might acquire the power to blast continents, or to put out the
sun, but he, or it, would not have that power long, and its use
would hasten the moment of the daemon's departure.

Pawns of Chaos                  117

Without Cavalon the Great to guide him - or it - how could
the daemon possibly know and understand how best to deploy
that awesome power in the interests of Gulzacandra?

Without Gavalon the Great's guidance, was there not a pos-
sibility that the daemon might deploy that power in such a way
as to contrive the ruination of Gulzacandra as well as the petty
Imperium that had been established in Kalazendra since the
fall from the sky?

Cavalon put up a hand to cover his aching eye, protecting its
tenderness from the hot light of the risen sun.

The sight of the palm of his hand seemed strangely comfort-
ing, that being one of the few areas of his outer flesh that had
not changed appreciably since his apprentice days. The fingers
were longer and thicker, their nails much more claw-like, but
ihe palm was still engraved with the same pattern of criss-
crossed lines: the pattern in which his destiny was written, if
only he could master the art of reading it.

Alas, for all its marvellous powers of sight, his new eye did
not come with any enhanced ability to read.

Even Cavalon the Great, the most powerful sorcerer to walk
the surface of Sigmatus for a thousand generations, could not
read the finer details of the promises inscribed by his parent
god in the frail fabric of his own flesh.

Know thyself was, alas, far from being the easiest of the sor-
cerous commandments to keep, even in respect of those
aspects of the self that were not subject to continued evolution
or arbitrary alteration.

'But we will win,' Gavalon muttered, too softly for the yak-
head to hear. 'We must.'

^

ELEVEN

DATHAN WOKE IIP with a start as the truck lurched to a stop. The
engine sputtered and died. He realised, somewhat to his sur-
prise, that the sun was now high above the horizon, only a
little to the left of the truck's heading. Several hours must
have passed, although it did not seem to him that he had
slept for more than a few minutes.

Hycilla raised her head too, and turned to peer at him. Her
eyes had lost their scary quality, and he knew that she was no
longer entranced. She seemed far more surprised than he was
by their circumstances. Whatever memory she had of having
driven the truck had obviously faded into that oblivion to
which dream-memories were usually consigned, and she
seemed quite nonplussed by the presence of the boy with the
tufted ears, who was just beginning to wake up in his turn.

'Where are we?' she asked.

'I haven't the slightest idea,' Dathan told her. 'A long way
west of the pool, and some way to the south. I have no idea
which way Elvenor might lie. We're in the middle of
nowhere.'

Hycilla turned to look out of her side window then, but she
couldn't see far. The truck was in a forest of sorts, although its

119

120                      Brian Craig

'trees' looked like huge red-and-black corn cobs sheathed in
pale yellow leaves with silver spikes. The undergrowth on
both sides was fairly dense, but the truck had been following
a road of sorts - or perhaps an animal trail, if there were ani-
mals hereabouts as big as loxodonts.

Hycilla turned back. 'Who's he?' she said, meaning the boy
who was rubbing the sleep from his eyes. Those eyes had been
even scarier than Hycilla's when he had first leapt aboard, but
they looked merely human now. Even the ears did not seem
as remarkable as they had before, and the dirt-stained body
seemed even skinnier. Dathan wondered whether the pattern
he had seen on the naked body when the boy leapt aboard
had been merely a trick of the confused light.

'I suppose he must have been hiding in the scrub around
the pool, just as we were. When the soldiers were attacked and
everything started burning he must have panicked. Maybe he
was close enough to see us being captured and knew that we
were friendly.' It wasn't until he'd said all this that Dathan
realised that there might be an easy way to get a more accu-
rate answer. 'Who are you?' he said to the boy.

'You and you,' said the boy, seemingly quite mystified by his
own existence and capacity for speech.

'Where do you come from?' Dathan asked, still hopeful of
finding a question that might elicit a comprehensible answer.

'Hungry,' said the boy, as if making a vital discovery.

'Yes,' said Dathan. 'So am I. But what's your name?'

'Nimian,' the boy replied, as he wrestled with the door-
catch. As soon as he had the door open he dropped to the
ground and scuttled into the undergrowth. He was lost to
sight almost immediately.

'I think his name's Nimian,' Dathan said to Hycilla,
although he knew that she must have heard the terse word as
clearly as he had.

Hycilla opened her own door and stepped down gingerly.
Then she went towards the back of the truck. Dathan got
down on the other side and moved around to join her at the
rear.

There was a dead soldier on the back of the truck, laid out
in a supine position between the gun-mount and the side-
wall. It wasn't immediately obvious how he had died. There
were no gaping holes in his uniform and there seemed to

Pawns of Chaos                  121

have been no conspicuous spillage of blood, except for two
trickles that extended from his closed eyes like tear-tracks. He
did stink, though, and not merely of shit. It was as if putre-
faction had already set in deep within his flesh. When Dathan
had clambered up on to the back of the truck he pushed back
one of the dead man's eyelids, but when he saw the ruin
beneath he shuddered and snatched his hand away.

'Magic,' he said, tersely. Then he remembered that Nimian
must be a wise-dreamer, at least, and perhaps a sorcerer. He
wondered, for the first time, whether the boy could have had
anything to do with the attack on the Imperial soldiers, If so,
he had saved Dathan's and Hycilla's lives before they had
saved his - if they had saved his.

'Never mind him,' Hycilla said. What's in the boxes and
canisters?'

Dathan looked over the cargo that had been stowed in front
of the gun-mount. 'Lots of water,' he said. 'Some food, and
what looks like ammunition. No guns, though, except for this
monster. If the truck stopped because it ran out of fuel, we
certainly can't take that with us... and I wouldn't know fuel
for what it was even if I saw some. Where has the boy gone?
Didn't he say he was hungry?'

Nimian reappeared then, as if on cue. He was carrying a two
foot-long lizard in one hand and something that Dathan
couldn't put a name to in the other. While the boy lifted his
right hand high above his head so as to dangle the head of the
living lizard into his mouth, and then swallow it whole, inch
by wriggling inch, Dathan had time enough to study the sec-
ond creature more carefully.

It looked like a grotesquely over-inflated woodlouse with
homs and a spiky tail. Dathan couldn't imagine that it was edi-
ble, whether it was poisonous or not - but when the lizard was
safely packed into his gullet Nimian proceeded to stuff the crea-
ture into his mouth, exoskeleton and all. This time, he
condescended to do a certain amount of biting and chewing -
both of which were noisy processes - but the final effect was the
same. The monstrous arthropod was completely consumed.

'Ah,' said Nimian, with what seemed to Dathan to be a par-
ody of satisfaction.

There's some real food here/ Dathan said, numbly. He had
found biscuits, compressed fruit and corned beef.

122                      Brian Craig

Nimian's refusal to take his pick of the treats on offer
seemed disdainful. Instead, he grabbed the dead man by the
boots and hauled him off the back of the lorry. He quickly
stripped the man of his uniform and boots.

For one horrid moment, Dathan thought that the boy was
going to start feeding the soldier's limbs into his unnatu-
rally capacious maw - but it was the clothes he wanted, for
now. By the time he had put them on they weren't quite as
ill-fitting as Dathan had expected; Nimian seemed to have
grown taller and wider since he had first jumped into the
truck.

Hycilla had opened one of the water-canisters and had
taken a drink before passing it to Dathan. When Dathan had
quenched his own thirst he passed it on to Nimian, half-
expecting the offer to be refused - but Nimian drank from it
with astonishing avidity, consuming at least half a gallon in
no more than half a minute.

When he put the canister down, the improbable boy said
'Still hungry' and promptly disappeared into the undergrowth
again.

'What is he?' Dathan asked Hycilla.

Hycilla did not question Dathan's use of 'what' instead of
'who'. She was as apprehensive as he was. She would proba-
bly have been terrified - as Dathan would have been - had
they not endured so much horror already that she had lost the
capacity for further excitement.

'I don't know,' she said.

'A mutant?' Dathan prompted. 'I've heard people say...' He
trailed off. Where the secret matters of the covens were con-
cerned, he had only heard people say things that he wasn't
supposed to hear. He was a man now, but he had been a boy
all his life, shielded and excluded from all adult affairs.

Hycilla, who had hardly begun her preparation for educa-
tion as a wise-dreamer, seemed to know only a little more. 'I
don't think he's an ordinary freak,' she said. 'Something else.
Something more. Did I really drive the truck for half the night
and nearly half a day? I can't imagine how.'

'You were at the wheel,' Dathan said, choosing his words
very carefully. 'Maybe he knows who was really driving. I wish
I'd got to those good boots before he did - but I suppose I'd
have had to hand them over. Whatever kind of something else

Pawns of Chaos                  123

he is, he isn't the kind of something else that people like us
can say no to. How much danger are we in, do you think?'

'Not as much as we were in when the soldiers had us, 1 sup-
pose,' Hycilla said, uncertainly. They'd have shot you within
another couple of minutes - and they'd have shot me too,
after another couple of hours, or however long it took.'

'But he is dangerous.'

'I think he is,' Hycilla said, pensively. 'Whatever he is, he's
definitely dangerous. But he's on our side, isn't he? His ene-
mies are our enemies, which must make him our friend -
and us his. We ought to get some food for ourselves while we
can.'

Dathan knew that Hycilla was right, probably about every-
thing. He wished that he were able to think clearly, but the
overload that had obliterated his capacity for fear and horror
seemed to have slowed him down in every respect. He ate
mechanically, unable to taste the food and seemingly unable
to do anything but move his hands mechanically back and
forth from his mouth. Whatever danger Nimian posed was
simply set aside; Dathan was unable to contemplate it, let
alone to reason it out any further than he already had.

Dathan and Hycilla had finished their meal by the time
Nimian appeared again, and this time he didn't bring his
meal with him. Either he had figured out that his eating-
habits were so disconcerting to others that they were best
indulged in private or he had been too hungry to delay his
satisfaction.

The stolen uniform appeared to be even better-fitting now
that it had when he had disappeared. If the boy really had
grown into it, Dathan thought dully, he had done so with
astonishing alacrity. Nimian's eyes and ears seemed more dis-
tinctly unhuman now, and there was hair on the back of his
hands that had not been there before. His teeth were notice-
ably sharper, and there seemed to be ridges growing on his
skull, their tips already showing through his silky hair.

'Can you understand me, Nimian?' Hycilla said. She had
obviously recovered more fully than Dathan.

The boy didn't answer, but he swivelled his incredibly black
eyes to fix his gaze upon her.

'I'm Hycilla and this is Dathan,' she told him. 'We ran away
from our village when it was attacked. We ran away again

124                      Brian Craig

from the pool - but we have no idea where to run to. We're
lost, and alone. We need help.'

The boy listened to all of this, and then seemed to set about
thinking it over - but it appeared that the effort was a trifle
painful, because he raised his hands to his forehead, closing
his eyes momentarily.

'You and you,' he said. 'Us now. All together. Grow together.
Burn together.'

Hycilla pondered these remarks for a moment or two, then
shrugged her shoulders, admitting defeat. She turned back to
Dathan. 'This is a road of sons,' she said, kneeling down to
inspect the surface. 'I can feel the ruts of cart-wheels. It's not
well-used, but it is a road - which means that it must lead
somewhere, probably to Elvenor or Mancip. Maybe all we
have to do is follow it, until we come to a town - or, at least,
a village or a farmhouse.'

Dathan looked at the giant parodies of corn-cobs that were
growing beside the roadside, and wondered briefly whether
they could possibly be a crop of some kind. He decided that
it was highly unlikely. They were native, of little nutritional
value if not actually poisonous. The tales told to the village
children sometimes referred to 'nightshade forests' as places
of even more extreme danger than the 'gardens of god', but he
had never managed to obtain a clear notion of what a night-
shade forest might look like. Maybe, he thought, this was one.

Or maybe not.

'Walk,' said Nimian, suddenly, having apparently com-
pleted his cogitations. 'Battle to fight. Stars stand still. Then...
whoosh.' His voice trailed off, uncertainly.

'Whoosh,' Dathan echoed, looking to Hycilla for guidance.

"There's a battle to fight, and then the stars will stand still,'
Hycilla said, trying hard to import the proper sense into
Nimian's clipped utterances. That's bad, I think, if I've got it
right.'

'Bad,' Dathan repeated, thinking that it sounded all too
plausible.

There was something in a dream I had,' Hycilla went on,
'something Pater Saltana said... if the stars stand still, more
enemies might pour out of the sky. They'd annihilate us, and
there'd be nothing Gavalon and the other coven-masters
could do to save us.'

Pawns of Chaos                   125

Nimian seemed to have become confused again as he tried
to follow this speech, but his expression cleared as he caught
one word that was evidently far more meaningful to him than
the rest.

'Cavalon/ he repeated, nodding his head urgently. 'Lost
Gavalon. Too hungry, too angry, too fast. Lost Gavalon. Bring
him. Touch him. Do his part.'

'If he knows Gavalon,' Dathan concluded, uncertainly, 'he
must be from Gavalon's army.'

'I don't know,' said Hycilla, even more uncertainly. 'If that's
so, maybe we ought to help him get back to it. But we don't
know where Gavalon is.'

Dathan felt slightly better now that he had food in his
stomach - but feeling slightly better only paved the way for
feeling much worse, as he found the ability to be afraid again.
lie hopped back on to the rear of the truck, intent on rooting
around to see what he might be able to carry away. 'We have
to go,' he said. 'One way or another, we have to go. Why did
the Imperium have to come to Gulzacandra, to destroy every-
thing we had and everything we were? What did we ever do to
them?'

'I don't know,' was the only reply Hycilla could offer.

Nimian was still listening, apparently trying to digest what
was being said. He seemed to be making progress intellectu-
ally as well as physically. 'Imperium,' he said, seizing for a
second time upon a word that had ready-made significance
for him. 'Men at war with themselves, at war with everyone
else. No peace. Never can be. Always war. Always game.'

'It's not a game, Nimian,' Dathan assured the boy - whose
neatly-fitted Imperial uniform now seemed almost as discon-
certing as the traces of unhumanity that had appeared in his
face. 'It's real. People are being killed.'

Nimian smiled then. It was the first time Dathan had seen
him smile, and he got the odd impression that it might have
been the first time the boy had ever smiled.

'Everything dies,' the boy said, as if he were imparting a pre-
cious hidden truth. 'Only matters how.'

"That's not true,' Hycilla put in, as she too set about making
up a pack to carry. 'Everybody dies, but it matters when as
well as how - and what matters even more is what the dead
can leave behind. Knowledge, tradition, discipline. Everybody

126                      Brian Craig

dies, but villages outlive individuals, and civilization can con-
tinue forever.'

Hycilla was parroting Pater Saltana's teachings, but her
voice was beginning to take on that peculiar extra timbre;

Dathan deduced that she too was beginning to feel better -
but that she was no longer the kind of person who could feel
better in the perfectly ordinary way that he could.

Dathan had felt comfortable in Hycilla's company for so
long that it seemed utterly preposterous that she should now
appear alien - but that was the truth of the matter.

'Only darkness is forever,' was Nimian's reply to what
Hycilla had said. 'Men die, villages die, civilizations die,
empires die, universes die. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Ashes
of stars, dust of stars. All darkness in the end - but while we
burn, we must burn. Will see. Will all see. You and you
and...'

Nimian's eyes seemed to flare up from within while he
delivered this speech, but the light died away in the void as
confusion reasserted its hold on his head and his heart.
'Hungry,' he muttered, after a pause. 'Need food.' But this time
he did not dive into the undergrowth in search of hideous
prey.

'I think this is all I can carry,' Hycilla said to Dathan, show-
ing him the pack she had made up. There was enough food
and water to see them through several days - twice as many
when the resources of Dathan's own self-selected burden were
added in. Had there been a manageable gun, Dathan would
certainly have taken it, and plenty of ammunition, but the
dead man hadn't been wearing a sidearm.

'It's enough,' Dathan said. 'Let's go.'

Nimian hadn't prepared a pack of his own, and showed no
inclination to help Hycilla or Dathan with theirs, but nobody
offered any objection to his travelling light. The three of them
set off along the road, and the truck was soon lost to sight
behind them.

The forest wasn't extensive - not, at least, in the direction
they were heading. They had only gone a few hundred paces
when the cob-like plants gave way to a more varied vegeta-
tion: grassland much like the one which they had trekked
across the previous day, interrupted by clumps of spiry silver-
leaved trees.

Pawns of Chaos                   127

It was beautiful, in a way, but Dathan was not in a mood to
appreciate its beauty. The imaginary thread around his heart
seemed to be tightening its grip upon him. He could not find
words to describe how he felt. Like a prisoner within his own
body? Not quite. As if his flesh were no longer entirely his?
Almost. Odd, at any rate. Very, very odd.

A family of mowas sprinted away across the grassy plain as
the three travelling companions emerged into plain view.
They looked like eight-foot chickens but their gait was
remarkably steady and very speedy. Further away, Dathan saw
a herd of ghazals. They were too far from the track to feel
threatened by human presence, and they continued grazing.

There was no immediate sign of cultivation or of any
human dwelling, but Hycilla pointed to a thin spiral of
smoke on the horizon. 'Maybe a house-fire,' she said.

'If so, we should see the chimney soon enough,' Dathan
said.

There can't be enemies ahead of us/ Hycilla said, uncer-
tainly. 'The trucks were the spearhead - and now that's been
broken off, they won't be so keen to get ahead of themselves
again.'

'If it's the remains of a beacon-fire,' Dathan said, hopefully,
'maybe we can get the keepers to rebuild it, and send a signal
to G aval on's army.'

'Gavalon probably has better means of finding us than we
have of finding him,' Hycilla told him. 'He has wise-dreamers
and thrall-wizards, and divination spells. Reaching us might
be difficult - but the army must have fast horses, and maybe
other runners even faster.'

Dathan didn't want to question her as to the nature of
those other runners.

'Hungry,' said Nimian, yet again. 'Need food.' This time he
did make a detour, although he came back quickly enough,
with what appeared to be the tail of a fast snake still dangling
from his lips.

'So hungry,' Nimian reported to his companions, in a semi-
apologetic manner. He seemed to have grown another two
inches taller. It was no longer possible for Dathan to think of
him as a boy. He had started out shorter and slimmer than
Hycilla but he was considerably bigger than both of them
now.

128                        Brian Craig

'That's all right,' Dathan said. 'Just keep right on eating.' To
Hycilla, he whispered: 'All that stuff we were taught about
native produce filling you up but not doing you any good
doesn't seem to apply to him. He's thriving on those hor-
rors.'

While Dathan was speaking, Nimian drifted off again, pre-
sumably in search of yet more food.

'So I see,' Hycilla agreed. 'But the native predators don't
bother with scales and bones and armour-plate. Whatever he
is...' She stopped abruptly, as if she had suddenly realised
what he might be.

'Go on,' Dathan prompted.

Hycilla didn't take up the thread of the sentence, and
Dathan had no way of guessing what she might have been
thinking. He had to provide his own continuation.

Whatever he is, Dathan thought, perhaps we ought to be
grateful that he's on our side. The thought was less comfort-
ing than he had hoped. After a moment's pause, he asked
Hycilla another question. 'How big is he going to get, do you
think, if he keeps on eating?'

Very big indeed,' Hycilla replied, fearfully. 'And he might
change in other ways too. If he's just a kind of grub, imagine
what the fly might look like when it finally hatches out.'

It seemed to Dathan to be a peculiar comparison to make,
but Hycilla was a wise-dreamer, a lot better at sensing possi-
bilities and jumping to conclusions than common folk like
him. Even the commonest folk could sometimes see strange
possibilities, though, and even the commonest folk could
sometimes jump to ominous conclusions.

'He's something really horrible, isn't he?' Dathan said, anx-
iously. 'Something out of the kind of tale that children aren't
supposed to hear.'

Dathan had already begun to wonder whether the tales he
had contrived to hear while he was everybody's helper and
nobody's apprentice might only be a tiny fraction of the tales
that adults kept to themselves. What horrors might there be
in the world that had been successfully hidden from him?

That made him think of his mother, and everything she had
tried so hard to hide from him in order to protect his
innocence - and for the first time, the fact that his mother was
probably dead stood starkly clear in the forefront of his

Pawns of Chaos                   129

Consciousness. Now he was able to be afraid again, and terror
struck at his heart like an icy spear.

'Not yet,' Hycilla replied to his question, stressing the yet
ever so slightly. She seemed utterly oblivious to his reborn ter-
ror. 'But if he means what he says about having to burn while
he can, we might have to be very careful indeed not to be
caught in the flames.'

^

TWELVE

THE ASSASSIN CAME out of nowhere. Ragan Balberith was
descending the staircase towards the foyer of the headquarters
of the Adeptus Terra ofSigmatus - in what was supposed to be
a completely safe environment - when the aborigine suddenly
appeared at the foot of the stairs and started shooting.

Perhaps he would have succeeded had he not started shoot-
ing quite so soon, before taking proper aim, but it seemed
likely that he had not had adequate opportunity to practise
using the weapon. It was not so very uncommon in Kalazendra
for aborigines to possess and use stolen guns, but they lacked
training opportunities.

Even so, the assassin got off four shots before one of
Balberith's bodyguards put him down, and one of those shots
lodged in the thigh of the second bodyguard, who had been
quick to do his duty by serving as a human shield to the Chief
Inquisitor.

Balberith's first thought, as he watched the gunman collapse,
was that it was as well that what passed for the Adeptus Terra
on Sigmatus had contrived to maintain a proper measure of
loyalty and discipline. Had his bodyguards been less than fully

131

132                      Brian Craig

committed to his protection, one of them would surely have
been bribed by now to do Orloc Melcarth's dirty work. As
things were, Melcarth had to rely on aboriginal petty criminals
to serve as triggermen, and kitchen staff or cleaners to get them
into a shooting position.

There would have to be an investigation, however time-con-
suming it might be. The rat within the walls had to be
identified and annihilated - after proper interrogation, of
course. Melcarth was too careful to leave a trail that might lead
back to him, but an example had to be set. There was, of
course, a possibility that the assassin hadn't been sent by
Melcarth, and that he really was a local anarchist with a grudge
against everything Imperial, but Balberith had always found it
politic to assume the worst until he was presented with proof
to the contrary.

While servants hurried to help the wounded man and sum-
mon a doctor, the bodyguard who had shot the would-be
assassin knelt beside the dying man, demanding to know who
had sent him. Having checked that the bullet-wound in his
protector's thigh was unlikely to be fatal, Balberith followed
the other man down the stairs. He knew that it would be futile
to question the gunman. Even if the failed assassin had breath
enough to answer - which was unlikely, given the size of the
hole in his chest - he would waste it in a brief exhalation of
spite. In all probability, the man wouldn't have the slightest
idea that he was Melcarth cat's-paw even if that was the truth of
the matter. He probably thought that he was a good servant of
the Revolution, working for the destruction of the Imperium,
and he might be right.

Even Balberith had only the vaguest idea how many of the
supposed Revolutionaries were really spies, because he could
only make an educated guess as to what proportion of the infil-
trators were Melcarth's rather than his. He did know, though,
that the whole movement could be tidied up in a matter of
days if it were ever in the interests of the Imperial community
to do so. One of the few points of strategy on which he and the
governor were wholly agreed, however, was that a carefully-
managed and subtly-manipulated opposition was a far more
useful political tool than a much smaller organization that
really did operate in secret.

'He's dead,' the bodyguard reported. 'Never said a word.'

Pawns of Chaos                   133

'Anything on him?' Balberith asked, as the bodyguard began
to search the dead man's pockets. He was certain that the
answer would be negative, and so it was.

'Word of Ajao's breakthrough must have leaked out,' the
bodyguard opined. They know that if we can establish contact
with the Fleet, everything will change.' He carefully didn't spec-
ify who 'they' might be. 'Shall I double the guard in the psykers'
quarters?'

'If you can be absolutely certain of the new men,' Balberith
said. 'And I mean absolutely certain. Even the strongest minds
are apt to become agitated down there - it's a duty that requires
exceedingly strong nerves.'

'No problem. I'll get the best possible replacement for poor
Makri, too. Do you want to wait until he gets here?'

'No. I've got to see Melcarth now.' Balberith stood up as he
spoke and moved towards the door, where his car was waiting.

'Is that wise?'

'It's necessary. Anyway, the so-called palace is just about the
safest place in Kalazendra - he couldn't afford to have anything
happen to me there. He thinks he has enough support to make
himself ruler of the world, but he knows how fragile some of
that support is. He can't afford to let the rumour get around
that he cares far more for his own personal glory than the safety
of the Imperial community.'

'It's getting around anyway,' the bodyguard said, as he held
the car door open for the Chief Inquisitor, looking round all
the while for further dangers - of which there were none.

That's a pity,' Balberith said, as the bodyguard took his own
seat and closed the door so that the driver could get under way,
'because I'm not sure that we can afford a split in the ranks at
this point in time, any more than he can. If we can't re-estab-
lish contact with the Imperium we need to win this war in
Gulzacandra - and if we can, we need to be able to persuade
the real tech-priests and inquisitors that we're worth saving.
What we need is to rein Melcarth in and make him see sense.'

'No reprisals, then?' the bodyguard said.

We don't even know for sure that it's him,' Balberith said,
tiredly. 'It's not as if we're short of enemies, is it? The aborigines
hate us more than they hate the governor's guardsmen and the
army, because we're the ones trying to exterminate their foul
religion. They don't understand the kind of war we're fighting.'

134                      Brian Craig

It was only a short ride to the governor's palace. It would
have been easily walkable, but custom dictated that the Masters
of the Imperium didn't walk. They were the True Men, citizens
of the galaxy still, despite the fact that they had been out of
touch for seven generations. Walking was for aborigines.

As the elevator rose to the floor where Melcarth's offices
were, Balberith hoped that he wouldn't have to go out on that
damned balcony again. He didn't like Melcarth playing with
him, or even knowing that he was vulnerable to being played
with. One day, he thought, Melcarth would lean out just a lit-
tle too far and lose his footing - but not, of course, while the
Chief Inquisitor was standing next to him, or even in the
building. Now was not the right time - but times changed,
sometimes rapidly, and if Deir Ajao was right they might be
about to change very dramatically for the better. Within a
week, if only the warpstorm would condescend to become
dormant for long enough, Sigmatus might have a real
Planetary Governor - and the importance of its Chief
Inquisitor's loyalty and determination would receive due
recognition at long last.

Orloc Melcarth was not on his balcony. He was at his desk,
entertaining other guests: three of the army's senior officers,
and a vox-caster operator who must have delivered fresh news
from the front. The expressions on their faces told Balberith
that the news was not good.

What went wrong?' he asked.

'Operation Probe,' replied Major-General Vorch, succinctly.

That brought a frown to Balberith's face. Operation Probe
had not been his idea, but its presumed necessity had been
based on intelligence provided by his psykers. The vision in
question had been unfortunately vague, but it had seemed ade-
quate to establish the tactical importance of a certain hill west
ofOdienne. The decision to take Odienne and hold it as a sup-
ply depot had been taken independently, but once that was in
Fulbra's plan, the desirability of occupying the allegedly-signif-
icant position without delay had seemed clear.

The cultists must have occupied the rock already,' Colonel
Balila put in. 'Fulbra's men must have ridden straight into an
ambush.' There was more than a hint of accusation in his tone.
Military men, who had no understanding of the problems of
dealing with psykers, could never quite come to terms with the

Pawns of Chaos                   135

limitations of the intelligence Balberith and his fellows were
able to gather. Having been warned that the rock might be
important, Fulbra's men should have been alert to the possi-
bility of an ambush.

What were they ambushed with?' Balberith asked, combat-
ively. 'Field artillery? Assault rifles?'

"We don't know/ Vorch admitted. There don't seem to have
been any survivors to report back. Something nasty. Something
horrible.' He meant magic, but he couldn't even bring himself
to pronounce the word.

'If there was no one to report back,' Balberith said, faking a
contempt that he was not quite able to feel, 'we have no reason
to assume that it was anything out of the ordinary, do we?'

'It must have been,' Vorch retorted, sombrely. They were
good men - travelling light, but well enough armed against any
foreseeable contingency.'

'Even if it were something horrible,' Balberith said, 'its use
will cost the enemy dear. This might be a setback, but we have
to press on regardless. It's the fact that we're fighting to destroy
something horrible that makes it absolutely necessary to fight
this war - and win it. We have to send the aircraft now, so that
Fulbra can make use of it.'

The Chief Inquisitor is right about this being a setback,'
Orloc Melcarth put in, swiftly, 'but it's not serious. We've lost a
handful of trucks and thirty men - but we can take it on trust
that they didn't die easily. They must have inflicted some dam-
age on the enemy. It leaves the position at Odienne weaker
than we could have wished, but it would have been weak any-
way, given that the locals managed to poison the well. The
incursions to the north and south have proceeded much more
smoothly - our casualties are insignificant, while the enemy
has already lost thousands.'

Thousands of ill-armed peasants, Balberith thought. The first
real battle has yet to be fought. 'But General Fulbra is still ask-
ing for air support, isn't he?' he said, doggedly. The refuelling
points are all in place. We should dispatch it without delay.'

Melcarth casually ignored the statement, as if it had been a
mere suggestion of no importance. What news do you have,
Chief Inquisitor?' he asked instead, looking Balberith straight
in the eye. If he knew that there had been an attempt on
Balberith's life he gave no sign of it.

136                      Brian Craig

'Ships of the Imperial Fleet are definitely nearby/ Balberith
said, boldly. They are certainly aware of the situation on
Sigmatus. If the abatement of the warpstorm continues...'

'Are you telling us that you've actually got a message through
to the Fleet?' Melcarth wanted to know. 'Have you begun a dia-
logue?'

'Not exactly,' Balberith had to admit. 'What we seem to have
contrived is to eavesdrop on a few relevant exchanges within
the Fleet's internal communications. We're trying to establish a
telepathic link, but the warpstorm...'

'Is still a barrier, and might become impenetrable again at
any minute,' Melcarth finished for him. 'WC can't afford to wait,
Chief Inquisitor. We have to press on with our own plans.
We've been isolated for two hundred years, and we can't pin all
our hopes on the possibility that the isolation might soon end.'

You certainly can't, Balberith said to himself, silently, but I'm
not sure that I have any alternative. Aloud, he said: We can't
ignore the possibility either. If the warpstorm does remain
quiet, the Fleet's commanders will have to decide whether it's
worth their while trying to help us. It would be a risk, because
they wouldn't know how soon warpstorm activity will increase
again, or how violent it might become. If they think we're
beyond help, or undeserving of it, they might decide that the
safest course of action is Exterminatus.'

'I can't believe that,' said the major-general, bluntly.
Balberith realised that it was perfectly true. Vorch was literally
unable to believe that the Imperium - the real Imperium, of
which this one was but a feeble and distorted echo - was in the
business of obliterating whole ecospheres, making no discrim-
ination at all between Chaos worshippers and those who
opposed them.

To men like Vorch, the Imperium of Mankind was a distant
memory, preserved in a set of stories handed down from his
great-great-great-great grandparents, more speculation than
history. Vorch thought of himself and men like him - in which
category Vorch presumably included lerius Fulbra and Orloc
Melcarth - as the Imperium, and took it for granted that his
own notions of authority and strategy were universal. The inner
core of the organization that was still proud to own such
names as the Inquisition and the Adeptus Terra was the only
place on Sigmatus where accurate knowledge and true faith

Pawns of Chaos                  137

still survived. Alas, the twisted mind of Oiloc Melcarth, who
would prefer that contact with the real Imperium was never
resumed, was not so very remarkable in a community which
had strayed so far from the path of righteousness.

'Our task,' Melcarth said, smoothly, 'is to oppose the forces
of the enemy with all our might. To do that, we must win this
war, swiftly and completely. I don't suppose, by any chance,
that you have any more information to offer about this myste-
rious rock in the wilderness? Our men are dying out there.'

The last thing Balberith wanted was to make Melcarth's sup-
port any less fragile than it was. 'I'll do what I can to obtain
further intelligence,' he promised, 'but the tech-priests and
inquisitors accompanying General Fulbra may be better placed
to do that, especially if they can capture a few of what the abo-
rigines call wise-dreamers. If you were to send the aircraft...'

'If Operation Probe hadn't gone so badly awry,' Vorch said, in
a vexed tone - doing Melcarth a service whether he knew it or
not - 'we might have been better placed to capture a wise-
dreamer or two without exposing our men to undue risks.'

'Nobody expected this campaign to be a walk-over,' Balberith
pointed out. 'However inflated the reputation of this Gavalon
the Great might be, he's as powerful as he is vile. We, who are
pious and virtuous men, can have little or no idea of what hor-
rors he might be able to unleash - but we are the Emperor's
men, no matter that we have been cast away on this pustulent
planet, and we have right on our side. We were always going to
take losses in this campaign, and we always knew that those
losses might be heavy - that's why we waited until our forces
were strong enough to be irresistible. My people will do their
utmost to help with the primary assault - but their real work
will begin afterwards, when we have to root out every remnant
of Chaos-worship throughout the continent. That will be a
long and uphill struggle, unless we can obtain reinforcements
from the Imperium.

'If we can get those reinforcements soon enough, we might
be able to cut General Fulbra's antidpated losses drastically.
That's what we all want, isn't it? More than anything else, we
want to save the lives of our soldiers, and make the work of our
priests that much easier - which is why I have to continue try-
ing to make contact with the Fleet, and why every small success
in bringing that end closer is worthy of celebration, and why

138                        Brian Craig

we really ought to send the aircraft to Gulzacandra without fur-
ther delay.'

Balila was already nodding agreement to the main points of
this speech, and Vorch's expression had softened considerably.
Even Orloc Melcarth had to make a show of approval, no mat-
ter how determined he was not to take up the final suggestion.
Balberith had begun to understand that Melcarth wanted the
aircraft for himself - and that made him determined to make
sure, one way or another, that he didn't get it.

'You're right, of course, Ragan,' the governor said. 'But let's
not put all our eggs in one basket, shall we? General Fulbra
will do everything he can to figure out why Operation Probe
went wrong, and what the implications are for the next phase
of the battle. We do need to know what the enemy has in store
for us, and your people represent our best hope of finding out.
It's not as if Gulzacandra is like Kalazendra, with a spy on
every street of every town - and if the reports from Odienne
are anything to go by, even our best interrogators will find it
hard going extracting useful information from the local peas-
ants, whose stupidity is only exceeded by their stubbornness.
We're relying on the Adeptus Terra, Ragan. We need you now
more than ever before.'

Melcarth's insincerity was palpable. It was easy enough for
Balberith to imagine the governor adding, for his own ears
alone: and once we're through with this campaign, we'll never need
you again. He knew, though, that the Imperium would need
him again. If Chaos were to be annihilated rather than sub-
jected to a merely temporary defeat, the rulers of Sigmatus
would need to maintain the strength of its remnant of the
Adeptus Terra, and its strength of purpose too. And what the
local relic of the real Adeptus Terra needed more than any-
thing else was a healthy injection of new strength and new
purpose from the real Adeptus Terra, the backbone of the
Imperium of Mankind.

It would be foolish, Balberith thought, even to try to redirect
Deir Ajao's attention from authentically important matters to
such trivial questions as who or what had ambushed
Operation Probe, and why a lump of rock in the desert seemed
to be of some tactical significance to Cavalon the so-called
Great. 'If you need me so much,' Balberith said, grimly, 'it's a
pity your police force couldn't stop a native with a gun getting

Pawns of Chaos                   139

into my headquarters this morning. One of my bodyguards
took a bullet that was meant for me.'

Major-General Vorch and his junior officers seemed gen-
uinely shocked, but it was hard to believe that Melcarth's
pantomime of horror had any genuine sympathy in it.
Balberith couldn't believe that it had, even if Melcarth hadn't
actually been behind the assassination attempt.

The cultists still have agents in Kalazendra,' Melcarth
observed. 'Until their organization loses its head, we'll never be
able to obliterate them entirely - but once Culzacandra is ours
and this Cavalon is safely dead, along with all his disgusting
followers, the underground will wither away. Once victory is
ours, we'll all be able to sleep safely in our beds. Would you
like me to lend you some men to reinforce your bodyguard,
Ragan? I'd be only too happy to help.'

'1 can take care of it,' Balberith said, drily. 'I can take care of
everything - depend on it.'

'I will,' Melcarth assured him, insincerely. 'We all will.'

I'll bring the Fleet here or die trying, Balberith told himself
firmly. You can ignore the possibility if you want, my dear
governor, but you won't be able to ignore the ships when
they come down - and then we'll see who can take care of
themselves and who can't. All praise to the Emperor
Magnificent - and death to all his enemies, whoever and
wherever they may be!

^

THIRTEEN

IT TURNED ou'r that the smoke Dathan and Hydlla had seen
was not the residual smoke of a dead beacon-fire. It was com-
ing from the chimney of a small house set in the middle of a
square patchwork of fields, which had remained invisible far
longer than seemed likely because it was situated in a narrow
valley.

There had been grain growing in two of the fields, lentils in
two more and potatoes in the remainder, but the grain had all
been harvested and all but a few of the potatoes had been
unearthed. Even the sturdily-fenced chicken-run behind the
house had been emptied. Dathan assumed that the birds had
been taken by the quartermasters serving Gavalon's army. If
so, that army could not be far away.

The farmer's family had gone, presumably to seek refuge in
Elvenor - if, in fact, Elvenor was the nearest town. If rival
armies were to clash upon the plain, the farmer had presum-
ably reasoned, it was best not to remain in an isolated
building that either side might find it convenient to occupy
and hold against bombardment.

From Dathan's point of view, on the other hand, the possi-
bility of temporary shelter seemed very welcome. Because he

141

142                        Brian Craig

had hardly slept during the previous night the morning's trek
had soon exhausted his reserves of strength. Hycilla seemed to
need rest even more than he did, and he was afraid that she
might slip back into a trance state at any moment. Nimian,
who had slowed their progress considerably while he took any
and every opportunity to feed his unnatural appetite, seemed
stronger and more alert than either of them, but he too was
beginning to show distinct signs of confusion in his eyes.

Nimian might be alert, Dathan thought, but it was not
merely - and perhaps not primarily - his immediate sur-
roundings that he was alert to. Other things, whose nature
was beyond Dathan's comprehension, seemed to be clamour-
ing for his attention.

When they had searched the little house and its outhouses
thoroughly, not so much to make sure that no one was hiding
there as to determine whether they could renew their supplies,
Dathan and Hycilla settled down on the hearth before the last
glimmering embers of the previous night's fire. They ate a rea-
sonably hearty meal.

Nimian ate too, although the Imperial soldiers' rations did
not seem nearly as much to his taste as the various disgusting
items of native fauna he had been chasing and devouring
since dawn.

'How do we go about finding Gavalon?' Dathan wanted to
know.

Hycilla didn't answer immediately; the meal had made her
more somnolent than before. 'I don't know,' she said, weakly.

'The only thing I can think of,' Dathan said, not at all satis-
fied with this feeble response, 'is trying to find and follow the
tracks left by the wagons that took the grain and potatoes
away. They must have been heavily laden, so it shouldn't be
too difficult to pick up their trail. Or we could just go on fol-
lowing the road until we reach the next village.'

'Fine,' Hycilla said, unhelpfully.

