by Dan Abnett
“You say she insisted that word of her return be broadcast?” Gaunt asked.
Lugo nodded. He had stalked over to the window and was staring out at the city as the first shrouds of evening began to fall across the scene. “She would not have it kept secret no matter how strenuously my advisors objected. She cannot… as I understand it… see why her return should be kept from common knowledge. She calls herself an instrument, Gaunt. An instrument of the Golden Throne She embodies a power and a purpose for the good of Mankind. Kept secret, she has no power or purpose at all. It makes a certain sense.”
“It makes her vulnerable. It makes this world and this… forgive my candor… feeble city vulnerable.”
Lugo watched the city lights as they came on in the covering darkness. A wind from the wastes had picked up and pattered glass flecks against the thick window pane. “It does. It does indeed.”
“Then why here, sir? Why this backwater? Surely her power and purpose could be put to better use at the vanguard of the crusade. With the Warmaster on Morlond, for example?”
Lugo turned from the window. He was smiling now. “It pleases me no end to hear you speak this way, Gaunt. It agrees entirely with my thinking. She should not be here. We must persuade her to… relocate.”
“Of course,” said Gaunt, “though this all presumes she is what she says she is.”
Lugo’s expression suddenly darkened. “You don’t believe?”
“I—” Gaunt began.
Lugo took a step forward. “If you don’t believe, I can scarcely see the point of you being here.”
“I remain to be convinced, lord general.”
“You what? You’re talking like a damned heretic, Gaunt.”
“No, sir. I—”
“Saint Sabbat has been reincarnated. She is made flesh so that she might lead us to victory here in the worlds that bear her name. This is a moment undreamt of in human history! A moment of sacred wonder! And you remain to be convinced?”
Gaunt opened his mouth and then closed it again. He met the lord general’s hard stare.
“I think it’s high time you met her,” said Lugo. “Either that, or it’s high time I had you burned at the stake.”
On a cold, forlorn night just like the one presently bearing down on the Civitas Beati, but six thousand years earlier, the Saint had left her mark on Herodor. The Civitas Beati hadn’t been called that then. It was but a single colony tower, the basis of what would one day become Old Hive, the central hive steeple, and back then it was called Habitat Alpha (colonial). The Saint, at the head of her flotsam cavalcade of an army, a host made up of colonial regiments, armed pilgrim retinues, a commandery of the Sisters Militant later to form the Order of Our Martyred Lady, and an echelon of the now extinct Astartes Chapter the Brazen Skulls, had bested and driven off a Chaos force at Grace Gorge, and she had come to Habitat Alpha to cleanse her wounds. She and her chosen bathed in the thermal springs and made them blessed for all time. The next morning, the Saint’s host arose, refreshed, and annihilated the renewed thrust of the Chaos force in the Battle of the Shard Valley where, it was said, she alone disposed of eighteen hundred enemy warriors, including their Archon, Marak Vore.
It was all in the annals, and the storybooks. Gaunt had known them since childhood. Under Slaydo, he had committed them to memory.
The Balneary Shrine where Sabbat had washed her wounds lay in the lowest depths of Old Hive. It was constructed from black basalt and lit only by electro-candles and biolumin globes. Attendants and shrine priests hurried out as Lugo, with his chief staffers and life company troopers, approached down the long stone corridor. The air was hot and damp, and smelled of sulphur and iron.
They reached the doorway. “We will wait here,” Lugo said. “All of us,” he added, looking pointedly at Surgeon Curth, whom Gaunt had summoned to join him before following the lord general into the depths of the hive tower. Curth caught Gaunt’s eye and he nodded.
“Stay here I’ll call if I want you.”
