‘Is that…’ Stumar began, then stopped herself.
‘I don’t know,’ said Brauner.
‘Neither do I,’ Stumar said quickly.
‘Inside,’ Brauner told his farmhands. When he glanced back, he saw their pale faces and compressed lips. None of them could say that they knew with certainty what that rosette represented. But they had all heard whispers. What they did know was that it was a mark of absolute authority. Any information beyond that was not healthy to possess. They retreated to the interior of the house, removing themselves from the woman’s gaze.
Behind her came a squad of men-at-arms. Their uniforms mirrored the colours of her power armour. Their faces were grim, but if they were in the service of the owner of the rosette, at least they didn’t carry the same terrible symbol themselves.
The woman stopped a few strides away from the gathering. ‘My name is Malia Orbiana,’ she said. She was, Brauner guessed, close to his and Stumar’s age. His judgement was not based on her apparent age, but on her overlapping scars. They were the topography of past battles. Her eyes, though, burned with the passion of someone much younger. Orbiana was driven by obsessions that went far beyond simple duty, or the need to win the day. They were another sign, for Brauner, that Orbiana was not a warrior in the sense that he understood. She made war, but by means that he would be happy not to know about.
Brauner stepped forward. ‘Welcome to Squire’s Rest,’ he said. He introduced himself and Stumar.
‘This is your land?’ Orbiana asked him.
‘It is.’
‘Then you can be of assistance.’
‘Honoured to be of use,’ he said. Despite his wariness of the authority Orbiana obviously wielded, Brauner resented the cavalier way she ignored the crisis faced by the citizens of Squire’s Rest. She had noticed the ork army, just a few kilometres distant, hadn’t she? He was careful to keep all irony out of his tone as he said, ‘However, the greenskin invasion is–’
She cut him off. ‘I’m seeking the tomb of Major-General Luter Mehnert. My information is that it is in this vicinity.’
‘Uh… yes. Yes it is,’ Brauner stuttered in surprise. ‘About a kilometre from here.’ It was that officer’s mausoleum, and the cemetery surrounding it, that he and Stumar had been discussing as their next line of defence. The coincidence alarmed him.
‘You will take us there.’
‘Of course.’ He exchanged a glance with Stumar, who had joined him.
‘Is there something wrong?’ Orbiana’s tone was sharp.
‘With the tomb?’ Stumar asked. ‘No.’
Brauner wondered if Orbiana would catch the implication that there was a lot wrong with everything else.
If she did, she ignored it. ‘Tell me,’ she said, speaking now to everyone present, ‘is there any folklore associated with the Mehnert tomb?’
‘No,’ said Brauner. ‘None that I’ve ever heard.’ The cemetery was an old one. Interred on its grounds were some of the original colonists of Squire’s Rest. All the lines of descent from the men and women who had gone to their final rest there had long since withered away. The site had fallen into disuse. No one visited. It sat on the extreme eastern edge of Brauner’s territory, and he had explored it a few times. He knew where it was and its layout. He knew the names on the largest tombs. But that was all.
‘What of Mehnert himself?’ Orbiana continued. ‘Any stories?’
Bruaner shook his head. The general was known for his role in the early settling of the planet. His military career, to the best of Brauner’s knowledge, was distinguished primarily by the fact that he had survived it. His name and his history were sinking into the mire of the past. He was no legend. He was just a man.
Orbiana frowned briefly. ‘Odd,’ she said.
Brauner did not ask why. Neither did Stumar.
Orbiana looked past them, at the hard land upslope. ‘Then let us go pay our respects,’ she said. ‘We have little time.’ She paused, and the silence was filled by the rumble of the invasion. It sounded less distant. Orbiana turned her attention back to the farmers. ‘And you have still less. I am not unsympathetic to your situation. With your aid, however, it may be possible to end the greenskin plague forever.’
She was holding out hope but Brauner didn’t dare grasp it. Leaving the farmhands to complete the preparations for defence, he and Stumar led the way towards the cemetery.
Shipmaster Montgelas and a small retinue of warrior acolytes greeted the Grey Knights as they disembarked from the Stormraven Harrower. The reception was respectful, but not welcoming.
