there were glimmers of things that he knew he should not be hearing.
‘Who else knows about this?’ asked the voice in the curtains.
Muhr cleared his throat. ‘Only you, a handful of unnamed squads in Fourth and Sixth Companies… and a slave named Moselle Grae.’
The reply jolted Grae. Frightened, he looked up and realised Muhr was already looking at him. The witch’s eyes sought him out in his hiding place, boring into him.
‘Did you think you could hide there, little mouse?’ Muhr asked, addressing him directly.
Grae’s nerves could not hold out any longer. He was done. He turned and ran, taking the nutrient sacs with him. There was no logic to what he did, but the fear he felt was deeply primal. It was the same flight instinct that early man had relied upon, a thoughtless, baseless need to just run. That voice was too much for him.
He clattered down the spiral stairs but only made it to the third step.
+ Stop+ commanded Muhr.
Grae’s legs instantly seized up, his mind overwhelmed by Muhr’s psionic will.
+ Turn around+
Jerked like a marionette, Grae spun around without consciously doing so. He saw Muhr rise from the ground, utterly naked except for his mask. A grotesque mass of scars ridged the muscles of Muhr’s abdomen, long and thin like the deft cuts of a razor. Grae wanted to scream but he no longer had control of his own body.
27
Muhr hovered over Grae with his towering stature and studied the slave. He inspected his shaven scalp and tested the muscles of his arms like a rancher inspecting stock.
Apparently satisfied, Muhr nodded.
‘You are a strong slave. We Blood Gorgons do not waste the lives of our slaves needlessly,’ Muhr remarked. ‘So you will live.’
Grae was so relieved his left eye began to twitch. It was the only part of him that Muhr’s psychic paralysis had not affected.
‘But we should lobotomise you. I do not want my aspirations undone by gossiping slaves,’ Muhr said sagely.
Grae’s left eye widened. There was pure terror in his pupils. The veins on his neck bulged visibly as the slave struggled to move. But Muhr would not let him go.
‘We have need for workers such as you on Bassiq. Not living like you are, of course, but dead, yet obedient all the same,’ Muhr muttered as he parted the curtains and moved out of Grae’s paralysed view. He rustled through the atrium, clicking his eyelids rapidly to adjust to the darkness. With a satisfied whistle, Muhr picked up a sliver of long surgical steel from a trestle table – an orbitoclast.
‘This is harmless really. I’m going to insert it through your eye socket and puncture the thin wall of bone to reach your frontal lobe. A few medial and lateral swings should separate your thalamus,’ Muhr stated. ‘You will not feel much after that.’
28
CHAPTER FOUR
NINE HUNDRED TRAITOR Marines in congress was unsettling. The Temple Heart barely seemed to contain their wild, exuberant ranks. They stamped their feet like bulls and boasted on vox‐amp of their scars and trophies. Silence only fell across them when Sabtah ascended the central dais.
‘Chapter‐strength deployment,’ announced Sabtah the Older. The declaration was momentous and all of the Blood Gorgons, all nine hundred of them, roared their approval.
‘Hauts Bassiq is an ancestral world. Many of your brothers can trace their blood line to the lineage of the plains people. I’d wager many more of you have infused Bassiq lineage in your veins through the blood bond.’
The gathered Traitor Marines howled in approval. They sat, lounged or crouched about the temple without any particular display of company order. Congregating in six‐man squads, each formed by three blood‐bound pairs, each of the pairs were attended to by a train of retainers – black turbans, armour serfs, helm bearers and dancers.
‘With Gammadin’s death there is a void in rulership,’ said Captain Hazareth in his deep metallic bass. ‘Until such time as a warrior will be chosen to reign, I pledge wardship of my company in your hands. Whoever else may do so is not of my concern. For now, my swordarm is yours.’
Hazareth the Cruel, Captain of 1st Company, was an embodiment of the Blood Gorgons Chapter. Wild and boisterous, he was a violent thing. When he laughed, and he did so often, the humour behind it was black and bitter yet genuinely mirthful. His face had been melted by fire and his cheek pockmarked with bullet scars. Hazareth wore them like laurels of honour, for his men feared him and the