Dathan turned to Nimian in exasperation. What do you
think?' he asked, not expecting much in the way of a reply.

Nimian stared at him in a most disconcerting fashion, but
he did at least appear to be considering the question with all
due seriousness and with a measure of intelligence.

Dathan noticed that both halves of Nimian's stolen
Imperial uniform were now straining at the seams; he

Pawns of Chaos                   143

doubted that they would last more than an hour before they
were torn apart from within. No one could possibly have
called Nimian 'skinny' now; he had muscles that a blacksmith
would have envied.

'I stay here,' Nimian said, eventually. 'With her. You go.
Bring Gavalon. Bring wizards. Sacrifices will come. I will bring
ships.'

The word 'sacrifices' seemed ominous. It was, however, the
final word that seemed the most surprising to Dathan.

'Ships?' Dathan said. 'We're hundreds of miles from the sea.
How can you possibly bring ships?'

"Vou bring Cavalon and wizards,' Nimian said, impatiently.
'I bring ships.'

'You mean starships, don't you?' Hycilla put in, having
apparently experienced a sudden flash of enlightenment. 'Like
the ones that brought the Imperium here, two hundred years
ago.'

'You bring wizards,' Nimian repeated, still looking at
Dathan with his inimitably dark eyes. 'Sacrifices will come. I
will bring food. Lots of food. Then ships. Whoosh.'

'I don't want to leave Hycilla,' Dathan said, wondering how
stubborn he dared to be, given that he was talking to someone
who was gradually turning into a giant, or something far
stranger and far worse.

'Safe here,' Nimian replied. 'Safer than anywhere. Need her
here. She can see. She knows. She is me. So are you. Go.'

'Hycilla's supposed to be a wise-dreamer,' Dathan persisted,
stubbornly, 'but she's very young. She's just an apprentice. She
doesn't know anything.' He was uneasily aware of the fact that
he had no idea what Hycilla might know, or even how she
might have come by the information.

'Needs help,' said the boy who was no longer a boy, nod-
ding in agreement. 'And rest. Stay with me. You go.'

Dathan wasn't convinced. Didn't he need rest just as much
as Hycilla did, maybe more? And how could anybody be bet-
ter off staying with whatever Nimian was becoming? This was,
after all, a being who didn't think that it mattered when a per-
son might die, but only how - a being who reckoned that
when the time came to burn, one had to burn.

Pater Saltana had once told Dathan that all life was like fire,
and that food really was a kind of fuel, whose energy was

144                        Brian Craig

released and reclaimed by slow combustion. The trick of
being human. Pater Saltana had said, was to burn as slowly
and as steadily as one could - but the trick of being more than
human, as wizards and wise-dreamers were, was to bum
brightly as well.

Dathan knew nothing about wizards except what he had
heard in fantastic tales, but he had a nasty suspicion that
when Nimian spoke with such relish of burning he was think-
ing of the kind of fire that could compete, if only
momentarily, with the sun.

Dathan didn't want Hycilla to burn like that. He didn't even
want her to be standing near to anything - or anyone - that
did. He wanted Hycilla to be safe, and slow, and steady, and
not to risk anything for the sake of brightness. He had loved
her for a long time and he didn't want to stop just because she
was becoming strange, and wasn't always entirely herself. He
was convinced that he could love her, if only the world could
be restored to proper order.

If only...

'Co on, Dathan,' Hycilla said, opening her eyes a little
wider. 'Do what Nimian says. It's for the best.'

Was it really Hycilla talking, Dathan wondered, or was she
under the control of someone else - something else? It was a
frightening thought, but he had grown so used to fear by now
it was difficult to conceive of any thought sufficiently power-
ful to add an extra measure to the terror he already felt.

'I wouldn't know which way to go,' Dathan objected, in a
low tone. 'I need you to come with me.'

'Give you guide,' said Nimian. He reached up to his head
and pulled out one of the hairs from the top of his head. Then
he wrapped it twice around the little finger of his left hand,
and used his teeth to knot it tight. Dathan noticed that the fin-
gernail had grown longer, thicker and darker, so that it was
now more like a claw.

When the knot was secure, Nimian-the-monster - as
Dathan was beginning to think of him - took the base of his
own left little finger between the thumb and forefinger of his
right hand, and casually snapped it off.

No blood flowed from the wound.

Nimian got hold of the free end of the hair and held it up,
so that the severed finger dangled freely. It swivelled left and

Pawns of Chaos                  145

then right, oscillating for a second or two before settling
down.

That way/ said the monster, blandly. 'Follow the finger.
Find Gavalon. Bring wizards. Soon. Sacrifices will come.'

'What kind of sacrifices?' Dathan asked, although some-
thing inside him was trying to tell him that he really didn't
want to know. He couldn't bring himself to reach out his hand
to take the proffered charm.

When is time to bum/ Nimian replied, 'we bum.'

Take the finger, Dathan,' Hycilla said, dully. 'Show it to
Gavalon - he'll understand what it means. He'll know what to
do.'

'I'm not sure...' Dathan began.

'YOU don't have to be sure,' Hycilla told him, brutally. 'You
just have to do it. For me. For the village. For the world.'

'I don't want to leave you.'

'It was only an accident that brought us together in the first
place,' she said. 'I have to stay here, to play my part. For you.
For the village. For the world. For the god of Gulzacandra.'

'You're not safe with him,' Dathan persisted. 'Whatever he
is, whatever he becomes, he's not safe to be around.'

There is no safety,' Hycilla told him. There's only war -
only the game.'

'It's not a game,' Dathan insisted. 'It's life and death.
Especially death.'

'Co/ she said. 'Do what you have to do. For us. I am he and
he is you. For all of us. For me.' This time, Dathan noticed, she
had left out the village and the world - and the god of
Gulzacandra, who was sometimes called the Changer of the
Ways, the Divine Schemer. It was a good ploy; Dathan wasn't
sure what he was willing to do for the village, the world and
the god he had worshipped since birth, but he did know what
he was willing to do for Hycilla.

Anything.

Gingerly Dathan took the charm that Nimian was still hold-
ing out to him, and wrapped the free end of the hair around
his right forefinger, so that the darkened nail of the dangling
finger could point whichever way it wanted to. Then he picked
up an open canister of water and took a deep swig before
screwing the cap back on and returning it to his pack.

'How far do I have to go?' he asked.

146                      Brian Craig

'I don't know/ Hycilla said. 'Rest when you have to - ten
minutes every hour, as best you can calculate - but don't stop
to sleep. Keep going. There isn't much time.'

Dathan was convinced by now that although Hycilla's
mouth was forming the words, there was another intelligence
behind them - perhaps, however paradoxical it might seem,
the same intelligence that couldn't yet persuade Nimian's
vocal apparatus to form a proper sentence.

Dathan looked hard at Nimian, but all Nimian said was:

Very hungry. Must bring food.'

Dathan didn't want to think about what that might involve,
but when he condescended to be pushed outside he soon got
a clue.

A family of mowas - probably the same ones that he had seen
running away when he emerged from the red-and-black forest -
was sprinting towards the farmhouse. They were only flightless
birds, but the adults were taller than any man and they were
very stout around the waist. Dathan suppressed a vision of
Nimian breaking their necks and chopping them up before
wolfing them down one by one - feathers, talons and all,

The stolen uniform would have no chance at all of contain-
ing the subsequent expansion, but Dathan didn't suppose that
clothes were going to be a significant priority once the hungry
boy's legs and torso began to follow the example of his ears
and find their eventual form. He remembered the pattern he
had glimpsed on Nimian's naked body when he had first seen
him, and realised that it might have been a pattern in more
than one sense of the word. It might have been a plan, like
those that carpenters and weavers scratched in the sand while
trying to organise their thoughts.

It wasn't just the mowas that were coming towards the
house, either, although the rest were reptiles and megascarabs.
Apparently Nimian wasn't hungry enough to tackle a lox-
odont yet, but there didn't seem to Dathan to be much
comfort in the cautious 'yet'.

Some of the reptiles passed right by him, but none of the
snakes hissed at him or reared up to threaten a strike. The fin-
ger seemed to be doing more than point his way; perhaps it
had protective power too.

Dathan did exactly as he had been told. There was a certain
comfort to be found in the sense of purpose that obedience

Pawns of Chaos                   147

gave him. No matter how scared he was of what might lie at
his journey's end, having orders to follow was better than hav-
ing no idea at all what to do.

When he had been going for about an hour - he had no way
of knowing the exact time - he stopped for a few minutes'
rest. Once he had taken a drink, however, and rested his feet
by sitting down on a giant mushroom for a while, he set off
again.

He made steady progress, even though his legs were aching.
While he was on the move he didn't feel unduly sleepy, so he
kept moving. His conscious mind became dull and the flow of
his thoughts became viscous - but his feelings were out of
step, and there was a peculiar excitement in his belly. He lost
track of time as he strode across the alien landscape, but there
was something deep inside him that seemed to rejoice in his
movement.

The sun was well into its afternoon decline when Dathan
ran into the beastmen.

He was passing through a native wood at the time: one that
was not quite as spectacularly odd as the corn-cob forest in
which he had found himself when the truck ran out of fuel,
but which was nevertheless peculiar. Some of the trees were
domberries, which were as similar to imported vegetation as
native vegetation ever got, but most had shiny scales that
made their boles and branches look more like metal than
wood, and their fruits were like medallions.

He had smelled the beastmen before he actually saw them,
but he hadn't been able to recognise the odour, and only
realised how foul it was when he found out where it was com-
ing from.

Dathan was dumbstruck with terror, but terror seemed to
have lost its meaning and he felt oddly clear-headed, oddly
mechanical. The severed finger was still dangling from its
thread beneath his own forefinger, but there was a paradoxi-
cal sense in which he seemed to be dangling from it, meekly
following its direction, unable to do more with himself than
point and proceed.

Under other circumstances, he would have been quite con-
vinced that the monstrous beastmen were about to pounce on
him, rend him limb from lim and make a meal of him, but
with the finger to guide him he felt as if he, not they, were the

148                     Brian Craig

real monster and that they, not he, stood in the greater danger
of being rent asunder and consumed.

There were six beastmen in all - three with heads sugges-
tive of lopsided cattle, one with a hawk's head, one that was
more like a pig's than anything else Dathan could put a name
to, and one with the face of some nightmarish caricature of
an ape. They were all shaggy, except for the piggy one, and
they mostly had legs like bears, except for the two mowa-
legged ones. They were armed with an assortment of axes and
spears, although there wasn't one of them that couldn't have
torn him limb from limb with their bare hands - or claws, in
the cases of those that didn't actually have hands as such.
They had been sitting or lying down, but when they caught
sight of him they all came to their feet and moved to bar his
way.

On any other day of his life such a meeting would have
caused Dathan to faint with horror, or to run away as fast as
he could, hoping to hang on to the contents of his colon.
Today, however, he simply stopped, and lifted his right hand
a little higher in order to display the talisman that was dan-
gling from his forefinger.

'I'm looking for Gavalon the Great,' he said. 'I have a mes-
sage for him.

The beastmen looked at him, their various eyes squinting
slightly as they weighed him up. He moved his hand a little,
trying to draw their attention to his uncanny compass. Their
attention was duly drawn.

They grunted to one another, unhurriedly, but they didn't
come any closer.

'Cavalon,' Dathan repeated, figuring that they were proba-
bly stupider than the average human. 'Do you know Gavalon?
Can you take me to him? Don't worry if you can't - I'm
already pointed in the right direction. All you have to do is let
me pass. You will let me pass, won't you?'

The beastmen didn't reply, and they didn't move.

Dathan realised, reluctantly, that he would have to march
right up to them and pass through their ragged line. The stink
seemed suddenly overpowering, and the idea of coming
within arm's reach of the creatures was extremely unappeal-
ing, but he knew that he had to do it and he knew that he
could do it.

Pawns of Chaos                   149

Nervously, he set one foot in front of the other - and then,
figuring that he was committed, walked forward boldly. He
extended his right arm so that the monstrous finger preceded
him by as wide a margin as he could contrive. He made up his
mind that he would pass between a bull-head with an axe and
the spear-wielding ape-thing.

They didn't move until the last possible moment, but they
did move sufficiently to let him pass without touching either
of them. Their nearness was repulsive, but the fact of his being
able to bear it was strangely exhilarating. As soon as he was
through, while still within easy reach of a spear-thrust, he felt
his heart leap.

I'm a brave man, he thought, rejoicing in the surprise of it.
I really am a man, and brave. It was not the first time he had
thought of himself as something other than a boy - far from
it - but it was the first time he had had occasion to call him-
self brave. He had not been brave in the judeye forest, or at the
pool, or at the farmhouse, but he had passed through the rank
ofbeastmen with iron in his soul.

I am in this war, he thought, whether I like it or not. I am a
fighter now, and I must do whatever I can to secure our vic-
tory. For the village. For the world. For glory.

On the far side of the wood, he saw the fringes of the
encamped army: its myriad tents and wagons, and its multi-
farious coloured banners, flapping lazily in the breeze. There
were other sentries to pass, but none so frightful as those he
had first encountered, and he found men with voices soon
enough, who not only understood the name of Cavalon the
Great but were willing and able to reply to his enquiries.

'Who sent you?' asked one tall man - the first person on his
own side Dathan had seen with a gun: a sleek rifle with a pol-
ished barrel.

'Nimian,' Dathan told him. That's what he said his name
was, at any rate - before he began to change into something
else.'

The man's eyes narrowed at that, but he was just a fighting
man, not a wise-dreamer. He obviously knew little or noth-
ing about what Nimian had been, let alone what he was
becoming.

'We - that is to say, a girl named Hycilla and I - were
ambushed next to a pool last night, a long way to the east,'

150                      Brian Craig

Dathan explained. 'We'd run away from the village when the
Imperial soldiers came, hoping to reach Elvenor, but they
came after us in trucks. I think Nimian killed them all, but I'm
not sure. We got away in a truck.'

The rifleman was capable of understanding that. His eyes
widened again. 'Trucks? Imperial soldiers?' he said. 'Come
with me - you'll need to tell the commanders where and how
many, and what guns they had. They're supposed to be some
way off to the north, as yet. They're not supposed to be less
than a day away in the east.'

They aren't now,' Dathan assured him. 'If there were any
left alive, they can't have numbered more than a dozen.'

If the rifleman believed him it didn't lessen his sense of
urgency. He hustled Dathan through the camp, towards the
tent that bore the most striking banner of them all: a huge eye
that emitted an irresistible blast of killing force. Dathan
realised that he had seen it before, in his dreams. Did that
mean that he was a wise-dreamer now? He couldn't believe it,
and told himself that he must have seen something like it
before, when he was too young to remember.

Inside the tent, Dathan saw Gavalon the Great for the first
time. He had no difficulty whatsoever in picking the sorcerer out
from the crowd that surrounded him; he had never seen anyone
so spectacularly ugly, or anyone with such monstrous eyes.

Dathan watched the rifleman stammer out his story, and
saw Gavalon wave a huge hand negligently, as if to indicate
that the news was no news at all. Then the sorcerer turned, to
direct those awesomely intimidating eyes at Dathan. As
Cavalon came towards him, Dathan the valiant drew himself
up to his full height and displayed the finger that had brought
him here.

As soon as Gavalon saw what Dathan was holding aloft
before his face the sorcerer's broad mouth broke out into an
expansive smile, exposing two great rows of jagged yellow
teeth.

Where is he?' Gavalon wanted to know. 'We must find him
- there's no time at all to lose. Fulbra is coming at us full tilt,
and we do not have arms enough to hold him off. Is he well
and strong? Where is he?'

'He wants you to come to him,' Dathan said, a little breath-
lessly. 'Bring wizards, he said, and-'

Pawns of Chaos                   151

'And what?' Gavalon the Great was avid to know.
'He said something about sacrifices/ Dathan concluded,

reluctantly. 'He said that sacrifices are coming... and that he

will bring ships.'

^

FOURTEEN

IERIUS FUI.BRA PULLED a blanket over his head and shoulders and
crouched down in the ditch as the explosive charges went off.
He winced slightly as great gobs of mud rained down on the
blanket, almost tearing it from his hands. A general had to pro-
tect his uniform, or what kind of example would he be setting
to his men? He had not merely to appear to be the bravest of
the brave, but also the neatest of the neat. He was fighting for
order, after all, against the insidious and horrific ravages of
Chaos - and if that thought imported a little dread into his
own trained mind, how much more dread would it import into
the minds of his less enlightened followers?

Fulbra knew that his followers would be glad to be on the
move, glad to be in action, glad to be doing the holy work of
the beloved Emperor - how could it be otherwise when the
anticipation of that gladness had been so thoroughly
drummed into them? But they would be apprehensive too. If
the thought of Ragan Balberith's psykers was enough to bring
them out in a cold sweat, what would the prospect of facing a
continent full of alien psykers do to them, if the notion were
allowed to take root? They would say their prayers and perform
their rituals and fire their guns with all the mechanical

153

154                        Brian Craig

regularity their drill-sergeants had been able to contrive, but
every time they had a moment's pause for thought there was a
possibility that doubt, the most insidious of all the enemy's
weapons, might come to occupy it. At least the killing had so
far been easy, and profuse. There was nothing like a good
massacre to maintain morale. Blasting barricades apart wasn't
quite as satisfying, though. It was often tedious work, without
the hint of a thrill.

The barricade was the sixth they had encountered today but
only the second that had required explosive charges to be set
within it. Shells fired by bolters had been adequate to take care
of the others. It was a waste of good ammunition, of course,
but necessary. Although the trucks carrying Fulbra's vanguard -
even the ones carrying the precious caterpillar-tracked battle-
tanks - were theoretically capable of handling rough terrain,
they moved a great deal faster if they stuck to what passed for
roads in these barbarian parts.

Fulbra gave the filthy blanket to an orderly and moved
swiftly back to his armoured car, signalling Colonels Hamera
and Diambor to follow him. Like most of the other vehicles in
his retinue the car was locally-built. Fourteen of the tanks and
sixteen of the troop-carriers were originals, Leman Russ and
Chimeras and Salamanders, but no fast-moving vehicles had
survived the two hundred years since the landing except for the
aircraft that Melcarth would not let him have. Even the motor-
cycles his scouts used had come out of Kalazendran factories,
although their relative simplicity meant that they were much
more similar to original designs than the heavier vehicles.

The Salamander command vehicle that Fulbra used while the
brigade was on the move was lightly armoured, but it was more
manoeuvrable than its lumpen kin - much more so than the
fortress-on-wheels to which he would retreat when the serious
fighting started. Given that the enemy had vastly inferior fire-
power, he had decided that mobility was his first priority for
the moment, which was why his heavy tanks had been loaded
on to trucks instead of lumbering into Gulzacandra at their
own stately pace.

It was obvious to Fulbra that Colonel Hamera would have
preferred to sit safely inside an original tank even when there
was no obvious need, but Hamera valued his position as the
general's chief aide-de-camp too much to raise any objection -

Pawns of Chaos                   155

all the more so with Diambor ready to step into his shoes at a
moment's notice. Fulbra was all in favour of jealousy and com-
petition among his senior staff - it sharpened up everyone's
performance and added a necessary seasoning of recklessness
to their battle-tactics. Envy, if properly channelled, could be
just as useful in its own fashion as piety. A good officer had to
be taught to love the Emperor, hate heresy, and keep very care-
ful account of the progress of his rivals.

Unfortunately, the enemy also seemed to know that mobility
was the invading forces' first priority, and the swine were doing
everything they could to slow the invaders down. They were
setting fire to their fields as they retreated, burning wooden
bridges, tumbling boulders into narrow canyons and scattering
caltrops in the hope of puncturing the tyres of the Imperial
vehicles. There was a barricade in every village, no matter how
makeshift, and if the village were large enough there would be
snipers posted on the roofs of the houses beyond the barricade.
Only one sniper in three had a rifle, but those who used bows
were skilled archers and their arrows could do nearly as much
damage as a bullet if they hit unarmoured flesh. So far, casual-
ties on his own side had been trivial, but time was on the side
of the defenders, for now. Once the victory was won, the victors
would have all the time in the world to hunt down the tainted
and slaughter the lot, but until then...

'News?' Fulbra barked at the vox operator as soon as he had
taken his seat again.

'Nothing from the scouting-party sent out from Odienne, sir,'
the operator replied, as the car got under way, taking its cus-
tomary slot in the column. The village itself is secure, but the
commander hasn't heard a word from the men sent to find the
dome-shaped rock.'

'It must be an equipment breakdown,' Hamera put in. 'How
could an ambush have taken them out so quickly that they
didn't even get a chance to call for help?'

That's what I'd like to know,' Fulbra growled. 'Don't make
the mistake of thinking that these people are helpless, or tacti-
cally incapable. They're not honest fighting-men, like us -
they're nasty, corrupt and underhanded. Tell the commander at
Odienne to find out what happened, and to make sure that
when his men have found out, they get the news to us imme-
diately. Anything else, corporal?'

156                        Brian Craig

The vox operator hesitated momentarily, but then said:

There's been an attempt on the life of the Chief Inquisitor.
Unsuccessful, thanks be to the Emperor.'

'Expectable,' Diambor said. The locals might be separated
from the sites of the First Conquest by thousands of miles, but
the cults have their own lines of communication. There was
bound to be an increase in terrorist activity in Sostenuto when
things began to get hot hereabouts. Our men have the measure
of them, though - all praise to the Emperor Magnificent!'

'I suppose so,' said Fulbra, dubiously. He had his own theory
as to who might be responsible for the attempted assassination
of Ragan Balberith, but he knew that it wouldn't be politic to
mention it here and now. He cursed suddenly as an arrow
bounced off the plastic window to his left, leaving an ugly scar
in the transparent pane.

It was a wasted shot - the car had only a few square inches
of surface vulnerable to the kinds of missiles that snipers had
at their disposal - but it was not without a certain symbolic
value.

The sharpshooters in the turrets of the leading Chimera
troop-carriers were blasting away in every direction, but Fulbra
couldn't see whether their shots were having any effect because
there was too much smoke. The houses hereabouts were
mostly built of wood and even those that were made of stone
or brick often had thatched roofs, so the fires set in the fields
usually spread to the dwellings and gutted them if the wind
pushed them in that direction.

'Imbeciles/ Hamera commented. They're destroying their
property and their future livelihoods for the sake of slowing us
down by a couple of hours a day. If they'd just let us through
and lend us a little support they might be able to keep what
they have - under new management, of course, once we've
secured the territory. Why should they care who rules in
Rintrah, or whichever of their shabby towns becomes the new
capital? Do their current masters treat them any more kindly
than we would? No. Much worse, probably, given that they're
evil-worshippers. Peasants! Shit for brains, the lot of them.'

Fulbra knew better than Hamera what would happen when
the conquest was complete. Once the inquisitors got busy the
owners of the fields hereabouts would be under the new man-
agement of whatever vile afterlife their foul god cared to

Pawns of Chaos                   157

provide for them. Some few of them might conceivably be
untainted, but how could anyone be certain which? Best to kill
the lot and let the gods sort them out.

A final punctuation mark was appended to Hamera's speech
by the spang of a bullet ricocheting from the steel-plate sur-
round. Hamera muttered a supplementary curse, then shifted
slightly in his seat as he added a quick prayer.

They've been taught to hate us with a passion that defies all
reason/ Diambor said, laconically. They can't begin to under-
stand that the Imperium of Mankind is the only thing that
stands between the forces of corruption and dominion over the
entire universe. It's hard even for our own people, given the
duration of our isolation.'

We are still part of the Imperium of Mankind, praise be to
the Emperor,' Fulbra growled, remembering why he kept
Hamera in place as his second-in-command, even though
Diambor was the more intelligent man. 'Seven generations of
separation and the necessity of manufacturing our own ord-
nance don't make any difference to our purpose. We're the
Emperor's trusted servants, and we must never forget it. One
day - perhaps in our own lifetimes - contact with the Fleet will
be restored. If and when that glorious day comes, we have to be
able to hold our heads high and say: We did what was expected
of us. We held to our duty, no matter what obstacles were put
in our way.'

'It's not exactly news, sir, but...' the vox-caster operator put
in, tentatively.

'But what?' Fulbra wanted to know.

There's a rumour that ships of the Fleet are nearby, waiting
for the warpstorm to ease sufficiently to permit a landing.'

"What do you mean, a rumour?' Fulbra demanded. 'Either we
have vox contact or we don't. If this is true, it's the most vital
news that we've had in centuries. This could change everything.'

'A psyker is said to have made contact of a sort, sir,' the vox
operator said, failing to suppress a slight shudder. The word is
that any ships that are out there must be too far off to get vox
messages back and forth without an unacceptable time lag,
even if the storm wasn't garbling the signals, although
Melcarth's tech-priests are trying as hard as Balberith's people.'

Fulbra's reply to that was diplomatically wordless. He
wouldn't allow tech-priests in his own armoured car, no matter

158                        Brian Craig

how useful their prayers were to the maintenance of equipment
and morale, because the two things he hated most of all were
backchat and confused priorities. No one could accuse tech-
priests of lacking discipline, but it wasn't military discipline,
and no matter what anybody might say about unity of method
and purpose, there was still an obvious difference between men
who said their prayers as they passed and used their
ammunition and men who merely said prayers. Fulbra didn't
like psykers any more than the next man, but he knew that
Balberith's psykers were far more likely to establish telepathic
contact with Imperial ships than Melcarth's tech-priests were to
get a vox message through, even if Melcarth's men were really
trying.

Let it be true! he said to himself. For the love of the Emperor,
let it be true! Then he reminded himself, dutifully, that it was
only a rumour, and that he had battles to fight and massacres
to manage. He also reminded himself that any intelligence
gained by Ragan Balberith's psykers ought to be reckoned dubi-
ous, given that their powers had to be boosted by the same
drugs that the aborigine dreamers used - drugs that were
undoubtedly tainted.

Despite the poverty of their equipment and their relative
dearth of true purestrain immigrant blood, lerius Fulbra had
every confidence in the fact that the fighting-men of his army
were just as brave, just as determined and just as well-trained as
the agents of the First Conquest - but that confidence did not
extend to the so-called inquisitors of the so-called Adeptus
Terra. He respected Ragan Balberith as a man, but he was not at
all sure that Balberith would be as easily recognisable as a cog
in the great machine of the Imperium of Mankind as he him-
self would, or even Orloc Melcarth.

According to the secret history carefully handed down to
Fulbra by his forefathers, the psykers of the galaxy-spanning
Imperium of Mankind were the glue that held the Imperium
together. They maintained the Astronomican, transmitted mes-
sages over interstellar distances and navigated starships. What
they did not do, unless his more immediate forefathers had
contrived to lose the relevant information, was to function as
what the aborigines of Sigmatus called 'wise-dreamers'.

The handful of psykers who had accompanied the original
exploratory mission had been attached to it in order to relay

Pawns of Chaos                   159

information about Sigmatus back to the Fleet, so that a rea-
soned decision could be made as to how the world ought to be
developed. Once that purpose had been nullified by circum-
stance, even more so when the original psykers had been
replaced as one generation gave way to another, new roles had
had to be found or designed for them. The Chief Inquisitor's
psykers were just as intimidating as their forebears had pre-
sumably been, and their business was equally shrouded in
mystery; Fulbra knew that they had become an important ele-
ment of the war against the aborigine cultists, but he was not
convinced that their role was entirely orthodox. Balberith was
as steadfast a servant of the Imperium as anyone now alive on
Sigmatus, but Fulbra sometimes wondered whether he might
have made a terrible mistake in trying to turn the methods of
the Gulzacandran cults against them.

Perhaps, he thought, this supposed news is a vile trick,
worked by our enemies in order to deflect our hopes and our
intention from our present mission. Who knows what hideous
subtleties these horrid sorcerers may be capable of?

The armoured car had finally cleared the fields surrounding
the village, and Fulbra was grateful to be able to draw fresh air
into his lungs again. Now that they had passed through the
swirling smoke, visibility was good, although the range of his
vision was limited by the density of the local vegetation.

lerius Fulbra had been born in the hills of northern
Kalazendra, and he had grown up with jagged horizons of dis-
tant peaks. The trouble with flat plains, he thought, was that
they had no standpoints from which a man could see for many
a mile. Even when there were no clumps of nasty vegetation in
the way, it was difficult to see for more than a few hundred
yards, and in this kind of warp-exposed landscape, clumps of
nasty vegetation were very common indeed. There were plenty
of trees that were recognisable as trees, although their foliage
was sometimes peculiarly coloured and their fruits exotic, but
there were far too many bulbous growths like giant fungi or
twisted cacti.

Long before the Imperial forces had arrived, the not-so-great
aborigine civilizations of Kalazendra, Zendamora and
Bulzavara had overplanted all but a few enclaves of native veg-
etation with earthly produce. By contrast, the two kinds of life
had always rubbed shoulders in Yevelkana, and alien life still

160                      Brian Craig

ran riot in Culzacandra, whose indolent and corrupt inhabi-
tants had always been content to down tools at the boundaries
of their own fields. The terrain over which the invaders were
now speeding seemed more profoundly alien than anything
Fulbra had ever seen before.

'Bikes reporting in, sir/ the vox operator said. The road's
clear for the next five miles, but then there's a bridge down.
Slow-moving river at least twelve feet deep, twenty-five yards
across. The engineers ought to be able to work unimpeded,
though - there's no cover for snipers on the other side and a
couple of bolter-blasts should take care of the flanking vegeta-
tion.'

What's beyond the river-crossing?' Fulbra wanted to know.

'More of the same for at least a mile. Then a cluster of roofs
- another village. Can't see beyond that.'

'How am I expected to make plans if I'm blind?' Fulbra com-
plained. 'I need that aircraft - and why in the Emperor's name
am I clearing makeshift airstrips every time I pause if those
fools in Sostenuto don't intend to send it? How am I to find
out where the cultists' army is, or how numerous it is, or what
its disposition is, if I don't have the aircraft?'

They're mostly farmers with pitchforks and beastmen with
axes,' Hamera said. 'It won't matter all that much how many
there are and how they're distributed.'

'It will if we can't catch up with them and inflict massive
casualties while they're massed together,' Diambor pointed
out. 'If they realise once they've got a good look at us that the
only sensible option is to wage a guerilla war, it might take us
years to gain control of the region. It won't be easy to move
colonists from the other continents to support our troops,
given that the locals have destroyed so many of their homes
and farms.'

'But they are massing for a pitched battle, however misguided
that may be,' Hamera pointed out. 'We know that much, and
we can probably figure out where. Surely they'll want to inter-
cept us before we can bring up the cavalry and the loxodont
corps. They must intend to prevent us from linking up with the
southern contingent.'

'It's not easy to figure out what they intend, or why,' Diambor
mused. 'Why fight a battle you can't win, when you could wear
down the opposition by attrition? If they have nothing up their

Pawns of Chaos                   161

sleeves, what can they be thinking? And if they have, why
haven't Balberith's psykers found out what it is? There's some-
thing not right about this supposed gathering of the enemy
forces, and I wish I could figure out what it is.'

The answer might be simpler than it seems,' Fulbra told the
two colonels. 'In Kalazendra, small groups of guerillas really
could live off the country for months or years, because most of
what passes for wilderness there is earthly produce - but look
around you! Without their fields, there's no way these people
can find enough food to keep them going. They know that if
our supply-lines are broken we'll be in trouble - but in order
to put us in that kind of trouble, they have to put themselves in
it too. They can't fight a long drawn-out guerilla war because
there aren't enough places where they can safely hole up. They
have to isolate us if they can - but once they've isolated us, they
have to deal with us as quickly as possible. If they have a
chance to do that, no matter how slim, they'll probably take it.
Attacking tanks and armoured cars with hand-held weapons
might seem futile to any sensible strategist, but if they can only
get enough fighters to close quarters, they might do a lot of
damage with spears and clubs, let alone the kind of vile tricks
that only heretics and mutants would use. That's why I need to
know their exact deployment.'

'In all fairness to Governor Melcarth,' Diambor put in, 'air
surveillance wouldn't necessarily give us the information we
need, given the abundance of cover hereabouts. If the trucks
that set out from Odienne hadn't got lost, they would proba-
bly have been more useful to us.'

'But they did get lost,' Fulbra pointed out. 'And if that many
trucks carrying that much firepower can vanish on the instant,
without even contriving to tell us what hit them, we might find
a similarly unpleasant shock awaiting us.' But sorcery can be
exhausted, just like any other kind of firepower, he thought,
during the pause that followed. And if the Fleet really were on
the brink of restoring contact, all the sorcery in the world
would be impotent. If we could summon a ship to our aid,
imagine what that could do to the enemy!

The command vehicle was slowing now as it approached the
broken bridge, but the flame-throwers mounted on the leading
troop-carrier had already burnt back the neighbouring vegeta-
tion, and the far bank was so empty that the motorcycle scouts

162                        Brian Craig

hadn't even bothered to take cover. The engineers were already
extending the main girders that would form the steel frame of
a temporary bridge.

Tell the quartermaster's people to test the water before
renewing our supplies,' Fulbra instructed the vox operator,
although he knew that such precautions were routine. 'And
send the bikemen out again as soon as we can get them across.'

'Yes sir,' the vox operator replied. 'All praise to the Emperor
Magnificent!'

Fulbra contemplated getting out of the vehicle to stretch his
legs, but he didn't need to and it was probably better to let his
men see that this was a thoroughly routine operation. They
would have their own anxieties, and rankers were notorious for
their ability to interpret every tiny circumstance as a cause for
apprehension. Oh for a platoon of Space Marines, or even
Imperial Guardsmen! What an example they would set to his
feeble imitations!

What his men needed, of course, was more action: another
easy massacre, conducted with brutal efficiency and no losses.
Unfortunately, the local yokels no longer seemed to have the
least inclination to make themselves available for slaughter -
not, at least, by the enemy they had been taught to loathe.

What, Fulbra wondered, could possibly have happened to
the advance party sent ahead from Odienne? How could trucks
carrying that kind of firepower have run into trouble in the
Gulzacandran wilderness, even if they were few in number?
And why, against all reason and calculation, did he have the
insistent creepy-crawly feeling in his stomach that he usually
got before fate sprang a particularly nasty surprise?

^

FIFTEEN

'CAN YOU RIDE?'

Dathan blinked at the unexpected question. 'I've ridden a
horse, sir,' he said, wondering whether he ought to admit that
he had only ridden a very slow horse at a very moderate pace,
and not very often. He also wondered whether it was adequate
to address a man as powerful as Gavalon as 'sir' - but he had
never been told the proper way to address a sorcerer, let alone
the supreme head of all the covens in Gulzacandra. Mercifully,
Nimian's finger still seemed to be exerting its benign influence
over him, maintaining his equilibrium far better than he could
have maintained it himself.

'Good,' said Gavalon. 'I need to get to the Vessel as soon as
possible. Our attempts to delay Fulbra and string out his forces
have failed miserably. His engineers are too good - rivers,
ditches and burning fields can't make significant obstacles, and
our fighting-men can't get to close quarters with his unless they
can find a better way to stop his trucks. It would be a dire irony
if the outcome of this conflict were to be settled by the number
of spare tyres he's carrying and the speed with which they can
be changed. You'll have to show me where this wretched farm-
house is. My beastmen can follow at their own pace, but I need

163

164                      Brian Craig

to get Sathorael to understand what is required of him, as soon
as he's able to listen.'

'I'll do my best, sir,' Dathan promised.

He began to regret this promise as soon as he saw the
mounts that Gavalon's servants had prepared. There were four
in all; although Gavalon was prepared to hurry ahead of his ret-
inue of beastmen he was compensating for their temporary
loss by taking two of his thrall-wizards, Abdalkuri and
Maldayak. The steeds were definitely horses, but they were
coloured far more garishly than any horses Dathan had ever
seen, orange and kingfisher-blue being the predominant
colours, and their heads were elaborately homed. Their tails
were not made of ordinary horsehair, being more like rats' tails,
and their unshod hooves were massive. The saddles and bridles
with which they were fitted were conventional enough, but
they had no bits in their mouths. They seemed as bizarre to
Dathan as the thrall-wizards, whose faces were scarred and
painted and whose leathery armour was brightly striped in red,
yellow and green.

'Don't worry, Dathan,' Gavalon said, when he took note of
the boy's anxiety. They're more amenable than they seem, and
more intelligent than any animal you've ever encountered.
Once constrained to obey you, this kind of steed will serve you
very well.'

Dathan hesitated again when the time came to mount. He
was a whole foot shorter than the least of his companions and
the stirrup seemed impossibly high - but one of Gavalon's
beastmen came forward to make a step with his huge hands,
and Dathan managed to scramble into the saddle.

/ have monsters to wait on me now! he thought. Yesterday I was
no one, but today I am the emissary of a very powerful person
indeed!

Cavalon paused to shout a few more instructions to his com-
manders. Then they were off, moving swiftly from a walk to a
trot to a canter.

Within minutes, the four coloured horses were galloping
faster than Dathan had ever imagined possible. As he bounced
in the thigh-stretching saddle he wondered what would have
happened if he had told Cavalon that he couldn't ride. In all
probability, he guessed, Gavalon would simply have taken the
direction-finding finger from him and left him behind - and

Pawns of Chaos                   165

that was definitely not what he wanted. He was anxious to get
back to Hycilla as soon as possible. If he had to learn to ride
the hard way, so be it.

Mercifully, his mount was well-accustomed to carrying riders
and it was exceptionally sure-footed. Dathan only had to
twitch the bridle to suggest a change of direction and the
instruction was obeyed. This delicacy allowed him to free the
hand to which Nimian's severed finger was attached, so that it
could instruct him as to the pathways that needed to be taken.

Gavalon rode alongside him to begin with, to make sure that
he was capable of identifying and taking the correct path, but
after ten minutes or so the sorcerer dropped back, content to
follow where he led.

Once his mount had settled to a steady pace the ride became
smoother, and Dathan found that if he kept his eyes fixed on
the horizon ahead of him rather than glancing sideways at the
bushes and cacti that were whizzing hectically past he did not
feel quite so sick. It was, in any case, so long since he had eaten
a substantial meal that he could not believe that his stomach
contained anything to throw up.

When Dathan had been on foot, even with his mind unusu-
ally dulled, the distance between the isolated farmhouse and
Gavalon's camp had seemed very long, but the horned horses
covered the ground at such a remarkable pace that the miles
seemed to melt away. Dathan had only just begun to get used
to his unlikely situation astride the bizarre animal when he saw
the chimney of the farmhouse - smokeless now - loom into
sight.

For a moment or two, Dathan thought he might somehow
have got the wrong farmhouse. The environment looked wrong
- but the roof of the house was familiar, and Dathan realised
that the discrepancy was in the surrounding vegetation. New
plants were springing up in the shadow of the walls: native
plants, not cultivated ones. Some were thorny bushes and a few
were fungal masses, but the majority seemed to be creepers
intent on climbing the walls of the house and all the other
walls and fences marking out the territories and possessions of
the farmer's tiny domain.

Dathan knew that some forms of local vegetation could grow
very quickly indeed, but Pater Saltana had told him that was
because they could draw energy directly from the sky. It was

166                      Brian Craig

something to do with the force that made the stars appear to
change colour and move. Given that the movements of the
stars were slower now than they had ever been before in
Dathan's lifetime - or, he suspected, in Pater Saltana's - this
did not seem a likely season for the encouragement of plant-
growth, but all the normal rules of expectation had been set
aside within the last twenty-four hours.