Gaunt stepped through the heavy doors, and they closed behind him. It was dim and quiet, and the close air was dogged with steam rising from the deep-cut bathing pools. A narrow staircase of a hundred steps cut from gleaming white limestone led down from the doorway, thousands of electro-candles lining the edges of the flight. The candlelight reflected off the slowly lapping water below. To the east lay the Chapel of the Emperor, to the west the votive chapel of the Saint. Gaunt went down the pale, polished steps, and took off his cap. He was sweating already. He walked to the side of the main bath, and stared down at his chopped reflection in the rust-stained water. The water rose from an aquifer deep beneath the city, broiled and heated by the volcanic vents in the crust. It was said to heal all wounds. Along the edge of the bath, Gaunt could see hundreds of brass spoons, cups and ladles that were used by the faithful to drink or baptise or cleanse themselves. Deep in the pool, shimmering, he saw millions of coins and blades, badges, medals and other offerings.
He knelt down at the poolside, plucked off a glove, and ran his bare fingers through the warm water.
There was a splash on the far side of the bathing pool, and ripples circled across towards him. He looked up in time to see a pale figure rising from the water, its back to him. It was a woman, dad in a simple white shift. She came up the bath’s side steps, dripping, the wet linen sticking to her body, and he averted his gaze Two shrine adepts emerged from the steam and draped her in a long, grey robe. She pulled it close, and brought the hood up over her head.
Then she turned, facing Gaunt across the water of the sacred balneary.
“Ibram.”
He looked up. “You know my name?”
“Of course.” Her voice was soft and breathy. He longed to see her face. A sweet scent reached his nostrils as if the departing adepts had thrown incense on the lamp flames. Islumbine, that was it. The smell of islumbine, sacred flower of the Saint.
“I’m glad you’re here,” she said.
“I came because I was told to come,” Gaunt said. “I was ordered.”
She folded her arms, facing him across the steaming pool.
“You can stand up, if you like. You don’t have to bow.”
He rose, slowly.
“I requested you. I requested the Tanith Ghosts. It pleases me that Gaunt’s Ghosts are here with me on Herodor.”
The voice was so sweet. So penetrating. It was almost as if he already knew it.
“Why us?” Gaunt asked.
“Because of what you did on Hagia. You and your men put up their lives to vouchsafe my remains against the archenemy. You defended the Shrinehold to the last. It is only right I ask for you here, now, to protect me as you did before I want the Ghosts to be my inner circle. My honour guard.”
“We will not shrink from that task,” Gaunt said. He took a few steps and began to move around the side of the pool. “I had a… well, I don’t know what it was. I had a vision on Aexe Cardinal that this would come to pass. A woman six millennia dead told me to find you here.”
“Really?” she said, as if thinking for a moment. “That is good. That is as I intended it to be.”
“Did you?”
“Of course.”
He took another step closer. “You intended that? That vision of the sororitas? You created that chapel in the woods out of nothing?”
“Of course, Ibram.”
“I believed that. It was real. Beltayn and I, we were totally convinced by it. We felt… touched by a strangeness beyond our power to explain.” He took a step closer. She began to back away slightly.
“Not like now,” he added.
“Ibram, you alarm me. What is this agitation in you? Why do you approach me?”
“Because I want to see your face.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because—”
“I want to see your face because I know your voice!”
He lunged at her and grabbed her. She thrust out a hand and pushed his
face aside, but he shook it off and yanked back her hood.
“I know your voice,” he said again, as she fought to break free.
“Sanian.”
Sanian pulled away from him and dragged her robe tight. She stared at him with eyes he couldn’t fathom.
“You don’t believe.”
Gaunt took a step back and shook his head, laughing out loud. “I wanted to. Oh, believe me, I wanted to. Five months in a transit ship, waiting to see the truth? I’ve longed for this moment since Slaydo first explained the mysteries of Sabbat to me. I expected all sorts of things… truth, lies, fantasies. But not you, Sanian.”
She glared at him. Her black hair fell in wet ringlets around her beautiful face. It had grown long since he’d last seen her, a far cry from the shaved scalp and braid she’d worn as an esholi student. “Understand this, Ibram. I’m not Sanian.”
“You are. I know you. You were the esholi who guided my men to the Shrinehold. Milo still talks about you.”
