‘I have a week before I depart,’ Rannik said.
Sozel came up short, glaring at Vex.
‘A week? You really expect me to abandon my own cataloguing for a whole week to lead this girl around the shrines and memorials searching for the answer to some long-forgotten myth? My mortuary-brethren would eject me from the order! I would be left grubbing for alms by the gravesides!’
‘I assume you have a list of the pertinent sites,’ Vex said, appearing considerably more immune to the archivist’s bitter attitude than Rannik. ‘I will accompany her myself if need be, and you can return to your work after today.’
Sozel coughed again, spat, then began to carry on up the slope, wheezing and muttering darkly to himself.
The mourning wind was strongest at the hill’s crest. Its groaning roamed around the great spires and statues that clustered about the Cenotaph, biting deep wherever it found exposed flesh. Beyond its miserable lamentations the Hill of Silence lived up to its name. The crowds that choked the tomb streets and memorial walkways winding about its base were reduced to individuals or small groups, hurrying with heads bowed as they clutched on to their black garments. Strips of remembrance cloth, tied about the wrists of martyr statues and on the lich posts that bordered the plots of the Greater Graves, flapped in the knifing wind. The place was as desolate and grim as Rannik had imagined.
‘You know the Cenotaph’s name is a misnomer?’ Sozel asked as they approached the great fresco walls that surrounded the hill’s crest. ‘A cenotaph is an empty tomb erected to honour those whose remains are elsewhere. It is true that the monument you see before you is dedicated to all the honoured dead of the Ghost War, and that the vast majority do not reside here, let alone in the hallowed turf of Hypasitis. However, the very hill we are climbing is in fact a vast mortuary mound. Its foundations are the steam-scalded bones of the billion-and-one martyrs of the Harnas Collective. So while the Cenotaph itself contains no remains, its very base rests upon those cruelly culled by the traitor and the heretic.’
‘How long have you sought out and recorded the identities of this world’s fallen?’ Rannik asked, speaking over the wind’s eternal misery.
‘Eighty-nine years Terran standard,’ Sozel replied, seemingly pleased that someone was asking about his life’s work. ‘Those who earn a living catering for the incoming mourners must pay their tithes to the Necropolis Guilds that rule this world. I was part of one such tithe – my father’s firstborn son, given over to the mortuary-archivists as soon as I was old enough to hold a stylo and learn my letters.’
‘And you have catalogued this world’s graves ever since?’
‘I have, and I would do so all over again if I could. To be chosen for the archivists is one of the highest honours any on Hypasitis can aspire to.’
They had reached the base of the first of the Cenotaph’s encircling walls. Sozel turned right, leading them along its southern length for almost a mile before stopping and gesturing up at the carvings with his cane. Rannik followed the movement, looking up at the great bas-relief effigies that adorned every inch of the stonework. Each carving was huge, almost life-sized, filling the face of what she estimated to be over fifty feet of wall. She picked out a scene of battle – Imperial Guardsmen, a solid, side-on mass of grim, uniform faces, advancing through a maelstrom of fire unleashed by heretics in chipped rags, their mutated visages hideously rendered.
‘How much do you know of the seventh Black Crusade?’ Sozel asked, making the sign of the aquila as he uttered the name of the conflict that had first filled Hypasitis’ graves.
‘I spent what time I could studying it,’ Rannik said. ‘But it is not a topic easily accessed, even for one with lower clearance from the ordos.’
‘Have you heard of the Canticle of Cassandra Lev?’ the mortuary-archivist asked, peering at her with his cloudy eyes.
‘A work produced by Saint Lev over a century after the final engagements of the Ghost War,’ Rannik said. ‘It’s voluminous to say the least, and the oldest comprehensive account of the conflict as a whole. I’ve only had a chance to read its preface data.’
Sozel grunted, the rare happiness he clearly derived from describing his life’s work evaporating.
‘Come,’ he said, leading them further along the fresco.
‘If the information forwarded to me by Legate Frain is correct, I suspect the first chapter of the one hundred and sixth volume will be of greatest interest to you,’ he said, clearing his throat as he came to a halt again beneath another section of the wall.