It was more likely, though, once Dathan thought about it,
that the growth had something to do with Nimian's arrival at
the house.

When Dathan dismounted and tethered his steed to one of
the gateposts of what had once been the kitchen garden he
realised that the ride had not been quite as short or as smooth
as he had thought. His legs seemed to have been bent out of
shape, and walking had become painful.

This did not stop him running into the cottage to find
Hycilla.

Hycilla was easy enough to find. She was, however, quite
alone.

This circumstance did not please Gavalon the Great at all.
'Gone?' he repeated, impatiently, when Hycilla began to offer a
tentative explanation. 'Cone where?'

'Perhaps he wasn't expecting you quite so soon,' Hycilla said,
anxiously. 'He said that he was hungry, although how that
could be possible after what he did to those birds... He's a lot
bigger now. If he'd stayed here much longer he probably
wouldn't have been able to get out of the door. He had to get
rid of the Imperial uniform he was wearing - the rags are over
there - but his skin doesn't look like human skin any more.
He's more like some kind of enormous reptile than a man,
although he talks much more fluently.'

Dathan noticed while Hycilla was stammering out her
excuses that she too looked taller than before, even though she
certainly hadn't been dining on mowas and megascarabs.
Nimian's unnatural growth seemed to have a certain commu-
nicable generosity about it, which extended to people as well
as to native plants.

This is bad,' Gavalon said, fretfully. 'He should never have
run away from me in the first place, even if he had sensed
enemies closeby. He shouldn't have got aboard the truck, and
he shouldn't have sent the boy to fetch me instead of coming

Pawns of Chaos                   167

himself. How will he know what I need of him if 1 can't tell
him? Fulbra is coming too quickly, in good order. If we have to
fall back we'll expose too many towns and too many roads. If
the Imperial forces can occupy a strong position, and gather in
supplies, we'll never winkle them out. How did the Vessel seem
mentally? Has his true consciousness begun to manifest itself
within the wieckage of Nimian's soul7'

'I don't know what you mean,' Hycilla said, faintly - but
Dathan knew that she was only being cautious. She had already
said that Nimian had begun talking more fluently.

"What had he to say for himself?' Gavalon demanded, impa-
tiently

'Not much,' Hycilla said, worriedly. 'He told me to wait. He
didn't actually say that he'd return, but 1 thought that's what he
meant. After all, he'd told Dathan to bring you here, so that...
He said that he needed to touch you.'

Gavalon considered this for a moment or two. 'I need to get
to him as soon as possible,' he murmured. 'He can have any-
thing he wants once he's back at the camp, but...' He turned
abruptly to look at the device that was still attached to Dathan's
finger, having noticed that the severed finger was no longer
horizontal. As Gavalon's interrogative gaze lingered upon it,
the knot in the hair by which the finger was suspended sud-
denly came undone, and the direction-finder fell to the floor.

It did not lie there as it should have done; instead, it began
to wriggle like a worm, moving awkwardly towards Cavalon.
The sorcerer reached down, laying one of his hands flat on the
ground, palm upwards. The severed finger was growing longer
as it moved, and it was long enough now to wind itself around
Gavalon's finger like a compound ring.

Gavalon stared at it, and continued to stare after rising to his
feet. His stance suggested incomprehension, but the expression
in his amazing inhuman eyes was quite unreadable.

Well, Dathan thought, 1 suppose that he has now been
touched. Perhaps the monster is close enough to work his will
without putting in an actual appearance. As soon as he had
thought it, though, he wondered how he had formed such a
strange conjecture. It had been his thought - he was sure of
that - but it seemed to have seized upon a feeling that was not
his, or not entirely his. He remembered Nimian's less compre-
hensible mumblings, and wondered for the first time whether

168                      Brian Craig

there had been far more meaning that seemed likely in the
reply of'you and you' that Nimian had twice made to the ques-
tion, 'Who are you?'

Dathan shivered, and decided that he really ought to think
about something else. He looked up.

'Am I mistaken,' Dathan asked Hycilla, in a low voice, 'or is
the ceiling a little higher than it was before?'

Hycilla looked up too, apparently not having noticed any
change in her surroundings until Dathan spoke. '1 believe it is,'
she said, pausing before she added: 'but I don't seem to be any
further beneath it than I was before.'

'Everything's getting bigger,' Dathan said, hesitantly. 'Even
the stone in the walls. Everything he's touched - except me.'

'No wonder he's hungry,' Gavalon said. 'But he mustn't waste
his power, accidentally or deliberately. I don't know how much
energy he'll have at his beck and call when he reaches maturity,
but it won't be infinite and he won't be long in his prime. We
have to smash the Imperial forces, so decisively that they'll
never recover. If we don't, this world will never be safe for wor-
shippers of the true god.'

"What about the ships?' Hycilla asked.

Cavalon's remarkable gaze had been relatively subdued until
now, but Dathan saw its fire flare up slightly then, especially in
what looked to be the younger and fresher eye.

'Spaceships?' Gavalon queried.

Hycilla nodded. 'I've seen them in my dreams,' she said, 'but
never so clearly as last night. Nimian mentioned them - he
says they're coming closer.'

'Are these Imperial ships?' The question came from one of
the thrall-wizards - Maldayak, Dathan thought.

'Not necessarily,' Cavalon replied. The true god has his
spacefleets too, as do other gods to whom the Imperium is
opposed. There are other races which can navigate between the
stars: eldar, tyranids, tau... The names mean little enough, but
they have been revealed to me, so that I may know something
of the war in which I am a part. What did the Vessel say about
the ships?'

'Firstly that he would bring them,' Hycilla reported.
'Secondly that they were coming closer. He seemed pleased.'

'Bring them?' Cavalon repeated, pensively. 'And he seemed
pleased!'

Pawns of Chaos                   169

The warpstorm is retreating,' said the thrall-wizard who was
probably Abdalkuri. 'If ships serving the Changer of the Ways
could come to our aid...'

We might obliterate the Imperium once and for all/ his mul-
ticoloured companion finished for him.

The Imperium is too vast to be obliterated,' Gavalon cor-
rected him, scornfully. The little fragment of it that has been
lost here for two hundred years was always a small and sickly
thing - but yes, that could be obliterated, once and for all. If
the warpstorm has retreated far enough, forces might be gath-
ering in space to dispute possession of five or fifty worlds:

worlds full of men, and sorcery, and who knows how many
descendants of stranded Imperial investigators? This phase of
the great game may be taking place on a larger stage than I had
imagined... but that only makes it all the more important that
Sathorael should follow my lead, and act under my direction.'

'Most certainly,' said Abdalkuri.

'Absolutely,' said Maldayak.

It seemed to Dathan that both voices rang slightly hollow.
The thrall-wizards were, he assumed, completely bound to
Gavalon's ends and means. They were his obedient servants,
and nothing more. But whatever it was that the so-called Vessel
now held was a great deal more: far more than they were, and
far more than even Gavalon the Great was. Dathan realised that
the two thrall-wizards might not be entirely displeased were
some freak of fate to reduce Cavalon to their own ignominious
status, even if their own were further diminished in the process.

But we are all mere servants of the true god, Dathan
reminded himself, or was reminded by something not quite
himself. He is the Divine Schemer, and he decides where each
and every one of us should fit into his scheme. We are all
potential sacrifices, it seems. Again he wished that Pater Saltana
had had time to tell him more about the secrets of the cult and
the rituals of his people.

'I suppose we must wait a while,' Gavalon concluded, reluc-
tantly. 'Have you, perchance, any food fit for human beings to
eat?'

'We have what we took from the Imperial trucks,' Hycilla
admitted. Her reluctance, Dathan knew, was due to the fact that
she knew very well how difficult it might be to come by further
food supplies in the next few days.

170                      Brian Craig

'Good/ said Cavalon. 'We'll eat, and hope that the Vessel's
hunger will be as easily satisfied as ours.'

Dathan and Hycilla had no alternative but to place their
packs at Gavalon's disposal, and to watch the sorcerer and his
thrall-wizards make short work of the greater part of their
hoard.

After settling his own hunger pangs Dathan walked stiffly out
into the walled enclave in front of the house, intending to
water the horses and stretch his legs in a more familiar fashion
than that in which they had recently been stretched.

Hycilla followed him out and stood by while he tended to
the horses. She looked around, studying the native vegeta-
tion that was springing up all around the house. It was a
remarkable sight. The most avid creepers were already half-
way up the walls of the house, and spiky growths to either
side of the low garden wall had already made it into a far
more impressive barrier than it had been before. The roof,
which seemed steeper now than it once had, was covered in
mossy parasites.

What will become of us, do you think?' Dathan asked, when
he was able to join her.

'I don't know,' she said. 'My head tells me that the closer we
are to Nimian, the safer we're likely to be when the fighting
actually starts, but my legs would rather be nowhere near the
fighting - or Nimian.'

They have need of you because you're a dreamer,' Dathan
pointed out. 'But what use am I now, even as an errand-boy? I
don't even have the magic finger any more.'

'It makes no difference,' she told him. 'Gavalon has us now,
and he'll use us both as he can. If he gives us up, then Nimian
- Sathorael - will use us instead. Gavalon seems to think that
the creature's here to do his bidding, but I don't think it's here
to do anyone's bidding. I think it has a purpose of its own -
and that you and I have been caught up in that purpose, by
accident or by design.'

'If even Gavalon the Great is here to be used at Nimian's
whim,' Dathan muttered, amazed at his ability to discuss such
matters at all, let alone so calmly, 'you and I could be in real
trouble.'

'We already are,' she reminded him. 'But we wouldn't be here
at all if Nimian hadn't turned up in time to stop the Imperial

Pawns of Chaos                   171

soldiers doing what they wanted to us. We have to think of
every minute that passes as pure good fortune, no matter what
the future might bring. If we die tonight, we're still a day ahead
of the game, aren't we?'

Which is what you meant when you told Nimian that
"when" mattered as much as "how",' Dathan murmured. 'And
you're right, of course. But it's not going to be easy, is it?'

'I don't know,' Hycilla said, with a tiny shrug of her shoul-
ders, in a voice that was no longer her own. 'Maybe it will be
easier than we imagine, if we can only leam to look at it the
right way. When you come right down to it, if you have to burn
you might as well try to burn brightly.' She was noticeably taller
now than she had been when she followed him out of the
farmhouse, and her eyes were aglow again.

Hycilla was still beautiful, but Dathan wasn't sure that her
beauty would last. Having seen what the exercise of magic had
done to Maldayak and Abdalkuri, let alone to Gavalon the
Great, he suspected that she might not age as elegantly as
women who did not dream wisely.

'I'm afraid,' Dathan confessed. 'If I thought that gaudy horse
would consent to carry me, I'd be tempted to ride away into the
sunset as fast as I could go - but it's Gavalon's, and while I have
it, I suppose I'm Gavalon's too.'

The sun was indeed setting again, although the day seemed
to Dathan to have flown by, and its disc would soon be gone.
Hycilla looked around, presumably hoping to catch a glimpse
of the giant that Nimian must now have become, but there was
nothing to be seen moving upon the world's surface.

Dathan looked up into the sky, at the first of the moons to
rise and the few fugitive stars that had begun to twinkle in the
east. He tried to estimate the strength of the force that stirred
the stars - the force the Gavalon had called the 'warpstorm' -
but his merely human eyes weren't up to the task.

'Whatever kinds of ships might descend from the sky, it
wouldn't be good news for us, would it?' he said. 'Whatever alle-
giance they own, they'll only come to rain down destruction.'

'Perhaps,' she said. 'But the Imperium only has firepower. We
have something better.'

'Is it better?' Dathan asked, wondering why he was the only
one who didn't seem to be growing in response to the crisis.
'Or is it worse?'

172                      Brian Craig

'Of course it's better/ Hycilla assured him. "We're the vic-
tims here. We deserve help, and we should be grateful for any
we get, no matter how scary it may seem.'

'I suppose we have to go on hoping that it'll all turn out
right in the end,' Dathan agreed, 'no matter how ugly it gets.
I suppose Nimian's still getting uglier as well as bigger?'

'You should have seen him dismembering those birds,'
Hycilla told him, with a slight shudder that seemed to have
more delight in it than fear. 'He's eaten five or ten times his
own weight since we met him. I've not seen much of what
Imperial firepower can do, but I'm beginning to be able to
imagine what he might do, when he's fully grown.'

Hycilla's eyes were glowing even more brightly now that the
sun was down, and Dathan felt that she was already slipping
away from him into the exotic consciousness that he would
never be able to comprehend, let alone to share. There was an
oracular quality to her pronouncements now; she had been
growing inwardly as well as outwardly since the moment that
Nimian had crashed into their lives.

'Will we come through it in one piece?' Dathan asked, hop-
ing that he might be speaking to something better placed to
give an accurate answer than a mere village girl.

'It doesn't matter,' she told him. 'All this is profit, beyond
our due. We must make the most of every precious second,
and begrudge nothing.'

It was, Dathan supposed, easy enough for her to say, given
that she was no longer the person he had known all his life.

For his own part, he still nursed a hunger for life that was
very far from satisfied.

^

SIXTEEN

'I SIMPLY COULDN'T get to him, excellency,' Kerforo reported,
uneasily. 'Since the assassination attempt, Balberith's guards
have been even more vigilant than usual, and the fact that every
inquisitor in Sostenuto is convinced that contact with the
Imperium Fleet is imminent has caused a veritable explosion
of piety.'

The spy was sweating a little and squirming uneasily - as well
he might, given that Orloc Melcarth had dedded to conduct
the interview in the vaults of Sostenuto's main prison.

Their immediate surroundings were not unduly threaten-
ing, and might even have been described as festive, but the
room was a guardroom most of the time and it was only a
few dozen paces away from accommodations that were infi-
nitely more unpleasant, and from which few tenants ever
moved on.

There was always a party in the prison on the eve of mass exe-
cutions, when Melcarth distributed petty favours to the
members of his inner circle and servants who had served him
well, but Melcarth rarely trifled with the condemned, no mat-
ter how pretty they might be. He preferred to use such
occasions as opportunities to do business. He was, in any case,

173

174                      Brian Craig

firmly of the opinion that attractive aborigine women owed
whatever glamour they had to the taint of Chaos, and that they
remained direly dangerous to good and honest men, even -
perhaps especially - when they were due to be hanged or
burned in the morning.

'An explosion of piety?' Mekarth echoed, wryly. 'Somehow, I
can't quite imagine an explosion of piety.'

'Then you don't know the kind of power that Chief
Inquisitor Balberith wields over his own people, excellency,'
Kerforo said. 'You and I might be prepared to believe that
the waking dreams of a drug-sodden psyker are meaningless,
and not at all anxious to see contact with the greater
Imperium restored, but the instruments of the Inquisition
think differently. They really are desperate to be welcomed
back in to the Imperial fold, restored to the bosom of the
beloved Emperor. The possibility has made each and every
one of them consult his conscience, and to resolve to make
up for the slightest lapse or relaxation of faith with a new
flood of devotion. They're entirely sincere, sire, and it's the
kind of sincerity that doesn't compromise. It's not conducive
to... diplomacy.'

Kerforo did not, of course, consider himself to be a mere spy,
let alone a hired assassin. He liked to think of himself as a
diplomat.

That's inconvenient,' Mekarth admitted, chewing his lower
lip reflectively. 'And I suppose we have to face the possibility
that the psyker really is on the brink of making contact with an
Imperial starship. It's a contingency we have to prepare for, just
in case. If there were to be another landing... Well, if Balberith
appears to be a good and efficient chief inquisitor, then I must
appear to be a good and efficient planetary governor. It should-
n't be too much of a problem, given that I've just launched a
holy war against the heretics ofGulzacandra. A successful holy
war, which General Fulbra is winning - all praise to the
Emperor Magnificent!'

Kerforo was still sweating, and squirming even more. There
was obviously something else on his mind, as well as his obvi-
ous incompetence in the matter of arranging assassinations.

What is it?' Mekarth demanded.

'Well, sire,' the spy stuttered, 'it's just that my people... your
humblest hirelings... do have their fingers on the pulse of

Pawns of Chaos                   175

popular rumour... and even though they do everything
humanly possible to monopolise the starting of rumours,
they can't help the fact that other rumours do get about,
and...'

'Oh, spit it out!' Melcarth growled, impatiently.

'Well, excellency, there's a rumour going round that... how
shall I put it?... That you've not been as enthusiastic in your sup-
port of General Fulbra as you might have been. The little people,
in their ignorance and foolishness, seem to think that Balberith
has been more ardent in that cause than you. There's a whisper
on the streets about your refusal to provide the general with the
aircraft he's requested, in spite of the fact that it's ready to take
off at a moment's notice - a whisper which my men have natu-
rally tried to quell, without success. Which wouldn't be so bad,
except that news is somehow getting about that one of the gen-
eral's operations has gone awry and that a whole platoon's been
lost... and the two stories have become connected in the public
mind, in the awkward manner that such things often do, in a
way that simply can't be helped... or hindered.'

Melcarth considered this intelligence carefully. It would all
have been irrelevant, of course, if Kerforo had done his job
properly. If the psyker had been disposed of, or if Balberith had
been wounded by the assassin, there would be no space on the
street for any other topics of conversation. The common peo-
ple weren't supposed to know anything about the aircraft's
state of readiness, and they certainly weren't supposed to know
about the failure of Operation Probe, but if someone who did
know such things had a motive for letting the news out, there
was no way to keep it in. It appeared that someone did. Ragan
Balberith, it seemed, was already making preparations for the
second landing of Imperial forces on Sigmatus, and one set of
preparations he was making involved undermining the gover-
nor's reputation and position.

'Perhaps I took him out on that balcony once too often,'
Melcarth muttered. 'I shouldn't ever have let him see how
much I hated and despised him, but I simply couldn't resist the
temptation. But it's not a disaster. There's an obvious counter-
move, if we're quick enough. I always intended to take the
aircraft over myself as soon as the time was ripe. All that's hap-
pened is that the time has become ripe a little sooner than I
expected. You'd better get over to the airbase as quickly as you

176                        Brian Craig

can, and tell Techmaster Sauldron that I want the aircraft ready
to take off at first light.'

'You're sending the aircraft to Gulzacandra, sire?' Kerforo
said, letting his astonishment show. 'You're putting it at
Fulbra's disposal?'

'No,' Melcarth said, patiently. 'I'm taking the aircraft to
Culzacandra and keeping it under my disposal. I'm going to be
a war hero. With luck, the battle will be fought before we get
there, but even without... the aircraft is an original. It's the
finest original left to us, and it has been scrupulously main-
tained. We'll be quite safe.'

'We?' Kerforo echoed, nervously.

'Oh, not you,' Melcarth said, appalled by the other man's appar-
ent cowardice. 'I'll take Vorch and the cream of the palace guard.'

Kerforo was still looking at him in open astonishment. The
silence was broken by a long drawn-out howl of agony, only
slightly muffled by the thick stone walls of the prison.
Someone was obviously having fun. Melcarth smiled, but his
smile was mirthless. Unlike Ragan Balberith, Kerforo had not
the slightest fear of heights, but there was obviously something
about the idea of flying - even in a prime example of original
Imperial technology - that terrified him. Melcarth had flown in
the aircraft four times, admittedly for less than an hour each
time, but he had only been afraid the first time, and then only
slightly. He loved the idea of flying. What kind of ruler would
he be if he did not?

'My grandfather used to tell me tales about skimmers,'
Kerforo said, trying to speak lightly, 'but they were stories he'd
had from his own grandfather, about the Emperor's finest. Your
aircraft isn't a fighting-machine - it's just a transporter. Are you
sure it's capable of a twelve-hour flight, excellency? Are you
sure it's safe to even take it into a battle zone?'

'I'll leave all the actual shooting to Fulbra's men, of course,'
Melcarth told him, wearily. The point is that I'm going to his
aid, personally. I'm so firmly behind him that I'm taking per-
sonal responsibility for finding out what happened to
Operation Probe. I'm the kind of governor that generals can
depend on, after all. I'm the kind of governor that deserves the
loyalty of all his subjects.'

What if you can't find out what happened to the missing
trucks, sire?' the spy asked, in frank perplexity.

Pawns of Chaos                   177

'Who cares what happened to the missing trucks?' Melcarth
said. The point is that everyone in Sostenuto will see me set
out to join General Fulbra. We'll circle the city twice to make
sure that they do. The mere sight of the aircraft will be enough
to send most of them into paroxysms of awe. The news that I'm
aboard it will make any vile whispers spread by Balberith's
agents instantly redundant. Once I'm out of sight and out of
mind - and as soon as General Fulbra has actually joined bat-
tle with the Gulzacandran forces - mere details will cease to be
of any importance. I'll fly back with news of our first great vic-
tory, which I'll deliver personally from my balcony... and the
triumph will serve me just as well if the miracle happens and
the Imperial Fleet does make contact as it will if we're left to
our own devices, responsible for the making of our own his-
tory. It's perfect. Why are you still sitting there? Why aren't you
on your way?'

Kerforo leapt from his chair, his face suddenly clearing as he
realised that he was under orders - and, at least for the
moment, safe from his master's wrath. He left the room in a
hurry.

It was a pity that the spy would have to miss the climax of the
party, Melcarth thought, but he hadn't really seemed to be in a
party mood. Nor should he be in a party mood, while matters
of such importance hung in the balance.

When Kerforo had left the prison, Melcarth instructed one of
the senior guards to find his driver, put an immediate stop to
whatever fun he was presently enjoying, and tell him to bring
the car to the rear entrance of the prison. If the guard was sur-
prised, he gave no indication of the fact.

As he made ready to depart the governor found that he was
getting more and more excited.

I've been scheming too long and delegating too much, he
thought. I've forgotten how exhilarating it is to be a man of
action. I always used to be a man of action, before I became
tangled up in too much politics. I should have built this expe-
dition into the plan from the start. It's exactly what I need.

As he hurried through the corridors of the prison he heard a
new chorus of screaming raised from a dozen agonised throats.
It was music to his ears. He felt a warm glow of satisfaction at
the thought of the entertainment that his most loyal support-
ers would obtain while the long night lasted, and of the further

178                        Brian Craig

increase in loyalty that the reward would undoubtedly pro-
duce. He was glad, though, that he had more urgent business
to attend to. The despoiling of the condemned, no matter how
imaginatively it might be carried out, was too easy to rank as an
authentically piquant pleasure, especially for a man of action.

He instructed his driver to return to the imperial palace, in
order that he might pack a bag, select a retinue of bodyguards
and organise a motor-cycle escort for the motorcade, but he did
not linger long over the task. His car was careering through the
darkness again within the hour, with a second vehicle in the
rear and six motor-cyclists in attendance. He sat in the back,
with his chief bodyguard, Thorold, beside him.

The journey through the city streets was not as smooth as it
might have been. The Imperial forces stranded in Kalazendra
had improved Sostenuto's roads dramatically during the first
years of their tenure, but regular maintenance had been left to
the aborigines when the Imperium's engineers moved on to the
business of conquest. The central streets were in good repair,
but those in outlying districts had been deteriorating for as
long as Melcarth could remember.

It was the same with the buildings, Melcarth thought, as he
watched the shop-fronts and the factories go by. Nothing new
had been erected in this neighbourhood for more than a cen-
tury, because everyone knew that new buildings were far
inferior - in design as well as quality - to those that the reluc-
tant colonists had made. Although factories had been
established to turn out copies of the vehicles the Imperial
forces had brought with them the copies had always been poor,
and the copies of the copies even poorer.

Balberith's people believed - or pretended to believe - that
the steady deterioration was mostly due to the fact that the tech-
priests of two hundred years ago must have been word-perfect
in all the prayers and rituals which today's tech-priests had
never quite contrived to master, but Melcarth was sceptical. He
was more inclined to blame the quality of their raw materials
than the limitation of their practical skills. Not that it mattered
much either way; whatever the reason, the simple fact was that
the descendants of the original castaways had been unable to
prevent the long, slow decline of their material wealth.

Nowadays, the margin that separated the lifestyle of the
majority of so-called Imperials from that of the richer

Pawns of Chaos                   179

aborigine city-dwellers was very thin indeed. The Imperium
still kept its monopoly on vehicular transport, but there were
so few vehicles on the roads of Sostenuto that it was fast
becoming a distinction without a difference for everyone but
the governor's personal staff and the army.

Melcarth stared out of his window at the streets through
which he passed, trying as hard as he could to take pride in his
capital city, but it wasn't as easy as he would have wished. Now
that the car had passed out of the heart of the city, where the
Imperial castaways had built according to their innate sense of
grandeur, his route was flanked by houses that the aborigines
had built for themselves, using stone, cement and wood in
seemingly haphazard combinations. The streets were lit, if they
were lit at all, by smoky oil-lamps, and the people moving
through them - in a city like Sostenuto the streets were always
full of people, even at night - were mostly ugly, drunk, miser-
able and ill-dressed.

By day the aborigines made more of an effort to ape the
imported manners of the Imperium, pretending as hard as they
could to be virtuous, well-disciplined and fully devoted to the
great causes of order and civilization, but by night they relaxed
into their age-old habits of slothfulness. They should have
been far more grateful for the effort that the Imperium had
invested in saving so many of them from the vile clutches of
the coven-masters that had been their erstwhile rulers, but
Melcarth suspected that many of them were secretly nostalgic
for the long-gone days before the advent of the Imperium, hav-
ing completely forgotten how brutal, dangerous and
degenerate the life of their ancestors had been.

There were, so far as Melcarth knew, no cults or covens
still active in Sostenuto, but one item of conviction on
which he and Balberith were in complete agreement was the
knowledge that the corruptions of Chaos were as subtle as
they were insidious. The people who turned their heads,
with as much hostility as curiosity in their predatory eyes,
to watch his car pass by were the victims of a very bad inher-
itance. No matter how hard they tried, they could never be
entirely convincing as models of rectitude and piety. No
matter how often the population was purged by the
Inquisition, it never seemed to become entirely pure, and
probably never would.

180                      Brian Craig

When Culzacandra had been purged, the most prolific well-
spring of the world's malaise would run dry, but Melcarth knew
that no matter how strictly the purge was carried out, it would
not and could not put an end to the eternal war. There would
always be a need for organizations like the Inquisit'-'.n and
men like Ragan Balberith to run them - under the ^icper
supervision of more sensible men, of course. Everyday life had
to be maintained too, and the business of government was far
too broad and complicated to be left to obsessive zealots.

Melcarth started suddenly as a stone hurled from a shadowed
side-street hit the window out of which he was peering. The
bodyguard sitting beside him also reacted, but soon settled
back into his seat as a member of the motor-cycle escort roared
off into the side-street to make certain that there was no real
threat.

The motor-cyclist reappeared a moment later. Melcarth
watched through the rear windscreen as the man signalled to
his companions that all was well.

No significant injury had been done to the car, but the enor-
mity of the insult filied Melcarth with a sudden rage. The
missile had probably been thrown by an unruly child, with no
more motive than pure mischief, but it seemed nevertheless to
be symptomatic of a disrespect more terrible than any ingrati-
tude. Had these wretched aborigines no idea how much they
owed to the Imperium? Had they no understanding of the
enormous enrichment the Imperial castaways had brought to
their shabby culture, in addition to the enlightenment that
turned the tide against the awful corruptions of Chaos? How
could they not recognise such an obvious superiority of man-
ners and mores? Were they really stupid enough to hanker after
the reign of coven-masters who not only offered daily tributes
of their blood to the vilest of gods but welcomed their own
slow transformation into mad and monstrous mutants?

'Perhaps Balberith is half-right,' the governor murmured, in a
highly exceptional moment of generosity, as he continued to
stare out of the rear window. The only thing worth fighting for
is the Imperial ideal, and that would be a great deal easier to
uphold if we were not cut off from our starfaring brothers. If
only the man could understand that the very best embodiment
of that ideal in our own world is me, we might be friends
instead of adversaries!'

Pawns of Chaos                   181

'Excellency?' said the normally taciturn Thorold, just in case
the remark had been addressed to him.

'Is that a third car, Thorold?' Melcarth asked, having sud-
denly caught sight of the glimmer of headlamps behind the
motor-cyclist who had temporarily detached himself from the
protective formation. 'I thought Vorch contrived to cram the
other guardsmen into his.'

The bodyguard turned to peer into the gloom. 'Yes, excel-
lency,' he said. T believe it is. Shall I have it stopped?'

'Not yet - let's find out who it is first. Tell your colleague in
the front to use his vox-caster to find out whose it is.'

This order was relayed through the glass screen that sepa-
rated the rear section of the governor's car from the front seats.
After a few moments, the answer came back.

'It's the Chief Inquisitor's car, excellency,' Thorold reported.

'What?' Melcarth was dumbfounded. 'Where is he going?'

Another minute went by, seeming much slower than its pre-
decessor, before the second answer came back - this time
directly from the driver's companion. 'He says that he's coming
to help you, excellency,' the guardsman reported. 'As soon as he
heard news of your heroic endeavour, he thought it necessary
to pledge his full support, and to share the danger.'

Melcarth became uncomfortably aware that his jaw was
hanging open. He shut his mouth with an abrupt click, gritting
his teeth while he considered the situation.

He wondered briefly whether Kerforo might have been
turned, but quickly decided that it must have been the vigi-
lance of Balberith's own secret agents that had alerted the Chief
Inquisitor to Melcarth's hastily-improvised plan. Balberith
must have reacted instantly, just as impetuously as Melcarth
himself. Having understood the game that Melcarth was play-
ing, and the decisiveness of this latest move, Balberith had
responded reflexively - and very recklessly.

He's played right into my hands! Melcarth thought. What a
stroke of genius it was to hasten my departure!

Melcarth could see nothing but advantage in allowing
Balberith to 'share the danger' of the aerial expedition - pro-
vided, of course, that his own retinue outnumbered Balberith's
by at least two to one. If it were to transpire, after his timely
return to Kalazendra, that the expedition had suffered casual-
ties while in Gulzacandra, would that not serve to demonstrate

182                      Brian Craig

his bravery in going, and the true extent of his triumph in
returning safely? And what a magnificent funeral he could stage
for the heroic Chief Inquisitor, whose life had been so tragi-
cally lost...

'How much extra space will there be aboard the aircraft, once
our own men are accommodated?' Melcarth demanded of
Thorold.

'As much or as little as you desire, excellency,' was the swift
reply, as the bodyguard immediately realised what his master
was thinking. "We can depend on Techmaster Sauldron to set as
narrow a limit as you might care to suggest.'

'Good - send him instructions to make sure that our people
outnumber Balberith's by three to one. Tell him to be as apolo-
getic as he needs to be, but to make sure that there are
abundant good reasons why there simply aren't enough spare
places to accommodate more than a couple of his pet thugs.
Make sure it's all sorted out before we arrive.'

'Yes, excellency,' Thorold replied - and immediately leant
forward to take the vox-caster's speaking horn from his col-
league.

Having grasped this unexpected opportunity, Melcarth set-
tled back into his seat to make further plans. He was amazed
that Balberith was even prepared to contemplate joining him
on the flight, given the Chief Inquisitor's aversion to heights,
but now that the possibility had been raised, his main fear was
that Balberith would suffer a last-minute attack of cowardice
and pull out. That, he thought, would be a real anti-climax. It
would be wise to delay any hostile action until the aircraft had
actually landed in Gulzacandra. It would be entertaining too, if
Balberith did turn out to be as deeply discomfited by flying as
by standing on a high balcony - but once they were on alien
soil... on hostile soil... it should be easy enough to extract the
thorn from his side permanently, and make up a story that
would work to his advantage...

'It seems, excellency, that there won't be a problem/ Thorold
reported. 'Apparently, the Chief Inquisitor left his apartments
in a hurry. He's already told Techmaster Sauldron that he has
only three men with him - and only one of them is armed. We
have eight men fully-armed, plus the pilot and the aircraft's vox
operator, both of whom are completely trustworthy. But why is
he doing it, excellency? Surely he must know that it's suicide.'

Pawns of Chaos                   183

'Must he?' Mekarth wondered, aloud. 'Perhaps not. Perhaps
he really does not understand how matters lie. Or perhaps he
is merely desperate. In either case, everything is going our way.
How the Emperor must love us, Thorold - all praise to his glo-
rious name!'

'All praise to the Emperor,' Thorold echoed.

Even when Mekarth reached the airbase and discovered what
he had not thought to wonder or to ask before, he was still
exultant, still convinced that he had the favour of the gods.
After all, he thought, the only thing that would matter once the
aircraft was aloft, was the number of guns aboard and the loy-
alty of their carriers.

What difference could it possibly make to his unfolding
scheme that Ragan Balberith had elected to bring along a priest
and a psyker as well as a bodyguard?

Was it not, after all, the greatest gift that circumstance could
offer a future ruler of the world, that the psyker who had come
so close to making contact with the Imperial Fleet should be
delivered into Orloc Melcarth's hands along with his trouble-
some master, the Chief Inquisitor Ragan Balberith?




SEVENTEEN

WHEN HYCILLA WENT back into the farmhouse Dathan stayed
outside. He told himself that he was 'keeping watch' but he
didn't really believe it. He knew that when Nimian - or
Sathorael - returned, there would be no need to offer Gavalon
an early warning of his approach.

He was, therefore, taken utterly by surprise when he heard
the noise of the approaching trucks.

It had never occurred to Dathan that the soldiers who had
taken the village might set out to discover what had become of
their companions, or that once having found the wreckage by
the water-hole they might also find the tracks made by the
truck Hycilla had driven away, and follow them until they
found the truck that had run out of fuel - at which point, the
Imperial soldiers would naturally continue along the road,
anxious to know what had become of the vehicle's driver. Once
he realised that the trucks were actually coming, though,
Dathan understood immediately that all this had been obvi-
ous, and that he had been a fool not to expect it.

Dathan understood, too, the awful significance of the fact
that Gavalon the Great was in the farmhouse, with only two
thrall-wizards and two unarmed villagers for company. It

185

186                        Brian Craig

would be utterly disastrous, he knew, if the defenders of
Culzacandra were to lose their leader before the expected bat-
tle had even begun.

For this reason, he ran back into the house shouting: 'Mount
up! Mount up! We have to get away! More trucks are coming!'

The response was immediate, but it was not quite what
Dathan had expected. Instead of running for the steeds that
had carried them from the encampment, the sorcerer's first
move was to whirl around to face Hycilla.

Where is the daemon?' he demanded. 'How near is he?'

Dathan's first assumption was that Hycilla had no way of
knowing what the answer was - but when he saw the way that
she met Gavalon's intimidating gaze, he remembered that she
had known far more than she should even before Nimian had
made his spectacular appearance in their lives. Ever since the
boy had touched her, she had been growing - and the physical
change was merely symptomatic. When Nimian had touched
her, he had claimed her; she was his now.

He touched me, too, Dathan remembered - but was swift to
add: but I am no wise-dreamer, and she is. There was already
something in her, waiting to be claimed.

Gavalon's eyes were dark and bulbous; looking into them
was like looking into a stormy night - but Hycilla's eyes were
larger now, and much darker. Anyone who met her stare would
be frightened - anyone, except a man like Gavalon.

The sorcerer and Hycilla met one another's eyes very steadily.
Gavalon reached out as if to seize Hycilla's arms in his remark-
able fists - but Hycilla was too quick for him. She reached out
and placed her own recently-elongated hands on his forearms,
and she stared into his face with the full glare of her suddenly-
supernatural eyes. Gavalon was taken aback - but he was
obviously satisfied with what he saw within or behind Hycilla's
eyes, for he nodded his shaggy head. Then he stepped back,
releasing himself from her unresisting grip.

'Maldayak, with me!' the sorcerer shouted. 'Abdalkuri -
mount up! Take the boy with you. The beastmen cannot be far
away. Ride to meet them and bring them forward as fast as you
can.'

Dathan was momentarily confused by these instructions, but
as Abdalkuri grabbed his arm and pulled him back towards the
door he realised that Gavalon intended to make a stand, and

Pawns of Chaps                   187

that he must intend to keep Hycilla with him as well as
Maldayak. He opened his mouth to protest, but the words died
in his throat as he realised how futile a protest would be. He
did not want to leave Hycilla in a place of danger, but he was
in no position to demand of her, let alone of Gavalon the
Great, that she should come with him.

By the time Abdalkuri had dragged Dathan out to the yard
where the horses were tethered, the leading truck had already
come to the crest of the ridge, from which the farmhouse was
clearly visible. Dathan knew that he must be visible too - and
that their vivid orange and blue colouring would make the
homed horses stand out boldly even against the exotically
tinted vegetation of the plain.

'Don't be afraid,' the wizard hissed, as he thrust Dathan
towards one of the horses. They have guns, but we have glamour.'

Dathan had no idea what this reassurance was supposed to
mean, but his attention was fixed on the task immediately
before him - which was to get up into the saddle. The stirrup
seemed even higher than it had before, and the possibility of
using it as a step even more remote. The horse knew him this
time, though, and although it could not bend a knee to make
the step easier it stood stock still, looking back at him with
what seemed to be a trustful eye.

Mustering all his courage, Dathan reached up to take hold of
the saddle-horn, and lifted his left foot as high as he could.
Somewhat to his surprise, he managed to get his boot into the
stirrup. He pushed off with his other foot, while using the
strength of his arms to haul himself up.

Amazingly, it worked. He found himself in the saddle.

Although he no longer had Nimian's severed finger to help
him, the horse seemed perfectly content to recognise Dathan as
its master, or at least as its ward. He had to admit that there was
no real exercise of mastery in the fact that the horse turned and
trotted out of the yard, breaking into a canter as soon as it was
clear of the gate. If anyone were actually the master, he quickly
realised, it was the horse - but at least the horse seemed enthu-
siastic to have him on its back.

Abdalkuri's mount was already ahead of them, but as soon as
its direction was obvious the trucks coming over the hill began
to draw apart, two of them leaving the road on an interception
course.

188                      Brian Craig

Dathan judged that the trucks were too far away to be able to
cut Abdalkuri off, but he saw that there were men swarming
around the guns mounted on the backs of the vehicles. He had
no doubt that he and his companion were already within range.

The firing began immediately, although it was the smaller
arms that opened up first; the bigger guns remained silent
while the men attempting to aim them fought to get them
properly aligned.

Although he heard the whine of one bullet that passed close
by, Dathan saw that the trucks which had peeled off were
bouncing too violently on the uneven ground to provide a
good platform for marksmen. With a little luck, he thought,
and given that the ground could only get worse the further the
trucks went from the road, his sure-footed mount might be
able to carry him out of range before he was hit.

Unfortunately, his sure-footed mount did not seem to see the
matter in that light at all. While Abdalkuri's horse galloped
full-tilt for the horizon, aiming for the point at which
Cavalon's retinue ofbeastmen was due to appear as they plod-
ded after him, Dathan's mount wheeled about and charged
away at a right-angle, exposing the whole of its wide flank to
the gunners on the two trucks.

The trucks were close enough by now for Dathan to sense the
gunners' delight at finding such a target, and he knew full well
that they did not need to hit him to seal his fate. If they
brought down the homed horse while it was galloping the sub-
sequent fall would certainly disable him, even if it did not kill
him.