The look in her eyes changed suddenly and unnerved him. “Oh, Ibram. Of course I am Sanian. My flesh is, at least. I needed a vessel, and she was the right one She was a sweet girl and she gave her flesh to me I look like Sanian. I sound like her. But I am not her. I am Sabbat. The girl from the hills of Hagia, reborn into this fragile body.”
“No…”
“Answer me this, Ibram. How else might I come back? How else might I find flesh to clothe me?”
He shook his head. “This is a trick. Lugo is using you. You’re not my Saint.”
Gaunt strode out into the corridor outside the balneary and Lugo’s party stood back to let him pass.
“Well?” asked Lugo.
Gaunt stared at Lugo for a moment. “It doesn’t matter what I believe does it?”
“Why?”
“Because as far as the Imperium is concerned, as far as hundreds of thousands of pilgrims are concerned… and as far as the archenemy is concerned… we have a reincarnated saint here on Herodor. And that’s all that matters.”
Lugo grinned. “At last Gaunt, you’re grasping the idea.”
Gaunt marched away from the balneary and the lord general’s retinue, and headed down the long, stone colonnade that led to the nearest elevator bank. The attendants from the balneary, the hierarchs and adepts who had withdrawn from the place at Lugo’s approach, were waiting quietly in the colonnade, silent robed figures in the gloom. He pushed through their huddled groups, knowing they were all watching him.
“Gaunt! Gaunt!” Curth called as she ran after him. He didn’t break stride. When she finally caught up with him, he was waiting outside the iron cage door of the elevator for a lift car to arrive.
“You want to tell me what’s going on?” she snapped.
He looked at her, his eyes in shadow. “Ever have a secret, Curth? One that will hurt as many by telling it as it will by keeping it?”
“Yes,” she said honestly, the thought of Gol Kolea flashing through her mind.
He seemed surprised at her reply, as if he’d been expecting her to say no. “How did you decide?”
“I didn’t. It was decided for me.”
“That’s what I’m afraid will happen here.” The mechanically wound elevator car clanked and moaned to a halt, and he wrenched open the collapsible cage door. Curth had to leap in after him to stop him closing the cage in her face. For a moment, she thought he was going to pull the cage open again and order her out. Instead, he walked to the wall panel and pulled on the brass lever. The elevator began to rise, gears whirring in the blackness of the shaft.
“Did you see her?” she asked, watching the lights of passing floors slide down his face.
“I saw her.”
“And it’s put you in this mood?”
He let out a slow, dangerous breath and looked like he might punch something.
“You asked me to help you, Gaunt. You said you needed proof to put your mind at rest.” She patted the equipment satchel slung over her shoulder. “I brought the bio-scanner. Did you not need proof after all?”
“Apparently not,” he said.
“It’s not her, is it?” Curth asked. Gaunt said nothing. With a sigh, she leaned over and pulled the brass lever down to suspend motion. The elevator clanked to a halt between floors. Somewhere, a buzzer rang. An amber light began to flash on the control panel.
“Talk to me,” she said.
“Let it alone, please, surgeon.”
Curth shook her head. “I’ve watched you, Ibram. All the way from Aexe Cardinal, ever since the news broke. Part of you wants it to be her, part of you is afraid it won’t be. Know what I thought? I thought the moment you saw her, you’d be sure. Just like that No need for me to do a gene procedure to get the answer for you. I knew you’d know. And you do.”
“I do.”
“It’s not her.”
“It’s not.”
“Throne!” she gasped, then recovered her train of thought “So what is this? Disappointment? Anger? You came here needing proof one way or the other, and you’ve got it That at least should satisfy you.”
“Do you remember Sanian?”
She shrugged. “No, I… oh, wait. Hagian girl, a student… esholi, that’s what they were called, wasn’t it? She went along with Corbec’s mob.”
“That’s her.” He stared at her.
Her eyes widened. “You are fething kidding me, Gaunt! Her? She’s the Saint?”