‘And lo, the grey-clad came from the outer night, and their jagged maw did swallow the stars, and their black gaze did mirror the void of oblivion. Their pale shadows fell upon the servants of the skulled-one with great fury from the darkness, unseen as the beast that lurks beneath the black waters, death for death, blood for blood. Thus were the Sons of Sanguinius bought respite, and did turn back upon their pursuers, and so were the damned traitors of the false gods driven unto their ruin.’
Rannik said nothing. Vex and Sozel watched her in silence, the wind moaning between them. The archivist’s quote had caused memories of her nightmares to resurface, like a sudden, suffocating tide. She pushed them back, focusing on the quote and how it linked to the figures portrayed above her.
‘Are you all right?’ Vex asked. She waved him away.
‘I’m fine. Go on.’
‘Saint Lev’s record, supported by the other ancient accounts, tells us that at the moment of their triumph the heretics were turned back by the intervention of those we now know as the Obsidians,’ Sozel said, watching Rannik closely. ‘They came from the void beyond Imperial space, the Outer Dark where no true servant of the God-Emperor steps without great trepidation. At the hour of greatest need they interceded on behalf of their fellow Adeptus Astartes, the Blood Angels, and with fearsome savagery struck down the legions of darkness.’
‘And thus earned themselves a place on this planet’s endless memoriams,’ Vex said, gazing up at the great figures carved above them.
‘Yes,’ Sozel said. ‘Observe, the Obsidians.’
Rannik had already identified the beings Sozel was referring to. There were Space Marines on this section of the fresco, towering head and shoulders above the mortal warriors and nameless Chaotic horrors that surrounded them. Many bore the teardrop-and-wing sigil Rannik had seen on the pauldron of the warrior atop the Pillar of the Broken Angel. The accounts she had read claimed the crest belonged to the Blood Angels, one of the oldest and most honoured of all Space Marine brotherhoods. Not every one of the Adeptus Astartes above her, however, bore their crest. There were others, some poised in a moment of vicious close combat aboard what looked like the corridors of a heretic warship, others striking against the warp-spawned beasts that sought to overwhelm the Blood Angels as they withdrew from the battle of Midian. The heraldry was different – a curling oceanic predator, one of the finned, saw-toothed sharks that had once swum the seas of ancient Terra. Rannik recognised it immediately. She had seen it before, a decade earlier, during the events that still stalked her sleep. Her shiver has nothing to do with the mourning wind and its low groaning.
‘Carcharodon Astra,’ she murmured. If Vex or Sozel heard her, they said nothing. Both were gazing at the representations of the Obsidians. The reason the archivists of Hypasitis had given them the name was obvious. Unlike the Blood Angels, or even the traitor forces they fought, every single one of the Space Marines bearing the shark motif had a disc of black obsidian inserted where his helm’s visor or face should have been. They were featureless, black as the void, little spheres of nothingness amidst the rough, time-worn stonework. They rendered each warrior quite literally faceless and unidentifiable.
‘Here we can see the intervention of the Obsidians as the Blood Angels make their withdrawal,’ Sozel said, pointing to various sections of the bas-relief. ‘They counter-attacked a force of berse
rk enemy warriors led by some great champion of darkness, and turned them back with a fury to match. Not even the Sons of Sanguinius had witnessed such bloodshed before, or so the ancient accounts tell us.’
‘There are none without the discs?’ Rannik asked. ‘None that haven’t been rendered faceless?’
‘No,’ Sozel said. ‘After a decade’s supplication to our mortuary-librarium and a month’s fasting, one of my brother archivists was granted permission to remove one of the discs to inspect what lay beneath. He found nothing, only a smooth insert. The obsidian does not cover their features. It represents them. There is nothing beneath.’
‘I had heard tell that the discs were a later addition,’ Vex said, gazing at the faceless warriors. ‘There is a story told by some stall-sellers that they appeared overnight, centuries after the wall’s completion.’
‘Disingenuous gutter gossip at best,’ Sozel snapped, glaring at Vex. ‘And heresy at worst. Such an idea is ridiculous.’