‘They see us as intruders,’ Epistolary Gared voxed on the squad channel.
‘They want us gone so soon?’ Brother Vohnum asked. ‘That speaks volumes.’
‘It does,’ Styer agreed. ‘So we shall have to disappoint them.’
Furia said to Montgelas, ‘Why is Inquisitor Orbiana not present?’
‘She is not currently aboard,’ he said.
‘Where is she?’
For a few moments, Montgelas’s features were the portrait of distress in its purest, most concentrated form. He was, Styer could see, torn between opposing commands, neither of which could be defied without mortal penalty. But a decision was necessary, and he chose the inquisitor he served, rather than the one who stood before him. ‘I implore your forgiveness,’ he said, ‘but I cannot say.’
Styer respected the strength of his determination. Orbiana’s philosophy was dangerous, but that was not the fault of her underlings.
‘You cannot or will not?’ Furia asked.
Styer intervened. ‘Is there a difference?’ he asked. ‘We demand the same of the crew of the Tyndaris.’
‘You are fortunate,’ Furia said to Montgelas. ‘It is a rare day that Justicar Styer appeals to my better nature.’ She turned from him, the abruptness of her gesture expressive of disgust and anger. ‘Is there a reason why I should not put this man to the question?’ she asked Styer. The chill of her voice pervaded the landing bay. Montgelas paled.
‘Because it is unnecessary.’ He gestured, taking in the shipmaster and the honour guard. ‘Loyalty of service is nothing to be condemned. We will have our answers soon enough.’
He strode towards the doorway leading to the interior of the ship, his brothers following.
Montgelas hurried to catch up. ‘Your pardon, lord,’ he said. ‘May I know your intentions?’
‘To go to the bridge and await Iquisitor Orbiana’s return. Do you propose to block my path?’
Montgelas stumbled. He looked miserable. ‘No, lord. Of course not.’
‘I didn’t think so.’
To his credit, the shipmaster kept up the pace. ‘Will you come this way, then?’ he asked. He moved faster yet.
‘You have my thanks,’ Styer said, granting him the pretence of escorting the squad to the bridge.
The pretence was a weak one. Montgelas trotted in front, almost running to stay ahead. Behind him came the grave, unbending force of the eight Grey Knights and the half-metallic shadow of Furia. Trailing at the rear were the guards. Styer imagined they were formidable when backing Orbiana and bringing Inquisitorial force to bear on the foes of the Imperium. At this moment, their primary struggle would be to hold on to their pride. He granted them a degree of sympathy. Honour had value.
Furia opened a private vox-channel to him. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘I was letting my anger get the better of me. Orbiana’s crew are not responsible for her decisions.’
‘Is there a history I should know about?’ Orbiana’s radicalism was enough to condemn her in his eyes, but if there were other factors at play here, he didn’t want to be surprised by them.
‘Yes,’ Furia said. ‘One from twenty years ago.’
‘You were working together?’
‘No. Circumstances brought us into contact. It was o
n Novgorod.’
‘Exterminatus was declared there,’ Styer recalled.
‘Yes. I was pursuing a heretical cult. The planet was caught in the path of an ork waaagh! while I was there. That was, I assume, what brought Orbiana to Novgorod.’
‘A strange repetition of circumstances.’ He distrusted the coincidence. It suggested other forces at work. He liked the current situation even less. The signs should have encouraged him to trust the prognostication. Instead, his unease grew.
‘A repetition only in the broadest terms,’ Furia said.
‘What happened?’
‘An outbreak of the Plague of Unbelief. Between that and the orks, Exterminatus was the only choice.’
‘You blame Orbiana for the plague,’ Styer guessed.
‘I have no proof. I don’t know with any precision what her actions were on Novgorod.’
‘But you have enough for suspicions.’
‘Yes.’
‘You can’t think that she deliberately caused the plague.’
‘No. Not deliberately.’
