Blaskaine waved them away, coughing again as he rolled into a sitting position and immediately regretted it. Pain stabbed at him from what felt like every part of his body. His head felt light and woozy, his limbs weirdly numb.
‘W-water,’ he managed to croak, and a metal flask was pressed carefully but insistently into his palm. He looked up gratefully at Kasyrgeldt, whose face wore a professional veneer of concern, then put the canteen to his lips and drank.
It was glorious.
‘Not too much, sir, you’ve been unconscious for a couple of days,’ said the medicae. ‘You’ve been on thrice-blessed intravenous fluids, so your body will need to adjust to the introduction of more mundane humours.’
‘Blessed?’ asked Blaskaine, wincing up at the man. His head felt muzzy, and something was off about the balance of his body.
‘The Saint herself,’ said Kasyrgeldt, a hint of awe in her voice. ‘You saved her life, she said, and so…’
Blaskaine blinked. The Saint had blessed the medicae fluids that had been pumped into him? Hazy memories pieced themselves back together and he flinched at the thought of the daemonic horror he had stood against. He couldn’t picture it now, he found; only a roaring darkness, a blood-fire haze. His mind was protecting itself, he supposed. His sanity might not long survive that sort of memory.
‘Sir, your wounds were substantial,’ said the medicae. ‘Compression breaks, crush injuries, impact trauma. I have done everything I can, but you will need to see an augmeticist as soon as possible. Third grade or above, I would say.’
‘Wait, what?’ Blaskaine’s thoughts snapped into sharper focus at the word augmeticist.
Those who fitted bionic augmetics.
Augmetics to replace parts of the human body too broken to be saved.
He gritted his teeth and looked down.
Blaskaine stared at his broken body for a moment, the foreshortened stump of his left arm, the bulky compression harness whose pipes vanished into his chest and abdomen. The heavy bionic splint-cage that encased his left leg, joints like rivets punching through stitch-puckered flesh.
‘Oh,’ said Blaskaine in a small voice, then promptly vomited his first drink in three days all over his lap.
Half an hour later, the major had dressed as best he could in a spare uniform. The medicae had, with profuse apologies, been forced to cut holes in the garments to allow for the ugly surgical enhancements. Blaskaine bore the man’s attentions with what shaky dignity he could muster. Now he sat on the same bench that he had apparently bled upon, and been operated upon, and then lain upon as he teetered slowly back from the mortal brink. He held a foil ration pack in one hand, in his only hand, sucking its paste-like contents through a straw as Kasyrgeldt spoke.
Something in the back of his head wanted to start screaming. Blaskaine instead took refuge in the emotional numbness that had settled in his mind like a blanket of snow. He would bury himself under that blanket for as long as he could. Hopefully he wouldn’t have to really face any of this, not really, before their desperate mission saw them all dead.
He realised his thoughts had wandered.
‘I’m sorry, Astryd, could you repeat that?’ he asked, his words still a touch slower than he was used to. After-effects of the anaesthetic philtres, according to the medicae. Blaskaine wondered if it had more to do with being smashed three hundred yards through the air by… no, he wouldn’t think about that. He forced himself to focus on his adjutant, to make sense of her words.
Kasyrgeldt glanced down at the data-slate in her hand, then back to Blaskaine. Masking a flash of sympathy, he wondered, or maybe disquiet? After all, was he really in any fit state to act as senior officer?
‘Of course, sir,’ she said. ‘As I was saying, since the crater fields we have remained undetected by enemy forces during our advance through the agriponic hydroplexes outside the city. In the days since you lost consciousness, we have seen no further sign of the enemy.’
‘None?’ asked Blaskaine, a sudden surge of suspicion dispelling the fug around his mind like cold water dashed in his face. ‘Isn’t this meant to be their heartland? Their seat of power? They should be on us like bloodmites.’
‘There are several theories,’ said Kasyrgeldt, clearing her throat. ‘Captain Maklen maintains this must be evidence of further Imperial holdouts still besieged elsewhere on the planet, and that the War Engine emptied his territories of followers in a bid to crush us all. That does seem viable.’
‘You said several theories?’ asked Blaskaine.
