by Dan Abnett
They huddled in the rubble for a few minutes, and when the mortars started up again, they slid back in the direction of the main force.
“Help me!” someone was shouting. Flames were licking up around the buildings nearby and spitting sparks up at the fluttering shield.
Milo broke into a run, Bonin alongside him. They saw a man up ahead, a well-built man in late middle age wearing the robes of an infardi pilgrim. He was trying to drag an elderly man out of a burning manufactory.
“There are more inside!” Alphant yelled at the two Ghosts as they reached him. “By the Saint, the place is on fire!”
The abandoned barn Criid had opened for Alphant’s faithful just a short while before was now riven with flames. Many of those inside were too old or infirm to save themselves. Or they were children, helplessly lost and terrified.
Milo and Bonin went back in with Alphant and shooed the screaming children out. Rafters came down in scuds of flame. Bonin and Alphant grabbed an old woman in a litter seat and struggled out with her, patting out the flames which had caught on her dress.
Milo grabbed up two small children and scrambled them through into the night air.
Outside, they were met by a rain of las-fire and hard rounds. The Blood Pact had caught up with them. The old woman Bonin and Alphant had carried to safety died in her chair. Milo couldn’t bear to look at the other casualties.
He and Bonin dragged their las rifles off their shoulders and began returning fire, using the masonry of a disintegrated store front as a barricade.
“Give me something! Anything!” Alphant yelled from cover in a doorway, children huddled around him.
“You know what to do with it?” Milo shouted back.
“I was Guard! I know!”
Milo fetched out his laspistol and threw it to Alphant. Then he chucked over some spare dips from his musette bag. The three of them began to fire down the street.
Ducking in and out and shooting, Alphant suddenly saw the girl, Sabbatine. He’d been looking for her all night… ever since their encounter in the Ironhall camp, in fact. There was something about the girl, something remarkable, something that had driven him to seek her out.
She came out of a lathe shop down the street, rushing a group of child pilgrims from a block where flames were leaping up. They ran in line, holding hands. She looked like a scholam teacher on an outing.
“Get back! Get back!” Alphant shouted out to her.
She turned, saw him, and began hurrying the children towards the cover position where Alphant and the two Ghosts lay.
“For feth’s sake!” Milo exclaimed, seeing them come. Las-fire whipped around the heads of the little, urgent procession. How was it missing? How were they not dead?
Bonin and Milo rose up a little, and fired to give them cover, then began dragging the wailing children down behind the barricade as they reached them.
“Come on!” Alphant yelled at the girl. She seemed to be making no effort to duck or keep low. He risked his own skin and ran out of cover to grab her and the last of the children. A shot grazed his thigh. Somehow, the tiny girl kept him upright until they tumbled back into shelter.
“I was looking for you,” he said.
Sabbatine smiled. “I know.”
Milo crawled over to them, urging the sobbing children to stay low, trying to make it sound like a game.
“That was a very brave thing you did,” he said to the girl. She looked over at him and Milo was lost for words. He’d never seen her before in his life, but he knew her. As if he’d always known her.
Milo shook himself to clear the distraction from his mind. “We have to get these children out of here,” he said. “Bonin?”
“No go!” Bonin yelled from nearby, in amongst the cowering kids and other pilgrims himself. The fire’s choked off the back end of the street. “We can’t get through that way.”
Milo slithered forward and dared a look out down the street ahead. Spark-filled coils of smoke washed across the trashed, shot-up accessway. He saw men moving up through it men with rifles and chilling iron masks. Every few seconds, one or more raised his weapon and fired in their direction. Far too many for just the three of them to repel.
Then even that became academic. The advancing Blood Pact infantry were drawing aside into the edges of the ruined street. Something was approaching from behind them.
“Oh feth…” groaned Milo as the assault tank, painted crimson and defiled with abhorrent symbols, rolled into view.
“This is not an appropriate time for an audience,” said the Civitas Beati staff officer. “The city is under attack.”
“Really? Make a list of more appropriate occasions then, feth you!” Zweil snarled. The soldier, in his heavy battle-dress and polished armour segments, towered over the aged ayatani, and in the candlelight of the atrium it was impossible to read the expression on his hard-set face. Behind him, the massive bronze doors of the city’s chief Ecclesiarchy cathedral, situated near the summit of hive tower one, were engraved with images of Kiodrus holding up the bowl for the Saint to cleanse her wounds. The doors were shut resolutely.
“Father, please,” the staff officer began.
“I’ve come a long way to see her,” Zweil told him.
“So have very many people.”
Zweil waggled his bony hands in frustration. “Do you know who I am?”
“You are Imhava Ayatani Zweil, and only an old rogue like you would see fit to make a ruckus like this.”