More dark implications, more omens whose full import he couldn’t divine. Orbiana would have to be watched carefully. Styer studied his surroundings as they made the journey to the bridge. The corridors of the Scouring Light were a gallery of tapestries depicting Imperial victories over xenos armies. The subjects ranged over the millennia, and the enemies were varied. Orks were a recurring theme, however. For every defeat of the tau or eldar, there were five portrayals of the green tide being repulsed.
‘Are you admiring the art too, brother-justicar?’ Gared asked.
‘I am. You notice the recurring theme, then.’
‘An obsession, I think.’
‘Oh? Not just an interest?’
‘Many of the battles being depicted are from Armageddon. These are all portraits of triumphs, but hard ones, and many of them provisional. Furthermore, the orks are consistently represented in the most fearsome terms. These are reminders of how dangerous that enemy is.’
So Orbiana had surrounded herself with art intended to inspire rededication to a cause. In the archways between the tapestries, he saw many closed doors, a number of them marked by sigils of protection. They were the sorts of wards that were common on the Tyndaris, especially on the entrances to cells where dangerous research into the nature of the Great Enemy was undertaken. Their presence here was an anomaly: the servants of the Ordo Xenos trespassing into the domain of the Ordo Malleus.
With every step, Styer was more convinced that Orbiana’s radicalism was taking her down dangerous paths. If the Scouring Light were a civilian vessel, he would already have ordered it destroyed.
If the Scouring Light were a civilian vessel, the danger signs would be clear. The site of a potential incursion obvious. But the prognostication had involved galactic coordinates, not the name of the ship. And the sloop, though private, was not civilian. He was seeing pieces of the threat assemble around him, but they were not forming a coherent picture.
The bridge was just ahead.
‘Brother-Epistolary,’ Styer said to Gared, ‘I would welcome your insight.’ The collective psychic strength of the squad centred itself in the justicar, but the Librarian’s personal prowess gave him a deeper understanding of the threats from the immaterium that simmered just beneath the surface of reality.
‘And I would welcome the chance to be of use,’ Gared said. ‘But I cannot. There are risks here, but…’
‘There is something we are missing.’
‘Yes.’
As the Grey Knights reached the bridge, Styer identified the nature of the premonitory instinct that was troubling him. He had the vague but insistent conviction that he was walking into a trap, but one that did not yet exist.
He looked at the oculus, and the image of Squire’s Rest. To Montgelas he said, ‘You refuse to indicate where the inquisitor made planetfall?’
Montgelas squirmed. ‘Lord, I have no will to disobey…’
‘But I am about to place you in a position where you must disobey someone, is that not so?’ As soon as he asked the question, he repented of having done so. He had already decided that the shipmaster was an honourable man. He would not humiliate him.
‘Have no fear, shipmaster. I will spare you that. We will demand no betrayal from you. We will simply wait. You will hear from Inquisitor Orbiana. And when you do, she will hear from us.’
The graveyard was invisible from the farmhouse, hidden behind a shoulder of land. The slope rose, fell, and then rose again, more steeply. The tombs began at the bottom of the dip and extended uphill almost to the end of the scrub. Beyond them, the gradient increased again, becoming a cliff face a thousand metres high.
There were perhaps two hundred graves. There had once been more, but rough as the vegetation was, it had claimed some of the markers over the centuries. The more humble gravestones were crumbling and sinking slowly into the earth. A few of the larger monuments had fallen over. Vaults had collapsed. The roof of one mausoleum had fallen in. Everywhere, erosion, subsidence and the elements had done their work. Most of the memories of the first settlers had vanished with their last descendants. The stones that announced the existence of memory were on the road to vanishing too. But not yet. Battered with age, like the veterans who had been given the planet for a home, the monuments were still here. Not quite gone. Waiting for time or war to finish them off, but not without a fight.
A dry stone wall surrounded the cemetery. It had weathered the elements well. It was chest-height, lower than Brauner would have wished on this day, but better than nothing. He opened the iron gate in its westward, downslope side, and led the way through the tombs. Orbiana, her guard and Stumar followed. There was no path, and the graves crowded in on each other. Brauner had to weave his way around the leaning stones and lichen-stained obelisks.