‘Yes, sir,’ said Kasyrgeldt. ‘Velle-Marchon is adamant that the enemy believed their ambush would crush us, that they have arrogantly left themselves no second line of defence.’
‘In a hundred-mile radius?’ asked Blaskaine. ‘No, he’s wrong.’
‘I thought so too, sir. The other prevailing theory, which I should say stems from the Battle Sisters, is that it is a miracle. They say the Emperor has favoured us and hidden us from the enemy’s sight that we might do His work.’
There was a moment’s silence between the Cadians, before Blaskaine nodded.
‘That also sounds plausible,’ he said.
‘Er… I suppose… yes, sir, given everything else we’ve seen.’
‘It’s alright, Astryd,’ he said wearily. ‘I know what you’re thinking. But why not? We’ve fought daemons from scripture. We’ve seen an angel of the Emperor banish them. Throne, when that… thing came for her, I didn’t hesitate.’
‘You were incredibly brave, sir,’ said Kasyrgeldt, but he waved her away.
‘You never know,’ he said, his mind wandering back to his last sight of Cadia. ‘Perhaps I’ve reset the scales a little in my favour. Anyway, what do the other officers think? Meritorius? Tasker?’
Kasyrgeldt cleared her throat.
‘As I said, sir, Lieutenant Tasker was killed during the ambush, along with the great majority of his soldiers.’
‘Ah. Yes. You did,’ said Blaskaine, trying and failing to recall her words. ‘And our other casualties?’
‘Again, as I said, sir, they were substantial. The full breakdown is here for you to see if you wish, but in essence we have perhaps half our starting infantry strength remaining, a little over a third of our tanks, and a handful of self-propelled artillery pieces. Oh, and the surviving Battle Sisters and priests, of course.’
‘So, barely enough to stage a stand-up fight,’ said Blaskaine.
‘We also have the Living Saint on our side,’ replied Kasyrgeldt.
‘That we do, Astryd, and she may yet see some of us through this,’ said Blaskaine. ‘What remains of us, anyway.’ He managed not to glance down at his ruined body.
‘We can hope and pray, sir,’ said Kasyrgeldt. ‘We’ll know one way or another soon enough. The crusade left the agriponics behind several hours ago and entered the spoil-zone around the city. We’ve a few last ridges to crest, and then we’ll be in sight of the walls.’
‘And then, I would imagine, even our luck, blessings, whatever they are, will run dry,’ said Blaskaine. ‘Still, no sense delaying things. Hand me that data-slate.’
Kasyrgeldt hesitated. Blaskaine realised that the hand he’d tried to reach out with was no longer there. He cleared his throat and set aside his ration pack before reaching out to take the slate.
Unctorian Gofrey lurked in the shadow of Blaskaine’s Taurox. The vehicle had stopped on the leeward slope of the last ridge before Shambach, using the high crest of the spoil to shield it partly from enemy eyes. Dozens of armoured vehicles and thousands of soldiers waited around it. They had drawn up into attack formations but halted here to await the final plunge.
Gofrey had chanced a quick look over the ridge, had seen the ancient stone city that rose up in tangled tiers to meet the feet of Mount Imperator. The mine workings could be seen up there amidst the streets of the Ore District, their ca
vernous entrances glowing with unholy red light.
Spike-lined ditches had been dug outside the city limits, to foul an attacker’s approach. High ferrocrete walls had been raised around the City of Ingots, incongruous in their ugly functionality. Their ramparts were lined with various heavy cannons and artillery emplacements and thronged with cultists. Red banners rose above them, while emblazoned upon the ugly walls were runes to both the Blood God and the War Engine. The latter sigil depicted a crude, humanoid figure formed from interlocking gears. It had a horned helm, an axe for one hand and a cannon for the other. Some claimed it depicted the War Engine himself, though Gofrey was confident that was an exaggeration spread around by the renegade warlord to appear more fearsome.
The enemies of the Emperor were given to falsehoods, he had thought, casting a venomous glance towards the Battle Sisters and their so-called Saint.