Rannik said nothing. She had stepped up to the wall and was reaching out, up towards the disc covering the helm of one of the mysterious warriors locked in battle with a many-limbed warp-spawn. The obsidian was chill to the touch. She shivered again, and drew her hand back. As she did so, she noticed something further up the fresco. On the hull of a rolling battle tank, carved into the stonework, were a series of markings. They were illegible, a nonsensical scraping of circles and dashes, but for some reason Rannik was certain they hadn’t been there for long. She was about to point out the scratchings to Sozel, but he spoke before she could, turning away from the frescos.
‘These are not the only inscriptions featuring the Obsidians,’ he said, motioning back down the hill at the forest of graveyards and tombs stretching out beneath them in every direction. ‘But this is the largest and most detailed display. Over the past decade I have documented almost three hundred incidents of these Space Marines in frescos, murals and bas-relief images, from the walls of the Lower Graves to the Devotarium of the Fifty-five Saviours.’
‘You can furnish us with details of where we can find the rest?’ Vex asked.
‘I believe the majority are logged, yes. I will provide you with a data-slate once we depart.’
‘The masons and architects who carved this,’ Rannik said, gazing up at the faceless Adeptus Astartes. ‘Do we know where they drew their inspiration from? How accurate is their work?’
‘Both the Imperial Cenotaph and these walls were designed by the great Markano Ditchari, when Hypasitis was first redesignated as a cemetery world for the war’s martyrs,’ Sozel said. ‘Construction was begun within a decade of the Archenemy’s final defeat, but it took over a century to complete. Ditchari is believed to have worked with a number of eyewitnesses in order to ensure faithful renditions of his subjects, but just who they were was never recorded. Their descendants may yet live on Hypasitis. It is believed all other portrayals are copies of these original frescos, and none match them for either accuracy or artistry.’
‘You recognise them, don’t you?’ Vex asked, looking directly at Rannik. ‘The Obsidians. They’re what we’re here for.’
‘Perhaps,’ she said, hoping the distress she had felt when she had first laid eyes on the obsidian discs hadn’t been noted by Legate Frain’s operative. ‘I will have to conduct further studies before I can compile a report.’
‘Darkness is falling,’ Sozel said, gesturing to the lengthening shadows of the tombs all around them. ‘It is not permissible to stay here after the beginning of the night cycle. Not even with your clearance. Nor should you wish to still be here. This is a place for the hallowed dead. The living do not belong.’
They took a land carrier from the City of Martyrs to the seaside residential town of Morrsburg. Night had fallen and the carrier’s transport cabin was packed with mourners on their way to their rented accommodation and undertaker-serfs returning to their hab blocks. Those clad in the stifling funerary garb were in various states of undress, hats, shawls and veils pulled off to reveal tired, drawn faces. Vex and Rannik no longer drew disapproving glances.
Sozel had left them, returning to his scriptorium undercroft. He had grudgingly agreed to take Rannik to another of the prominent Obsidian frescos the next day, but beyond that had sworn he had done all he could to assist them. He had provided Vex with a data-slate containing scans of all the known examples of architecture featuring the Obsidians on Hypasitis.
‘You think it’s them?’ he asked her as he passed her the slate. They had been unable to procure one of the carrier’s wooden benches, so instead stood in the aisle, gripping the overhead supports as the transport rocked along the winding roads out of the grave sites and into what passed for Hypasitis’ countryside. She shrugged, not wanting to be drawn. She had no doubt the carvings on the cemetery walls represented the Carcharodon Astra. Vex knew as much, she was certain. He would carry news to his own master, and if Frain and Nzogwu wished to continue their joint investigation that was up to them, but Rannik had long ago learned the value of not giving away anything freely, least of all information.
‘Something intervened during the Ghost War,’ Vex carried on, watching her carefully. ‘If not them, then who? How many loyal Chapters are there in the galaxy that are all but undocumented in Imperial archives?’
‘Perhaps you should ask the Blood Angels,’ Rannik said.
Vex laughed dryly.
‘My master has many contacts, but I rather suspect they are not among them. Still, I will suggest as much to him.’