He liked the absence of a straight route. The defensive possibilities of the cemetery were looking better, now that he was watching for them.
Major-General Luter Mehnert’s mausoleum was modest by the standards of the more heavily populated worlds, but grand for Squire’s Rest. The largest monument in the graveyard, it stood in the far third of the uphill section. It was a solid, squat building, ten metres wide at the base, and fifteen metres tall at the peak of its stepped-pyramid roof. Columns topped by winged skulls guarded the entrance. The façade was unbroken by any other openings. Its bas-relief engravings of heroic struggle, fading and stained, were crude, the work of labourers rather than artisans. The veterans of Squire’s Rest knew how to build fortifications. There had rarely been room in their lives for anything not directly related to the taking or the holding of ground. Before long, Brauner suspected, their work here would be put to that use.
A few steps before the mausoleum, Orbiana said, ‘Thank you. That is far enough.’
Brauner stopped. Orbiana and the guards moved to the door. She examined it carefully, then looked back at Brauner. ‘I must ask again. You know of nothing unusual connected with this location?’
‘Nothing.’
‘No deaths?’
‘No.’ He was tempted, for a mad moment, to point out that death was all around them.
‘Very well. You may go.’
Stumar looked murderous. Brauner saw red.
Orbiana waited, watching them.
Brauner swallowed his rage. He turned and began walking away. Stumar eyed Orbiana a moment longer, then joined him.
‘Any ideas?’ she asked once they were out of earshot.
‘None. Happy to keep things that way. You?’
She gave a dissatisfied shrug. ‘Can’t help wonder if something that might be helpful to us right now has been under our noses all this time.’
‘If there is, it isn’t something for the likes of us to use. Besides, you heard what she said earlier. She’s going to end the greenskins fo
rever.’
‘And we’ll be very grateful, I’m sure. Do you believe her?’
His sarcastic reply died on his lips. He heard las-fire from the direction of the farm.
And the roar of the ork tide was much louder.
Brauner and Stumar ran up the shoulder and down the slope towards the farmhouse. They had a brief view of the house and the fields before they were in the trees. The shots from the house were still sporadic. The orks that were making their way across the field were the outliers from the mob. The main force was not there yet, but it was coming. The roar was building by the moment.
The two veterans made their way down as quickly as they could. They were slower than they would have liked. Brauner couldn’t remember when he had last sprinted. Neither could his body. He was short of breath before they hit the trees. Pain wracked his frame. His legs were stiff with age. They didn’t belong to him at all. He wondered bitterly who had stolen the body of his memory. Stumar’s breath sounded ragged too. The last hundred metres was a stumble through a fog of agony. Brauner’s chest felt like artillery guns were firing at his ribcage.
They reached the farmhouse. The shots had stopped. A handful of ork bodies littered the field, clustering near the shuttle. There were no other attackers for the moment. Beyond the fringe of trees that marked the boundary between Brauner’s land and Stumar’s, smoke rose in a wide grey cloud. The burn was large. The roar of approaching war had acquired definition. Brauner could hear the shouted glee of the orks. He could hear the sounds of vehicles, of explosions, of stone breaking. He didn’t hear screams. He didn’t know if that was a mercy. He didn’t hear anything he could identify as retaliatory fire, either, and that was no mercy at all.
One battle had already ended.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said to Stumar.
She nodded once. ‘I know they fought well,’ she said, and she looked away from the smoke.
A farmhand opened the barred door to let them into the house. They turned right into the dormitoria. Brauner had fifty hands working for him, and they had set up the defence there, aiming through the narrow, barricaded windows. A few of them were young, members of that rare group of native-born citizens of Squire’s Rest, the offspring of those few settlers who weren’t past the age of bearing and rearing children when they completed their service in the Imperial Guard. Most of the men and women of the Brauner farm were veterans close to his age. Many had worked their own plots for some time before selling up and choosing the greater stability of home and board on a larger farm. They were all proud warriors, and they were all, like him, worn down. They had the experience and the training, but they no longer had the strength. The young had the strength, and the experience of the raids. But they had not fought a war on this scale.
Grey Knights: Sons of Titan Page 3