‘You are dead.’
‘We are all dead. And no one will help us.’
Tenaka walked on, seeking a door, moving ever downward.
The corridor widened into a hall with dark pillars soaring into the void. Shadow-shrouded figures moved into sight, black swords in their hands.
‘Now we have you, Torchbearer,’ said a voice.
They wore no armour and the leader’s face was familiar. Tenaka racked his brains for the man’s name, but it remained elusive.
‘Padaxes,’ said the man. ‘Even here I can read your frightened mind. Padaxes, who died under the sword of Decado. And yet am I dead? I am not! But you, Torchbearer – you will be dead, for you have entered the dominion of the Spirit. Where are your Templars? Where are the bastard Thirty?’
‘This is a dream,’ said Tenaka. ‘You cannot touch me.’
‘Think you so?’ Fire leapt from the blade, scorching Tenaka’s shoulders. He threw himself back, fear surging within him. Padaxes’ laughter was shrill. ‘Think you so now?’
Tenaka moved to his feet, drawing his own sword.
‘Come, then,’ he said. ‘Let me see you die a second time.’
The Dark Templars moved forward, spreading in a semi-circle around him. Suddenly Tenaka was aware he was not alone. For a moment, as in his earlier dream, he believed The Thirty had come for him, but when he glanced to his left he saw a powerful, broad-shouldered Nadir warrior in goatskin tunic. Others moved alongside him.
The Templars hesitated and the Nadir beside Tenaka lifted his sword. ‘Drive these shadows away,’ he told his warriors. Silently a hundred hollow-eyed tribesmen surged forward and the Templars fled before them.
The Nadir turned to Tenaka. His face was broad and flat, his eyes violet and piercing. There pulsed from him an aura of power and strength that Tenaka had not seen in any living man, and he knew him then. He fell to his knees before him and bent forward his body into a deep bow.
‘You know me then, blood of my blood?’
‘I do, my Lord Khan,’ said Tenaka. ‘Ulric, Lord of Hordes!’
‘I have seen you, boy. Watched you grow, for my old shaman Nosta Khan is with me still. You have not displeased me . . . But then your blood is of the finest.’
‘Not all have felt it so,’ said Tenaka.
‘The world is full of fools,’ snapped Ulric. ‘I fought against the Earl of Bronze and he was a mighty man. And rare. He was a man with doubts, who overcame them. He stood on the walls of Dros Delnoch and defied me with his pitiful force, and I loved him for it. He was a fighter and a dreamer. Rare. So very rare!’
‘You met him, then?’
‘There was another warrior with him – an old man, Druss. Deathwalker, we called him. When he fell I had his body carried to my camp and we built a funeral pyre. Imagine that. For an enemy! We were on the verge of victory. And that night the Earl of Bronze – my greatest enemy – walked into my camp with his generals and joined me at the funeral.’
‘Insane!’ said Tenaka. ‘You could have taken him and the whole fortress.’
‘Would you have taken him, Tenaka?’
Tenaka considered the question. ‘No,’ he said at last.
‘Neither could I. So do not worry about your pedigree. Let lesser men sneer.’
‘Am I not dead?’ asked Tenaka.
‘No.’
‘Then how am I here?’
‘You sleep. Those Templar maggots pulled your spirit here but I will help you return.’
‘What hell is this, and how came you here?’
‘My heart failed me during the war against Ventria. And then I was here. It is the Nethervoid, pitched between the worlds of Source and Spirit. It seems I am claimed by neither, so I exist here with my followers. I never worshipped anything but my sword and my wits – now I suffer for it. But I can take it, for am I not a man?’
‘You are a legend.’
‘It is not hard to become a legend, Tenaka. It is what follows when you have to live like one.’
‘Can you see the future?’