Now the big guns opened up, both together, at what their
operators thought was an easy target.

They were wrong.

Dathan felt the blast-wave as the shells sailed past him, but
when they finally came to earth and exploded they were more
than a hundred yards behind him. The rifles continued to blaze
away, but he could not even hear the whine of their bullets now
that he had been deafened by the cannon. He suddenly under-
stood the meaning of the enigmatic reassurance that Abdalkuri
had given him, and the significance of the fact that the horses'
colouration - not to mention the thrall-wizards' costumes -
would make them stand out so sharply against any easily-imag-
inable background.

Pawns of Chaos                   189

Clamour must be a kind of illusion. The horses and their
customary riders were supposed to attract fire - but their appar-
ent position was somehow deceptive. Missiles aimed at them
would always go astray.

Or, if not always, then mostly.

No sooner had Dathan figured out the manner of this trick-
ery, though, than the horse changed its tactics again. It wheeled
around, and this time it charged towards one of the trucks, on
an interception course of its own.

Because they were approaching one another at an angle there
seemed to be no danger that the horse would actually run right
into the front of the truck, but as the range diminished rapidly
the gunners on the back of both trucks became even more
excited. The big guns swivelled urgently, while the riflemen
continued to fire.

Dathan did not know what to do, except duck. He pressed his
face into the horse's mane, dropping his arms in order to grip
the animal around the neck. The reins were still clutched tightly
in his right hand, but they were exercising no restraint whatso-
ever on the horse. He shut his eyes reflexively, having not the
slightest idea what would happen - and when the horse's
unnaturally massive hooves suddenly ceased to beat upon the
ground he thought for an instant that he had been hit by a bul-
let and robbed of all sensation, for he was still quite deaf.

Then he realised that he was still alive, and whole, and that
his mount was sailing through the air in an unimaginably
prodigious leap. It jumped right over the careering truck, as dis-
dainfully as if it were clearing a waist-high wooden fence.

The landing jarred him badly, but Dathan did not fall, and
the sheer exultation of being alive more than compensated for
the shock. The joy in question was quickly compounded as the
front wheels of the truck he had leapt over fell into a drainage
ditch and brought the vehicle to an abrupt halt.

At least, the sudden descent into the ditch would have
brought the truck to an abrupt halt had the ditch not been
quite so wide and deep, and had the mass of the big gun not
been mounted so far back. The combination of the speed at
which the truck had been travelling, the precipitousness of the
descent and the imbalance of the load ensured that inertia
plucked the back wheels from the top of a low ridge and sent
the entire vehicle into a cartwheel.

190                      Brian Craig

The sheer weight of the vehicle slowed the ascent of the
back end, but could not slow it quite enough. Almost as soon
as the radiator at the front of the truck hit the dirt the back
end attained the vertical, and the vehicle began to topple
forwards.

The men on the back tried to jump clear. The jumping was
easy enough, but landing was a very different matter. They
came down somersaulting, their limbs flailing madly, and four
out of the five fell very badly indeed.

The fifth fell quite well, and might have been uninjured had
the tailboard of the falling truck not caught the top of his skull,
killing him instantly.

The other truck that had left the road was in trouble too,
although not nearly as much. Its driver, forewarned, had man-
aged to steer sideways as the vehicle approached the drainage
ditch. He had managed to keep one of the front wheels clear -
but one was not enough. Given a second more warning, he
might have been able to keep the other clear too - but as it was,
the left front wheel tipped over the edge. The left rear wheel fol-
lowed it. The truck did not tip and topple like its predecessor,
but it skidded and shuddered to a slanting halt, incapable of
further movement in any direction.

All the guns on the second truck kept blazing away at
Dathan's brightly-coloured mount, but the horse continued to
present a deceptive target. Two more explosive shells blasted
enormous craters in the farmer's ravaged fields, but Daman
remained miraculously untouched.

For a moment or two, Dathan was carried back towards the
roadway, where more enemies were gathered - but that gave
him the opportunity to see that there was another fight in
progress, far less equal than the one in which he had been
engaged.

In order to attack the farmhouse the other trucks had drawn
up in a line, and Imperial soldiers had swarmed out of them,
heading for the building where Gavalon, Hycilla and Maldayak
were waiting. It had been a rash move - but how could the sol-
diers have known that the plants which grew in such strange
profusion around the house had been growing with such
astonishing and unnatural fervour for hours?

Those plants were giants now, and they were active too.
For a moment, Dathan thought that they might hold back

Pawns of Chaos                   191

the attackers and murder the lot of them, but they were only
plants. They slowed the attackers down, but it did not seem
to Dathan, at first glance, that they could hold them for

long-
Some of the soldiers had flame-throwers like the ones that
had burned the judeye forest, and were quick to use them. The
plants seemed to devour Hame, and to love the taste of it, but
the blasts persisted and soon turned the tables, devouring them
in their turn. Others among the soldiers had blades as well as
guns - blades that were sharp enough to strike a man's head
from his shoulders in a close fight - and they were even more
effective, in their fashion, than the flame-throwers.

When the plants were hurt by being cut it seemed to Dathan
to make them all the more avid to entwine their stems and
branches around the limbs and the bellies of the soldiers, in
order that they might squeeze and crush and strangle them.
Once they lost their connections to their roots, though, they
lost most of their strength.

But we're winning! Dathan thought, desperately, as his mount
changed direction yet again. We're holding them!

Alas, it was not as simple as that. There were still artillerists
manning the big guns on the trucks that had drawn up along
the road, and they opened fire on the farmhouse.

The clamour of the cannonade blended almost immediately
with the crashing of falling masonry and the splintering of
wooden beams, but it was all so muted in Dathan's deafened
ears that it sounded very distant and rather strange.

Nor were those gunners the only ones still capable of firing.
The truck whose left side was perched on the edge of the ditch
was listing at an angle, but that tilt was not so steep as to pre-
vent the big gun from being brought to bear, and the riflemen
still had their weapons. They were still firing at Dathan's glori-
ous mount, although the noise of their weapons seemed so
faint as to be slightly absurd.

Alas, that absurdity was no armour against the damage they
could do.

Their aim was still confused, but Dathan realised just a frac-
tion of a second in advance of disaster that if well-aimed shots
were certain to miss a target, then badly-aimed ones still had a
chance of finding their mark. There was a peculiar instant, in
which he thought he heard another sound, utterly different

192                      Brian Craig

from the explosive gunfire and much more horrible, but he had
no opportunity to wonder what it might be if it were more than
mere illusion.

His horse was hit, and he had no attention to spare thereafter
for anything but himself.

Had the horse been hit in the shoulder or the head it would
have gone down immediately, and Dathan would have been
sent somersaulting through the air in exactly the same fashion
as the men hurled from the truck that had turned over.
Although the wound the animal took was no less mortal, the
point of impact was close to the stock of its ratlike tail. Instead
of cartwheeling, the beast lost its back legs and slithered, while
its front legs continued to strive gallantly, but vainly, for pur-
chase.

The deceleration seemed horribly abrupt to Dathan, and the
descent to the ground was bruising, but even as he fought to
avoid being thrown he realised that fortune was still on his
side. He had a chance to jump clear and roll, and if he could
only control the tumble well enough to avoid breaking a limb
he could still fight on - fight being the operative word, now
that he was fully exposed and quite without glamour.

He dived, and he rolled.

The ground was better than it might have been, firm without
being unduly hard. His muscles were jarred and his nerves
were jangled, but Dathan eventually came to rest lying on his
side, with all his limbs intact. He was not even winded, and he
had the presence of mind to look up before trying to get up,
in order to see exactly where he was and where his enemies
were.

Perhaps the clever horse had contrived it and perhaps it was
mere chance, but Dathan found, to his delight, that he was lit-
tle more than ten yards away from the truck that had
overturned, and that the body of the truck was shielding him
from the fire that would otherwise have been streaming from
the other one.

There was a man with a gun not a dozen feet away: a living
man, whose eyes were fixed on Dathan and whose arms were
trying to bring a rifle round so that its muzzle would be point-
ing at his face. But the man had broken a leg and an arm as he
fell awkwardly, and he could not do what he was trying so very
hard to accomplish.

Pawns of Chaos                   193

Dathan launched himself forward and wrestled the gun free
from the stricken man's one good hand - and then he smashed
the butt of the weapon down on the soldier's head.

That's for Houime! he thought.

Dathan's brain, unprompted, completed a calculation which
told him that there must be a hundred and thirty villagers still
to avenge, but there was a pain in his heart that was not in the
least concerned with calculations. His mother was among
those who might have been murdered, and he knew that these
were the soldiers who had taken everything from him that he
loved, and everything that he knew. Even Hycilla was lost to
him now, having become Nimian's creature, and the agony in
his heart told him that he was utterly alone.

It was the agony in his heart, not the calculation in his brain,
which reversed his grip on the rifle and sent him sprawling into
the ditch, peering around the upturned truck in search of tar-
gets.

The other truck was less than thirty yards away, and it was full
of targets.

Dathan never paused to remember that he had never fired a
gun in his life before, and that did not even know how. Nor did
he pause when he felt the first recoil tear into his shoulder
muscles, more painful than the jolting he had received when
his horse collapsed.

He felt the discharge of the gun, but he could not hear it at
all.

He fired, and he kept on firing - and when the gun ran out
of ammunition, he scrambled back to the upturned truck,
determined to find another gun if he could not find the where-
withal to reload the one he had.

He found another rifle, and took advantage of the cover
afforded by the vehicle to resume firing.

The soldiers from the more distant truck had begun a charge
as soon as they were certain that he was out of ammunition,
but they were charging at the wrong position. Dathan shot two
of them down before they realised their mistake.

Then the beastmen arrived.

Cavalon's laggard retinue came charging across the fields like
stampeding cattle, howling more loudly than Dathan would
ever have thought possible - loudly enough, in fact, to cut into
his deafness where even the crack of the rifle had failed. Even

194                        Brian Craig

muted, as they were to Dathan, the beastmen's howls were ter-
rible, neither human nor animal but both at once - everything
at once, mingling in a scream so sharp it seemed to have the
power to lacerate and carve.

Dathan howled too.

Although his yell of anger and triumph was a feeble thing by
comparison with the howling of the beastmen, quite inaudible
to him, it must have added its force to the tumult.

Dathan felt that he was one with the beastmen, a sharer in
their power and their determination.

He came out into the open then, to join in a pitched battle,
choosing his targets now with the utmost care, lest he should
hit one of his allies instead of an enemy.

He was sure that he had killed at least one more enemy
before he was struck down himself - and when he fell, feeling
a curtain of hot wet blood gush like a waterfall over his fore-
head and into his eyes, he felt nothing at all but astonishment:

no pain, no sorrow, no regret.

Why, he thought, as his senses spun away from him, I thought
I was invincible. I really did!




EIGHTEEN

WHEN HYCILLA SAW the trucks split into two groups - two of
them chasing Dathan and the thrall-wizard, while four contin-
ued to approach the house - her first thought was a flash of
hope that Dathan's steed might be able to carry him out of
range of the guns. She had no doubt that Cavalon could defend
himself, and anyone who remained with him, although the
sorcerer did not appear at first glance to be carrying any
weapon adequate to deal with the impending threat.

Even Cavalon seemed slightly distressed, for a moment or
two - but then she realised that he was intensely annoyed.

'I had hoped to save the horn for the real battle,' he said to
Maldayak, 'but a blast sufficient to deal with these reckless
fools should not deplete its power too much. Protect your ears
- no matter how well I direct the weapon, there's certain to be
leakage at this range. You must do likewise, child, no matter
how well Sathorael has strengthened you. Your ears are grow-
ing nicely, but they'll still need to be stuffed with something
virtuous. Give her a strip from your jerkin, Maldayak.'

Cavalon seemed quite unhurried while he made this speech,
but Maldayak showed a greater sense of urgency as he tore
strips of bright yellow cloth from his decorated jacket, passing

195

196                        Brian Craig

two to Hycilla with a slightly ill grace before he began stuffing
his own ears with protective wadding.

Hycilla copied him, while Gavalon detached the hom that
hung from the right side of his belt, opposite his heavy sword.

Hycilla had heard that the horns of loxodonts were some-
times used as signalling devices when it was inconvenient to
make beacon-fires, but the only wind instruments she had ever
heard were delicate and fluty, made from the little horns of
ghazals. Cavalon's horn did not seem so very large, and it cer-
tainly was not as curly as the horn of an old ram, but it was
intricately carved and elaborately enamelled in a hectic mixture
of reds, yellows and blues.

As the trucks screeched to a halt and the soldiers swarmed
from them bullets began to pour through the windows of the
farmhouse, forcing Hycilla and Maldayak to duck down.
Almost immediately, though, the firing became confused.

Peeping over the window-sill, Hycilla saw that the native
weeds that had invaded the farmyard in such numbers were not
as easy to trample down as the booted soldiers had imagined.
Only a few had grown fast enough to reach head height, but
many were waist high and many more had extended creepers
six or eight feet along the ground. As soon as the soldiers were
within the confining wall of what had once been the farmer's
herb-garden they found themselves under attack.

When the purple and pink stems and creepers began to grap-
ple with the legs of the charging soldiers, the soldiers were
quick to fight back. Four who had flame-throwers ready - pre-
sumably to flood the rooms of the house with fire and force its
inhabitants out into the open - immediately used their
weapons to counter-attack, but they had to be extremely care-
ful not to injure themselves or their companions. The enemy
was already at close quarters, and the engagement was far too
intimate to allow the reckless use of flaming liquid.

For a moment or two, the plants actually seemed to be thriv-
ing on the flames, as if the burning liquid were some kind of
spicy nutriment - and when the vegetation did begin to bum,
it was the plants which were not actively involved in the con-
flict that suffered most.

The soldiers carrying rifles had to stop firing in order to free
their right hands to reach for their knives. Once clear of their
scabbards and deployed with reasonable skill, the blades cut

Pawns of Chaos                   197

through the branches and creepers readily enough - but the
severed ends continued to harass their victims, squirming and
squeezing as best they could.

Without anchorage, alas, there was little enough the severed
branches could do, although those with thorns dug deep
enough to penetrate the skin beneath the soldiers' uniforms,
and a few of those that were perfectly smooth leaked corrosive
sap. Three or four of the attackers began to howl with pain -
but none of them fell, and their howling soon had as much
rage as anguish in it.

Because the attackers seemed to be having such extreme dif-
ficulty getting to the wall of the house, Hycilla was bold
enough to lift her head a little higher, but she regretted her
rashness as the big guns on the trucks opened up.

The gunners had aimed high in order to avoid hitting their
own men, so she was in no danger of taking a direct hit, but the
shells punched gaping holes in the masonry and tore into the
beams holding up the roof. The house had not been badly
built, but its structure had not been designed to withstand a
collective shock of this magnitude. The ceiling immediately
began to crumble and debris began to rain down on Hycilla's
shoulders.

She ducked, putting her hands to her head in order to pro-
tect her skull. It was as well that she did, for the move made it
easy for her to clamp her forearms over her wadded ears when
Cavalon returned fire.

All the sorcerer did was to blow his horn - but the hom was
loaded with a power far greater, in its own subtle fashion, than
the enemy guns.

Hycilla could not have described the note sounded by the
hom in musical terms. She could not tell whether it was high-
pitched or low, more like a trumpet or more like a reed pipe.
Had she been required to say what it was like she could only
have compared it to pain, but even then she would not have
been certain what kind of pain it was. Perhaps it was simply
that she had not had enough experience of different kinds of
pain, but it seemed to her that this was a kind far purer than
anything generated by a blazing fire, a piercing dart, a thunder-
ing headache or a bone-slicing blade.

The Imperial soldiers had probably had far more opportuni-
ties to become discriminating connoisseurs of pain than

198                      Brian Crais

Hycilla had, but she could not believe that they would have
done any better.

Even though the building was still crumbling, Hycilla lifted
her head again as soon as she was sure that the artillerists
aboard the trucks had ceased firing. She saw immediately that
the holding action conducted by the plants had been a great
success in spite of the plants' inadequacy as warriors. Not a sin-
gle soldier had reached the wall of the house, and it seemed
obvious now that none would. All but two of those who had
come into the yard had fallen, at least to their knees.

Most of the attackers had dropped their weapons - knives as
well as rifles - in order to clasp both hands to their ears, but the
precaution had been woefully inadequate. Several were in the
grip of convulsive fits that seemed likely to shake them apart.
Others were foaming at the mouth, the foam turning red as it
was flooded with blood from tongues bitten through.

The gunners on the trucks had not been quite as badly
affected, and the drivers of the trucks even less so - the latter
had the protection of their windowed cabs to thank for that -
but the two remaining men on the most distant of the four
trucks seemed to be the only ones still capable of conscious
action. While the gunner struggled to recover his poise and his
position the driver threw the truck into reverse gear and began
to draw away.

Hycilla became aware that Cavalon had taken hold of her -
and the thrall-wizard too - and that he was thrusting them
towards the window.

'Out! Out!' he yelled.

Hycilla realised that the hom had almost paralysed her, and
Maldayak too - and that their weakness put them in great dan-
ger, given that the house was still collapsing in upon itself.

She knew that she had to help Cavalon, and made a supreme
effort to take charge of her own limbs. Had her arms and legs
been as scrawny and weak as they had been two days before she
would have had some difficulty climbing through the window,
but her limbs were far longer now, and possessed of a strength
that she had not yet tested. She took hold of the sill and leapt
through the narrow gap with a single bound, more gracefully
than she would ever have thought possible.

Gavalon's intention had been that Maldayak would follow
her. The sorcerer was already yelling a further instruction to his

Pawns of Chaos                   199

thrall-wizard, telling him to mount his horse and chase the
truck - but the instruction was worthless, because Maldayak's
limbs were by no means as lithe as Hycilla's. The wizard tried
to climb, but he could not co-ordinate his actions. Somehow,
he became wedged in the window.

The remainder of the roof finally fell in.

Then the wall collapsed outwards, carrying Maldayak with it.

Gavalon was still inside.

Hycilla had to leap backwards in order to avoid being
trapped by the falling wall, but her backward leap carried her a
dozen feet. She landed beside one of the disabled soldiers, who
was still thrashing about in an attempt to dislodge a dozen fee-
ble but inconvenient vegetable serpents from various parts of
his body. Hycilla picked up his discarded knife - a keen blade
more than two feet long - and slashed his throat.

He continued thrashing, but harmlessly. The plants drank up
his lifeblood greedily.

Hycilla hardly spared him a glance, staring instead at the
place where Gavalon the Great had disappeared under a mass
of falling masonry.

A mere man would probably have been killed, or at least
knocked unconscious, but Cavalon was no mere man. He rose
up from the rubble, sending bricks and mortar cascading in
every direction, more angry than hurt - but he had not lost his
power of calculation, and he had not forgotten that he was in
the middle of a battle.

His first impulse, it seemed to Hycilla, was to pull Maldayak
out of the wreckage, so that the wizard could obey his order, but
it took him only a couple of seconds to realise that Maldayak
had been caught at a far worse disadvantage than he had.

The thrall-wizard was not dead, but he had broken at least
one leg and at least one arm. He was useless.

Cavalon's eyes immediately fixed on Hycilla, questioningly.

'I'll follow them!' she said, when she realised that he was
waiting. 'I'll kill them.' She was amazed by her own words.
How could she possibly make such a promise?

Gavalon nodded, immediately acquiescent, and seemingly
devoid of any doubt as to her ability to chase a truck and kill
its passengers.

The one who was fully exposed will not be very dangerous,' he
said, 'but the other might... be careful, I beg of you. Go! Go!'

200                        Brian Craig

Hydlla turned. Without bothering to question the sense of
the action or the magnitude of the task she had accepted, she
began to mn - and as soon as she settled into her stride, she
realised that Gavalon must know her new capabilities better
than she did. She glanced back once, not so much to see what
Gavalon was doing as to see what had become of Dathan.

Her heart leapt into her mouth when she saw that Dathan's
horse was down, but then she saw that he was on his feet, and
armed. Like her, he was carrying the fight to the enemy. He had
not grown at all since Nimian had touched him, and did not
appear to be changing in any way whatsoever, but he had risen
to the occasion nevertheless.

He is a hero! she thought. Even a boy like him may become a
hero, when disaster strikes!

She saw Gavalon, too, but only very briefly. The sorcerer was
running towards the youth, presumably to help him. Then she
heard a strange noise, which somehow contrived to penetrate
not only the coloured wadding in her ears but the aftershock of
Cavalon's hom.

It was an eerie and frightful noise, and she had the impres-
sion that under other circumstances, it might have seemed
loud and blood-curdling, but she had to bring her head back
round then in order to maintain her balance as she sped along
the road, faster than she had ever seen any human being run.

But I am no longer human, she reminded herself. I have been
touched by the creature that Nimian is becoming. I have been
touched by a Lord of Change more powerful than any other,
and there was something in me that responded to its touch. I
am more than human now. I am burning far more rapidly, and
far more brightly, than I could ever have done as a mere wise-
dreamer.

She realised as she settled into an even, carefully measured
stride that the truck was not drawing away from her. Even
though the driver had taken the first opportunity to turn it
around, so that it was moving forwards instead of backwards,
it was not moving any faster than she was.

Hycilla knew, having sat in a driver's seat - even though she
had been in a very strange state of mind at the time - that the
driver would be able to see her image in the mirror set in the
centre of the cab, above his head. He would know, therefore, if
he cared to look, that he was being pursued.

Pawns of Chaos                  201

Perhaps that would not frighten him, given that she still
looked like a young girl, in spite or her increased stature - but
perhaps it would, given that no mere girl could be doing what
she was doing without magical aid.

The man on the back of the truck could see her too, and she
could see him quite clearly. He had fallen down when the
horn's blast hit him, but if he had experienced a convulsive fit,
it was over now. There was no sign of blood or foam at his
mouth, and he looked as if he might be able to stand up again
if only he could find the strength. Hycilla did not doubt that he
was trying to find that strength with all his might, but for the
moment it was a losing battle. He could not draw himself into
a sitting or kneeling position, in spite of having the plinth and
mount of his gun to hold on to.

His eyes were firmly fixed on the vehicle's pursuer, and there
was terror in them.

Hycilla took a certain satisfaction from that terror, but she
knew that it would have been more to her advantage if the man
had been laughing. Terror might help him gather his strength.
Terror might help him bring his weapon to bear - and no mat-
ter how much unhuman strength Nimian's touch had given
her, a well-aimed shot from a cannon like that would blow her
to smithereens.

Cavalon had told her that the man would be helpless for
some time, but Cavalon had not factored the terror into his cal-
culation either.

Hycilla tried to accelerate, but it wasn't easy. She knew that
she mustn't exhaust herself too soon, and that she had to pace
herself in anticipation of a long chase. She also knew that she
had to begin to close the distance separating her from the
truck.

She accelerated, but so did the truck. The driver could see her
- and he was afraid.

Now, though, the truck could go no faster. But Hycilla still
had reserves of strength untapped.

Steadily, yard by yard, she began to eat into the distance sep-
arating her from the stricken gunner. While he stared at her, she
stared at him, not terrified at all, nor even slightly apprehen-
sive.

Her confidence made the gunner try even harder to rise to his
feet. Finally, he managed to sit up. The effort cost him dearly in

202                      Brian Craig

pain, but it seemed to be a price he was willing to pay. He
braced himself for an even greater effort, gritting his teeth in
anticipation of paying an even higher price. Had he been a
coward, he would have failed, but he was a brave man.

If he had a god, Hycilla thought, he must have offered up a
particularly powerful prayer. Against all the odds, he began to
haul himself to his feet.

Once he was erect, Hycilla knew, the rest would be so much
easier. He had only to adjust his position, and aim the gun. The
gun was swivel-mounted, easily manoeuvrable. It would not be
easy to aim from the back of a vehicle moving at full tilt over
such an ill-made road, but he would not have to be very pre-
cise.

She was only twenty yards away now, and still closing. By the
time he could get the gun aligned, she would surely be less
than ten yards away - unless she abandoned the chase and
moved off the road into the corn-cob forest which they had just
re-entered, in order to follow more discreetly.

It was her choice.

She accelerated again, throwing every last vestige of her
strength into a final sprint. The intervening distance lessened
dramatically, forcing the gunner to a further effort of his own.

His legs were not as willing as hers. He stumbled.

That lost him at least ten seconds, and ten seconds was
more than Hycilla needed. By the time he had recovered his
former pose she was leaping up on to the back of the truck,
hauling herself over the tailboard with an improbably fluid
motion.

There was a rifle in the comer, but it was out of reach. Hycilla
slammed into the gunner even as he turned, and the impact
must have filled his body with paralysing pain all over again.
His body hit the back wall of the cab like a sack of grain, and
bounced.

The soldier collapsed, turning as he fell to face her again with
his terror-stricken eyes.

Hycilla knelt over him and pressed the point of her blade to
his throat.

'One question,' she whispered. Why did you destroy my vil-
lage, and kill everyone in it?'

She used her left hand to tear the rags out of her ears in order
that she might hear his reply.

Pawns of Chaos                   203

He looked at her as if she were mad - as if anyone who
asked such a question as that must be mad. There was horror
and loathing in his eyes too, but they were outweighed by
astonishment.

'I... I was following orders/ he said, as if it were absolutely
obvious and something of which a man might be proud.

Hycilla had been intending to slash his throat as she had
slashed the throat of the man whose knife his once was, but
when she heard that reply she changed her mind, and deftly
used the point of the weapon to blind him in both eyes.

Then she picked him up as if she were a labourer with pow-
erful muscles hauling a sack of grain on to a sturdy shoulder,
and hurled him over the side of the still-speeding truck, hop-
ing that he might live long enough to bring himself to his feet
again and stagger off into the hostile forest - whose predators
would doubtless dispose of him at their leisure.

^

NINETEEN

DATHAN DREAMED THAT he was taking part in a great battle,
whose fire and fury stretched from horizon to horizon of a vast
plain. It was the dead of night, and the only illumination apart
from the faint and hazy light of the three moons and the mul-
titudinous stars was provided by the muzzle-flashes of
countless guns. He had a gun himself, which he was firing
repeatedly and mechanically, always finding shadowy targets
at which to aim but never knowing whether any of his shots
struck home.

He was surrounded by beastmen and other monsters: crea-
tures that had once been human but were human no longer,
having suffered terrible mutations and mutilations. Such
armour as they had was brightly-coloured, but the colours
seemed oddly drab in the dim light. Only a few had guns,
while the rest wielded massive blades of various bizarre shapes.
They too fought shadows, but the shadows they fought had
guns of their own, and blades too. No matter how many shad-
ows faded or fell, there seemed to be an infinite number rising
anew from the muddy ground.

The mud was not compounded out of soil and rainwater, but
out of soil and blood.

205

206                        Brian Craig

He awoke with a start to find that someone was shaking him
by the shoulder. He could not open his eyes at first because
they were sealed shut, but he rubbed them and forced them
open. The knuckles with which he had rubbed them were dark
red, and he realised that it had been dried blood that had caked
his eyelashes and locked his eyelids shut.

When he lifted his head he discovered that the alarming eyes
of Gavalon the Great were staring at him. It was Cavalon who
had shaken him awake.

Dathan put his hand up to his head then, to feel the wound
that had felled him. His matted hair was in the way, but his fin-
gertips traced the length of a ridge of homy scar-tissue that
arched across his head an inch or two behind the hairline. It
wasn't painful.

'Did you heal me?' he asked the sorcerer. 'Did you bring me
back from the dead?'

'Healing isn't one of my talents,' Cavalon growled, 'and no
one comes back from the dead as hale and cheerful as you
seem to be. But yes, I sealed the wound. It's a great deal less
pretty than it would have been had it healed of its own accord,
but I couldn't wait - you might have slept till tomorrow, and I
need you now.'

What for?' Dathan wanted to know. He was already hauling
himself to his feet and looking around. The battle was over, but
the beastmen were still moving rapidly back and forth over the
ground, scavenging for weapons.

The trucks,' Cavalon said. We need them, so we need to
know how to make them work.'

'How would I know that?' Dathan asked, in frank
astonishment. 'I'm just a villager - not even a craftsman's
apprentice.' He noticed that there was a rifle at his feet, and
remembered using it. He touched the fingers of his left hand
to his right shoulder, where the weapon's persistent recoil had
left a bruise. That still hurt more than a little, but the twinge
released a surge of pride as he remembered what he had done.
He might not have been appointed an apprentice, and might
never have become a true craftsman even if his life had clung
to its rut of normality, but he was a man now. He was a
warrior.

'You watched the girl,' Cavalon said. 'You saw what she
did.'

Pawns of Chaos                  207

'I don't remember!' Dathan protested. Then his voice
dropped as he added, more honestly: 'I wasn't paying atten-
tion.'

That doesn't matter/ Gavalon said. The girl was guided, and
you were beside her. The Vessel touched both of you, and drew
you into the process of his maturation. With you beside me, I
can easily recall an echo of the guidance the girl received - and
I've power enough to share what I learn with those in thrall to
me. One truck got away and one broke an axle, but the army
needs the other four. You're the key.'

Dathan was confused by this speech, but when its import
became clear he saw its most worrying implication.

Where's Hycilla?' he demanded. Why can't she show you
what to do?'

'Not here,' Cavalon admitted, with a slight sigh. 'She fol-
lowed the men who drove away, because she was the only one
who could. Perhaps I could have demanded that she stay, if I
had had sufficient presence of mind in the heat of the battle,
but she is not in thrall to me any more than you are. She was
responding to a higher call, and I would only have confused
her by trying to prevent it, and so I urged her to go. But all will
be well, I trust - because I have you.'

Dathan was astonished by this speech, as much by the con-
fession that a man and a sorcerer as powerful as Cavalon could
lack presence of mind in the heat of battle as by the implica-
tion that he had somehow become an important element of
Gavalon's scheme. To cover his confusion he knelt down to
pick up the rifle - his rifle, by right of conquest. As soon as he
had his hands on it, though, the impatient sorcerer pulled him
upright again, and thrust him towards one of the trucks. It was
the one whose wheels had slipped sideways into the ditch, but
it was no longer stuck. Gavalon's beastmen must have used
levers to prise it out and set it to rights. Dathan remembered
shooting the man who had fired the big gun at him.

'Where's Nimian?' Dathan asked.

'He didn't come back,' Gavalon replied, as he increased his
pace, pulling Dathan along with him. 'I dare not wait any
longer. He'll find us easily enough when he wants to - if he
wants to. I ought to get these weapons to the army. Fulbra will
be on us soon enough, and I must place myself in a position to
shape the encounter as best 1 can. Every gun will be desperately

208                      Brian Craig

needed, no matter what part Sathorael intends to play. The
Changer of the Ways will doubtless let me know what my pan
is to be when the time comes.'

The sorcerer thrust Dathan into the cab of the truck, and
climbed up behind him as soon as Dathan had scrambled over
to the passenger seat. Gavalon put his misshapen fingers to his
ragged lips and whistled an ear-splitting signal to his retinue of
beastmen. Through the side-window of the cab Dathan could
see that they responded as one, running to the trucks with the
last of their booty.

'Why didn't you use magic the moment you saw the trucks?'
Dathan asked. 'Why did you let them get so close and do so
much damage?'

Gavalon looked at him sharply. Had the sorcerer's face been
more human, Dathan thought, he would have been wearing
exactly the same expression that his mother and Pater Saltana
had put on when he had asked one question too many - but
unlike them, Gavalon didn't seem to begrudge him his curios-
ity.

'Had you had an atom of talent, boy,' the sorcerer said, 'we
might have made a wizard out of you.'

It was obviously meant to be a compliment, but Dathan
couldn't quite see the logic of it. Was asking questions a quali-
fication for wizardry? Surely not. He opened his mouth to
speak again, but Gavalon placed a clawlike hand upon his
shoulder, and the massive talons dug into his bruise just hard
enough to shock him into silence.

Try to remember, Dathan,' Cavalon said brusquely. Try to
relive the moment when you first got into one of these things.
Remember what Hycilla did. Remember the expression on her
face.'

If it had been anyone else but the sorcerer beside him,
Dathan would have had difficulty collecting himself - but it
was the sorcerer, and the words seemed to flow into his head,
exercising an awesome power of command.

As soon as Hycilla had the door open she had leapt up into
the empty space, and had then reached back to offer Dathan
the support of her arm. He had taken her hand and clambered
up behind her. By the time he was in she had scrambled across
to set herself in the further seat of a matching pair, behind the
big wheel that was the cab's most prominent feature...

Pawns of Chaos                  209

The confined space had been an utterly mysterious and pro-
foundly alien environment, but when Hycilla had turned
towards him to tell him to be quiet she hadn't needed words.
Her eyes had been uncannily large and strangely luminous,
brightly lit by moist reflections even though the pupils had
been widely dilated. Her lips had formed themselves into a
ferocious snarl, making her lovely face into a hideous carica-
ture...

There had been a lever sticking up from the floor of the truck
between her seat and Dathan's, and she had already begun
wrenching it back and forth. The truck's engine had roared into
life. As soon as the truck's wheels had begun to turn she had
spun the steering-wheel, forcing the vehicle into a tight arc that
carried it away to the left...

'Not so distant,' Gavalon murmured. 'Relive it, as if it were
now.'

Hycilla spun the wheel again, sending the truck into another,
entirely different arc. She was making no attempt to stick to
better ground, and there was nothing visible through the wind-
screen but the crowns of bushes and exotic flowers - a veritable
tide of vegetation that seemed to hurl itself forward and dive
down beneath the vehicle with reckless alacrity...

There were no more soldiers to be seen now, but the evidence
of their presence was all around, in billows of smoke and lines
of hectic light scrawled upon the surface of the starry sky...

'Open the door!' Hycilla screamed. 'Move over!'

His hand shot out from his side to grapple with the door-
catch. He had never encountered one like it, so it required a
few seconds of inexpert fumbling, but in the end he managed
to spring the catch and hurl the door open - and then, without
any pause for thought or reinforcement of the command, he
moved over into the narrow gap between the two seats...

A human figure leapt out of the onrushing vegetation to land
sure-footedly on the floor of the truck, arms extended to catch
the side and top of the door frame, so that a single fluid move-
ment might deliver the slender body into the space that
Dathan had cleared...

Hycilla spun the wheel yet again, hurling the truck into an
arc so tight that it came up on two wheels. Dathan was scared
that it might tip over, but the fear was insufficient to override
his astonishment...

210                        Brian Craig

He became lost, then, as two different times seemed to over-
lap and merge, so that his old self briefly confronted his new
self. Dathan was astonished to discover that his old self was
contemplating his new self with as much horror as astonish-
ment, but he told himself - his new self, of course - that his
old self was only a boy, and was not capable of understanding
the man that he had become, even though the process of meta-
morphosis had taken little more than a day.

Gavalon's hand lifted from his shoulder, and Dathan came
back to the present with a peculiar rush, as if he were being
thrown clear of a vortex in which hours and minutes had min-
gled with centuries and millennia.

Dathan looked sideways at the monstrous sorcerer, and
recognised the trance-state into which Hydlla had slipped
when she had been required to perform a task that she had no
idea how to do.

This, Dathan supposed, was magic - and yet the Imperium
had no need of magic to propel and steer its vehicles. The sol-
diers had been trained to drive, and simply did so. But if the
people on his side needed magic to do what the enemy found
simple, what chance did they have in the impending battle?

'We have Sathorael,' Gavalon said, as if he had heard the
unvoiced question. *We shall not have him for long, and his
behaviour has been annoyingly mercurial, but he is the key to
everything.'

The sorcerer's voice sounded strangely mechanical, and
Dathan wondered whether Cavalon was actually awake, even
though his strange eyes were fixed on the ground ahead of
them - the ground over which they were travelling at a surpris-
ingly rapid pace.

Dathan was surprised that he had not noticed the truck's
engine roaring into life, let alone the commencement of the
journey, but his curiosity was further intrigued by the fact that
Cavalon had answered a question that Dathan had not even
voiced.

But what is Sathorael, exactly? he wondered, taking care to
form the question clearly in his mind even though he did not
say a word.

'I wish I knew more precisely what Sathorael is,' Gavalon
said, in that same mechanical manner. 'I had expected a Lord
of Change, but I now suspect that it may be more than that,

Pawns of Chaos                  211

although it may be that the lore of the covens is defective in its
understanding of what a Lord of Change is. I had hoped that it
would provide me with a daemon familiar, such as favourite
champions of Chaos are said to be granted to aid their own
apprentice daemonhood, but even the Vessel Nimian did not
conduct himself as a familiar should once the ritual was com-
plete. I had hoped to be allowed to know far more of my
Divine Master's mind once I had brought his plan into its final
phase, but it seems that I was more ignorant than I knew, and
still am.'

But he - it - will help us to win the battle, Dathan thought.
That much has to be certain, has it not? He - it - will make the
Imperium pay dear for invading our lands, and save Gulzacandra,
will he not?

'I hoped that Sathorael would make our victory certain,'
Gavalon said, his voice becoming slightly more distant and
oddly plaintive. 'I thought I knew what strategy my Divine
Master was following, but I am no longer so sure. Much had
been revealed to me in my dreams, but still I had the temerity
to think that what happened on this world, to my people, was
of paramount importance. Perhaps I should have realised that
this is but the tiniest comer of a vast arena, and that whatever
happens here is of scant importance, if it does not bear some-
how upon the whole. If Imperial ships are coming... Sathorael
may have a higher purpose than the salvation of Gulzacandra.'

Dathan struggled to make sense of this, not very success-
fully. But we are heroes, he reminded himself, and we have
magic. The Imperium has guns, and trucks, but I have faced
them twice and - admittedly with magical aid - have beaten
them twice. We are heroes, fighting for our homeland, and
Cavalon the Great is a powerful sorcerer. How can the enemy
possibly win?

The secret of whether the enemy can possibly win may be
the darkest secret of all,' Gavalon said, his sonorous voice
becoming even more distant and ruminative. 'Darker than the
secret hidden by the Golden Throne itself. Everything we
know and believe, of course, tells us that the Imperium cannot
possibly win in the end. In the fullness of time, the only
possible victory is that of Chaos. In the fullness of time, the
only possible fate for humankind is extinction. And yet the
Imperium fights on - and who knows what petty victories they

212                      Brian Craig

might win in the meantime, or what the tme value of those
petty victories might be?

'We who are proud to be dwellers in Gulzacandra and fol-
lowers of the Changer of the Ways might say, and might even
believe, that we are the heroes of the eternal struggle - but we
know in our hearts that it is not true, and that the Imperium
has the monopoly on heroism. We fight out of choice, driven
by pride and lust and fury, and everything we do hastens our
own end and the end of our species. They fight for duty, dri-
ven only by faith. They know that they cannot win, but they
fight on, determined to survive for another hour, another
year, another century... even though they know that they can-
not survive forever. It is they, not us, who maintain the game
and make it worth the playing. It is they, not us, who are the
game.