The land carrier rolled to a stop three times before reaching Morrsburg, disgorging passengers along the way. After the second Vex and Rannik were able to sit. The black drapes either side of the window slats had been let down and fastened in place, so the carrier’s occupants could not look out into the depths of the night. Rannik was sure it was just some foolish local superstition, but she could understand why Sozel had been so eager to return to his undercroft before night fell. Even the most rational servant of the God-Emperor would surely have struggled to countenance staying out amidst the bleak headstones and funerary statues, with only the groaning wind for company. Rannik considered herself more level-headed than many, but there was no possibility she was going to pursue the investigation on into Hypasitis’ hours of darkness.
The transport’s cabin was almost empty by the time they approached the final stop, the hooded lamps dimmed, the deck underfoot swaying slightly with the carrier’s rugged motion. Morrsburg was one of the smallest of the seaside towns inhabited by Hypasitis’ living population. Vex had already organised their accommodation with a minor mourning guild, under the guise of an uncle and his niece come to pay their respects to a long-dead ancestor in the Astra Militarum. The thought of returning to the necropolis city and Sozel’s bitter company the next day filled Rannik with misery. The sooner she scanned the remaining frescos and compiled them for Nzogwu’s analysis, the sooner she could be away from this bleak corpse-world.
She felt her eyelids growing heavy. Vex had returned his attention to the brochure he had taken from the skyrail, penning notes in the page corners with a stylo.
She was about to rest her head on her arms when a sound disturbed the swaying rhythm of the cabin – fabric, swishing across the bare floor of the aisle. She half turned, looking back at the far end of the cabin. There, standing before the door leading to the drive compartment, was the same black-clad woman she had seen on the skyrail. Her face was still hidden behind the delicate embroidery of her mourning veil, but the thick, silken black folds of her expensive Shontii-style dress were unmistakably the same. The hems were now crusted with grave dirt, as though she had spent all day down among the final resting places of the dead.
She was looking at Rannik, the arbitrator was certain of it. Dread settled over her like a pall, clenching in her stomach and sending ice down her spine. Her hand went instinctively to the snub-nosed autopistol concealed in the pocke
t of her fatigues as the dim lanterns throughout the carriage dipped for a second. The woman remained where she was, silent, ominous, as much a spectre of death as the thousands of grim carvings Rannik had seen that day.
She stood and approached the figure, hand gripping the pistol in her pocket, her body tense with an unreasoning, surreal sense of fear. The lamps flickered again, and the carrier’s tracks gave off an eerie shriek. Still the figure didn’t move, even when Rannik stopped right in front of her. She reached up, towards the veil, remembering the black, faceless discs of obsidian that marked the fresco carvings. Remembering the bloody horrors that haunted her every night, the rippled faces and screaming mouths of those butchered by the monsters on Zartak.
She tore the veil away.
And woke with a start. Vex was staring at her over the top of the brochure. She looked about, blinking. She was still on the bench next to the window slat. Apart from the two of them, the carriage was empty. Of the woman in black, there was no sign.
‘We’re five minutes out from Morrsburg,’ Vex said, snapping the brochure shut and pocketing it.
‘I-I fell asleep?’ Rannik asked, trying to process what had happened. She stood up, scanning the swaying carriage in the low light, unable to shake the sense of dread the shrouded figure had brought on.
‘You’ve had a long day,’ Vex said, his voice more stoic than comforting. ‘Surrounded by death’s legacy. I think it’s time both of us got some rest.’
‘You didn’t see the woman?’ Rannik demanded, pointing at the drive compartment hatch. ‘The woman in the mourning dress and veil? She was standing right there!’
Vex stood, and for a moment, as the cabin swayed to a halt, his face was thrown into shadow. Rannik hadn’t realised just quite how savage his burn scars could make him look.
‘This is the final stop,’ he said, pulling her kitbag down from the overhead holder and tossing it to her. She caught it, but instead of following him to the exit she turned back to the drive hatch. There was something on it, carved into the metal. Markings, scrapes she had only noticed when she had pointed out the woman’s absence to Vex. They were a collection of circles and dashes, ones that she had seen before. They were identical to the inscription carved into the fresco. She could have sworn they hadn’t been there when they had boarded the carrier.
Carcharodons: Outer Dark Page 8