Gofrey had then drifted down to his current position of concealment, most Cadians giving him a wide berth. A couple of sentries had tried to move Gofrey along but he transfixed them with his wild-eyed stare and nudged hard. They had been a hundred paces away, walking downhill and entirely unsure of their purpose, before they had regained the capacity for independent thought. By then, Gofrey was out of sight and out of mind.
Now, he listened with self-righteous anger as Major Blaskaine held a vox-conference with Celestine and the other crusade leaders. The soldiers around Blaskaine’s transport had cheered the man when he had emerged, awkwardly, from its top hatch to survey the scene. Cheered was perhaps too restrained a word. They had all but praised the major as though he himself were another risen Saint.
It had been his self-sacrificing act that had done it, of course, stepping in the way of the rampaging warp entity long enough for Celestine to find her feet, and for the Cadian tank captain to draw a firing solution. The next instant, the daemon had vanished under a hail of artillery fire and sword blows, and the battle had turned from there. Blaskaine had paid for that victory with his own blood. His mangled body would never fully recover.
And the men knew it, Gofrey thought sourly. Oh, didn’t they know it. At least Blaskaine had had the good grace to appear bewildered. But that was not enough, for it was all too clear that even the major had now been taken in by the so-called Saint’s lies. Gofrey had thought to perhaps take the man into his confidence, but now, as the wounded martyr and talisman of the crusade? Not a chance. Gofrey clutched the thing beneath his shirt and muttered a prayer of thanks to the Emperor for his clarity of sight.
‘Yes, Saint, I understand,’ Blaskaine was saying. ‘So, the Basilisks concentrate all fire upon sector nine of the outer walls, and we rush the breach. That is your plan?’
‘Even if the artillery does bring down a section of wall, by the time we cross the open ground to exploit it our enemies will have moved their reserves into position to block us,’ came the tinny voice of Captain Maklen through the voxponder. ‘I’m sorry, Saint, I’m not sure I see this working.’
‘We will not wait for the breach to be opened,’ replied the Saint, her transmitted voice redolent with serenity and conviction. ‘I trust in the Emperor. A way shall open for us, and we shall pass through it, then on into the streets and towards the mines before the foe can react. The Emperor has shown me that the source of this world’s corruption lies deep within those mines. We will fight our way through to it, and we will defeat it.’
‘You are suggesting that we charge the wall before the breach is made?’ asked Blaskaine. ‘What if our artillery cannot get the job done in time, or at all? We’d be left sat before fifty-foot-high ferrocrete ramparts with no way forward or back, at the mercy of their guns.’
‘If the Saint says that the breach will be made, then it will,’ came Anekwa Meritorius’ voice. ‘Have faith, major.’
‘Oh, I do,’ said Blaskaine, and Gofrey skinned back his lips at the solicitousness he heard in the man’s voice. ‘But I must think of the lives of my soldiers.’
‘Of course, such is only right and proper, for the good shepherd thinks first of his flock,’ said Celestine. ‘I will lead my Geminae up onto the walls and we will do what we can to combat the gun crews from there. And my Sisters will lend their prayers to this endeavour, the better to shield our attack beneath the glory of the Emperor’s light.’
There was a moment of profound silence over the vox, during which Gofrey hoped that one or other of the Imperial officers might see sense. Surely the daemon Celestine could not have bewitched them all?
‘So be it, I’ll disseminate the orders now,’ said Blaskaine. ‘We move in fifteen minutes.’
‘Emperor have mercy on us all,’ said Captain Maklen.
‘He will,’ said Sister Meritorius, and Gofrey was surprised to hear the conviction in her tone.
‘He will not,’ hissed Gofrey under his breath. They were all damned, then. They would be led to the slaughter like the faithless cattle they were. Well, he would move amongst them like the proverbial wolf, ready to do his last duty for the Emperor.
Gofrey had already nudged a handful of particularly suggestible Cadians. The broken, the resentful, the dismayed – they would follow his commands when the time came. He had a few more candidates in mind, and, by the sound of things, scant time to act.
‘Emperor, fear not, there is still one faithful man alive upon this world,’ said Gofrey, setting off down the ridge towards the massing Cadian soldiery. ‘And he has the strength to do Your will.’