“Far as I can tell, Sanian believes she is the reincarnation of Sabbat. She’s quite lucid, and convincing, I would imagine, to someone who didn’t know her already. She needs psychiatric treatment in an Imperial asylum. But her potential value has been recognised. Her value as propaganda.”
“By Lugo?”
“You can see how delighted he is his career’s back on track. He doesn’t care if she’s real or not All he cares about is the fact that she’s convincing. The crusade needs a miracle right now… and he’s the one who’s going to be remembered forever as the man who made that miracle happen.”
She reached out tentatively and chaffed his shoulder reassuringly. “So, tell the truth. As a servant of the God-Emperor, you’ve always been honest to a fault.”
“It’s not that simple. She is strategically valuable, there’s no getting away from that. As an icon, a rallying point, she could win this war for us. Her presence could bolster our morale and destroy the enemy’s resolve. If she continues to play the part, and we all go along with it and say we believe, we could liberate the entire cluster. But I don’t think I can lie about something like this. Not to Zweil… not to Corbec and Dorden and Daur and the others who were touched by the Saint on Hagia. They believed in a truth there, a truth that I felt too. I can’t ask them to believe this lie instead.”
“Let them make their own minds up,” she said.
“Ah, there you are,” said Corbec, looking up from the data-slate he had been riddling with. “You’ll be pleased to know we’re settling in. Billets are fine. I’ve got a list of their locations here, if you want.”
Gaunt ignored the slate Corbec held out to him.
“Or maybe you don’t. Anyway, we’re getting the lie of the land. Rawne and Mkoll are out there right now, deploying platoons around the city perimeter. We got about nineteen in the field, setting up waystations in cooperation with the local militia. It won’t be much, but by dawn we should have a basic defence established around the north and east flanks of the city. The locals add about twelve thousand to the numbers, along with medium armour, and the lord general’s landing force has about a thousand more, plus light armour and some special weapons units.”
“Where’s Milo?”
“Milo?” Corbec furrowed his brow and scrolled down the disposition lists on his slate. “Right now, I’d say he was out with his platoon at the Glassworks. That’s… ah… up in the north-west sector.”
Gaunt nodded. “Get on the vox and get him back here.”
“Well, they’re due for return rotation to the billets
at ten tomorrow and—”
“Now please, colonel.”
“Right. Yes, sir.”
Gaunt walked past him into the wide, vaulted chamber on the eightieth level of the third hive tower where the Tanith First had set up their operations post The wide room, with shuttered windows on two sides, was busy with regiment personnel, working with members of the Regiment Civitas Beati and tech-adepts from the regular Herodian PDF to set up main-caster vox stations, tactical superimpositionals and relay nodes. Power cables and data-flexes snaked across the floor. Technicians were wiring up the portable comm-desks and holo-chart tables.
“Is he all right?” Corbec asked Girth, who had followed Gaunt into the room.
“Not really,” she said.
Gaunt turned and looked back at Corbec. “What’s through here?” he asked, gesturing to a side arch into another room.
Corbec hastened over to join him. “Just an annexe. Daur thought it might do as a briefing room. The Munitorum’s bringing chairs up, and a few tables. Beltayn’s organised some food too. Down the hall on the left, plenty of grub for—”
Gaunt cut him off. “Two minutes. I want you, Dorden, Zweil and Daur in the annexe for a privy briefing. Hark too, if he’s around.”
Corbec shrugged and nodded. “As you ask, sir.”
They took their seats. Corbec; the old ayatani priest Zweil; Captain Ban Daur, the Verghastite third officer; Dorden, the chief medic and Viktor Hark, the regiment’s commissar. Curth slipped in and sat at the back. Before he sat down, Daur configured and activated the portable confidence screen that would generate electroference patterns to keep the meeting private.
“What I’ve got to say doesn’t leave this room,” said Gaunt.
The men nodded. Curth, at the back, folded her arms and hunched her shoulders.
“I’ve met the Saint,” said Gaunt.
“Praise be!” Zweil murmured.
Hark had a sick look on his face that indicated he knew what must be coming next.