The ultimate triumph of Chaos, which lies so far in the
future as to be of little concern to short-lived creatures such as
you and I, is absolutely certain. The ruination and destruction
of all mankind is but a tiny part of that culmination. The
Imperial forces have nothing to fight for but a trivial post-
ponement, and yet they fight. They have made their emperor a
god, and are surely right to do so, for if anyone less than a god
could ever deserve to become one, what other kind of man
could it be than an emperor? The Imperial forces are the
heroes, because they have nothing to win but a momentary
eyeblink in the hour of eternity, for the sake of which they have
sacrificed every freedom, every thought, every hope and every
pleasure. They will never know how grateful my Divine Master
and those like him must be for all their sacrifices, or what the
true value of their petty victories must be.

That, I am convinced, is the darkest secret of all.'

Dathan would have liked to feel privileged to have been
admitted - even by accident - to this 'darkest secret of all'. Alas,
he could not begin to fathom what Gavalon meant. Even the
elementary secrets of the cults, known to Pater Saltana and
Kanak, and perhaps by now to Hycilla, had been denied to
him. And yet, he now had the word of Gavalon the Great that
the lack of an atom of talent was all that had prevented him
from being apprenticed to a wizard, thus entering into the spe-
cial favour of the god of Culzacandra, whose name was too
ominous ever to be spoken aloud.

Pawns of Chaos                  213

What an achievement that would have been, for his mother's
son!

'And what an achievement it has been,' said the entranced
Gavalon the Great, more mildly than Dathan would ever have
thought possible. 'I have regretted nothing, no matter what my
career may have cost me. I would not trade places with anyone,
no matter what my fate is yet to be. I have lived; I have chosen;

I have led. Can any commander of the Imperium - even the
True Imperium - say more? Can any daemon? There are those,
I know, who believe that the gods which are served by men like
me are compounded out of human evil, but I cannot believe it.
There was Chaos long before humankind was dreamed of, and
there will be Chaos long after humankind is vanished from the
universal stage. Humans who think themselves vital to the
cause and course of Chaos are the vainest of the vain; we live
but a moment and die forever, unable to encompass infinity
and eternity even in the ambition of the imagination. I have
dreamed; I have seen; I have understood. If I die tomorrow or
the next day, as I likely shall, I have nothing to begrudge.'

It was at this point that Dathan realised, belatedly, that
Gavalon was not talking to him at all, but only to himself, and
that the questions he was asking were serving as prompts to
Cavalon's exploration of his own interests and intrigues.
Dathan saw that he was a mere eavesdropper on a private con-
versation that he could not hope to understand, even if it were
all true. Perhaps it was not. No matter how great a sorcerer
Gavalon was, he was only human, more than capable of
believing that he knew and understood far more than he actu-
ally did.

And yet, Dathan had to suppose, there was valuable knowl-
edge to be gained here, if he could only phrase a question
simply and carefully enough.

What, he wondered, would become of him?

'All men die,' Gavalon murmured, still lost in the cold depths
of his reverie. 'Some live to be old, others die as babes. In a
world like this, in a time like this, no one can be sure that he
will survive the morrow, and everyone should conduct himself
accordingly. There is no future but war. There is no hope but
postponement of disaster. There is nothing a man can do to
help himself except to fight, unendingly, with every weapon he
can command.'

214                   Brian Cmig

And having said that, with the myriad banners of his army
already fluttering mutely upon the horizon, Gavalon suddenly
shook himself, and coughed. Then he turned to look at
Dathan, and said: 'Better wake up now, boy. We're almost there.
It's good that you've slept - you needed the rest. Get yourself
washed now, and fed. Then pray. Fulbra will surely be on us
soon enough, and I must do what I can to bring Sathorael to
the field, in order that he might unleash the wrath of the
Changer of the Ways.'

'Can I keep the rifle?' Dathan asked, meekly.

'It's yours, boy,' Gavalon said, in a gruff voice very different
from the one he had used - unwittingly, it seemed - before.
'Yours by right. You'll be issued with ammunition. Use it
well.'

^

TWENTY

As SOON AS Hycilla had sent the blinded soldier tumbling over
the side of the truck, the vehicle's driver slammed the brakes on.

If he had done it a minute earlier he might have rendered
some useful assistance to his friend, but he could not have
known how badly the gunner had been hurt by the blast of
Gavalon's horn. Although he had been able to see Hycilla close
in on the gunner by means of his mirror, the driver must also
have seen his comrade struggle to his feet. Either he had
thought that the other man was capable of putting up a fight,
or he had been afraid that a sudden stop would cause his friend
more distress than it would cause Hycilla. Now that the blind
man was gone, though, and Hycilla was off guard, the driver
must have thought that the time had come for him to take a
hand.

Hycilla had not been standing awkwardly when the truck
suddenly decelerated, but she was thrown completely off bal-
ance nevertheless. Had she been only a few inches closer to the
rear end of the gun she might have succeeded in grabbing it,
and using its mass to steady herself, but her groping hand
missed it by a whisker and her momentum sent her cannoning
into the back wall of the cab.

215

216                      Brian Craig

Had the cab been higher or had she been only as tall as she
had been mere hours before she would only have bruised her-
self, but as matters stood the bulk of her mass was too high to
be readily arrested. Her legs were swept from under her and she
tumbled forward, rolling over the roof of the cab and falling
down on the other side.

Her back hit the hood of the vehicle hard, spoiling her sec-
ond desperate grab for purchase, and she fell again, right in
front of the truck.

Had the driver waited where he was and accelerated as soon
as he saw her fall from the hood he might have run her over,
breaking at least one of her limbs, but he had not waited.
Instead, he had chosen to hurl himself through the door, with
a long blade in his hand, ready to run his enemy through.

And had Hycilla been only human, she would have had lit-
tle strength left with which to resist the driver's angry charge,
but she was far more than human now - as he should have
understood when he had seen her pursue him on foot and
catch him in spite of all his efforts to pull away.

Even so, it was a close run thing - it was only at the last pos-
sible moment that she raised her own blade to block the
soldier's thrust.

The soldier cursed, seemingly surprised that Hycilla had
contrived to hold on to her own weapon while she described
her involuntary somersault, or that she had done so without
inflicting the smallest cut upon herself. She met his pale blue
eyes, lit by terror and desperation, and saw him flinch from
her own gaze, as if her eyes had the power to wither him. She
was aching in every limb, and her spine was a river of fire, but
the burning sensation was exhilarating rather than debilitat-
ing. Although she was down on the ground while her
adversary was standing, the soldier could not make the most
of his advantage.

He thrust again, and then again, but Hycilla parried both
thrusts with enough force to make him unsteady on his own
feet.

Rather than risk falling on top of her, the soldier moved side-
ways to regain his balance, giving her a moment in which to
alter her own position. She was still on one knee when he
attacked again, but as she blocked his fourth thrust she bor-
rowed a little of the force of his attack to prise herself upright

Pawns of Chaos                  217

- and now she had the advantage, for she was several inches
taller than he was, and had a considerably longer reach.

The Imperial soldier should have been confident. He was,
after all, a trained man, and Hycilla was young as well as
female - but the man's eyes told the real story. He could hardly
bear to look at her, so frightful had she become. Nor was it her
lack of prettiness that appalled him; he knew and understood
that she had been touched and transformed by sorcery. He was
a brave man, though. Mouthing what was probably a prayer, he
attacked again, with all the courage of a man who was fighting
for more than his life.

Hycilla had never trained with any kind of weapon, but she
had played the same games as Dathan and her other peers, and
it was to her advantage now that it had always been the boys
who decided which games to play. She had played at sword-
fighting, with branches and broom-handles, and now that she
had strength to supplement her quickness of hand and eye her
reflexes were good enough to check the increasingly desperate
thrusts of the Imperial soldier.

For three or four minutes Hycilla was content to check him -
and then she took up the tempo of the fight, and went after her
opponent.

His training had equipped him with skill enough to fend off
half a dozen thrusts, but it had not granted him skill enough to
save his life. Although she was still aflame with pain, Hycilla
had the stride, the reach and the diabolic strength to finish him.

First she slashed his arm, rendering him unable to make fur-
ther use of his weapon, and then she stabbed upwards through
his belly, pushing the blade through his intestines and liver to
puncture his diaphragm.

He died more swiftly than she might have hoped, and was
certainly unconscious before the creature that had once been
Nimian walked carelessly out of the alien forest, picked his
body up in two massive hands, and bit his head off.

The pattern that Hycilla had first seen on Nimian's skin as a
mere sketch was now clearly manifest in coloured scales and a
cape of feathers. The creature had wings now; they were furled
for the moment, but she estimated their span as thirty feet at
least. They too were brightly coloured. The monster's hands
and feet were vast taloned claws, but its face still held an echo
of humanity - and was still just about recognisable as

218                     Brian Craig

Nimian's - even though the nose and mouth had been twisted
and wrenched to form the shape of a beak.

Had she seen such a sight two days earlier Hycilla would have
been utterly aghast, perhaps paralysed by terror, but having seen
so many of the stages of this strange metamorphosis Hycilla felt
almost that she was looking into the face of a friend - a friend
she knew better than anyone else ever could or would, and who
could probably have said the same about her. This peculiar
being had touched her, and that touch had been no casual
salute or caress. She had been drawn into its evolution. She was
in thrall to it - but she did not feel like a slave or a victim. She
felt proud, as if she had more mastery of her fate now than
could ever have been granted to her former, lesser self.

"you might have helped me,' she pointed out, as the monster
continued to make a meal of the bloody corpse.

There was no need,' it said. The voice seemed to materialise
out of nowhere; the creature's beak-to-be was obviously inca-
pable of forming the same sibilants and plosives as human
lips, but the words were clearly audible and their pronuncia-
tion was perfect. Nimian had not been nearly as articulate.
Hycilla had only to wonder where the daemon's new com-
mand of language had come from to know the answer, as if by
an inspired guess. This was no longer Nimian but a Lord of
Change: a very powerful Lord of Change. It could hear the
thoughts of human beings... no, not hear, exactly, but share.
No secret was safe from its presence, language least of all.

It shared the language of those it had touched and those it
had not, not entirely but in fragments. It shared aspects of each
person's intellect, and each one's imagination, hope, anxiety,
ambition. It possessed her completely, but even Dathan had
something in reserve, and the minds more distantly glimpsed
and grasped had even more; nevertheless, the sum of all the
disparate parts over which it had dominion was not merely a
whole mind but a whole far greater than any mind. It was a
crazy patchwork, a vast confusion, but it was a million minds
and a single mind at one and the same time: a mind befitting
a daemon.

Hycilla realised, as she looked into those bleak raptor's eyes,
that the daemon was glad to be possessed of such a fine frag-
mented mind, and utterly fascinated by the extent and
complexity of its thefts and borrowings. The daemon knew, as

Pawns of Chaos                   119

it had to, that it would not live long - but that only increased
the piquancy of its experiences, and the particular feeling of
power it obtained from knowledge.

There was a sense, she realised, in which the daemon was a
brute: a thing of raw power whose destructive potential was
still undeveloped. But there was a sense, too, in which it was an
infant: a being possessed of youth, and all the zestful curiosity
of innocence. She knew this because there was a further sense
in which she was now a pan of the daemon: not merely an
extra limb but an extra intelligence.

IIycilla leaned back against the radiator of the truck,
exhausted by the sum of her physical and mental efforts. The
grille was very hot, but the heat did not seem uncomfortable.
Her body soaked it up, and the fire inside her burned a little
more brightly. She felt very tired, but she was determined not
to sink to the ground while the monster was looking down at
her. She did not want to run the slightest risk of being mistaken
for another toothsome morsel, more use as nourishment than
as a living being.

What shall I call you now?' she asked, in the hope of giving
further evidence of the fact that she was not for eating, 'Master,
or friend?'

'Sathorael,' the monster replied.

'Sathorael,' she repeated, mechanically. 'Who gave you the
name? Cavalon?'

The monster seemed to consider that question very carefully,
as if it were a matter that it needed to get straight in its own
mind. Hycilla wondered if she really ought to be thinking of
the creature as 'it', or whether it would be more appropriate to
revert to 'he', but she decided that it probably did not matter
much.

'A Lord of Change requires a true name,' the giant told her,
eventually. 'I am a great Lord of Change: a very, very great Lord
of Change. The name is mine, ingrained in every fibre of my
being.'

"Well, Sathorael, Lord of Change,' Hycilla said, faintly
amused by her own temerity, you certainly seem to have
changed me.'

True/ said the monster, echoing her amusement. '[ change
everything. That is my nature, and my purpose. I change. I
change myself. 1 change the world. I change the game. I am

220                     Brian Craig

change. Change concentrated; change crystallized; change clar-
ified. Thank you for asking.'

'Why?' she asked, taken slightly aback.

'Why what?'

'Why thank me for asking?'

'Change clarified. How am I to know myself, if no one asks
the questions? I can know everything that you know, every-
thing that anyone knows, but there is so much, and all so
confused. 1 should like to know myself more clearly. I shall not
exist for long, and there is so much to do. May I offer you a
ride?'

'A ride?' Hycilla echoed, still tying to catch up with the unex-
pected course that the conversation had taken. 'In the truck,
you mean?'

'No. I am too heavy, and it is best that we take a straighter
course than the truck could follow in the forest. On my shoul-
der. You could lean back upon my furled wing and rest a while.
There may not be another chance.'

'Where are we going?' Hycilla asked, making no move to step
into the huge claw that the monster had extended, invitingly.

'We are going to bum,' the giant said. 'More gloriously than
you could ever have imagined - more gloriously than anyone
of your kind could ever have imagined.'

'Do I have a choice?' she wanted to know.

'Yes. We all have a choice; that is our greatest strength and
our greatest folly. We perish by choice, gloriously or inglori-
ously. You may fight, or you may run. You may fight the little
fight, or the greater fight. You may come with me, or not. It is
a choice not many have, and fewer still would want, but you
must make it now. Time is pressing, and I must make the most
of myself when I am folly grown. For that, I must prepare.'

Sathorael was already three times as tall as Hycilla, who was
no longer small. She shuddered as she received a sudden but
fleeting impression of the extent of the growing that it had yet
to do.

'Are you going to Gavalon?' she asked. 'Are you going to help
him against the Imperial invaders?'

'I shall do what I must,' the monster said - and when it said
it, Hycilla divined that even Sathorael did not know exactly
what its purpose was, and would not until its identity was fully
revealed.

Pawns of Chaos                  221

Hycilla stepped forward into the embrace of the waiting claw
and allowed Sathorael to pick her up and place her on its
shoulder. When it stood erect again, she was well above the
canopy formed by the spurs and tassels extending from the
crowns of the corn cob-like plants. From this vantage the forest
looked very different, rather like a field of clover painted and
enamelled in red, black and purple, interrupted by exotic
weeds like twisted clumps of nails and curly icicles. She could
see for miles - or so it seemed - and she could see the waste-
land beyond the forest's edge as a blurred and bobbled
patchwork quilt, in which fugitive greens and yellows mingled
with the harsher colours. There was not a trace of human habi-
tation, or of the plants and animals that the first humans had
brought with them thousands of years ago.

'Everything has changed,' she said. 'In two days, my whole
world has been torn apart and turned upside-down. I am
not what I was. What am I now, Sathorael7 What have I
become?'

The daemon thought about this for a moment as it began to
thrust its way through the native foliage, using its massive
hands to pan a way for its lumpen thighs and awkwardly-furled
wings. Eventually, Sathorael said: 'Familiar. You are familiar.'

'YOU seem strangely familiar yourself,' she said. 'But that's not
what you mean, is it?'

'Yes it is,' he said. That, and only a little more. Be glad of it;

you are more than you were or could ever have become.'

'Because you would have eaten me by now, if I weren't famil-
iar?'

That too - but be glad for what will come. It will only be a
moment, but it will be more than a lifetime of merely human
existence.'

Hycilla got the distinct impression that the monster was try-
ing to rouse a gladness in itself that it had not yet learned to
feel. Even daemons, it seemed, could be anxious. She won-
dered whether she ought to help in the morale-building
exercise, or challenge its fundamental assumption. Eventually,
she said: 'Forgive me for saying so, but I'm not sure you're the
best judge of the value of merely human existence.'

'Who is?' Sathorael countered.

Hycilla had insufficient confidence to make any claim on her
own behalf. 'We are going to win this battle, aren't we?' she

222                        Brian Craig

said, instead. 'With you on his side, Gavalon has the advantage,
has he not? We call the enemy the Imperium, but they're really
just castaways, aren't they? They've used up almost all the
weapons their forefathers had. They're no match for the kind of
power you can unleash.'

That required an even longer interval of thought. It was
almost as if the monster were relaying the more difficult ques-
tions to some further source.

'Never underestimate an enemy/ the great beast said even-
tually. These soldiers are brave. They think of themselves,
modestly, as little more than a travesty of their true Imperial
forebears, but they are better men than they can credit.
Because they lost so much, they had to learn to improvise.
The warriors of the true Imperium are fine fighting men, but
they are never called upon to understand their weapons. The
invaders of Gulzacandra have had to leam so much that they
have had no alternative but to substitute cleverness for faith.
That has weakened them, in one way, but it has strengthened
them in another. They do not know the extent to which they
have laid themselves open to corruption, but they should not
be despised. They are worthy sacrifices.'

'Worthy sacrifices?' Hycilla echoed. 'In other words, you
intend to kill and eat the lot of them.'

There will not be time for that,' the monster replied, a tri-
fle regretfully. 'Gavalon's army must do its share of killing,
and of dying. Everyone must do his part. And hers.'

The true Imperium is coming, isn't it?' Hycilla said, slowly.
That's what you - or Nimian - meant when you said that you
would bring ships. What happens in Gulzacandra doesn't
matter to you at all. You aren't here to save us, are you?'

That which you used to call "us",' the creature told her,
peeping sideways at her from a vast eye that seemed to have
become even more predatory since she had met it squarely on
the road, 'is but a petty legion of the dead and a greater legion
of the dead-to-be. Now, there is only me, and that which is
familiar to me.'

Hycilla swallowed hard as she realised what the full impli-
cations of this statement were - but she was not as distressed
by it as she might have expected. There was only one sad
thought that pricked the vestiges of her conscience.

'Is Dathan dead already?' she wanted to know.

Pawns of Chaos                   223

This time, the giant's response was immediate. 'Can you
expect me to concern myself with such trivia as that?' it
demanded. Time is; time was; and time will soon be gone.'

Hycilla saw then that they had been moving so rapidly that
there was something new to be seen on the horizon, far
beyond the soft blanket of purples, pinks and golds that lay
beyond the forest's edge. It was no less gaudy than the forest
or the plain, but it was far more fragile.

It was, in fact, the wind-fluttered banners of Gavalon's
army, waiting impatiently for the descent of the foe.

Hycilla reached out her right hand to touch the daemon's
enormous ear, as tenderly as anxiety would permit.

'Have you no fear?' she asked. 'Are you not horrified by the
thought of extinction, after such a brief existence?'

She expected an automatic, if slightly insincere, denial. She
did not know how welcome she would have found such a
denial, until she heard the actual answer.

'I am immune to fear and horror, for the moment,'
Sathorael said, 'just as you are. But when the time comes -
and now that you have chosen to unite your wise-dreams
more fully with mine, it will come to us both as one - we
shall know the true meaning of fear, and of horror, and of
death. Until then, we can only guess. Is it not fascinating to
know that we shall know - and so very soon?'




TWENTY-ONE

DATHAN WAS ASTONISHED, when he awoke, to find that the tent
was being dismantled around him.

What's happening?' he asked - but the men who were busy
with the ropes and canvas ignored him. He had to pick up his
gun and go outside into the bright morning light in search of
an answer. There he found that the entire army was making
ready to march. He could not see Gavalon, but Abdalkuri was
nearby, placing a pack on his colourful steed. Abdalkuri treated
Dathan with some respect now that he had been admitted into
Gavalon's inner circle.

"What's happening?' he asked, again.

'A change of plan,' the thrall-wizard told him. 'Fulbra's
stopped his advance. We don't know why. He may simply be
resting his men, but he might be waiting for something.'

'Reinforcements?' Dathan guessed.

'He'd have to wait months for that, unless the reinforcements
can fly,' Abdalkuri said, drily. 'He's probably waiting for his
scouts to report on our positions.'

'Is that why we're changing them?'

'One reason. Given that we already know their positions,
Gavalon might have seen an opportunity to attack.'

225

226                      Brian Craig

Dathan remembered what Gavalon had said to him in the
truck. Perhaps the sorcerer had received further enlightenment
from the god he served as to what his part in the unfolding
drama was to be. Perhaps, on the other hand, he was merely
confused. Perhaps he wasn't sure that he had time to wait, even
though Fulbra apparently had. Perhaps Fulbra had stopped
because he had got wind of the daemon's existence, and had a
scheme of his own to counter its influence.

At any rate, Dathan thought, Gavalon's own plans had gone
awry the moment he had lost sight ofNimian. The sorcerer was
desperate now, and likely to remain so.

'Are you going to saddle up?' Abdalkuri asked. 'You won't be
riding in the truck this time.'

Dathan was surprised by the question. He hadn't expected to
be allowed to ride into the battle in a truck, but he hadn't
expected to be allowed to ride at all.

The horse I rode before was killed by a stray shot back at the
farmhouse,' he reminded the wizard.

'Maldayak won't be needing his,' the other pointed out. 'He'll
need to be carried into battle on a litter, if he can take any part.
It's over there. Don't worry - it can sense the daemon's touch
as well as I can. It'll serve you as well as the other.'

The daemon's touch! Dathan thought. Is that what I am, now?
Something touched by a daemon, set aside from all my fellow
men, save for initiates of a cult whose secrets I was never per-
mitted to hear?

He knew, though, that it was an envious position to be in,
given the circumstances. The closer he was to Gavalon and
Gavalon's thrall-wizards, the closer to the heart of the enter-
prise he would be. He would be no safer for being close, and
probably quite the opposite, but such closeness was a thing to
be desired in and for itself, given that he was fatherless - per-
haps motherless too - and all but friendless besides.

If he had to go into battle, he reasoned, was it not far better
to go mounted on a clever and deceptive steed rather than on
foot, especially when he had thoughtlessly missed a second
opportunity to scavenge a better pair of boots from among the
prizes taken at the farmhouse?

The coloured horse stood meekly, with its homed head
bowed, while Dathan placed the saddle-cloth on its back and
buckled the saddle in place. The stirrup was just as high as it

Pawns of Chaos                   227

had been on previous occasions, but Abdalkuri made a step for
Dathan with his hand before stepping up on to his own
mount.

'Shall I follow you?' Dathan asked,

That would be wise,' the thrall-wizard replied, calmly. 'I may
yet be grateful for the nearness of your gun.'

Dathan had not noticed before that the thrall-wizard seemed
to have no weapon of any kind, but while he settled himself in
his saddle one of the beastmen brought Abdalkuri a long lance
with a wad of cloth - presumably a furled banner - behind its
spearhead.

'And you,' the thrall-wizard added, 'might have cause to be
grateful for my nearness.'

'Is that your magic?' Dathan asked curiously.

'Cavalon's magic,' Abdalkuri said, 'which I am privileged to
wield on his behalf. He has the withering eye, of course, as well
as the horn of agony and other tricks. Mine is a mere standard,
but a potent one.'

Dathan remembered the banner he had seen billowing in the
breeze above Gavalon's tent when the beastmen had brought
him to the camp. It had seemed an ominous device even then,
although he had not realised that it was magical. If the name
that Abdalkuri had given it signified its power, it might be
interesting to see its magic released - always provided that its
force could be directed away from Cavalon's allies, entirely
towards the enemy.

What does your banner do?' Dathan wanted to know.

'It is a hellfire standard,' Abdalkuri told him. 'Its power is
great - much greater than those flame-throwers the Imperial
soldiers had - but soon exhausted. Invaluable in a skirmish,
less so in a protracted battle.'

'But you believe that the battle we have to fight now - tomor-
row if not today - will be a protracted one,' Dathan said, to
make sure that he had taken the wizard's meaning.

Very,' said Abdalkuri, sombrely. 'I have a few tricks of my
own - I'll not die easily when the standard decays into a mere
spear. You'll be in far greater danger than I, unless the daemon
that has touched you deigns to protect you.'

'Is that likely?' Dathan wanted to know.

'How would I know?' was the only answer he got, as
Abdalkuri shook the reins and urged his mount into motion.

228                        Brian Craig

Dathan had only to touch the neck of his own animal; it
seemed to know its business at least as well as he did. It fell
into step behind the other horse, and the column was soon
joined by other riders, arranged two or three abreast.

As Dathan rode through the busy ranks he was able to get a
far better idea of the size and nature of Gulzacandra's army.
Because he had seen so many beastmen and stigmatized wiz-
ards in Gavalon's entourage he had formed the impression that
the majority of its soldiers must be only half- or three-quarters-
human, but now he saw that his first impression had been
misleading. By far the majority of his fellows were as ordinary
as he - more so, if the effects of Nimian's touch were as obvi-
ous to everyone else as they were to Abdalkuri and the
decorated horse.

None of the men had uniforms like those the Imperial sol-
diers wore, unless the vivid livery of Gavalon's thrall-wizards
could be counted as such. These fighters still wore the costumes
of civilian life: labourers who toiled in the fields; husbandmen
who kept herds of livestock; the varied raiment of carpenters
and smiths, weavers and thatchers, chapmen and cobblers.
Only perhaps one in ten was privileged, as Dathan was, to cany
a gun, and some of those guns had obviously made their way
to Gulzacandra long before the current invasion - perhaps fifty
or a hundred years before. Those who had neither guns nor
magic mostly carried swords and half-pikes - good weapons,
so far as Dathan could tell, applying the standards set by his
village, but unlikely to be a match for the Imperium's firepower
unless the men wielding them could actually get among the
enemy, to fight virtually hand-to-hand.

He could not see the trucks that he had helped to capture,
but that was not surprising. Dathan knew that even if they had
managed to salvage the trucks left behind after the massacre at
the water-hole, the army's total stock of vehicles was unlikely to
be more than a dozen. However many there were, they had
already been moved out.

Most of the men on foot who glanced in the direction of the
riders as they passed by did not let their glances linger long upon
the furled standards and their multicoloured bearers, but a few
gazes which did settle on the anomalous figure of Dathan almost
hardened into curious stares. Dathan could not see another per-
son as young as himself, although there might have been a few

Pawns of Chaos                  229

hidden by the nearer crowds. Anyone younger was presumably
deemed a child, unready for the role of protector of the land -
but their turn to fight would surely come, in a year or two.

Everyone seemed to think of the coming battle as the battle,
the crucial one that would determine the fate of Gulzacandra
once and for all. Perhaps it would be - but whatever its out-
come, Dathan thought, day would follow night again and
again and again, as it always had. Whoever won the battle, or
survived it, would have to fight another day, and another, and
another. While there were people in the world the war would
go on, every settlement a remote prelude to a new rebellion or
a new conquest. The Imperium would never eradicate the fol-
lowers of the true god while the stars swam in the sky, and the
followers of the true god could win no final victory either while
the possibility remained that more ships would come bearing
more Imperial colonists.

In the long run...

Dathan knew that he would not be around in the long run.
Nor would any man here, whether he survived the impending
battle or not. Any difference he or they might make was a tem-
porary affair - but what man, in what world, could ever say
anything different? What difference could the mightiest sor-
cerer or the greatest commander make, even to a single
continent of a single world?

Dathan shivered as these thoughts took hold of him - but he
knew that they were his thoughts, born of his fears and calcu-
lations. He had been touched by a daemon, but he was still the
master of his own mind. If he had never encountered thoughts
like these before, it was not because he had been incapable of
formulating them, but because there had been no necessity to
do so.

The necessity was upon him now. He was going into battle,
and would probably be killed. He would have no other chance
to interrogate the meaning of his fate - and that, too, was the
work of a man. He was a warrior now, and a brave one, but a
true warrior had to be more than a mere killer. He had to know
what his bravery, and his likely sacrifice, might signify.

He did not doubt that lerius Fulbra's men were about the
same business, but he could not know how differently they saw
their own situation, or what resources they had for making
sense of it.

230                        Brian Craig

In the end - as Cavalon the Great had told him, without
quite meaning to - Chaos would win. The only true heroes
were those who fought to postpone the moment of its victory,
whichever god they served. There was nothing for any man to
fight for but a narrow margin - a little more life than he might
otherwise have, whether it be measured in years or hours or
minutes - but a real man, truly human as well as truly brave,
also had to consider the question of how best to use that mar-
gin.

'Well,' said Dathan, although there was no one but his uncar-
ing steed to hear, 'if that's the case, we are all heroes, no matter
which side we are on, so long as we fight instead of lying down.
If the daemon comes to save me, all well and good. If not... I
have a gun. I am more fortunate than I could ever have
dreamed of being when I was a masterless boy. I have a gun.'

The cavalry column had passed beyond the limits of the
camp now, and was making its way across the plain. The red
bushes and purple cacti to either side of their path, though not
very numerous, grew tall enough to loom over them, casting
long skeletal shadows wherever they eclipsed the still-rising
sun - but the shadows did not seem unduly dark or cold.

They had been riding north for two hours without breaking
into a trot when Dathan saw a dozen other riders approaching
from the north-east. He recognised Gavalon at their head. Like
Abdalkuri, Gavalon was carrying a lance, but his was larger
than anyone else's and the withered eye banner furled about its
head was a bulkier mass than any 'mere standard'. Dathan
realised that the sorcerer must be immensely strong, although
the strength in question was surely not the product of hard
labour and a healthy diet.

He wondered, briefly, how old the sorcerer was. He knew
that the mutations of Gavalon's form must have obscured the
usual signs of ageing, but it was impossible to think of a man
of his son as very young or very ancient. He wondered, too, if
Cavalon had fathered any children - and what had become of
them, if so. That was an oddly discomfiting question, whose
answer he suddenly did not want to know.

'Hold and dismount,' Gavalon ordered Abdalkuri. 'We must
wait here for support, where the cover is dense enough to keep
us hidden from prying eyes. They're busy clearing the land
around their present camp to make sure that there's no easy

Pawns of Chaos                  231

approach, which suggests that they don't intend to move on
today. They've chosen their ground well enough, but they have
kept so carefully to the road that they'll be awkwardly strung
out for hours yet, and it will likely suit us even better than it
suits them. They have formed a wide arc to make sure we can-
not outflank them, but that leaves them more vulnerable to a
frontal assault. If we can move enough men forward quickly
enough, we might surprise them.'

Abdalkuri bowed his head in acknowledgement, but his
voice was apprehensive as he said: 'It will take all afternoon to
move the men and organise a formation, magister. The men
will be tired.'

'And the Imperial soldiers will get wind of our presence
soon enough,' Gavalon agreed, 'but they're in mortal dread of
our magic, if not our firepower, and a night attack might work
more to our advantage than they'd expect. They're still being
harried from the rear, and they can't know for sure how few
the snipers are. The faster we can move, the better our chances
are. We must wait and see how quickly and how skilfully our
forces can be assembled, but if we don't start the fight our-
selves this evening, the enemy will have the opportunity to
pick their own time.'

Abdalkuri bowed again.

Dathan dismounted when he saw the other riders do so, and
looked for a place to tether his horse. The surrounding plants
were unfamiliar to him, but the thrall-wizard helped him yet
again.

'How do you feel, Dathan?' Gavalon asked, when he too had
dismounted.

Dathan knew that the sorcerer was not interested in the state
of his health. He was being kept so close because he had been
touched by the daemon, and Gavalon hoped that he might
somehow be able to provide news of the daemon's position
and condition.

T don't feel anything,' Dathan reported, reluctantly. 'If
Nimian's nearby, I can't tell.'

'It's not Nimian any more,' Gavalon told him. 'At least, I
hope not. We might have to attack regardless - you do under-
stand that?'

Dathan was taken aback for a moment, but then realised that
Cavalon must be hoping that even if Dathan could not bring

232                        Brian Craig

news, he might still be able to transmit it. The long explanation
Gavalon had given Abdalkuri had been more for his benefit
than the thrall-wizard's.

'] understand/ Dathan said. 'IfNimian - or whatever he now
is - knows what I know, he knows that he's needed urgently.'

Gavalon nodded his terrible head, and turned away.

If Nimian knows what I know, Dathan thought, then he
knows far more about me than I'd care for any man or woman
to know. I suppose I must hope that he only cares about the
battle and the war, and not about my deepest hopes and fears.

With that, he sat down in the shadow of a huge spiny plant,
like a rolled-up hedgehog that had taken root. He tried to
purge his mind of ail seemingly-dangerous thoughts.
Unfortunately, the more he dwelt on the problem of what
thoughts might be dangerous, the more crowded his mind
became with thoughts of potentially dangerous kinds.

'1 pray that Hycilla be kept safe,' he said to himself, as soon
as he settled upon it as a thought that as not merely safe but
sincere. 'Whatever happens to me, I pray that Hycilla may be
spared. Grant me that, if nothing else, oh mysterious god of
Culzacandra, whose name I have never been permitted to
know.'




TWENTY-TWO

ORI.OC MELCARTH WAS mildly displeased to discover that Ragan
Balberith seemed more comfortable aboard the aircraft than he
had ever been while standing on the balcony of the governor's
apartment in Sostenuto. Even so, the Chief Inquisitor didn't
appear to be in the least inclined to look out of the window.
Nor did the psyker he had brought with him - but psykers
always seemed to be on the verge of hysteria, so it was possible
that the fact that he was aloft in an aircraft wasn't making much
difference. The priest, Carro Alpalhao, gave the impression that
he would have been comfortable if he hadn't had the psyker
beside him.

The three members of Balberith's party were huddled
together in the rear part of the main cabin, keeping as much
distance as they could between themselves and Melcarth's
entourage - an arrangement which suited both groups.

Melcarth's aides and bodyguards also seemed to have been
experiencing some problems, although they were sleeping in
shifts and were fresher than any of those who had been awake
throughout the journey. Melcarth assumed that the guards-
men's nerves had more to do with the presence of Deir Ajao

233

234                      Brian Craig

than the distance separating them from the ground - or, for the
moment, from the ocean.

The aircraft had not flown in a minimal arc from Kalazendra
to Yevelkana; it had been necessary to take a slightly crooked
path in order to refuel at the base on Zendamora's westernmost
cape. Fortunately, there was no need to stray as far north as
Bulzavara; once they had crossed the northern coast of
Yevelkana they would be able to cross the central desert at its
narrowest rather thah skirting it as Fulbra had been forced to
do. They would arrive in the Gulzacandran wastelands with
enough fuel left to carry them to the airstrip that Fulbra's engi-
neers should have cleared by now, perhaps passing directly
over the place where Operation Probe had run into trouble.

Major-General Vorch emitted an audible sigh of relief when
Techmaster Sauldron reported that they were crossing the coast
of Yevelkana. Melcarth could not see that it made much differ-
ence - indeed, if the aircraft were to let them down, they would
presumably fall more gently on water than on land, and the
Amber Waste had the reputation of being an exceedingly
inhospitable place. The spectra of other people's fears never
ceased to astonish him.

Almost as soon as Vorch had been reassured, though, the
general's eyes began roving yet again, in an agitated fashion.

'Is it safe to have that man aboard?' he muttered.

That man was, of course, Deir Ajao. Melcarth understood
that kind of apprehension much better than a fear of heights or
flying. Psykers were authentically scary - and while a psyker in
a subterranean cell was discomfiting enough, a psyker in an air-
craft was something else entirely, and the fact that Alpalhao
was obviously in some distress was bound to amplify the anx-
ieties of Melcarth's companions.

Melcarth was not entirely immune to such anxieties, but he
was prepared to live with them in exchange for the opportuni-
ties that Balberith's insistence on Joining the expedition had
opened up. He had no intention of starting trouble while the
aircraft was in flight, but he was convinced that once it had set
its wheels down on alien soil, ridding himself of Balberith
would be easier than he had ever dared to hope.

The aircraft's pilot, Jal Moberg, had objected to the idea of
carrying a psyker, and the vox operator who shared his cockpit
had also seemed distinctly discomfited, but both men had

Pawns of Chaos                  235

spent their lives in preparation for a flight like this, and they
had been easily persuaded that the risk was minimal. Both
crewmen had flown a dozen times before, often with Melcarth
aboard, but all those flights had been brief training exercises.
This was the real thing. This was what the plane had been
designed and built for, by those mysterious and godlike tech-
priests who had manned the starships of the great Imperium of
Mankind. This was what Moberg, in particular, had been look-
ing/ forward to ever since he was favoured with the rank of
pilot.

'How soon will we be there?' Melcarth asked Techmaster
Sauldron.

The techmaster consulted his timepiece, and made a show of
elaborate calculation. 'About four hours, excellency, if all goes
well,' he finally replied. Tf our charts are accurate, we'll be over
the Amber Waste for three hours, then we'll reduce our airspeed
and descend to a lower altitude as we move across the
Gulzacandran border. We'll have to refuel before undertaking
any actual reconnaissance, but Fulbra's men should have every-
thing ready for us - they've had plenty of time.' He didn't
sound entirely certain.

'Is there any reason why things shouldn't go well?' Melcarth
asked him.

'Well, no sire - except that Gulzacandra is a nation of sorcer-
ers.'

'A]} of whom, if our intelligence can be trusted, have joined
Cavalon the so-called Great in the wasteland, conserving all
their resources for the impending battle against Fulbra's forces.
Even if there were a few malign magicians left in the deserts,
how could they possibly bring down the plane? It's an original,
not something your so-called craftsmen knocked up in one of
your so-called factories.'

The techmaster winced at that.

So far as Melcarth knew, there was no such rank as 'techmas-
ter in the True Imperium's Adeptus Mechanicus, but the True
Imperium's Adeptus Mechanicus employed whole worlds as
factories, and were in full possession of all the knowledge and
ritual required to produce an infinite supply of what he and his
people were now required to call 'originals'. Unfortunately, the
Adeptus Mechanicus had been so drastically under-represented
among the castaways, and so direly under-resourced, that

236                      Brian Craig

subsequent generations had been forced to create an entire
class of improvisers, with their own invented titles, whose pro-
duce was notoriously shoddy. In Melcarth's view, a techmaster
ought to be exceedingly grateful for any opportunity to travel
safely, comfortably and rapidly in an authentic original rather
than being condemned to crawl along the surface at a snail's
pace in a variety of machines manufactured by his own inept
kind.

'Yes, excellency, of course,' Sauldron said, weakly. 'But sorcery
is sorcery, and who knows what its masters are capable of?'

'We know that they're not capable of standing up to Imperial
firepower and Imperial resolution,' Melcarth told him. 'Isn't
that so, Vorch?'

'Yes, excellency,' Vorch was quick to say. 'All praise to the
Emperor Magnificent - but even so, sire, this has been a very
long flight, and by the time we arrive at Fulbra's position we'll
have precious little fuel left - and there's the problem of land-
ing. We have to bear in mind, excellency, that although this is
an original it's a very old original. It's been two hundred years
since our forefathers arrived here. And how much real experi-
ence can the pilot have had, given that the craft's hardly been
up in the air for more than an hour at a time for generations,
And then...'

That's quite enough, Vorch,' Melcarth broke in, disgustedly.
'Moberg, did you hear all that?'

'Yes, excellency,' the pilot replied.

'Is this craft capable of flying long distances? Are you capable
of landing it safely?'

'Yes, excellency,' Moberg replied, dutifully. 'Always provided,
sire, that General Fulbra's engineers have prepared the landing-
strip properly, and that...'