Engines revved and banners unfurled as the order to attack rang out along the Imperial lines. The Cadian regimental standard, with its portcullis gate and eagle-clutched lightning bolts, fluttered proud in the breeze. There was no speech given, no stirring words for a suicidal assault such as this. There was only the presence of the Saint, shining like a guiding star. That, thought Sister Meritorius, was enough. When Saint Celestine had stood over her in the crater fields, when she had banished Meritorius’ doubts and raised her up to fight anew, it had changed everything. Meritorius still felt shame, but now it was not at a paucity of faith within her; rather, she felt shame that it had taken her so long to recognise that the light of the Emperor did not shine down from the heavens, but rather it burned bright from within every one of His faithful servants.
She set off at a jog, wielding her bolter by its pistol grip in one hand and her crackling power sword in the other. Her Sisters advanced around her, Imagifiers raising their icons high as the few dozen Battle Sisters raised their voices in the Prayer of Faithful Lambastation. They led the way over the ridge, spoil-grit grinding under Meritorius’ boots before the ground dropped away and she found herself accelerating into a run as the slope took her. Imperial Guard tanks and transports roared as their track units rose proud of the ridge then dropped, slamming down as the vehicles accelerated. Massed men and women of Cadia poured in alongside them, hundreds upon hundreds of the desperate faithful charging into battle upon the promise of a miracle.
As she hit the flat ground at the bottom of the slope, Meritorius knew it was a miracle they hadn’t already been blasted into oblivion. There was no way the enemy could have failed to detect such a sizeable force outside their walls, and she was just thankful that gunships and rocket strikes hadn’t already put paid to their assault.
For all that, she found that she was in good spirits. As the rippling roar of Basilisk fire echoed from behind the ridge, Meritorius realised she truly believed they would open a path. Their shells whipped away towards the city, still a good half mile ahead, and hammered the designated wall section. Fiery explosions blossomed, and she felt their heat within her heart. Meritorius had seen the light, she supposed. Or rather, she had seen what the light of the Saint laid bare. The Emperor was not gone, the Throneworld had not burned. Meritorius knew this now, with a certainty that could only be faith. She recognised that, if there had been a darkness upon her soul these past weeks, it had lain within her, not without. The canoness
’ death, the coming of the storms, the fall of this planet’s faithful; to endure such a string of punishing blows, one coming upon another, and then to find herself solely responsible for the wellbeing of her Sisters in a war that seemed wholly impossible to win?
It was no wonder the galaxy felt darker.
She enjoyed the simple sensations of her footfalls pounding bedrock and her weapon grips in her hands. There had been no miraculous transformation within her, just a gathering of perspective. The realisation had come upon her, as she watched the Saint defeat the daemons of Chaos, that the end had not come yet. Meritorius might not feel her faith as keenly as she once had, but she knew it lay within her still, regathering its strength. For now, she fought for a holy cause in the light of Saint Celestine, alongside faithful and determined Battle Sisters of her Order, for an Emperor who she now knew still watched over her even in her darkest times.
For Anekwa Meritorius, that was enough.
A terrible droning roar began to rise from deep within Shambach. It was an industrial siren whose note had been corrupted into something dark and unnatural. Meritorius realised that the sound was not continuous; it was a voice, forming dark words, bellowing them forth with such a force of hatred that they struck like physical blows.
‘The voice of the War Engine,’ she cried. ‘Shun its words, faithful. They are naught but the bellowing cries of a mindless beast!’
Around her, Meritorius’ Sisters chanted louder, more fervently, matching their battle prayers against the War Engine’s call.
Behind them, the Basilisks spoke again, sending another hail of shells whipping overhead. Yet now the guns of Shambach answered, and in that moment Meritorius realised just how desperate their odds were. If the barrage-fire of the Basilisks was a roll of thunder, the cacophony of the city’s guns was the full-blown fury of the storm. Dozens of wall-guns lit with fire. Emplacement weaponry opened up, heavy bolters and stubbers chugging mercilessly as they spat shells at the charging Imperial army. Deeper booms rolled from within the city bounds, explosives sailing up from hidden artillery positions to plunge down upon the Imperial lines.
Celestine - Andy Clark Page 14