The voice came from behind him. Zweil glanced round and found himself facing another old man in priestly robes.
“Kilosh,” he said, bowing. Kilosh returned the gesture. “You’re a long way from home for a tempelum ayatani, brother,” said Zweil.
“The circumstances of our devotion change, brother.” Kilosh smiled. “It’s surprisingly good to see you again, you cantankerous old troublemaker.”
“And you, though you seem as starchy and straight-laced as ever. I need to see her, brother.”
“That much is evident to everyone in shouting distance. I might see what I can arrange, except…”
“Except what?” Zweil scowled.
“There is enough trouble for us all tonight. I’ll not have you causing more.”
Zweil drew Kilosh to one side and lowered his voice. “I know what you think. Not only do I have a less than pristine reputation, I’ve been consorting with these Tanith heathens for longer than might have done me good.”
“Brother, I do not regard Gaunt and his men as heathens.”
Zweil paused. “Neither do I, as it goes. But you’re afraid I’ll go in there and denounce her to her face. Disbelieve as Gaunt disbelieves.”
“His lack of faith indeed pains me, brother.”
“Not half so much as it does me. He is a good man, and honest, and I’ve hitched myself to his regiment this last while because he seemed a true devotee of the Saint. I do not know what has occurred to break his faith, but it saddens me.”
Kilosh nodded. “So you haven’t come as his emissary, to unmask the false idol?”
“Rather the reverse. Brother, I need to seek audience so I can go back and affirm the truth to him. Make him see. Make him believe.”
“You entertain no doubts of your own?”
Zweil shook his head. “There have been signs, portents, omens, enough to mass an exodus of pilgrims, enough to turn this part of the Imperium on its head. The divination of a dozen temples of a dozen worlds has foretold, emphatically, that the Saint is reborn and come here to Herodor. The evidence is unequivocal. I believe she is here. I believe full stop. I will do everything in my power to make Gaunt believe too. For without his faith, we are doomed.”
Kilosh studied Zweil’s face for a long moment, then beckoned him to follow.
The Civitas Beati regimentals drew back the bronze doors, and the two old priests hobbled into the vast chancel of the great church. The marble walls and pillars were laced with gilt, and obsidian mosaics had been chased into t
he stone facings. Clock shrines had been clustered inside the entrance, along with glacial heaps of islumbine garlands. A massive, sculptural eagle wrought from black iron, thirty metres from wingtip to wingtip, was suspended from the domed roof. The deep rows of pews, arranged in a semi-circle fan, were made of a dark, varnished wood and, at the high altar, great candlesticks worked from gleaming chelon shell fluttered with yellow flame. The altar itself was a large, rectangular basin of stone, filled with holy water from the balneary. The water was smooth and unrippled, like a brown mirror.
Zweil knelt and made devotion for a moment facing the altar. Then Kilosh helped him back to his feet and led him through to the inner chapel. Esholi handmaids, robed in violet albs and white bicom headdresses, waited outside the gilded screen of the iconostasis. Kilosh opened the old screen door and the pair descended the few, worn steps into the tiny crypt.
It was dark, save for phospha lamps and a shaft of faint exterior light swirling with the glow of the city shield, that fell through a narrow slit high up the wall above the simple shrine altar. A woman was kneeling there, in prayer, the window light dipping onto her.
She heard them and rose, turning. She wore long, blue robes and a white stole, and her glossy black hair was tied up away from her face. Kilosh bowed at once Zweil stared at her, unable to express himself. He felt his heart pound as if it was about to rupture, as if he had come this far and this long only for his ancient body to fail him now.
“Ayatani Zweil,” said the Saint, her voice like silk. Islumbine. He could smell islumbine strongly on the air.
He gasped and fell to his knees. Words would not come.
“Shhhh, loyal father,” she said, and reached out a hand. He took it between his own.
Something thrilled through his skin, like an electric charge. Like needles. He broke the grip sharply and looked up at her, confused.
“Sanian…”he said.
Her smile had not faded. “You know the vessel I am in, Ayatani Zweil. You recognise it but—”
“No!” he said, struggling to his feet. He was blinking hard, as if trying not to cry. “Oh, God-Emperor, he was right. You’re Sanian…”
She backed from him. Kilosh rose, grunting with effort. “Damn you, Zweil!” he hissed. “You said you would not do this! You tricked me!”
“No, no…” Zweil said, still staring at her. “With all my heart, Kilosh, I meant what I said back there. But now I see the truth. It is not the truth I wanted to see, but it is the truth nevertheless.”
Kilosh angrily pulled at Zweil’s sleeve to drag him back. The imhava ayatani pushed him away. “The Saint is here I feel her in every stone and every breath of air. But this is not her!”