'Oh, be quiet!' Melcarth commanded, sternly. 'Is there no
one here who has faith in Imperial workmanship?'

'Indeed there is,' put in a new voice, slightly spiced with
irony. 'I am delighted to hear the question on your lordship's
lips.' It was, of course, Balberith, who had crept forward in the
stealthy manner typical of an inquisitor. For once - and, he
hoped, for the last time - Melcarth was almost glad to see him
nearby.

'Chief Inquisitor,' Melcarth said, resisting the temptation to
employ a nakedly sarcastic tone. 'How kind of you to join us.

Pawns of Chaos                  237

Are your people as impatient as mine to reach the battlefield
where the fate of the world will be decided?'

'We certainly are, excellency,' Balberith replied - and he
sounded entirely sincere, to Melcarth's ear. "We are as eager as
you are to see the matter settled, and to play our pan. Deir Ajao
is ready, and I feel confident that proximity to so many evil
magicians is exactly what he needs to spur him on to the final
breakthrough. I am convinced that before the day is out, con-
tact with the Imperial Fleet will be firmly established. They will
know of our need, and they will send help.'

'You won't let him do anything while we're still up in the air,
will you. Chief Inquisitor?' said Vorch, who seemed almost
ready to panic if he did not receive a reassuring answer.

'Of course not,' Balberith replied. 'Like the heretic enemy
wizards, he is hoarding his strength - but once we are on the
ground, and the battle is joined, the moment will be propi-
tious. Fear not, major-general. We will not fail you. It has been
a very long day, but now that evening is upon us we may antic-
ipate an equally long night.'

Strictly speaking, that was not true. The reason the day had
seemed so unnaturally protracted was that the aircraft had
been heading west, away from the rising sun. Given that they
had been airborne for more than eight hours, and had less than
three to go, the impending night could not be extended to the
same extent as the day had been.

The moment will indeed be propitious,' Melcarth mur-
mured. 'But I wonder whether your psyker might not be better
employed in lending assistance to General Fulbra, helping to
counter the vile effects of enemy magic. He has the psykers and
inquisitors you assigned to him, of course, but I wonder
whether it was really wise - or dutiful - to reserve your most
powerful instrument for your own purposes?'

'My own purposes!' Balberith repeated, feigning shock.
What higher or more dutiful purpose could there possibly be
than to restore contact with the Imperial Fleet?'

'None at all, if it were possible,' Melcarth said. 'But can we
really afford such reckless hopes when there is such an obvious
enemy close at hand? Is not our first duty to crush this Gavalon
fellow and the cults at whose head he stands, then to purge
Culzacandra of the taint of hideous evil? Would the divine
Emperor forgive us if we were less than wholly successful in

238                        Brian Craig

cleaning our own house because we yearned so much to be
reunited with our distant cousins?'

'Could we ever forgive ourselves/ Balberith countered, 'if we
were to sacrifice a once-in-a-lifetime chance to make contact
with the greater Imperium? Besides...'

Balberith was interrupted by the vox operator. 'Messages
incoming, sire,' he said to Melcarth. "We've just come within
range of General Fulbra's field-transmitter. He's within a few
hours' march of what appears to be the enemy's main contin-
gent but he's waiting for the aircraft before pressing forward
any further. He's made camp for the night. Aerial reconnais-
sance after dawn tomorrow will give him a much better picture
of the enemy's disposition than his motorcycle scouts - but it
appears at present that he has an overwhelming superiority of
arms and armour.'

'Excellent,' said Melcarth.

What news is there of Operation Probe?' Balberith put in.
'Has he found out why it went wrong?'

The vox operator returned to his apparatus for a few minutes,
while Melcarth waited impatiently.

The investigators sent out from Odienne encountered sub-
stantial enemy forces,' the vox operator reported, eventually.
They sent back word quickly enough that the first expedition
had been attacked at a water-hole in the wasteland, apparently
by means of foul sorcery, but that some trucks appeared to have
got away. They were following the trail of the escapers when
they too were attacked, and the only message they were able to
transmit before contact was lost was garbled - something
about men in brightly-coloured costumes riding coloured
horses with horns. If we want to keep that supply-route,
Odienne will have to be reinforced soon.'

There was a moment's silence after this speech ended, broken
by Vorch. 'It now seems to me,' the major-general said, 'that
General Fulbra made a serious tactical error in sending such a
small force directly across the Amber Waste, and then splitting
it twice more.'

Were Fulbra to be found in any way negligent, Vorch would
be next in line to take his place as supreme commander, so
Melcarth could not consider this an unbiased judgment.

The real issue at stake,' Balberith was quick to point out, 'is
that my psyker was obviously correct in his identification of the

Pawns of Chaos                   239

wasteland west of Odienne as a significant location. Whatever
is going on there, it's something the cultists are desperate to
hide. They're not reckless enough to deploy powerful magic
against scouting parties unless there's something they don't
want the scouting parties to find.'

That would be a sound deduction if the scum we're facing
were strategists like us,' Melcarth said, pensively, 'but they're
slaves of ruin, as mad as they are evil. We can't be sure that their
motives and tactics make sense.'

'Even if they are strategists,' Vorch put in, 'this might be a
ploy - something to distract our attention from the main
threat.'

'Or from the main opportunity,' Balberith added. 'If Gavalon
knows that the Imperial Fleet is nearby, he might risk every-
thing - even sacrifice everything - to prevent us from restoring
contact with the greater Imperium. He must know that his vile
kind might have a chance of survival, even if the battle against
Fulbra is lost, provided that the forces of the greater Imperium
cannot intervene.'

'We are the Imperium here,' Melcarth said, sternly. 'We must
do everything humanly possible to win this war with our own
resources, and then to scour this continent clean. This is our
world, and we are the ones who must rule and defend it.'

Balberith obviously did not want to continue the argument.
'I must try to get some sleep,' he said. "You were wise to let your
bodyguards rest, excellency - we have been awake too long. I
may not get another chance.'

It was a reasonable observation, but Melcarth was immedi-
ately suspicious. Does he intend to try something? he
wondered. He would be mad, given that he is so heavily out-
numbered, but he is here for a reason, and not to commit
suicide.

'Perhaps we should take the opportunity to close our eyes
now that night is falling,' was all he said aloud. 'We shall be
more use to the general if we arrive refreshed.'

Vorch seemed grateful for the permission, and so did
Sauldron - but Melcarth only pretended to relax. He let
himself sag in his seat so that his head was resting sideways
- a position from which he could open his eye very slightly
and see not only Balberith but both of Balberith's
companions.

240                     Brian Craig

Ajao and Alpalhao both seemed to have taken Balberith's
advice - but the fact that Balberith had come forward to offer
it seemed deeply suspicious to Melcarth.

He's going to let the psyker try something, Melcarth thought.
Irrespective of the risk, the tech-priest's slipped the madman a
dose of that vile drug while Balberith was distracting our atten-
tion. But why? Does he think that it might be easier to contact
the Fleet from a high altitude?

Through lids that were not quite closed Melcarth studied
Deir Ajao very carefully. He could not believe that the psyker
was asleep, but if he were he was certainly dreaming, and none
too comfortably... almost as uncomfortably as the guardsman
sitting next to Melcarth, who was similarly stirring in his sleep
and muttering incoherently under his breath.

There's something not right here, Melcarth thought.
Something...

He lost the thread of the idea. In spite of himself, he drifted
away from consciousness - and when he snapped back again,
he knew that he had made a mistake. He knew that he had lost
a substantial fraction of time - perhaps as much as three hours.
Everything seemed to be much as" it had been before, save that
Vorch and Sauldron were in fact asleep, but he knew that time
had elapsed, snatched away from him by some trick of...

Magic.

For a moment, the enormity of what he was thinking over-
whelmed Melcarth's imagination. He had always been
convinced that it was a bad idea to amplify the powers of the
Imperium's mixed-breed psykers with the native drugs that the
aborigine 'wise-dreamers' used, because he had always felt sure
that they were not neutral instruments: that they were, in fact,
polluted by the corrosive evil of the covens. Now he was utterly
convinced. Whatever Balberith was trying to do, and whatever
the psyker was trying to do, the result could only be a catastro-
phe... and the time that he had lost had brought him to the
very brink of that catastrophe.

He stood up suddenly, although the effort made him dizzy.
He began to shake the man beside him with one hand, and
reached out with the other to bestir Major-General Vorch, but
his eyes were still fixed on Balberith and the psyker. The psyker
was still feigning sleep, and still seemingly victim to a night-
mare, but Balberith's eyes were wide open.

Pawns of Chaos                   241

What have you done, Ragan?' Melcarth demanded. What
have you done?'

Balberith didn't answer. The Chief Inquisitor merely smiled
- but the smile said more than a thousand words. It said that
Balberith had never intended to be a passenger on this expedi-
tion, submitting meekly to whatever fate Melcarth could
prepare for him at their intended destination. It said that
Balberith's desperation had been more extreme than Melcarth
had imagined, perhaps more extreme than Melcarth could
have imagined.

No sooner had that ominous smile spread to its full extent
than the aircraft seemed to become horribly unsteady, lurching
alarmingly to the left and downwards. Melcarth felt his stom-
ach muscles clench defensively, and knew that if his own
reflexes were alarmed those of his companions were likely to
be terror-stricken - but most of his companions seemed to be
fast asleep and dreaming.

'Moberg?' Melcarth said, anxiously.

'It's only turbulence, excellency/ the pilot said. We're leaving
the Amber Waste and moving into more temperate country. It's
just a downdraft. Nothing to be alar-'

His final word remained unspoken as the aircraft lurched
again, more violently than before.

Vorch awoke and came to his feet immediately, his own voice
fracturing as he squealed: What's happening?'

'Sit down!' Melcarth commanded - but Vorch was in no
mood to take orders.

'I knew this damn monstrosity wasn't safe!' he howled. 'It's
two hundred years old! We're going to crash!'

Techmaster Sauldron was awake too by now. He, at least, had
the presence of mind to launch into a prayer rather than giving
way to panic, but Melcarth knew that he had been driven to it
by terror rather than any conviction that the prayer might be
answered.

Melcarth thrust himself into the cockpit, into the narrow
space behind the pilot's seat. The aircraft was still shuddering
drunkenly, and its nose was dipping even lower.

What is it, man?' he demanded of Moberg.

'I... don't know, sire,' was the only reply he got.

Melcarth realised, a little belatedly, that it didn't really
matter whether the craft had fallen victim to some crazy plan

242                      Brian Craig

of Balberith's, or to some enemy sorcerer's spell, or whether
there had simply been a mechanical malfunction. The ques-
tion at stake was whether Moberg could do anything about
it.

All of a sudden, Melcarth saw the sense of the anxieties of
which he had previously been so contemptuous. The aircraft
was an original, forged by the real Adeptus Mechanicus, but it
was also two hundred years old. Faith in Imperial manufacture
was one thing, he realised, but faith in worldly maintenance
was quite another. Sauldron's predecessors had doubtless
been uncommonly careful to keep the machinery in good
order as well as preserving the letter and form of all the neces-
sary rituals, but two hundred years was a long time to keep the
components of the craft free from corrosion and metal fatigue.
Jal Moberg was a well-schooled pilot, but how good could a
pilot really be when his experience of actual flying had been
limited to a few fugitive hours, never straying more than a
hundred miles from Sostenuto?

I have been too trusting, Melcarth thought, marvelling at the
fact that even he could make such a mistake. 1 have been too
reckless, too impulsive - and now I am in danger of losing
everything, having come so very close to ruling an entire world.
"You have to land us safely,' he said, tautly, to Jal Moberg.
"Whatever it is, you have to set us safely down.'

"What the hell do you think I'm trying to do?' Moberg com-
plained, with frank disrespect. 'I'm up here too, aren't I?'

The craft was still shaking, but its dive had not steepened.
Melcarth stared out of the cockpit's narrow windows, trying to
see what lay ahead of them. The night was well-advanced now,
but the terrain seemed very confused from this height. There
were very few lights in sight - nothing that might signal the
presence of a substantial town, although there were one or two
that might be the illuminated windows of isolated farmhouses.
Melcarth knew, though, that the lands between the farms
would be wild, thickly overgrown with all manner of native
vegetation.

The native vegetation of Gulzacandra, Melcarth knew, was
warped vegetation, subtly tainted for thousands or millions of
years by the faint corruption that was in the sun-, moon- and
starlight, and in the very air. He had never seen considerable
expanses of it - the soil of Kalazendra had been almost entirely

Pawns of Chaos                   243

usurped by human crop-growers long before the Imperial cast-
aways had arrived there - but he knew well enough what the
vast shadow below the aircraft concealed.

'You have to find somewhere flat,' he told Moberg.
'Somewhere we can land.'

'I know that/ Moberg replied, through gritted teeth. 'But I
can't see.'

'I've informed General Fulbra of our situation, excellency,'
the vox operator said. His voice was more controlled, although
the effort required to maintain its evenness was obvious.

From the cabin behind, Melcarth could hear shrieking. At
first the thought it might be Vorch, having completely lost con-
trol, but he realised soon enough that it was Deir Ajao.

"The great beast!' Ajao was screaming. "The daemon! The
daemon! It's ripping the sky apart!'

The starlit sky above them, to Melcarth's eye, seemed uncom-
monly quiet and certainly unripped - but the air through
which the craft was passing seemed to be becoming increas-
ingly disturbed. The plane was bouncing up and down,
vibrating horribly. Moberg seemed to be fighting the controls -
and losing.

Sauldron was shouting now, as if he were trying to drown
Ajao out. He was saying something about parachutes, but
Melcarth had no idea what a parachute was. Techmasters were
custodians of all kinds of arcane notions whose meanings had
unfortunately been lost.

'YOU can do this, Jal,' Melcarth said, throwing protocol to the
winds. 'You can set us down safely. None of us is going to die.'
Except that snake Balberith, and that crazy psyker, he added,
silently. He was desperate enough now to begin a private prayer
of his own, but he left Ragan Balberith out of it, even though
he knew full well that Balberith might seem a more righteous
man to the Divine Emperor's all-knowing gaze.

The dive had not grown steeper but still the aircraft was los-
ing height. It was just possible now to see the ominous
shadow-shapes of the tallest alien plants, whose awful profu-
sion seemed infinite in the near-darkness.

'May the Emperor be with you, lal,' Melcarth whispered,
more sincerely than he would have thought possible an hour
before. 'May he guide you safely to ground. You can do it, lal.
You're a pilot. You can do it!'

244                        Brian Craig

But while the dark well of the Chaos-tainted wasteland
reached up, as if to swallow them, Orloc Melcarth was secretly
convinced that the well-schooled but poorly practised pilot
couldn't do it at all.

Damn you, Balberith, he thought. You've destroyed us a'l'.




TWENTY-THREE

DAT! IAN HAD ONL more brief conversation with Gavalon before
the sorcerer gave the order to attack. He had almost ceased to
be afraid of Gavalon, even while the sorcerer was standing near
to him, but the sorcerer's presence seemed, on this occasion,
more intimidating than it had ever been before.

Although his banner remained furled, for the moment, his
eyes gave the impression that they too could wither at a glance
and the mutations of his flesh had made noticeable progress.
He was more hideous than Dathan could ever have imagined,
his skin a patchwork of leprous patches, tufts of fur and sprays
of serpentine scales.

'Can you sense Sathorael's presence in the world?' Gavalon
wanted to know. 'Do you have any idea where the daemon
might be? I must obey the commands that I have been given,
but they will lead us all to destruction ifSathorael does not add
his power to ours.'

Dathan had been thinking of little else for several hours. He
had tried to will himself into the kind of trance state that
Hycilla had been in when Nimian had first made mental con-
tact with her, but he had never had her talent and could not do
it. There was a vague sensation that he had never experienced

245

246                        Brian Crcdg

before somewhere at the back of his brain, but every attempt
he had made to bring it into clearer mental focus had had the
opposite effect.

'I can't tell,' Dathan said. 'I wish I could, but I can't.'

Gavalon scowled, making his hideous face even more
appalling. Dathan quailed before the sorcerer's annoyance, but
Gavalon's eyes were not yet fixed on him. They seemed to be
searching for some further target, lost in infinity.

Then we must find another way to work the oracle,' the sor-
cerer said. This may hurt, a little, but it will not last long and
you will be stronger thereafter. Come closer.'

The last thing Dathan wanted to do was step closer to the
sorcerer while he was in such an uncertain state, but he had no
alternative. He obeyed the order, trying not to tremble too
much.

Gavalon placed his ungainly hands on Dathan's shoulders.
He had done it before, but not both of them at once, and not
while Dathan was standing directly in front of him. This
time, Dathan knew, the sorcerer intended to look into him -
into his mind and into his soul - and he felt sure, as he stud-
ied those huge, unnatural and ill-matched eyes, that the
sorcerer's scrutiny would not leave his mind and soul
unchanged.

This might do worse than hurt me, he thought. Nevertheless,
it was by choice that he met Gavalon's horrid and inquisitive
stare with his own meek eyes, and by choice that he let the
champion of Chaos into his mind and soul.

In fifteen years, it had never occurred to Dathan to wonder
how like or unlike other minds his own might be. He had not
always been content to be himself, but he had always accepted
that he was what he was, and that the question of exactly what
he was - and how that compared with what other men were -
did not require to be raised, let alone contemplated at length.
Now, he suddenly felt utterly different.

Dathan understood, abruptly, that he was a very frail and
fragile thing, of a sort that might be banished from the core of
his own being, or twisted into something utterly different, on a
momentary whim of a more powerful creature. He understood
that Gavalon the Great could have destroyed something like
him with a bitter glance - not entirely without cost to himself
but at no great loss - and that the only reason Gavalon

Pawns of Chaos                  247

tolerated his further existence in the world was that he might
be useful, not for a lifetime, but perhaps for a day or two.

After that, he would be nothing, or less than nothing. He
would be turned into a quantity that was not merely negligible
or negative but strangely twisted: irrational at least, if not imag-
inary. And he was useful now not because of anything he could
actually do of his own volition, but because of something writ-
ten in his flesh in an arcane language that he could not read:

something that merely used him, as if he were smoothed-over
sand in which a casual sketch might be made, erasable by time,
or the wind, or an equally unthinking process.

It did hurt, in more ways than one - but Gavalon had not
lied to him. Although the after-effects of the sorcerer's stare left
him gasping and retching when the demanding gaze finally
shifted, Dathan knew that there was a perverse sense in which
he was stronger. He had been close to death in any case - he
already knew that - and he was by no means capable, as yet, of
utter indifference to his fate, but he had now taken a step closer
to an indifference that embraced damnation as well as death.

He had begun to see what the daemon meant when its Vessel
had told him that it only mattered how a life might bum, and
not for how long.

When Dathan looked up again, Gavalon's eyes were far less
dreadful. The sorcerer seemed to be puzzled.

'What is it?' Dathan dared to ask. What did you learn?'

'I do not understand where Sathorael went, or why,' the sor-
cerer confessed. 'I do not know why the daemon would not
come to me sooner, or why it wants me to attack the Imperium
before it comes - but one thing is certain. Sathorael will come.
My victory will be the victory of Change; my fulfilment, the ful-
filment of the Great Metamorphosis.'

It was not a helpful answer, but Dathan was glad to have
received it.

'Mount up,' Gavalon said to him, quietly. The time has
come.' Then he repeated the order, a little more loudly, for the
benefit of others. Without ever being raised to a shout, the
whisper passed through the entire troop - not merely the
horsemen, but the various contingents of infantry that had
been drawn up to either side of them.

The sun's disc was already obscured by the western horizon.
Dathan knew that the twilight would fade quickly. Two moons

248                      Brian Craig

had already risen, and he judged by the rare steadiness of their
light that the night-sky would be unusually still - certainly
stiller than he had ever seen it, and perhaps stiller than it had
ever been before.

'Well,' said Abdalkuri, when the two of them had mounted
up and come into formation side-by-side. 'It will be a strange
night in which to die, and a far stranger mom if either of us
should live to see it. Are you ready?'

'Yes I am,' Dathan said. 'I did not think I would be, but I
think I am. I am a man and a warrior, not a boy.'

'I have been more than a man for as long as I can remember,'
the thrall-wizard said, bleakly, 'and cannot now remember that
I ever was a boy, but I wish I were a little less ready than I am.
I would wish you well, child-becomc-man, were I capable of
such a wish.'

'And I would thank you, if you were,' Dathan answered
solemnly, although he was not entirely sure what he meant by it.

Then the line of cavalry moved forward, all as one, although
Dathan had not seen the signal given. This time, his mount was
quick to change its paces, first to a trot, then a canter, and
finally a gallop.

The gallop seemed to go on for an unconscionably long time
as the gloom of dusk gathered and the stars came out in full
force. They were steady, silent and proud. Dathan, still suffer-
ing the after-effects of Gavalon's inquisitive stare, thought that
he had slipped out of time altogether, and although the mas-
sive hooves of his multicoloured mount were drumming
thunderously upon the coarse and desiccated ground he felt as
if he were almost floating, keeping closer company with the
stars than with the earth.

He fetched his rifle from its lodging-place and held it up in
his right hand, lifting it high above his head as if to display it to
his companions - but they were going too fast now to pay any
heed to him, and he could only catch fleeting glimpses of them
as they levelled their lances and began to unfurl their banners.

He thought that the banners must be a wonderful sight to
behold, even though the uncommonly bright and uncom-
monly white light of the stars could not do full justice to the
riot of reds and purples, blues and pinks, golds and violets, but
he could not bear witness to that glory himself while he was
part of its headlong rush.

Pawns of Chaos                  249

Then he saw the enemy, and understood how close to death
he was.

The steady stars, which could not do justice to the flamboy-
ance of his own side, were mere echoes of the blazing white
lights that the enemy had now turned upon them - but the
enemy's searchlights were not there to enhance appreciation of
the banners' many colours; they were there to find targets.

Dathan had met the enemy before, and had subconsciously
allowed those two tiny contingents to formulate and constrain
his notion of what the battle would be like. Now he under-
stood his error. The headlamps of the trucks by the pool had
been mere candles compared with this array of searchlights,
and the trucks themselves mere toys by comparison with the
arms and armour drawn up before him now.

There were trucks there, to be sure - trucks enough, it
seemed, to fill the horizon - but there were bigger machines
too, and stranger ones. And there were guns. Even before they
opened up, Dathan realised how many guns there must be, and
what a barrage they might lay down upon a charging enemy.

This is absurd! he suddenly thought, as his heart lurched. We
are men, mounted on horses, most of us bearing nothing but
lances. They are the Imperium!

For the first time, he had an inkling of what the Imperium
was, and what it meant, and why it was such a fearsome enemy
even for powerful men like Cavalon, who had been more than
men since they were infants, and who carried such awesome
weapons as the withering eye banner and the horn of agony.

Then the guns began firing, all at once, and the thunder
blasted his eardrums. The dazzle of the searchlights was
increased by multitudinous flashes, and the air was ripped by
the shock- and heat-waves of countless explosive blasts. It
seemed impossible that any man might ride through that tem-
pest unscathed, and Dathan had no doubt that a great many of
his companions had been killed on the instant, but he did ride
through it, and he continued riding even as the lights rushed
upon him and the storm reached out to swallow him up entire.

The first time Dathan fired from the saddle the recoil nearly
knocked him off the horse, but he swayed back and then
swayed forward again, and he fired and he fired and he fired.

He could not pick out human targets in the wells of shadow
behind and between the lights, but he fired regardless,

250                        Brian Craig

recklessly assuming that the enemy were so many that even
random shots might strike home.

He did not catch a glimpse of Abdalkuri's standard, but he
knew where Abdalkuri was - where he must be, if that first
frightful volley had not blown him apart - and he felt the back-
wash of the hellfire it unleashed. His eyes, dazzled as they were,
took note of the colour that suddenly infected the surrounding
blaze of white, and his deafened ears still had reactivity enough
to perceive the avid crackling of the air and the tortured
screaming of the weapon's victims.

For his own part, Dathan continued firing the rifle he had
liberated from his enemies, first this way and then that, while
his horse wheeled and changed tack. The animal was no longer
galloping now that they had reached their destination, but it
had not paused; it was prancing and leaping, and the rhythm
of its hoofbeats was dance-like. It was a deceptive creature, but
it had to move in order to distort the perceptions of its ene-
mies. It could not stand still - and Dathan was glad of that, for
while death was all around him he could not bear the thought
of stillness.

To be still, in such an inferno as this, would be to wait for
death, to invite death, to accept death. Dathan was not ready
to do that, for his first purpose was to kill, and to make the
cost of his eventual death higher than the enemy could stand
to pay.

If Dathan had already slipped, subjectively, out of time, he
now seemed to be slipping out of space as well. He had lost
touch with any sense of place, and might have been anywhere
in the vast confusion of the battle, although he could not pos-
sibly have penetrated deep into the enemy's lines. He was no
longer sure whether he was tiny or vast, or whether the lights
that formed an infinite cage around him were fireflies or suns.
It was astonishingly easy to visualise himself, in his mind's
secret cycloptic eye, as a winged giant soaring high above the
battle, glorying in all that wondrous fire and fury, soaking up
the souls of the dead as if they were intoxicating liquor, aflame
with the heady alcohol of sacrifice.

It was astonishingly simple, now that the stars were standing
still in the sky, for Dathan to forget the nothing that he had
become, or the quantity not merely negative but strange, and
see instead the not-self that was greater by far than he could

Pawns of Chaos                   251

ever have been: the not-self whose tiniest finger had more
cleverness, when severed, than any human fool; the not-self
that had only needed to lay its ear upon his shoulder to infect
him with a corrosion that would eat his soul; the not-self that
was still only pan-way to the Great Metamorphosis, which had
lain in embryo within the heart of the world, not for two
hundred years but for two thousand, and now was grown into
its mayfly firefly dragonfly maturity, to burn for just a moment
but to burn so brightly, so very, very brightly...

He emptied his rifle and reloaded, and suddenly found the
ability to see human figures within the shadows: human figures
that could not see him, or even the coloured blur that hid him,
and should not have been ready targets for a creature such as
he.

He fired and shot a man in the mouth, blasting his jaw to
shreds.

He fired again, and saw his bullet tear into a man's thigh,
ploughing through the fat and flesh to rip the femoral artery
apart.

He fired again, and saw his bullet ricochet from the plate of
steel to strike a sniper in the very eye that he was pressing to his
gunsight.

He fired again, and saw a man hurl away his laspistol in
order to clutch his navel, as if by holding his intestines in he
could stem the rapid ebb of his life-force.

He fired again, and saw...

He saw the shadow of incredible wings fall precipitously
across the battlefield, and understood that Sathorael had
indeed arrived, not to help Gavalon's army but to feed upon its
reckless sacrifice, and to feed upon its fallen foes, and to feed
and feed and feed...

And Dathan understood, then, what Gavalon had meant -
although he certainly had not known it - when he had said
that the one certain thing in a mist of confusion was that
Sathorael would come and that Gavalon's victory would be the
daemon's victory.

Then his horse was shot from under him, and he fell - far
more roughly this time than he had during the skirmish at the
farmhouse. He fell into the shadow of those awful wings, into
a darkness that almost let him see again, into air so deftly muf-
fled that he could almost hear again.

252                      Brian Craig

He would have liked to lie still for a moment or two, to col-
lect himself, but he did not have time to pause. There were
lesser shadows all around him: men who would certainly kill
him if he could not kill them first. He had to use his rifle as a
mere staff to parry a sword-thrust, and then as a brute club in
order to strike back, and he knew that the fight would go on
and on and on until he fell, and that he would likely never rise
again.

He wondered what had become of Gavalon, and all the
magic the sorcerer had hoarded so carefully for this evil day:

the withering eye banner, the horn of agony, and so much
more.

He parried another sword-thrust, then struck back again. He
felt the force of an impact, and knew that he must have hurt
someone, but the killing power he had wielded with such brief
efficiency was gone now; he was alone and earthbound, out-
numbered and overwhelmed. There were too many enemies,
and he had too little strength.

He lashed out again, and again, hitting nothing.

Then he was struck in the back, and he fell.

For a moment he remained kneeling, his arms reflexively
outstretched as if they were wings that might somehow lift him
up into the sky and out of the pit of death - but they were not,
and he pitched forward.

His face descended into a pool of mud. Dathan knew that
the mud was compounded out of soil and blood, not soil and
water, because there had been no rain hereabouts for many
days.

J wonder what Hycilla is doing now, he thought. J pray to every
god there 15 that she is safe.




TWENTY-FOUR

HYCII.LA CREPT CARP-FULLY towards the wreckage of the flying
machine.

It had come down at such a shallow angle that it might have
been able to land safely if the ground had been better.
Whoever had been in control - or not quite out of control -
had managed to steer it away from the densest clumps of
plants, but almost as soon as its landing-wheels had touched
the ground their tyres had burst. One of them was torn away,
dropping the left-hand wing on to the baked earth. That had
sent the body of the machine into a spin, until the dragging
wing had shattered. After that, the body had begun to fracture
and come apart, different sections skidding in three different
directions.

At first, Hycilla could not believe that anyone inside the
machine could possibly have survived the crash - but when
the roar of the impact finally died down she heard a few muf-
fled voices. Some were merely coughing - the crash had stirred
up a great deal of dust - but others were complaining or call-
ing for help.

She did not doubt that Sathorael had told her to watch the
sky for a purpose, and that this was it, but considering that the

253

254                      Brian Craig

daemon had been so unexpectedly loquacious while she was
perched on its shoulder, she found it surprising that it had
given her no indication of what she ought to do when the
watched-for event occurred.

The machine was obviously Imperial in origin, so the men
injured in the crash were presumably soldiers. It seemed
highly improbable, therefore, that she had been posted here to
render assistance. Had she, then, been set here to make sure
that the crash survivors did not survive for long?

That seemed the likeliest possibility, for the moment - and
it certainly accorded with her own inclinations, so she held
her blade at the ready while she moved toward the first of the
broken sections.

This had been the mid-section of the aircraft's body, from
which both the front and rear end had been separated. She
could only hear one man's voice emanating from within it,
and the voice was calling intermittently for help - intermit-
tently because it had to break off repeatedly in fits of racking
coughs.

As she peered round the ragged edge of the hull, whose alloy
had been sheared as easily as poorly-woven cloth, she saw not
one man but two, both spreadeagled on what had been the
side of the compartment but was now its floor. Neither man
was dead, but neither seemed able to rise; they had broken
limbs or badly bruised backs.

Hycilla moved quickly, hardly pausing to note that only one
of the two wore military uniform, the other wearing what
might have been a priestly robe. She slit their throats swiftly
and easily, hoping that anyone who might be listening would
take no warning from the abrupt cessation of the imploring
voice.

She remained within the tubular section while she
attempted to figure out where the other survivors might be.
Logically, the controls of the flying machine should have been
located at the front, with at least one man in charge of them.
When the craft had begun its descent to the ground, others
might well have run forward to see what was happening. They
might easily have been crushed, but some might have sur-
vived. It seemed to Hycilla it would be more sensible to go to
the rear section first.

Having made this decision, she was quick to act upon it.

Pawns of Chaos                   255

Keeping her head down, she scampered across the bare
ground towards the tail-section of the machine's hull, dodg-
ing several pieces of jagged wreckage. She had heard a voice
coming from this section before entering the other, but it had
fallen silent now, so she approached very cautiously.

Because the open end was turned away from the bright-
est moon the interior was shadowed, and there was a
considerable amount of dust swirling about the interior.
Even so, it only took her a few seconds to decide that there
was only one living person within: the second body, of a
burly man in what was presumably civilian dress, lay so
crookedly that it was obvious that the man's spine had
been snapped.

The living man, on the other hand, seemed relatively
unhurt. He must have been bruised, but his limbs were sound
enough to have let him scramble to his companion's side and
kneel over him.

Hycilla made every effort to be quiet, but it seemed that she
must have made a sound of some sort, for the survivor turned
to look at her while she was still five or six paces away. He was
unarmed, and if she had moved quickly enough she might
have been able to stab him in the throat or breast before he
had time to take any effective defensive action - but some-
thing made her hesitate.

She did not know what it was that had made her pause until
she saw the expression flaring up in his eyes: a kind of recog-
nition, not merely of what she was but actually of who she was
- not merely of who she had recently become but of who she
had always been.

The man was a wise-dreamer. He had seen her before, in his
dreams.

And she, she now realised, had seen him. The fact had
slipped her mind, but the sight of him brought it back.

Hycilla had not suspected until now that the Imperium
might have wise-dreamers of its own, and even though the
suspicion surfaced now, she could not quite believe it. She had
been told that the Kalazendrans hated everything that the peo-
ple of Culzacandra were, especially their traffic with the
worlds beyond the world.

Her first assumption, therefore, was that this must be a cap-
tive: a prisoner, transported against his will.

256                        Brian Craig

Was this, she wondered, why Sathorael had sent her here?
Was she here to accomplish a rescue rather than a massacre?

'Who are you?' she asked, in a voice as low as it was taut.

Instead of replying, the man stared at her with increasing
horror. 'Witch!' he eventually said, in a voice far tenser than
her own. 'Hellspawn! Monster!'

Hycilla saw immediately that her deductions must have
been at fault. Obviously, the Imperium did have wise-dream-
ers, who probably considered their Gulzacandran counterparts
to be evil - but there was still an atom of doubt. He had recog-
nised her, and she had recognised him. They had seen one
another in their dreams, and their fates were bound together.
Surely he understood that, just as she did. Or did he?

Hycilla knew how much she had changed since she had first
been touched by Sathorael's vessel, and she knew that the vil-
lagers among whom she had grown up would have been
horrified to see her so grotesquely mutated. They too might
have called her monster - though not witch or hellspawn,
which were presumably Kalazendran terms of abuse. For this
reason, she continued to hesitate over what to do next. It still
seemed to her that this dreamer - this particular dreamer,
above all others - might be useful to Sathorael's cause, and
therefore worth preserving.

In any case, he was unarmed, and he had made no move to
retrieve the weapon carried by the man with the broken back.

'What's your name?' she asked. There was power in names,
she knew. If he would only tell her that, she thought that she
might be able to exert some form of control over him, as a sor-
cerer to a thrall-wizard. Perhaps that was the manner in which
their fates were entwined.

But the other had no intention of telling her - and she had
lingered too long.

She felt something cold and metallic against the back of her
neck. A voice that was far too close to her ear hissed; 'Drop the
knife!'

She thought about whirling around, trying to knock away
the hand holding the gun and plunging the knife into her
adversary's guts, but she knew that he would certainly blast her
head off if she did not do as she was told.

She dropped the knife, but she remained tense and alert,
ready to pick it up again if the opportunity presented itself.

Pawns of Chaos                  257

She turned to face the man who had trapped her. Like the
wise-dreamer and his companion he was not wearing military
uniform. Nor was the second man who stood behind him,
mopping blood from a cut to the side of his head.

The man who was covering her with a pistol was dressed in
what seemed to her an unusually austere style, which should
have indicated that he was a man of discipline and a true
champion of order. There was, however, a glint in his eye that
Hycilla immediately recognised as a flicker of kindred spirit.
Somehow, presumably in spite of himself, this man had been
touched, if not by Sathorael then something similar. There
had been a chink in his spiritual armour: some kind of obses-
sion that had created space for the wiles of her own god to
work upon him like a worm in the bud.

She knew, though, that this would not make him any less
dangerous. Quite the opposite, in fact.

'Shoot it!' the bleeding man urged. T don't know what it is,
but for the Emperor's sake, Ragan, kill the thing! My guards are
all dead or disabled - Moberg and the vox operator too. We
can't take any risks. Kill it!'

'It's a she,' the man with the pistol replied, pensively. 'She's
a mutant, but she's young in spite of her height - hardly more
than a girl.'

'Whatever it is, it's dangerous. If you and your crazy psyker
didn't bring the plane down, she probably did. Kill it!'

*We don't know that she's hostile,' the man named Ragan
countered, with the ghost of an odd smile playing about his
lips. 'Even if she is, she might be useful. Can you talk,
hellspawn? Do you understand my language.'

'Of course I can talk,' Hycilla replied contemptuously. 'What
other language would I use?'

'Is Governor Melcarth right?' the man with the pistol had the
temerity to ask. 'Did you bring the aircraft down? Should I
shoot you, before you blast us all with sorcery?'

Hycilla was briefly tempted to claim credit for the crash, but
she decided that the wiser course was to try to appear harmless
in spite of her alarming appearance. The man with the pistol
would have been more than a foot taller than her two days
ago, but she had an equal advantage now. She was slender, of
course, but so was he. He was hesitating for a reason. He really
did think she might be useful to him. Was it possible, given

258                        Brian Craig

that she hadn't caused the flying-machine to crash, that he
might have done so, as his friend appeared to suspect? If so,
was he too a pawn - presumably an unsuspecting one - of
Sathorael?

'I came to see what I could do to help,' she said, hoping that
they had not seen what she had done to the wounded men in
the mid-section of the hull.

'Nonsense,' said the man addressed as governor. 'YOU can see
that she's a mutant, Ragan. It's an inquisitor's job to purge the
world of such as her.'

At least, Hycilla thought, he had stopped referring to her as
'it'.

'Why did you ask his name?' the inquisitor asked.

'She's a witch,' repeated the man who was now behind her.
'The governor's right, sir. She's dangerous. A psyker, far more
powerful than me.'

'A psyker,' echoed the man with the gun, as if that were the
heart of the matter. That's what I thought.' Hycilla realised
that the man who held the pistol was no less afraid of her, and
no less horrified by her, than his two dread-stricken compan-
ions - perhaps even more so - but that something else was
getting in the way of his fear.

That something was not courage, if her judgment of such
alien creatures could be trusted, but desperation.

'Shoot her,' the governor said, again. 'Why won't you shoot
her?'

'Look at the sky, Orloc Melcarth,' the inquisitor said. Two
moons are up and bright as they've ever been, but the stars are
out in all their profusion. Tell me, excellency: what do you
see?'

The man to whom he had spoken did not respond, but the
other man hurried past her into the open air, where he threw
back his head in order to look up towards the zenith.

They're standing still!' the Imperial dreamer said. The
warpstorm has died! I can do it now - I'm sure I can. I can get
through to the Fleet!'

'I dare say that you could,' the man with the pistol said. 'We
must certainly try - and perhaps they will reply to your cry for
help. I cannot help but wonder, though, if they would pay
more attention, and take the matter more seriously, if there
were more than one silent voice to be heard.'

Pawns of Chaos                  259

'Don't be ridiculous, Ragan/ the governor said. That thing
isn't going to help you! She's a mutant, more likely to sum-
mon sorcerers and daemons.'

'Who will not come, given that there is a more immediate
enemy to face in Fulbra. Of course she will not help, sire - not
willingly. But how much control does she have over her own
powers, when she is in the grip of the drug? And how much
control could she keep, if she were overdosed? Psykers acting
in concert usually become confused, even if they are twin
souls so far as their loyalty to the Inquisition and the Emperor
is concerned - but even confusion may be productive. If we
can get a cry for help to the Fleet, all well and good - but if we
can let loose a cry of rage and agony too, might we not be bet-
ter able to communicate the urgency of our situation?'

'You're mad,' said Orloc Melcarth.

Hycilla had never expected to find herself in agreement with
an Imperial governor, but she thought it a sound judgment.

