Martha quickly pulled a set of manacles from beneath her cloak, rolling the unconscious Psyker onto his front and binding his hands by the wrist behind his back.

Carrel dully noted that although their target had been subdued, a far more dangerous monster stood above it, one that instilled more fear in Carrel with nothing but her glance than that boy could do with a torrent of warp-sourced lightning.

Her voice came laudily now, a smile on her face as she hoisted the frail body up by the neck, dangling the child in the air as her predatory eyes focuses on the pillar that Carrel quickly retreated behind. “I wasn’t going to kill the boy you know”

“Then what was the knife for?” Carrel’s voice stuttered through his teeth as her metal-soled boots heralded her walking slowly, purposefully towards him.

Her voice was louder now, but its usual sharpness had softened. “Well, he is a filthy Psyker, and only the emperor knows what Jeremiah is going to do with him-” her voice rose into an excited crescendo for the briefest of moments “- or to him”

Another footstep, louder than the last. Carrel let his lasgun rest on his shoulder. The ever-present THUMP of his chest grew louder. He knew he was being ridiculous; Martha was his ally, it would be both cowardly and comical if he were to run.

A louder footstep, she had come closer faster than Carrel had expected, her voice made the hairs along his body stand and prickle as a cold chill ran from the back of his neck to the base of his spine. “But back to the topic at hand… I was planning to, in the good faith of our wonderful god-emperor, mark him with the Aquilla as property of the Imperium”

“With a knife?

“With a knife.”

The muscles in Carrel’s legs tensed, his knees dropped slightly to lower his stance as he raised one foot and prepared to kick off from the pillar. Time to run.

He’d taken a half-step by the time Martha had dropped the sack of unmoving flesh that was the Psyker, darted around the pillar and slammed her rough palm into his neck, pushing him back up against the pillar in a swift, jarring motion. Carrell looked up at the woman, who stood a head taller than him, his eyes trying to focus on the blur at the periphery of his vision that was the gloved hand fastened around his throat, his eyes trailed up, along her arm and the toned, steel-like muscle that pressed against her body suit as she strained, increasing the pressure that was slowly squeezing the very breath from the man’s throat. His eyes traced higher, finally rising above the angular chin that might make some mistake her for a man, to settle on the snarling grimace of her mouth, above that, a pair of eyes, angled in an expression of rage that Carrell had not seen from the woman in a long time.

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Her free hand, now bereft of the unconscious boy dropped down to her thigh, Carrell did not possess the freedom of movement to follow them, so he did not know where they strayed, however, when the hand rose back up into his view, all he saw was the glint of the blade in it.

She slid the blade neatly between the gap between his neck and the hand that was clasped around it, seemingly unsurprised, or perhaps just unimpressed by the lack of struggle that Carrell presented her. This had all happened before, and the guardsman had some confidence in the words of his late mother, a reassurance she had offered him when he was a child. It was a simple thing she had told him, that the best way to be left alone by the children that bullied him was to simply not retaliate.

This confidence swiftly waned when he felt the cold press of metal against his throat.

What his mother taught him was groxshit, his father had the right idea, should beat them, and if he couldn’t beat them, then run.

Her next words came through a snarl as she leaned in closer to his ear. “If you pull anything like that again, I’ll make sure you meet the emperor soon after.”

Carrell allowed nodded as slowly as he could, careful not to press any more against the knife that scraped at his skin. “U-Understood...” The knife fell away, deftly placed back into its sheath at her side. Carrell worked up the nerve to continue speaking. “G-Gonna let me go so we can finish off this mission?” With the blade no longer to his throat, Carrell’s nerve rose ever so more than usual. “If you don’t remember, we’re in a rush because of a certain someone”

Martha snarled back her response again as he felt the grip around his neck tighten a little more “How was I supposed to know these country bumpkins thought The Rosette was a bad thing?”

Carrell’s voice rose back as hers did. “If you’d bothered to go through the damn dossier we were given, we wouldn’t-” The door behind them crashed open as three steel-plated warriors strode into the room, longswords held at the ready in their hands. The trio that had just barged into the room were a few of the guards in this dungeon, geared with primitive weaponry and primitive, if well-crafted armour. Still, with only a few meters between the three and Carrell, he doubted he’d survive if he let them get close to him.

The head of the trio called to the two that flanked in behind him, blade pointed directly at Carrell and Martha as his eyes cast along the unconscious boy on the floor. “They’re trying to steal the wizard!”