'No,' said the Imperial dreamer. 'Please sir, no! You don't
understand. It would destroy me. Sir, she'd tear my mind apart
as easily as the plane was torn. You can't. Kill her, sir. Kill her,
please!'

Hycilla suddenly realised, almost as if she were belatedly
remembering a trivial fact that had somehow slipped her
mind, exactly why Sathorael had set her to watch the sky, and
exactly what she was now supposed to do.

The man the governor called Ragan had now relaxed suffi-
ciently to let her dodge any bullet he fired, had she cared to do
so, and she was certain that she could have picked up the knife
and gutted him before he fired a second time. Inquisitor or
not, the man had not the slightest idea what he was dealing
with. The terror and the horror that should have told him
what to do had been snared in a net of confusion. She, not he,
was in control here - or, more precisely, it was Sathorael that
was in command, operating through the flesh that bore his
stigmata.

'He's right,' Hycilla said, mildly. 'If you set us to dream
together. I won't need to know his name to enter into his night-
mare and tear him apart. It will not matter whether his dying
scream reaches the spaceships or not; they will not come. But
if you let me walk away, you have a chance to live out your lives
- in Kalazendra, if you can find a way to return.'

260                     Brian Craig

'We can get back easily enough,' the governor was quick to
say. Tulbra's forces cannot be far away, and when the battle is
joined in earnest they will win it in a matter of hours. We can
still return as part of a victorious army, albeit more slowly than
I had planned. Shoot her, Ragan. Just shoot her.'

'Please,' said the dreamer, weakly.

'All you've ever wanted, Orloc Melcarth,' said the man
named Ragan, 'was to be governor of Sigmatus. You've never
cared how well the war against Chaos went, and you'd rather
the Fleet never made contact again than share your power with
those who are worthy to wield it. But the hour of the
Imperium is come - not the faded shadow that is your
Imperium, but the true Imperium: the Imperium of All
Mankind. That greater Imperium shall know what is happen-
ing here, and what has happened during these last two
hundred years. The masters of the ships will know what has
been done and what has not, and what must now be done,
and what must not. 1 was never more certain of myself than I
am now. All praise to the Emperor Magnificent!'

This speech, although oddly stirring in its way, had given
Orloc Melcarth time to make plans of his own. He knelt down
as if to inspect the leather of his boots, but he had a holster
strapped to his leg and there was a gun in the holster. The pis-
tol was not nearly as large as the one the inquisitor was
holding, but at this close range the difference hardly mattered.

As Melcarth drew his stubgun, though, the man he had
called Ragan swivelled and shot him.

There was plenty of time then for Hycilla to pick up her
knife, and she could have killed the dreamer as well as the
inquisitor, but she made no move at all.

Orloc Melcarth had time to look down, in utter astonish-
ment, at the hole in his lower abdomen before the
momentum of the impact bowled him over. He crumpled
slowly to a sitting position, and looked for a moment or two
as if he might hold on to that position long enough to fire his
own weapon - but the wound, though by no means instantly
mortal, was too painful.

Tiny as it was, the weight of the stubgun dragged his hand
down, and the governor sagged on to his side. Some reflex
made him draw his knees up towards his chest, so that he lay
in a quasi-foetal position. His left hand clutched at his wound

Pawns of Chaos                  261

as if to stem the flow of blood, while the right remained out-
stretched, the little gun still stubbornly clenched in its fist.

'Now,' said the inquisitor, doubtless imagining that he actu-
ally possessed the authority that he had just exerted. 'Let's see
what can be done about rectifying the disastrous situation of
this sad, mad and tainted world. Even if it proves to be an invi-
tation to Exterminatus, at least we shall have done our duty to
the Emperor, and to Mankind!'

^

TWENTY-FIVE

DATIIAN FOUND, somewhat to his surprise, that he was no longer
face down in the mud. He thought for a moment or two that
he must have drowned.

Once, when he had been very small, his mother had insisted
on placing him neck-deep in a tub of water in order to make
him clean. An entire tub of water was a rare thing in the village,
where it rarely rained enough even in the winter to keep the
water-tower and the collecting-butts half-full, but such was the
waywardness of the weather that every fifth or sixth summer
would bring a very violent storm, when a whole month's rain
would fall in a matter of hours, creating a temporary glut.
Although such storms could be disastrous for the crops in the
field - and even more so if the lightning associated with a
storm happened to strike a thatched roof or the water-tower -
the village had its age-old customs for dealing with the liquid
surplus, one of which was 'bathing the children'.

At first, the young Dathan had deeply resented the
discomfort of this ritual, but when he had tired of crying he
began to find that the experience had its interesting features.
Because he was so very small and the tub so capacious, he
could actually lift his feet from the bottom for a moment or

263

264                        Brian Craig

two while flailing his arms to keep his head above the surface
- and when he did that, he seemed to become weightless. It
was a peculiarly pleasant sensation, but he had been tempted
to over-indulgence, and on one occasion he had missed his
footing when he had attempted to regain a standing position.
His feet had slipped, his head had gone under the water, and
he had completely lost his bearings. He had flailed his arms
more desperately, but instead of bringing his head back to the
surface the hectic movements had actually seemed to hold him
under - and when he opened his mouth to scream it was
instantly filled with soapy, scummy water.

His mother had pulled him out, of course, and had held him
upside-down until he coughed the water out of his lungs - and
when the next opportunity to bathe the children came around
he was so big that he could hardly fit in the tub at all - but
there had been an instant in between his fall and his salvation
when time had seemed to stop and his apparent weightlessness
had been translated into something more profound: a buoy-
ancy that was of the soul as well as of the body. When his
mother had told him afterwards that he had nearly drowned,
he had immediately connected the unfamiliar word with that
moment out of time and that all-encompassing sensation of
being buoyant and adrift, not merely in a bathtub but within
the great sea of existence.

Now, having let the mud of blood and soil into his unwary
mouth, and having sucked it down into his avid lungs in spite
of his every reflex, Dathan felt that he was drowning again -
but now that he was a man and not an infant, he knew that
drowning was a kind of dying.

He was not afraid of dying. He had already fallen once on
a field of battle, thinking himself dead, so he knew - or
thought he knew - that dying was a great deal easier than
some people claimed. But his first experience of not-quite-
drowning and his more recent experience of not-quite-dying
turned out to be more relevant to his present circumstances
than he imagined. He figured out after ten or twenty seconds
had elapsed that he was neither drowned nor dead, because
something else had stepped into the role his mother had
played when he was a very little child, and had plucked him
out of the suffocating mud and shaken the stifling liquid
from his lungs.

Pawns of Chaos                   265

That something held him tightly clasped within an enor-
mous claw, whose talons were curled around his shoulders and
his thighs. It was as if he were a mouse snatched from the
ground by the claw of an owl or an eagle - but not as prey.

Not, at any rate, as any ordinary prey.

Breathing was a great deal more painful than drowning, for
a while, just as living was a great deal more painful than any
kind of dying he had yet come near to, but he was grateful
nevertheless. In any case, he had never expected to be able to
fly, and the fact that he was flying now seemed to be one more
privilege to add to his life, one more blessing to count before
the axe of destiny finally fell upon his scrawny neck.

He could not see what it was that had snatched him up from
the battlefield, because its starshadow was too vast, but he
knew what it was, and the only question it occurred to him to
ask was: Why?

Why not? was the only answer he received - or thought he
had received. He had no talent, and could not connect his con-
sciousness to Sathorael, but he had been touched by the
daemon, and there was a secret part of him that was connected
more securely than he could imagine.

Without Gavalon to channel the daemon's nascent intelli-
gence into speech there was no way Dathan could hear
Sathorael's words, but the part of its sensations that was
beyond and beneath words overflowed directly into that part of
Dathan's inner being which was compounded out of the basest
instincts and emotions.

With this advantage, Dathan knew well enough where he was
and what he was becoming, even though the conscious part of
himself - the part that he thought of as his essential self -
remained distinct: a mere spectator.

That spectator watched the battle from on high. Although he
was lost in shadow he could still see much of what was hap-
pening on the ground, albeit fitfully. He saw it by the light of
those searchlights that still shone, the lightning-flashes of
Imperial weapons, and the eerie illumination that had acti-
vated the banners and standards that were his own side's most
powerful weapons. He saw much that he had been unable to
see while he rode to the battle on his coloured steed. He saw
the stolen trucks used as battering-rams, smashing suicidally
into Imperial tanks. He saw cloaked assassins worming their

266                      Brian Craig

way through the dark ranks of the Imperial vehicles, evading
the attention of the massed troops. He saw the scavengers mov-
ing in to seize the weapons dropped by Imperial victims of
brutal magic, then carrying them back to supply Gavalon's
reserves. He saw the surviving horses using their horns as
weapons to lacerate the faces of enemy soldiers or to disem-
bowel fallen men.

He saw confusion: a vast and hectic vortex of violence and
hatred, which would have been pure unadulterated chaos had
it not been for the discipline and order of the Imperial army -
which now seemed not merely a possessor of machines but a
machine in its own right: a megamachine of wheels within
wheels within wheels, whose invisible cogs and levers were the
produce of organization and the strict divisions of labour and
authority.

The magicians against which that megamachine was arrayed
were infinitely more colourful, but from the height at which
Dathan was now able to observe they were like maggots
swarming in a carcase, randomly and self-obsessively, moved
by a blind determination to survive: mere atoms of greed.

Now, Dathan was able to see Cavalon the Great for what he
really was, at the full extension of a sorcerer's capabilities. He
could see the blasts of the withering eye as they shrivelled the
flesh on the bones of Gavalon's attackers, sweeping in majestic
arcs across one forefront after another. He could see the effects
of the horn of agony too - although he could not hear the note
it sounded - far more clearly than he had had the opportunity
to do at the farmhouse. He saw the way in which it reduced
men to pain-racked puppets, usurping control of the nerves
which transmitted signals from their brains to their limbs and
flooding those nerves with blasts of pure hell.

With weapons like these at his disposal, Cavalon might have
been reckoned invincible, but Dathan saw that the matter was
not so simple. The great majority of men, he felt sure, would
have been petrified by horror and fear at the prospect of fadng
such devices. Whole armies, thus threatened, might have turned
tail and run in panic - but the Imperial army, no matter how
many generations removed it was from its authentic original,
was the inheritor of traditions that informed and convinced its
individual soldiers that this kind of hectic destruction must be
opposed at all costs, checked and obliterated.

Pawns of Chaos                   267

The Imperial soldiers were well trained, but there was some-
thing more than mere training in their refusal to be
intimidated and their refusal to be panic-stricken. These were
men who knew what kind of weakness panic was, and who
were determined not to give in to it. Men died in droves trying
to reach Gavalon, who seemed for a while to be untouchable
by any fire they dispatched in his direction, but those who
came behind the men who died did not stop trying, and they
did not stop firing.

Dathan understood, while he watched the Imperial forces lay
siege to Gavalon's position, what the sorcerer had meant - or,
to be more precise, what the daemon using Gavalon's voice
had meant - when it had said that the Imperial soldiers were
the true heroes. They were heroes because they could maintain
discipline even in the face of the forces of Chaos; they were
heroes because they would go to any lengths to hold back
those forces. They did not choose to do it, because they did not
choose; they did what they did out of necessity. And in the end,
their necessity was enough to put a stay to all Cavalon's wit and
trickery and raw formless power.

Dathan saw Gavalon hit by bullets, again and again. He saw
the sorcerer racing this way and that, hacking with his massive
blade, using all his powers of deception to avoid reprisal.
Dathan could not count the number of men Gavalon killed by
means of his various alloys of magic and brute strength, but he
could and did measure the phases of Cavalon's gradual exhaus-
tion as the sorcerer used up his resources...

And his enemies kept coming at him.

Dathan realised, eventually, that the reason he could see all
this so clearly was that the daemon was interested - because
their partly-magical perceptions were shared even though their
thoughts and conscious responses were not. The daemon was
interested in Cavalon - but the daemon did not intend to help
him. The daemon and its maker had always intended that
Gavalon should die. Sathorael and its maker did not intend
that the defender of Gulzacandra should die easily, but it had
no interest at all in the possibility of his salvation.

The only person Sathorael had plucked from the battlefield
was Dathan. It had not done so, Dathan presumed, in order to
save him, but merely as a matter of reflex: a casual result of
their chance connection. Doubtless there had been something

268                      Brian Craig

of that in the way his mother had snatched him from the bath-
tub so many years before, but his mother had acted in order to
save him, because his mother loved him.

For Sathorael, love was not an issue.

Dathan had been close enough to Gavalon and Cavalon's
thrall-wizards, albeit briefly, to have a good idea of what
Gavalon had expected of the daemon for whose advent he had
so carefully prepared the way. Gavalon had expected the dae-
mon to deliver Gulzacandra from the Imperial threat and to
save the worshippers of Gulzacandra's god from annihilation
by the empire. Gavalon had expected help in his own struggle,
his own war against adversity. Perhaps he had always known
that the god whose favour he sought was not a motherly god -
not a loving god, perhaps not even an honest god - but he had
believed nevertheless that he was entitled to ask for help in his
hour of need, and that he had some right to expect that help
would come.

Dathan understood now that this expectation had been an
utter illusion. Sathorael was here about its own business. It had
come to cast its vast shadow over the battlefield not to render
assistance but to obtain it. The slaughter on the ground was
helping to empower Sathorael, and to aid its further metamor-
phosis, far more effectively than all the bizarre foodstuffs that
Nimian had consumed.

From the viewpoint of Sathorael - the viewpoint Dathan
now shared, although he had never asked for any such favour
- all the deaths that were suffered down below were sacrifices,
and it did not matter in the least within the scheme of which
Sathorael was a part, which side the dying men were on.

'Sacrifices will come/ Nimian had said, while he was still more
vessel than possessor. 'Sacrifices will come. I will bring ships.'

Gavalon had wanted to be Gavalon the Great. He had dared
to aspire to a kind of daemonhood himself. He had chosen to
become a champion of Chaos - but all that the god he wor-
shipped had wanted of him was sacrifice: the sacrifice of his
own flesh; and of his own life; and, in the process, the sacrifice
of thousands of other lives.

That Gavalon's god had proved to be a treacherous god
would not have surprised Gavalon, so it did not surprise
Dathan - but what did surprise Dathan was the sheer hunger
of Gavalon's god for fervent destruction.

Pawns of Chaos                  269

This was what Sathorael was, he realised: an instrument of
destruction. Any distinction it made between its own cre-
ator's worshippers and their implacable enemies was purely
tactical. Gavalon's god had such a powerful appetite for
destruction that even worlds were of merely tactical signifi-
cance. Cavalon's god had a hunger that would not be
appeased even if the whole universe were to be consumed.

And the only thing that stood in the way of that con-
sumption was the Imperium of Mankind.

Dathan saw Cavalon die, and understood the meaning of
his death. He saw and understood it because the daemon of
which he had unwittingly become a part was interested in
both the fact and the significance of Cavalon's death - not
because that particular death was of any unique importance,
but merely because the daemon, in becoming incarnate in
the material world, had acquired the ability to be interested,
and had been delighted to occupy some tiny fraction of
itself in the exercise of that ability.

In dying, Gavalon the Great became merely Gavalon the
Hideous. With all his sorcerous power exhausted, the bullets
embedded in his transformed flesh began to take their toll.
He must have been bleeding internally and externally from
a dozen different wounds, but still he kept himself erect and
still he slashed to the right and left with his awesome blade.
Now, though, his thrusts were cleaving empty air, unable to
find targets that had somehow usurped his talent for eva-
sion.

His horrible eyes were aflame with rage and hate, but there
was no longer anything withering in his gaze. If anything,
the opposite was true: the sight of his monstrous face, now
agonized in its own turn, gave heart to his attackers and
made them all the more determined to shoot or cut him
down.

In the end, it actually came to cutting. The Imperial sol-
dier who killed him had run out of ammunition for his
rifle, but that had not forced him to fall back or quail
before apparently superior strength - and the cry of tri-
umph that he let out as he slammed his own blade deep
into Gavalon's breast, skewering the sorcerer's heart, told
everyone within earshot that he knew exactly what he had
done.

270                      Brian Craig

But still the shadow of the daemon lay upon them both,
accounting the sacrifices that might make the soldier's little
victory worse than irrelevant.

Dathan had already reconciled himself, so far as he could, to
the knowledge that he would be unlikely to survive the clash
of Imperial and Gulzacandran forces. His mother was proba-
bly dead already, his village effectively destroyed, his life
comprehensively blighted. He owed his own continued sur-
vival entirely to the whim of fate that had introduced him to
the Vessel ofSathorael. He knew that Hycilla had been right to
judge that every moment of life they enjoyed after their cap-
ture at the pool was profit. Now, though, he began to doubt
that reconciliation and recalculate that profit.

If the world is only what I see, Dathan thought, then it dies
with me. I need not care about what happens to it when I am
gone. If it has already lost everything I care about, that is all
the more reason for disregarding its fate. Even Hycilla is no
longer the person I once loved; she is a part of the daemon
now, more intimately bound to it than I. But a human being
is not merely his own life. He is the product of his family, his
village, his world and the entire history of the human race. He
is heir to all that legacy, and if he is to count himself truly
human he must accept a responsibility to all the heirs that are
yet to come. If a man is really a man, he cannot take the view
that it does not matter what happens after he is dead. He can-
not cease to care, merely because he is doomed.

I am within the daemon and the daemon is within me, and
I would be dead were that not the case, but if I am a man my
concern is mankind, not the daemon - and I am a man. I am
not an infant in danger of drowning, nor a boy excluded from
the secrets of his people. I am a man. All the men who are
dying down below are heirs to the heritage that made me a
man, and their sacrifice is my sacrifice, no matter what uncon-
scious impulse made the shadow snatch me into itself. The
daemon's hunger is not my hunger, and never should be any
man's hunger, because it is a hunger intent on devouring
humanity itself, which every man who is a man is bound to
resist.

It was a fine speech, Dathan thought, even if it had to be
issued silently, with not a human ear to hear it. But what did
it matter, given that it could have no consequence or sequel?

Pawns of Chaos                   271

What was it but so much wasted thought, so much wasted
anguish?

What, given his paradoxical nature and situation, could he
possibly do?

^

TWENTY-SIX

EVEN THOUGH IT would be a grave tactical mistake for the enemy
to attack the positions he had chosen to hold until Melcarth's
aircraft arrived, lerius Fulbra had taken every rational precau-
tion against the possibility of being taken by surprise. When
the enemy did come at him, his men were adequately fore-
warned and they took up their positions without delay. As the
enemy force swept forward, therefore, they ran into a veritable
hurricane of gunfire: gunfire far more devastating than any-
thing the members of Gavalon's ragged army could ever have
imagined, let alone experienced.

At first, when Fulbra took up his own position in the belly of
a tall-turreted tank, he assumed that the charge was a grave tac-
tical mistake, bom of a failure of imagination. He was able to
observe the attack through a periscope, which he had only to
move through thirty degrees in either direction in order to
obtain a panoramic scan of the entire front. By the searchlights
of his first defensive line of armoured vehicles he could see the
effects that his initial barrages had on the enemy, and found
them most satisfactory.

The enemy's absurd cavalry proved a surprisingly mercurial
target, riding through the blizzard of shells with astonishing

273

274                        Brian Craig

luck, but the infantrymen following in their wake absorbed a
full measure of shock and shrapnel. They dropped like flies,
and the first two hundred yards of ground they crossed after
the guns opened up cost them casualties so heavy that Fulbra
almost came to believe that victory would be his within
minutes. It was not until his line of sight was blocked by his
own heavy metal, as the remaining attackers came close
enough to be eclipsed by the ranks of armour drawn up
before them like a wall, that the balance of the battle began
to tilt.

The three radio operators manning the vox apparatus at the
front of the narrow cabin were silent to begin with, having nei-
ther new orders to transmit nor urgent reports to receive, but as
soon as the pre-set defensive plan was stretched to its limit
reports of casualties began to trickle in - and it did not take
long for the trickle to become a flood.

Fulbra's two colonels-in-chief had a rough-and-ready sketch-
map of the Imperial positions. It had been made purely as a
matter of routine, but the fact that the attack had begun was
ample proof that the insistence of routine was a very valuable
asset.

Fulbra tapped the map three times, saying: Their cavalry
seems to be split into three main contingents. These will be the
stress-points if their luck continues to hold. Strengthen the sec-
ond lines at all three positions, and be sure that we can plug
the gaps twice over if any develop.'

Hamera and Diambor had no experience of large-scale
defensive manoeuvres; all of their relatively vast experience was
of attacks, sieges and chases, with nothing more by way of
reprisal than hasty and ineffective ambushes. They had, how-
ever, carried out many exercises, in the field as well as on the
gaming table, and they knew how to put their learning into
practice. The vox operators began chattering away to the field
commanders, concentrating the Imperium's forces in support
of the positions that seemed most vulnerable. It was now that
information began to come back about casualties inflicted by
enemy sorcery.

'They have some kind of fire-generating apparatus,'
Diambor's operator said, 'and there's something that can dry
the flesh on a man's bones, sucking all the moisture and life
out of him.'

Pawns of Chaos                  275

'How are they generating the effects?' Fulbra wanted to know.

'It's something to do with illuminated flags,' Hamera's man
said. 'Maybe the flags are just signals or markers, but they seem
to be closely associated with the sources of destruction.'

'Order the snipers to take out the banner-carriers,' Hamera
said, instantly. 'Get flame-throwers trained on the banners
themselves. I've seen such devices used in Zendamora, though
never more than one at a time. They're limited in range.'

Fulbra had been briefed on the banners, not merely by his
own men and those who had gone into the field before them
but by Ragan Balberith's drug-assisted psykers. He knew that
the banners could be countered - but the last message that had
been received from the party sent out to search for relics of
Operation Probe had not mentioned banners at all.

They have other devices,' he was quick to say. 'Don't let the
gunners concentrate too closely - we need to respond to the
unexpected as and when it arises.'

The heaviest casualties seem to be in the centre, here,' said
Diambor's radio man.

Fulbra returned immediately to his periscope, directing it to
the place Diambor had indicated. For a moment, he caught
sight of two banners himself, one carrying an image of a great
taloned hand with an eye in its palm, the other bearing only
the image of a vast and furious eye. The brightly-embroidered
cloth of each banner shone with an eerie light, and each of the
eyes seemed to be emitting a ray sharper than any searchlight.

The lenses of the periscope, over which many prayers had
been said while they were being polished, should have pro-
tected Fulbra from the effects of such magic, given that the
glimpse he caught was so brief, but he felt a strange shockwave
move through his mind, threatening the fabric of his being
with laceration or breakage. Discipline came to his aid, though:

discipline and faith in the necessity of his cause. Fulbra could
see well enough that the soldiers who looked directly upon the
banner - especially those who were closest to it - were quite
unable to put up the same resistance.

Some of them stood stock still, as if immobilised by horror,
while others collapsed gibbering, as if in the grip of irresistible
terror. None, the general thought, were actually struck dead,
but he was not certain that very many would recover sufficient
composure to take up their weapons again - and while the

276                        Brian Craig

harlequinade of magical cavalry still swirled around them like
smoke, the helpless victims were being cut and slashed.

The gunfire in that sector of the front was the most intense of
all, and it seemed impossible that the banners were still raised,
or that the homed horses should still be prancing around
them, but Fulbra could see that their ranks were now being
swelled by those infantrymen who had contrived to make their
way across the field of death. Only a few had guns, and most of
the guns they had were common rifles, but even those who
only had blades were close enough to do considerable damage
now, and they were moving between and behind the armoured
vehicles that formed the first line of the Imperial defence.

'Strengthen the centre,' Fulbra ordered. They can't possibly
have men enough to be trying to outflank us, but keep reserves
to either side in case they have held anything back.'

Afterwards he had to step away from the instrument, slightly
dizzied by his first encounter with Gulzacandran magic. Like
Hamera, he had served in Zendamora and had encountered
magic there, but only in small-scale encounters, and never with
so much at stake.

'Have you looked at the sky, sir?' Diambor asked.

The one thing the periscope could not look at was the sky,
and Fulbra was tempted to issue an irritably abrupt reply - but
Diambor was not Hamera, and if Diambor wanted to draw his
attention to something, there had to be a reason. The hatch at
the top of the turret had been thrown back in order to let a lit-
tle fresh air into the belly of the machine, and there was a
circular patch of sky visible through it. No more than a dozen
stars were visible to the naked eye, but a dozen were enough to
let Fulbra know what Diambor meant.

The stars were not moving, and their light was white.

'Balberith was right,' he murmured. The warpstorm has
abated - but for how long?'

That may be why they attacked, sir,' Diambor said. They
must dread the stillness of the sky as much as we dread its tur-
moil. Even if they know nothing of warpstorms they must
know that the stars stood still when the Imperium first came to
Kalazendra. To them, it must be a terrible ill omen.'

At that moment, the dozen stars were abruptly eclipsed. They
were obscured for several seconds. It was impossible to judge
the shape and size of the eclipsing object from this narrow

Pawns of Chaos                  277

vantage, but the duration of the event convinced Fulbra that
the entity must be very large - and could not, therefore, be the
aircraft whose arrival he had expected, and which seemed to
have been delayed some time after making contact. But if it was
not an aircraft, what could it possibly be?

There's something above the battlefield,' he said to his vox
operator. 'Ask the men in the rearmost position to try to catch
a glimpse of it, and tell me what it looks like.'

The vox operator passed on the order, and waited. They can't
tell, sir,' he reported back, eventually. 'Some think it's shaped
like a bird, others like a flying spider - but it's damn big. Even
if it's only a few hundred feet up, it's bigger than anything that
could possibly get airborne using wings. If it's further away -
some of the men think it's out among the stars, although that
seems implausible.'

'Could it be a ship?' Fulbra demanded, urgently. 'Could it be
an Imperial starship?' He knew, even as he asked, that it
couldn't possibly be a ship like those whose empty shells were
still proudly displayed in Sostenuto. It would have to be a ship
of a very different kind. But who here on Sigmatus, knew how
many kinds of starships there were within the Imperial Fleet?

Any elation to be obtained from that thought, Fulbra
realised, had to be countered with the doubt that sprung
from another: who, on Sigmatus knew how many kinds of
starships there were in fleets other than the Imperial one?
The lore handed down through the last two centuries spoke
of the eldar, and oftyranid Hive Fleets, but no man now alive
on Sigmatus had any clear idea as to what those names might
actually signify, or how many similar names might have been
forgotten.

At any rate, there had to be a possibility that the shadow was
the shadow of an enemy.

'Is it firing down at us?' Fulbra wanted to know. 'Or is its
presence having any magical effect?' The possibility occurred to
him then that it might be the vastest and most powerful ban-
ner of them all, needing only the glare of Imperial searchlights
to expose its awful malignity.

'Not so far as they can tell, sir,' the vox operator reported. 'It's
just circling the battlefield... as if it were interested... except
that...'

'Except that what?'

278                        Brian Craig

The tech-priests have reported that their psykers are getting
very agitated.'

'Of course they are - we're in the middle of the biggest
battle against the heretic forces of Chaos this world has ever
seen. More magic has been unleashed against us in the past
half hour than the previous half-century. I'm surprised they
aren't having fits.'

'Oh, they are, sir - but the tech-priests can't make any sense
of what they're trying to say. No sense at all. They think some-
thing's wrong.'

They're tech-priests!' Hamera broke in exdtedly. 'Of course
they think something's wrong. It is wrong - but we're winning.
All praise to the Emperor Magnificent, we're winning!'

Fulbra returned to the periscope, while Diambor offered
sober support to Hamera's judgment. There was no sign of
either of the two banners with the eye motifs, nor of the exotic
cavalry that had enjoyed such astonishing good fortune in
reaching its first target. He could still see enemies standing, but
each was alone and each was surrounded. One by one, they
were being cut down.

They were fighting back, of course - he could still see his own
soldiers falling back here and there, some wounded and some
dead - but no ground was being given up, and for every man
that fell another pressed forward. The line had held, and was
solid again. The enemy forces had wasted their entire strength
in a whirlwind attack, but the whirlwind had blown itself out,
and there was nothing left of the gale now but a few near-
exhausted gusts.

'It's almost over, sir,' Diambor said. They committed suicide.'

From Hamera it would have been a figure of speech, but
Fulbra knew that Diambor meant it literally. The attack had
been suicidal: to charge against so much armour, so carefully
arrayed, had been an act of total folly. It would have made far
more sense, tactically and strategically, for the enemy to fight a
campaign of attrition, tempting fragmentary contingents of the
Imperial forces on to ground of their choosing, striking swiftly
and fading away into the alien forests.

Had Gavalon the allegedly Great elected to fight a guerilla
war, he might have extended the business of conquest and
suppression for years. In the end, of course, he could not have
won - once supply-routes were established, the Imperial strike

Pawns of Chaos                   279

force could be reinforced, and increased by degrees to
impregnability - but he could have made things far more
difficult.

Instead, he had committed suicide.

Why?

For a moment or two, Fulbra wondered whether it even
made sense to ask questions like why when dealing with sor-
cerers, but that was too easy a dismissal. There must be a sense,
however twisted, in which what Cavalon had done had been
worthwhile. Why had he acted so recklessly - almost as if there
were no tomorrow to worry about?

Fulbra had no alternative but to return to the hypothesis that
it was because the stars had stood still in the sky. Whatever the
shape above the battlefield might be, the way was clear for the
Imperial Fleet to come to the aid of the little Imperium of
Sigmatus - and if the way was clear, Balberith's psyker must
have got through.

How delighted the Imperial commander will be, when he
finds out what I have done this day, Fulbra thought. That vain
fool Melcarth fancies himself the future ruler of a world, but
when the Imperium returns, they will not be interested in him.
I shall most surely be the one to reap the best rewards ofrecon-
tact. Even Balberith has only shown his loyalty in petty ways,
but I have won a victory of exactly the kind that the Imperium
loves best. I might yet have the opportunity to serve as a gen-
eral on a stage of stars!

The sound of gunfire was beginning to die away now, fading
gradually into silence.

'Suicide,' Diambor repeated. 'What a debt we owe them, in
spite of all the casualties we have sustained. We might have lost
three or five times as many men had they made us work harder
for their annihilation.'

Their foolishness has always been our greatest strength,'
Hamera observed. They do not have our discipline, our faith,
or our purity of purpose.'

'Is the shadow still visible in the sky?' Fulbra asked his vox
operator. He was looking up at the circular patch of frail
starlight, but he knew that the sky was a much vaster expanse
than that.

'No, sir,' the other replied. 'It seems to have gone.'

'Good,' said Fulbra.

280                     Brian Craig

Immediately, the dozen stars visible through the hatchway
were eclipsed again. Fulbra could hardly help thinking that the
shadow had returned, or that the observers who had declared
it gone must be fools, but he had military reflexes, which were
already responding to his danger before he was consciously
aware of it.

As the Gulzacandran assassin dropped through the turret,
poised to land on his slippered feet, with his blade ready to
strike out at any target within arm's reach, Fulbra's right hand
snatched the pistol from the holster at his belt.

As the assassin landed, Fulbra fired.

The man-shaped shadow crumpled and fell, as if it were
indeed no more than a wisp of darkness strayed from the infi-
nite dark beyond the sun. The knife clattered harmlessly to the
floor.

I am a hero! Fulbra thought.

There was, of course, a sense in which he had been a hero
before, to whom the credit for an epoch-making victory was
due, but there was something about a direct kill so cleanly exe-
cuted which had a special heroism of its own - something, he
felt sure, that even men who commanded starships and fought
whole worlds would understand.

"Well,' he said, with pretentious calmness, 'we have plenty of
work to do before dawn. We'd better make ready to move on as
soon as that damned aircraft arrives, before the stink of the
dead makes our positions unbearable. Soon, the real business
of extermination will begin.'

^

TWENTY-SEVEN

WHEN THE BATTLE was effectively over and the forces of
Gulzacandra had been all but annihilated, the shadow that
had lain upon the battlefield passed on, with Dathan still
clutched in its claw. Sathorael's wings were now so vast that a
single beat was all that was necessary to send its huge form
soaring high into the sky. Dathan felt himself growing colder.
The air that he sucked into his lungs seemed as weak and
unfulfilling as it was sharp and chilly - but the stars grew no
larger; they were too far away.

No sooner had it soared away from the battlefield than
Sathorael wheeled about, and began a long gliding descent.

Dathan could hear the rush of air in the daemon's huge
feathered wings, and knew that his sensation of weightless-
ness was mere illusion. Sathorael was far from weightless; its
mass was tremendous. Had it fallen from the zenith it had
briefly attained it would have hit the ground like a meteor,
blasting an enormous crater. While it had wings, though, it
was a graceful creature, and Dathan's eyes had adjusted well
enough to the starlight to let him see the gleam of its brazen
plumage and the glint of its yellow eyes.

281

282                     Brian Craig

Sathorael might have been beautiful but for its huge bald
head and its monstrous beak, but the gleam in its eye made it
seem limitlessly cruel and infinitely arrogant. There was noth-
ing of its Vessel left now; Nimian had been utterly devoured,
body and soul alike.

The dive became steeper for a little while. There were no
lights below them now to indicate the lie of the land, so it
seemed to Dathan that they were diving into a vast well of
darkness - but as Sathorael's course began to level out again
Dathan caught a glimpse of a light on the horizon, faint and
flickering but undoubtedly man-made.

It was a group of fires, and as Sathorael homed in on it,
seeming now to be skimming the ground, Dathan was able to
count them. There were five in number.

Dathan realised belatedly that Sathorael intended to set
him down, in order that he might carry out some small task
on the daemon's behalf. He could not flatter himself with the
illusion that this was the reason why Sathorael had snatched
him up from the battlefield. The daemon certainly did not
need him in order to complete this part of its plan, but since
it had him, it condescended to use him, for reasons of sim-
plicity and aesthetic elegance.

You love her, the daemon whispered, without needing to
pronounce the words aloud. I give her to you, for a moment. She
is yours to save and savour.

But the daemon knew perfectly well that Dathan under-
stood that Hycilla was no longer the person he had loved, and
that whatever he did he would do for other reasons.

Dathan knew this because it was only the subconscious
part of his mind that had fused with the daemon, leaving the
conscious part free. Because of this, he had the power to dis-
obey if he were so minded. He was still the commander of
his own limbs, still the master of his own movements - but
he had no intention of asserting his individuality now.
Whether or not she was still the person he had loved, Hycilla
was Hycilla. If she needed him, he had to go to her. If she
needed to be saved, and he had been granted the chance,
then he would do it.

He was even prepared to be grateful for the opportunity,
knowing that Sathorael could have done as much itself, with
casual and contemptuous ease.

Pawns of Chaos                  283

I am still a man, Dathan reminded himself. I am still
Dathan, son of Ora, pupil of Pater Saltana and friend of
Hydlla. I am a man and I have my pride.

He did not even stumble when Sathorael set him down,
although he had to run full tilt for a dozen strides before he
could begin to slow himself down. He managed to avoid run-
ning into a thorny thicket, and had the presence of mind to
skin it very carefully, using its bulk to shield him from the
makeshift arena marked out by the five fires.

When he was able to compose himself and creep closer, he
obtained further cover from the wreckage of some kind of big
machine, which was scattered all around.

There were four people within the pentagram described by
the fires, but one of them was badly hurt. He had a gunshot
wound in his belly.

Dathan had never seen any kind of mortal wound until the
skirmish at the farmhouse, but he had been told blood-cur-
dling stories which alleged that belly-wounds were the worst
of all, because they caused a slow and agonising death. The
wounded man seemed to be of much the same opinion;

although he had been propped up in a sitting position, with
his back to a squat cactus, he did not seem to be taking any
notice of his three companions. His eyes were closed, and he
seemed utterly lost in the depths of his own predicament.
Dathan could see that the white-faced man did not want to
die, and was utterly determined to cling to what life he had
left but Dathan understood - perhaps because Sathorael
understood - that he knew full well how dear the cost of his
obstinacy would be.

It was hardly surprising that the wounded man had not
noticed the shadow of Sathorael or felt the wind of its wings
upon his fevered face, but Dathan was astonished that the
other two men did not seem to understand what had passed
them by.

One of these other two men was clearly the orchestrator of
whatever ritual was being enacted. He was tall and spare, and
he carried a gun in a manner which suggested that he was
more than ready to use it. He was pacing back and forth impa-
tiently, keeping a close watch on all three of his companions.
He must have looked up when Sathorael passed, and must
have felt the downdraft of the mighty wings, but he had

284                        Brian Craig

already put puzzlement behind him in order to focus on the
private matter in hand: the matter of his own intention, his
own ambition and his own obsession.

It did not seem to Dathan that Hycilla and the third man
required watching any more than the wounded man did. They
too were sitting down, back to back, apparently quite meekly.
They did not appear to be injured, but they did seem weak
and distant. Their arms hung loosely by their sides, and their
eyes were half-closed and inattentive. If they had been
drugged - and Dathan was certain that they had, presumably
because Sathorael was certain - they had consented to their
condition. Both of them had been aware of Sathorael's pas-
sage, but neither had reacted visibly or audibly, one out of
paralysing terror and one out of satisfied relief.

They too were waiting - and Dathan had hardly taken up
his final hiding place, some twelve or fifteen paces away, than
the first signs that their waiting was nearly at an end became
obvious.

The five fires had been burning steadily, their flames cosily
yellow, but now they began to change colour. The one which
remained yellow became more sulphurous and vivid; the oth-
ers glowed red, blue, green and violet. Their flames crackled
and danced, as if their dry fuel were being vigorously stirred
and excited by invisible bellows.

The night had been tolerably warm, but a sudden cold
descended like a blanket; it was almost as if the entire scene
had been plucked up into that thinner air which Sathorael
had briefly tasted before bringing Dathan down to this
peculiar rendezvous. There was a sound of shattering glass,
although Dathan could not see what it was that had been
broken.

'Now!' said the man with the gun. The moment is at hand
at last. Share her power, Deir. Draw it into you. The dose I gave
her will numb her brain and kill her within the hour, but
while she lives her power is yours for the stealing. Take it! Use
it! Bend the power of evil to the cause of good! The Fleet is
there; you have only to cry out to be heard. Cry out, Deir!
Send forth a shout that will be heard across the light-years.
Bring the ships, Deir! Bring them at all possible speed. Tell
them that we have dire need of their power of destruction:

that there is corruption here that needs rooting out.'

Pawns of Chaos                  285

As he finished this speech, the tall man knelt down by the
man with the belly-wound, and struck him sharply across the
face. The blow was a slap intended to force the other to pay
attention, but the stricken man only screwed his eyes more
tightly shut. The man with the gun struck him again, just as
insistently.

'Don't be afraid, Orloc,' the tall man hissed. 'Everything will
come out right. Everything. Fulbra will win his battle, and
Deir Ajao will summon the Fleet to capitalise on his victory.
The Chief Inquisitor of Sigmatus will never again have to run
the risk of being struck down by an assassin's bullet. All is well
- praise be to the Emperor Magnificent! Everything is in place,
including that lump of lead shot in your intestines.

'I know why you suddenly decided to come here, Orloc. You
came to claim the victory for yourself, to establish yourself in
the eyes of all your anxious followers as a man of power, a
man of authority, a man of destiny. And I know why you gave
me a place on the aircraft: because you intended to have me
killed, far from my friends in Kalazendra. And you intended
that Deir should die too, to make sure that you would never
have to surrender the power you had won to any higher
authority. But everything has come out right. Everything.

'You may close your eyes, Orloc Melcarth, if you will, but
you cannot shut out the knowledge of what is happening
here. Can you not feel it in the air? Can you not feel the edge:

the power to cleave through the awful density of space and
time? Can you not hear the voice of the infant world scream-
ing for its protective parent? Can you not see, even within the
darkness of your own mind, the ruination of all your dreams
and ambitions - all your corrupted dreams and ambitions? I
know that you can, Orloc. I know that you can.'

While the tall man was raving in this manner Dathan fixed
his own eyes on the two wise-dreamers - for he did not need
the subtle influence of Sathorael's intelligence to know that
the man with whom Hycilla sat back to back must be one of
the Imperium's wise-dreamers.

Hycilla still seemed stupefied, but quite relaxed. The man,
by contrast, was as straight as a ramrod now, and his arms
were no longer hanging loose by his sides. Instead, they were
possessed by what must have been a painful rigidity - and
the rack-intensified tautness that had taken possession of his

286                     Brian Craig

body was obviously internal as well as external, because his
nose had begun to bleed and his face was aglow with a light
so violet as almost to constitute a new colour normally invis-
ible to human eyes. His eyes, which glowed brightest of all,
had begun to curdle; they were all white now, having lost
every vestige of iris and pupil. Dathan had to suppose that
the Imperial dreamer - Deir Ajao, as the ranting man had
named him - must have gone blind, and would never see
again.

When the blind dreamer began to mutter, the tall man
immediately broke off his taunting and scuttled back to place
his ear close to the other man's lips.

The way is clear,' the blind man was saying. The way is clear
and the need is great. Here is a world that cries out for
redemption. Here is a world that requires reunion with the
community of mankind. Here is a world in need of Imperial
weaponry and Imperial discipline. Here is a world of souls in
need of salvation, a world of souls which yearn to serve the
Emperor in every way possible and in every way conceivable,
a world of souls which pleads for succour in the face of a ter-
rible threat, a world which cries mayday, mayday, mayday,
mayd...'

Presumably, the world for which Deir Ajao dared to speak
would have continued crying out the same unfamiliar word
for some time longer had not something invisible clutched at
the wise-dreamer's throat, choking back the syllables and
causing his eyes to bulge out of his head. Foam flecked the
corners of his mouth.

The tall man put the stubgun to Hycilla's head, saying:

'Don't fight him, witch! He's about the Emperor's business.
Let him leech your power, and don't even try to subvert his cry
for help, or I'll blow your brains out now. There's nothing you
can do. The message is through, and the ships will come.
There's nothing you can do.'

Dathan knew that the tall man was badly mistaken. He
knew what was really happening here. He had seen more of
the game than anyone else - more even than Sathorael, for all
that Sathorael had the power to eavesdrop on the thoughts of
any man or woman in the world.

Dathan had seen more because he had lived, and Sathorael
had not. Dathan had not had the power of thought thrust

Pawns of Chaos                   287

upon him, as a brief and fascinating gift; he had grown into
thought as its natural heir. No matter what powers of intelli-
gence Sathorael might have, the daemon had nothing to guide
them but momentary whim and casual reflex. Dathan knew
how ignorant he was by comparison with this Imperial mad-
man, and how limited his powers of reasoning were, but he
was a man, and he understood the enduring reality of mind -
of hope, of endurance, of desire, of commitment, of fury, of
tranquillity, of self-sustenance and self-fulfilment - far better
than any daemon ever could.

For this reason, it was Dathan, not the sharer in his more
primitive being, who understood the way in which the game
was now being played - and what was at stake.

Dathan also understood that the tall man was very likely to
carry out his threat, and blow Hycilla's brains out, before she
could collect herself and make use of the gift that he had
unwittingly offered her. Dathan was prepared to assume that
Hycilla might no longer be human enough to be destroyed by
the calculated overdose of the drug that she had been fed, but
he knew that she was still human enough to be killed by a
bullet in the brain.

Dathan had no weapon, but he had the advantage of sur-
prise.

When Dathan sprinted forward, the man with the gun nei-
ther saw nor heard him. Surprisingly, the wounded man did -
indeed, he opened his eyes as if on cue, focusing them imme-
diately on the running figure - but Orloc Melcarth never even
considered the possibility of calling out a warning to the rant-
ing man. He was perfectly content to watch.

Dathan cannoned into the tall man with all the momentum
he could muster, meeting him shoulder to shoulder. His
opponent was far taller than he, and considerably heavier in
spite of his leanness but the crucial factor was that his oppo-
nent was unready and off-balance. The impact sent him
sprawling, and the stubgun flew out of his hand, skidding
away in the loose dust; it did not come to halt until it was five
or six yards away, nearer to the wounded man's extended foot
than his own convulsively clenching fist.

What the tall man should have done was to dive for the gun
immediately, while Dathan was still reeling from the after-
effects of the impact. He could not have reached it

288                      Brian Craig

unchallenged, but he had by far the longer reach and he might
have held Dathan at bay for a few precious seconds while he
picked up the weapon. What he did instead, betrayed by his
reflexes or his bad judgment, was to hurl himself at Dathan,
confident that a man as strong as he could master and over-
power any mere boy.

The ranting man could not help but think of Dathan as a
mere boy, in spite of all that had happened in the last two
days. He could not know what strength Dathan now had - but
Dathan only needed one more backward step and a half-turn
to balance himself again and make himself ready for a war of
fists and feet. When the tall man tried to smash him down
with a blow to the head he ducked under it, and he rammed
his own fist into the other man's midriff with all the power
that wrath could give him.

Dathan did not have mass enough in his arm and shoulder
to put his opponent down, but he certainly hurt him and put
him direly ill at ease. Although the tall man promptly lashed
out again, his blow was wild and easily avoided - but when
Dathan launched his foot into the tall man's groin the kick
was perfectly measured.

Dathan had regretted two missed opportunities to replace
his crude boots with loot of Imperial quality, but he did not
regret in the least that it was the village cobbler's work which
ripped the tall man's frame with pure agony, and laid him
helpless on the ground. Nor did he regret that it was the
same poor man's craftsmanship that stamped its crude
authority on the tall man's face, breaking his nose and bruis-
ing his eyes.

There was plenty of time after that for Dathan to walk to the
place where the gun had fallen and pick it up.

The wounded man was still watching him.

'Who are you?' Dathan asked the wounded man.

'I'm Orloc Melcarth/ the other replied, his voice exceedingly
ragged. 'Planetary Governor. Emperor of this world.' It must
have cost him a tremendous effort to add the final phrase, but
he did it. He did it with the air of a man who was determined
to say the words aloud, even if they were the last words he ever
spoke - and even if they were utterly, absurdly false.

'You gave the orders, then,' Dathan said, colourlessly. 'You
ordered the destruction of the village.'

Pawns of Chaos                  289

He could read the other man's mind, perhaps because
Sathorael could, and he understood immediately that the
answer was both 'yes' and 'no'.

No, Orloc Melcarth had never given a direct order to lerius
Fulbra to the effect that he should send men across the
Amber Waste to attack the village he called Odienne. If any
one person were ultimately responsible for that decision,
the blame might more obviously be attached to Ragan
Balberith the ranting man or Deir Ajao the unwise-dreamer,
both of whom were here, available to justice.

But yes, Orloc Melcarth was indeed the governor of this tiny
fragment of the Imperium of Mankind that had gone astray,
without knowing or realising quite how far it had gone astray,
and there was a sense in which all the orders in the world
were Orloc Melcarth's orders to give or withhold, to sanction
or revoke.

Dathan shot Orloc Melcarth between the eyes, knowing as
he did it that it might be reckoned as a mercy killing by any-
one but Orloc Melcarth himself.

Then he shot Deir Ajao in the head, knowing as he did it
that the blind man might well have reckoned it a mercy
killing, had he been in any condition to reckon anything at
all.

Then he went to shoot the tall man.

'It's too late,' the tall man mumbled, although the effort of
speaking seemed to cost him as much as the similar effort had
cost Melcarth. The message got through, and the stars are
standing still in the sky. The ships are coming, and they'll
scour... this planet clean of your kind, heretic filth. You've
lost... and I've won.'

He did not ask Dathan's name, because he did not care who
Dathan was. He did not care about the name of anyone in
Culzacandra; to him, all men other than his own narrow kind
were mere vermin, who had no need of names. He had a very
different opinion as to the necessity of his own name, which
was Ragan Balberith.

The shot that killed Ragan Balberith, when Dathan fired it,
was as clean as the others: an efficient and perfunctory com-
pletion of the business of murder. First, however, he took the
time to tell him: 'It's a trick, you poor fool. It always was a
trick. The trap was laid long before you were born, before

290                        Brian Craig

your ancestors first set foot in Kalazendra. Now it's set, and
you have set it. The daemon is waiting, your ships are
doomed, and you did it, Ragan Balberith. You did it all.'

He wished that the other had the power to read his mind,
so that he might know beyond a shadow of a doubt that it
was all true, but the ranting man was as deaf to his thoughts
as to his name.

Finally, Dathan went to help Hycilla. That, after all, was
what he had come to do.




TWENTY-EIGHT

To BEGIN WITH, when the wise-dream unfolded like a sun-loving
flower in the furnace of her inner being, Hycilla concentrated
on making herself seem small.

She knew, of course, that she was lending Ragan Balberith's
not-very-wise-dreamer the power he needed to blast his mes-
sage across space to the Imperial Fleet, but she did not want to
run the risk that the psykers receiving the message might realise
that its sender was not in control. She knew that they might be
able to detect the influence of the native drug with which his
master had dosed him, but she dared to hope that the fact
might work to her advantage in helping to obscure the real
peculiarity of Deir Ajao's cry for help.

So she had to make herself seem small. She had grown as
large in her inner being as she had in the flesh since the touch
of Sathorael had infected her with greatness, but she still had
the power to seem small, and the skill to use it.

While Ajao did manage to establish a telepathic link with the
Fleet's psykers, therefore, Hycilla made a cunning effort to
remain perfectly passive, allowing the awareness she shared to
flow through her without response. That was not easy, for
much of what she learned during her brief communion was

291

294                        Brian Craig

Although Ragan Balberith had thought of himself as an
authentic inquisitor and his associate priests as genuinely
learned men, and moreover had fervently desired that his psyk-
ers might become true astropaths, two hundred years of
isolation by the warpstorm had made it impossible to com-
plete Deir Ajao's training, let alone bind his soul to that of the
Emperor. Deir Ajao was a flawed instrument, who had needed
the amplification of his powers by native drugs to allow him to
catch the merest glimpses of Imperial ships in his dreams. He
could never have made himself heard by the Fleet's astropaths
by that means alone, because the drug was too wayward, too
fundamentally chaotic - but Deir Ajao did not know that.

Nor did Ragan Balberith.

Nor, it seemed, did the astropaths who received his cry for
help.

The only way that Deir Ajao had been able to get a message
through to the Imperial Fleet was to borrow the power of
someone whose soul was very firmly bound - but not neces-
sarily to the Emperor. Even now, Ragan Balberith thought that
he had found and provided that last advantage, but he was
quite wrong. Even Gavalon the Great's part had been very
minor. What was happening now was the culmination of a
game whose first moves had been made centuries before.

This was its final flourish, its key deception. And the decep-
tion, it seemed, had worked. The ships were coming. They were
responding to Ragan Balberith's plea.

Or were they?

Deir Ajao's link was to the astropaths of the Fleet, not to the
captains of the individual ships or the ultimate commander.
Hycilla saw the situation as the Imperial psykers saw it - but
they too were essentially passive, mere instruments of commu-
nication.

Perhaps the ships were coming to lend material assistance to
Kalazendra's cause: to refresh the echo of the Imperium that
persisted here in spite of all adversity, and to welcome it back
into the greater Imperial fold. And perhaps not.

Perhaps their commander could not tolerate the least risk of
being cut off as his luckless predecessors had been, and
thought those predecessors such fools that their descendants
could not be worth saving. Perhaps their priests and ministers
had decided that whatever fragment of Imperial force and

Pawns of Chaos                  295

purpose remained on the world was already too degenerate to
be worth the effort of redemption.

Perhaps, in fact, the ships were coming to scour the planet
clean of life of any kind.

Sathorael, Hycilla realised, would not care either way. The
only thing that mattered to the daemon was that the ships
should come, because the daemon's one overriding purpose
was to be a destroyer of Imperial ships.

The daemon would not be here - 'here' meaning not merely
the world but also the universe of space and time - for more
than a moment, and it did not care at all what became of the
world, or of the entire universe of space and time. It was inter-
ested in such matters, to be sure, even fascinated by them, but
its interest was a mere aesthetic whim, whose ends would be
as well served by annihilation as by preservation, and perhaps
all the better served, given that Sathorael itself had been made
for annihilation and not for preservation.

What fate, Hycilla wondered, had the god of Gulzacandra
planned for her world? Had the god even bothered to figure the
world into any further calculations he - or it - might have
made?

She did not know.

No matter how tightly her soul was bound, she did not
know.

And that was why, when Dathan shot Deir Ajao in the head,
abruptly cutting her line of communication to the Imperial
Fleet, Hycilla did not know whether to rejoice or mourn. She
felt the heat of Dathan's anger - and also felt, in spite of its
lesser intensity, the residual warmth of his love - but she did
not know whether to be grateful for his furious arrival or not.
She knew, when Dathan had completed his methodical
vengeance, that when he came to help her he was also acting,
as a true hero had to act, on behalf of Culzacandra, and on
behalf of the world of which Gulzacandra was a tiny fragment.
But she did not know whether he had wrought salvation or dis-
aster. Had she been able to speak coherently, she would not
have known what to say to him. Had she had time to tell him
the story of what she had learned, she would not have known
whether to tell it as epic, tragedy or farce.

She kept silent, in the end, because she did not want to
scream, but she felt utterly and terribly alone with the burden

296                     Brian Craig

of her new knowledge, and with the margin of ignorance that
still remained.

Bound as she was to Sathorael the Destroyer, she could not
help but share its purpose and its destiny, but there was enough
of the human left in Hycilla to wonder what would happen
after that purpose had been fulfilled and that destiny conclu-
sively met - and not merely to wonder, but to care.

^

TWENTY-NINE

WHEN DATHAN TURNED back to Hydlla she was still sitting bolt
upright, back-to-back with the equally rigid corpse of Deir
Ajao. He went to stand in front of her, but she did not seem to
be capable of reacting to his presence. Although her eyes still
had vivid green irises and pinpoint pupils he was anxious that
they might be as sightless as Ajao's. He knelt down and took
both her hands in his, hoping that the contact would reassure
her.

The actual effect was the opposite of what he had intended.
Instead of reassuring Hycilla, the contact immediately unset-
tled him, and the disturbance was profound.

He had been moving like an automaton while he shot the
three representatives of the Imperium, his mind seemingly
clear and his thoughts seemingly in perfect order - but that had
been a brief illusion. The moment he touched Hycilla's mutat-
ing flesh the strength of his connection to the daemon became
obvious again. It was still a matter of feeling and not of intel-
lect, but the raw power of aroused emotion made the authority
of his conscious reason seem very weak indeed.

Had the flood of emotion been entirely his own Dathan
might soon have regained a measure of equilibrium, but he

297

298                        Brian Craig

and Hycilla were too intimately involved with Sathorael for his
feelings to be self-contained. His most elementary impulses
and appetites merged with hers, and its, and became confused

- and the dream in which Hycilla was lost burst into his mind
like a cataract.

Dathan knew that his body was still on the surface of his
world, released by the claw in which Sathorael had previously
borne him up into the sky, but the dream he shared with
Hycilla and the daemon took some less tangible part of him far
higher than before.

Sathorael was moving upwards at an astonishing speed.
Dathan saw the world whose surface he inhabited become tiny,
contracting into a miniscule half-disc no bigger than the discs
that its moons displayed as they careered through the night sky.

He knew that it was the shadow of night that obscured the
remainder of the circle. He knew, too, that he was somewhere
in that shadowed part, hidden from his own supernatural
sight.

He saw the sun fade into a mere star and fall into a back-
ground that had thousands - perhaps hundreds of thousands

- more stars in it than he had ever been able to see from the
surface of his own world.

Dathan had never imagined that the sky could be so glori-
ous, or so full of sublime light.

For a moment, the image was clear, but then it began to blur
and smear. The austere whiteness of the pinpoint stars was
stained with colour, and their light flowed and merged - in
exactly the same manner, he thought, that his inner being and
Hycilla's had flowed and merged.

He and she and it, Dathan felt, should have been distinct
points of intelligence and enlightenment, clear and white, but
they were not. They had become something very different:

something blurred and tinted, smeared and unsteady... and
the cause of that was exactly the same as the cause of the stars'
uncertainty.

Two dimensions of reality, which should have been distinct,
were overlapping and interfering with one another...

And the confusion was the turbulence stirred up by the beat-
ing of daemonic wings.

Sathorael was too large now to be visible, and perhaps too
attenuated to be tangible, but it was there. What had begun as

Pawns of Chaos                  299

a seed within a human Vessel was reaching the climax of its
brief existence, and the product of its final metamorphosis was
now obvious.

The grub that had begun as Nimian and had transformed
itself by reckless consumption into a Lord of Change was now
in the process of becoming a warpstorm: a warpstorm that
would form a monstrous net in which to ensnare a fleet of
Imperial starships.

Dathan still had consciousness enough to count the star-
ships, a feat of which even Hycilla had been incapable.

There were twelve.

Dathan did not have consciousness enough to count the
stars into whose bed the sun that lit his world had fallen, but
he knew that there must be thousands of millions, perhaps
hundreds of thousands of millions.

If the Imperium of Mankind spanned the whole of that
starfleld, he thought, how many starships must the Imperium
have? Of what real significance could twelve ships possibly
be?

Once, when Dathan was very young, his mother had scolded
him for being wasteful because he had broken one of the nails
that she had given him to repair the wooden fence of their
chicken run.

'It's only a nail,' he had said. The smith has a bucket full of
them.'

'Aye,' Ora had replied. 'And now we shall need another, and
he will have one less. Our extra nail might have secured a
horse's hoof, for lack of which the horse might cast his shoe,
and strand its rider in the wasteland. And were that man to be
lost, his children might go hungry, and all the children that
they might have fathered and mothered might not come into
existence at all - including the one that might have become the
wisest dreamer Gulzacandra ever produced, the liberator of his
people, and the scourge of Kalazendra.'

What his mother had been trying to explain was that every-
thing great and wonderful that happened in the world
depended for its fulfilment on a host of prior events, each of
them part of a complex pattern of causes and effects, and that
there was no way of knowing whether a tiny loss here and now
might eventually be magnified into a far greater loss elsewhere
and elsewhen.

300                     Brian Craig

Where had those twelve ships been going, when they were
interrupted by Deir Ajao's telepathic cries for help? What dif-
ference would it make if they never arrived? Perhaps none, or
very little - but perhaps not. For lack of one ship, a battle might
be lost, or a world. For lack of twelve... Who could possibly
know what was at stake here? Not Dathan, not Hycilla, not
Sathorael - but perhaps the devious Chaos god that had made
Sathorael knew, and cared.

The twelve ships were steering a course through warp-space
for Dathan's world. Their Navigators had the sacred
Astronomican to guide them. Dathan knew this because
Hycilla knew it, and understood it to the extent that she under-
stood it.

As soon as the ships re-entered what their commanders
expected to be normal space they would be caught up in a
warpstorm. Their final transition would, in effect, be suffi-
ciently complicated and confused to make it impossible for
them to reclaim their proper relationship with space and time.
They would be destroyed - not merely ripped apart, in the way
that the aircraft that had brought Deir Ajao to Sathorael had
been ripped apart on landing, but turned inside out and sub-
jected to even more peculiar contortions.

Dathan knew this not so much because Sathorael knew it -
because Sathorael's capacity for knowing was rapidly dissolv-
ing - but rather because Sathorael was the warpstorm that
would wreak such exotic havoc, and because a substantial part
of him would also become the warpstorm, as would an even
greater part of Hycilla.

Dathan and Hycilla and Sathorael would be torn apart along
with the ships - but of the three, only Dathan would be able to
reserve enough of himself to think about what was happening
to them. Hycilla, like Sathorael, would be content to feel it.

But content was the wrong word, Dathan realised. She and
the daemon would be far more than content. They would be
ebullient, exultant and ecstatic. For them, the feeling would be
everything: not merely the culmination of their existence but
its justification and its glory. The fire of their lives would burn
hotter and brighter than any other life - human or daemon -
could ever achieve, and the two of them really would experi-
ence that blast as the ultimate bliss, as if nothing else could
ever matter to any being except the manner of its burning.

Pawns of Chaos                  301

But I am a man, Dathan thought, and I cannot do that. I am
a man, and must ask myself what will come after me. I am a
man, and must care about the answer. I am a man, and must
serve the cause of mankind, no matter how many individual
men have been my enemies and would-be murderers. The
Imperium is my enemy now as it has always been, but because
I am a man I must ask the more difficult question of whether
it is also the enemy of another and even greater enemy - and,
if so, which of those enemies I ought to hate the more.

The Imperium had destroyed everything Dathan held dear,
except Hycilla. It deserved his hatred. But Dathan was a man,
and he had to ask why. Had he only been a man, he could
never have found the answer, but for the moment he was not,
and he thought that he could see why. He thought that he
could see the necessity of the Imperium, It was a bitter neces-
sity, to be sure, but it was a necessity.

In a universe where peace was impossible, the cost of exis-
tence was war, and that was what the Imperium was: a war
machine that spanned the stars, which dared to turn the
weapons of the warp against the malign inhabitants of the
warp.

The twelve ships attempted to come out of the warp then, in
order to re-establish meaningful contact with space and time.

Instead, they were engulfed by the warpstorm that had been
the daemon Sathorael.

Sathorael had found intelligence and imagination intriguing,
and the business of thought quite fascinating, but it was no
longer a being capable of calculation, vision or thought.
Neither was Hycilla, whose subconscious self had been fully
liberated by the power of the drug that made wise-dreaming
possible.

'Wise' was the wrong word, Dathan realised. The drug helped
psychically-gifted dreamers to see what they would never oth-
erwise have been able to see, and to know what they would
never otherwise have been able to know, but it was wrong to
reckon that arcane insight as a species of wisdom. Wisdom was
another kind of intelligence, which had far more reason in it
than sight and knowledge.

I am the wise one here, Dathan thought, because I am the
only one who still has any capacity for thought. They are fire,
and can only bum. I am a man, and I can plan.

302                        Brian Craig

In the meantime, the Imperial ships were being torn apart.
One by one, as they fell into the net that had been Sathorael,
they were turned inside out. It was a surprisingly slow process
- but Dathan remembered that the warp was a timeless place,
whose sly interference with the world of space and time was as
likely to distort duration as it was to distort distance.

The people inside the ships were turned inside out too, so
that they wore their lights on the outside and their skin on the
inside. Their blood remained confined to their veins for a sur-
prisingly long time, but their complex contours were stained
and polluted by a stinking warpaint of foodstuffs in various
stages of digestion.

Oddly enough, they hardly noticed their inversion. It was as
if, from their own points of view, they seemed to be perfectly
normal - except, perhaps, for being slightly more self-
absorbed than usual. But that was while they were still
intimately bound to their ships, and to the tiny life-bearing
worlds that those ships had contained. One by one, the
inverted ships exposed their crews to the hungry void of deep
space: the furious vacuum which sucked the blood from its
fragile vessels, curdled their brains and burst their eyes like so
many trodden grapes.

Had the soldiers on the starships not been wearing such
restrictive armour they might have been more comfortable in
their everyday work, but they did not seem to Dathan to be
the kind of men who placed a high value on comfort. Their
minds were entirely given over to discipline and calculation,
to reverence and faith, to duty and purpose. The soldiers
hardly knew what was happening to them as they were peeled
and pulped, shredded and scathed. They died as bravely and
as sanctimoniously as they had lived, praising their God-
Emperor.

Their Navigators, on the other hand, realised quickly enough
what was happening to them, because their inversion had
wrenched their particular connection with the Astronomican
out of true. They knew immediately that they were steering a
new course, and that its destination was damnation - but they
could not say so. Any words they might have spoken, like any
screams they might have loosed, were lost and crushed inside
themselves.

And the inversion was, of course, only the beginning.

Pawns of Chaos                  303

Already, Dathan saw, the newly-metamorphosed beings were
beginning to change again, to lose what little integrity they had
left. They were becoming blurred, turning into smears of
colour on the gaudy face of eternity.

This, Dathan understood, was when the real torment would
begin. This was not a quick way to die, given the warpstorm's
lascivious play with duration, and it was a bad one. The storm
that had been Sathorael was sucking them in and digesting
them, making nutrient of these new sacrifices just as it had
made nutrient of the more ordinary deaths that had paved its
stairway to the stars.

Dathan had no idea whether or not he could stop the
process, but he knew that he had to try. He did not have to for-
give his lifelong enemy the Imperium of Mankind, but he did
have to deal with it as a human being, and not as some crea-
ture of the warp for whom thought was a disposable luxury
and appetite was everything.

I am the only conscious mind that the storm has. he thought.
I never surrendered my consciousness to Sathorael, nor could
the daemon take it from me while it was so dull and fireless. I
am the only conscious mind here, and I need only exert that
consciousness to take control of what the storm has in place of
limbs.

Alas, it wasn't that easy.

Dathan did reach out, mustering all his willpower, and he
did indeed discover that he had the ability to influence the
storm - but he was only a man, and the storm was not only
bigger than a world but bigger than a solar system.

For a moment or two, Dathan felt that he might as well have
been a tiny worm, almost invisible to the naked eye, which had
burrowed into the brain of a giant, entertaining ridiculous
delusions of grandeur as to the possibility of replacing the
giant's own guiding intelligence. In truth, though, he was no
mere invading parasite. The daemon had used him, and made
him a part of its fast-evolving self. He did have power, if only
he had will enough to use it and fortitude enough to bear the
consequences of its use.

When he tried to hold back the storm, he felt the fury of the
storm, and he felt it as fire.

It might have been preferable, he thought, to have been
turned inside out. He felt the fire course through him, burning

304                        Brian Craig

him alive - except that it did not consume him by turning him
to smoke and ashes. It burned him and it continued to bum
him, as if it might yet burn him for all eternity.

He felt his skin catch fire; he felt his heart and lungs roast; he
felt the blood in his veins boil; he felt his brain melt - but all
of this was mere feeling, and could not become actual unless
he let it. All he had to do to prevent his body from burning in
actuality was to cling stubbornly to consciousness, to refuse to
become a mere bundle of emotions.

That was far more easily thought than done, but the mere
fact that it could be thought was proof enough that it could
also be done.

So Dathan burned while he fought the storm, and lived with
the agony. He would not surrender the privilege of being a
thinking being. No threat was adequate to make him do that,
and no temptation. He was a man, and he had the power of
choice, and he knew where his duty lay in the exercise of that
choice.

Dathan understood now what a petty fool he had been to
think himself a hero merely because he had shot a man with a
stolen rifle. He understood now what a real hero was, and why
the Imperium really did have heroes while their enemies had
only victims of casual choice and corrupting temptation.

He could not quiet the storm, of course, or make it into any-
thing other than it was, but he could disrupt the process by
which it was tearing the Imperial ships apart, and everything
within them. He could not even do that for long, but he did
not have to.

He only had to win time for a few of the ships to make their
escape.

Winning time from timelessness was difficult, but binding
time was one thing that human consciousness was good at, one
thing on which the human mind had a reasonably secure grasp.

Dathan reached out with the hands that still clasped
Hycilla's, and won time.

Men who had been turned inside out were turned outside in
again, awakening with a start from their moments of dreamlike
self-absorption. They leapt to work, knowing that they were on
the edge of destruction but also knowing what to do about it.

They implemented the procedures in which they had been
trained. They prayed.

Pawns of Chaos                  305

They contrived order in the face of Chaos.

Three ships escaped the trap. Not everyone aboard them sur-
vived, but their casualties were relatively light.

The survivors had not the slightest idea, of course, that they
had been saved, let alone that they had been saved by Dathan.
Had anyone told them what he had done, they would not have
believed it - but even if they had, it would have made no dif-
ference to what they did next.

The three surviving ships fell upon the world that they knew
as Sigmatus, and as they fell they rained indiscriminate destruc-
tion upon its face.

They sowed their bombs in bright daylight first, devastating
every city in Kalazendra. They reduced Sostenuto to blasted
rubble and melted the empty hulls of the ships that had
brought their cousins to Sigmatus. Then they moved to devas-
tate Culzacandra, which still lay hidden in the darkness - until
the long lines of explosions tore highways of light across its
languid deserts and patchwork fields.

The time that Dathan had won for the three ships was a prize
their masters were avid to use - and could have used far better
had the warpstorm not followed them to the surface.

Had Sathorael not been such a short-lived entity, it might
have repaired the damage that Dathan had done to its scheme,
but the storm was becoming increasingly tenuous with every
moment that passed. Its remnant had the power to make the
stars swim in the world's multicoloured sky, and to prevent the
ships from rising out of the atmosphere, but it did not have the
power to turn them inside out or to shatter them into so many
glowing shards.

So the ships landed.

Having destroyed a lost fragment of the Imperium, they
became a lost fragment of the Imperium. Having brought a cli-
max to one perverse adventure, they became the prologue of
another.

And so the world went on: battered, blighted, burned and
bruised but by no means unfit for human habitation, of a rel-
atively primitive but admirably ingenious sort.

And so the world went on, and on, and on.

Until the next time.

PAWNS OF CHAOS

THIS SPELL WAS not only the most intricate that Gavalon
had ever attempted, but the most intricate that any sor-
cerer had attempted since humans first arrived on the
world that the Imperium's star-maps had called Sigmatus.

The beastmen took their places. Gavalon held a dagger
with a wavy blade in his right hand and a lighted torch in
his left, both of which would have to be introduced to his
flesh at the appointed moments. He was no stranger to
constructive self-mutilation, and it would not be the first
time that he had put out an eye or cut off a designated
appendage.

When the appropriate points of the ritual arrived, there-
fore, Gavalon the Great did not hesitate or tremble. Nor
did he begrudge the god he was proud to serve the last
and least of the many sacrifices he had offered in pursuit
of this particular end.

Oh to be a Lord of Change! he thought. Oh to be a master
of metamorphosis, defiant of common decay! What bliss it is to
serve the true god, and to be free!

308                      Brian Craig

The vegetation of the wasteland had been bleak and ugly
even before the aircraft had come down, bringing further
ruination in its fiery train as it ripped through thickets and
scattered hot shrapnel. The bushes had been dry and thorny,
their randomly-twisted branches rigid. The bulbous cacti had
been even drier and whitely hirsute. The leaves ofe-'.ery plant
in sight had been thin and spiky or squat and lumpy. There
had been purples and greys in abundance, ochreous yellows,
dark reds and scabrous pinks, and only fugitive hints of emer-
ald green. The soil in which they grew had been desiccated,
coarse and lustreless.

Things were different now.

While Dathan slept, the entire landscape had undergone a
profound metamorphosis. The soil on which he stood was a
black and glutinous loam, over which slime-moulds stretched
in astonishing profusion. There were flowers everywhere, all in
glorious bloom. There were lemon yellows and creamy whites,
bold scarlets and pale blues. The leaves on every bush were
huge and palmate, tailored into all manner of strange tem-
plates. The bushes were twice as tall as their predecessors,
explosions of straight but supple stems which stirred in the
warm wind. The basal spheres of the cacti had budded dozens
of smaller spheres, many of which bore eruptions of even
smaller spheres, and the majority had sleek coloured fur
instead of white hairs.

The broken sections of the aircraft were still scattered all
around, but they had already been colonised by hectic
vinous growths, their fabric pitted by all manner of purple
lichens.

The dead bodies ofOrloc Mel earth, Ragan Balberith and Deir
Ajao had lost every vestige of flesh, although the yellowed
bones remained. Their skulls and rib-cages provided frames for
lesser vines, whose pale flowers projected from the eye-holes
and lodged between the front ribs.

Hycilla was still there, quite dead but also quite untouched
by the processes of decay and reclamation. She was the last
physical relic of the storm: the last repository of its energy and
its power. Thus far, her body had retained its integrity, but she
was dead flesh nevertheless, and in time she too would melt
and fade into the new landscape, dispersing her body and her
soul into the wilderness.

Pawns of Chaos                  309

Dathan looked back, at last, into Hycilla's dead eyes,
expecting to meet the ghost of her gaze. He had not yet released
his grip on her cold hands.

She was dead, but she spoke to him nevertheless.

Thank you, Dathan,' she said.

'For what?' he asked. It shouldn't have been easy to meet the
accusing stare of those dead eyes, but Dathan didn't have to
look away. He wasn't in the least intimidated.

'For betraying me.'

Who's "me"? And how could anyone give thanks for a
betrayal? It doesn't make sense.'

You know who I am, Dathan,' Hycilla replied - although he
noticed now that her lips weren't moving. Who else could give
thanks for a betrayal? Who else could entertain such a para-
doxical need?'

'I didn't do anything for you,' Dathan said, figuring that it
didn't really matter who 'you' might be. 'I did what I did for my
own reasons, because I am a man.'

'So you were,' Hycilla replied, placing no particular stress on
that last word. 'But ask yourself, Dathan: how do you feel? And
then: what will you become?'

'I don't feel anything,' Dathan said. It was true. He didn't feel
anything at all. It was as though the feeling part of him had
been stolen: cut out, ripped up and thrown away.

It was, of course, the feeling part of him that had been bound
to Sathorael, merging with the daemon of the storm. What had
remained unbound, separate and capable of independent
action had been his conscious mind - but without the emo-
tional part of him, his conscious mind could never have done
what he did, because it would have had no motive force to
drive it: no fear and no ambition; no pride and no lust; no
sense of duty to the vast star-strewn family of humankind.

So what was he now - and what might he become?'

'I'll get it all back,' Dathan said, uncertain as to how he knew.
'I'll live, and the practice of living will bring back desire, and
hope, and anxiety, and-'

'YOU might become a great sorcerer,' said dead Hycilla, 'with
the right guidance.'

'I never had an atom of talent,' Dathan reminded her. That's
why I'm still alive, and you're not.' He should have said, and
Hycilla isn't, but he couldn't care about such niceties.

310                      Brian Craig

There are exceptions to every rule,' dead Hycilla said. 'I adore
exceptions - and you could learn to love them too, with just a
little more practice. You don't have to be bound by rules if you
don't want to be, Dathan. Think about that, when you become
capable of wanting again. Ask yourself what a wise-dreamer
might sensibly want, in a world such as this. You'll never know
another.'

'I'll never serve your cause,' Dathan said. 'Never. I'll always
betray you, because I'm a man. Mankind is all that stands
between things like you and the ultimate annihilation of every-
thing.'

'Nothing stands in the way of the ultimate annihilation of
everything,' the god of Culzacandra told him through
Hycilla. 'In the end, everything possessed of life returns to
air and ash and dust, and everything possessed of energy
returns to listlessness. All that matters is how things burn.
Not how quickly, but how. How could one delight in taking
the side of Chaos, in being Chaos, if there were no Order to
make a game of it? Where is the spice in easy victory? Where
is the pride, the joy, the sense of achievement, the triumph?
I need enemies, Dathan, even more than I need allies. There
is nothing quite so precious to me as a traitor. But it doesn't
work the other way around. Remember that, Dathan, when
you begin to feel again. Order cannot tolerate traitors, or
weaklings, or maladjustment, or creativity. Order needs
nothing but order, and calm of mind. You can have that if
that's what you decide to want, when you become capable of
wanting anything at all, but you might do better to choose
otherwise. If you choose wisely, you might become a greater
sorcerer than Gavalon.'

'Never,' Dathan said. That's not what I am. I am a man, no
matter what I might have lost in the defence of my kind. I can't
and shan't become anything other than a man - and if I can't
feel, then at least I'm free from all temptation. I am no longer
corruptible.'

That's good, very good,' the being that was not Hycilla said.
The only thing more valuable to the Ruinous Powers than a
corruptible soul is an incorruptible one. I would wish you long
life if you were capable of it, and good luck if there were any
such thing. However, 1 do believe you'll find that you stand a
better chance of survival if you start walking westwards.'

Pawns of Chaos                  311

Dathan let go of Hydlla's soft and leprous hands, and she
toppled sideways.

No sooner had her body hit the ground than the flesh began
to melt from her bones, flowing into the rich dark soil as if it
were avid to fertilise the renewed world, eager to take part in its
forthcoming adventure in evolution.

Dathan knew that he had not been dreaming. It would take
time, he thought, to learn to dream again - and when he did,
there would be not an atom of so-called wisdom in his
dreams.

He raised himself to his feet, and lifted his face so that the
warm red wind could stroke his feverless cheeks. The sun was
arterially scarlet now that it had climbed a little higher in the
blood-stained sky, and it was not in the least inviting.

Even so, when Dathan set out in search of a place to be, he
headed eastwards rather than westwards, because he knew now
that only a fool would take the word of a god. If he had been
capable of wanting anything, he reasoned, he would surely
have wanted to discover exactly what had become of the home
that he had shared with his mother - who might, if fate had
been unusually generous, be still alive.

There, if anywhere, would be the logical place to start his life
over, in an orderly way.


EPILOGUE

DATHAN WOKE IIP, not having dreamed at all. He turned away
from the cryptic stare of Hycilla's sightless eyes to watch a dawn
the colour of blood.

The disc of the half-risen sun was crimson. In order to reach
the surface of the planet its rays had to pass through the veil
of the revitalised warpstorm as well as the curtain of smoke
and ash that the Imperium's bombs had thrown up. These
two translucent barriers had mingled and merged, like two
happy children larking about together, and the games they
played with the light surely should have been a wonder to
behold. The whole sky was red and orange, pink and violet,
streaked with exotic rainbows and host to dancing storms -
but Dathan observed it dispassionately, without the least
trace of wonder.

When Dathan saw what the trailing edge of the warpstorm
Sathorael had done to the native vegetation he toyed with the
question of whether it might not have been more interesting to
wake up a little earlier, but he seemed to be quite incapable of
remorse or regret - or, indeed, any other emotion. The ques-
tion passed him by unanswered, as unengaging as any other
whim of the imagination.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

When asked why he dresses entirely in black, Brian
Craig claims to be in mourning for H.P. Lovecraft, but

the real reason is too dreadful to reveal. The rumour
that he joined the British Antarctic Survey in 1993 'to
get away from it all' is false; he failed the medical and

had to join the French Foreign Legion under a pseu-
donym instead. He is not allowed to discuss the
reasons for his dishonourable discharge therefrom in

1999, but he is glad that he will now have more time
to write and play cricket.

Brian Craig is the author of The Wine of Dreams, and
also Zaragoz, Plague Daemon and Storm Warriors in an

earlier range ofWarhammer novels, and has con-
tributed short stories to a range of anthologies,
including The Dedalus Book ofFemmes Fatales, edited
by the infamous Brian Stableford. He is 28 and only

looks older because his troubles have aged him.