The tank fired again, burying a shell in the facade of the burning manufactory behind them. Rock and glass was hurled into the air. The children and the pilgrims were screaming.
“Tube-charge!” Bonin yelled.
“You’ll never get close enough!” Milo bawled back, shielding his head from the fluttering debris. He scrambled over to Bonin and pushed the tube-charges from his satchel into Bonin’s hands. “Not unless it’s distracted! On three!”
Another shell howled over their heads. The tank was just twenty metres off now. Its hardpoint stubber started chattering, raking the rubble barricade.
The two Ghosts started to run in opposite directions, heads down. Bonin hurtled down the left side of the roadway, tight to the wall, trying to strap the tube-charges together as he ran. Milo crossed to the right side, went on hands and knees until he reached a doorway, and then flopped round. Through the smoke, he could see Alphant and the other adult pilgrims trying to squeeze the children into what little cover remained.
“Ready?” Bonin’s voice crackled over the micro-bead.
“Go!” Milo said. He swung up out of hiding and let rip with his lasrifle on full auto. The shots pinged and flashed against the bruised metal hull of the war machine. It lurched to a stop and then the stubber came round to aim at him.
He barely got down in time. The hefty, solid-slug weapon blew the wall and doorway over his curled up body into fragments. It wasn’t enough. He hadn’t distracted it for anything like long enough for Bonin to get close.
Milo started to crawl again as more flurries of shrieking stub rounds went over him. If only he could—
He heard Alphant shouting and looked up.
The girl was running from cover. Running into the middle of the war-wounded street, right out in front of the tank.
“Feth, no!” Milo yelled, and started to dash after her.
She was right in front of the tank, both hands raised like an arbites officer controlling road traffic. The tank stopped as if puzzled. The main turret turned, lowering the massive cannon, like a cyclops eye-stalk, to stare at her.
Bonin came out of the smoke alongside the tank and hurled the tube-charges. They bounced along the hind-part of the hull, and came to rest under the lip of the turret’s aft cowling.
Milo dived headlong and brought the girl down hard, smashing her aside just as the main tank weapon fired.
And the tube-charges detonated.
At that moment, on a sliproad leading down between manufactory sites into the Ironhall sector, Captain Daur fell down so hard and so suddenly the troopers around him thought he’d been hit.
“Captain!” Brennan yelled, running to him. A few sparkling las-shots from the raiders down the slope drifted past like fireflies. Trooper Solia was yelling for a medic.
“I’m all right,” Daur said. His teeth were chattering, like he was cold. “I mean, I’m not hit.”
“Why did you fall down, captain?” Solia asked, fierce concern on her dust-smudged face.
“I just had… the most awful feeling,” Daur said, and then laughed at how stupid it sounded.
There was nothing stupid about the expression on his face.
In the back of the transport, in the rancid, recycled air, Curth stepped back from the Herodian trooper she’d been trying to sew back together and shook her head with a sigh. Many more injured, most of them infardi, were gathered around the entry ramp of the heavy vehicle. Every now and then, it vibrated as the ground shook from nearby shell-falls.
Curth heard a clatter and looked round. Chief Medic Dorden, working at a gurney beside her, had just knocked an entire tray of surgical instruments over.
“Dorden?”
He swayed. His face, behind his plastic mask, was grey and unhealthy.
“Dorden!” Curth cried, hurrying to him.
“Ana? What just happened?”
“What do you mean?”
“Didn’t you see that flash? It was so bright…”
“No… nothing more than the barrage we’re already getting.”
“So bright…” he whispered.
The Tanith reinforcements leapt out of their transports the moment the column of trucks pulled up. They’d reached a crossroads on Principal I, facing north on the Guild Slope, where the southern boundary of the Ironhall and Glassworks sectors began. One by one, light tanks and self-propelled guns of the Regiment Civitas Beati powered past, moving up to the front line, along with Salamanders and light cannon-platforms from Lugo’s landing force.
Gaunt checked his bolt-pistol clip and walked the length of one of the stationary troop carriers to where Corbec was briefing squad leaders.
“I know these babies have nice, thick armour,” Corbec was saying, slapping the hull of the carrier, but they’re also big fat targets. “We’ve got close-engage street fights up ahead, and you’ll be more use — and safer — on foot. Get ready to disperse by squad.”
He glanced round at Gaunt. “Anything you want to add, sir?”
Gaunt was about to answer when Corbec suddenly put a hand to his head and swayed.
“Colonel?”
“Oh my God-Emperor…” said Corbec, looking up into Gaunt’s eyes. “Did you not just feel that? Did you not just feel that?”
“Ayatani Zweil! Ayatani Zweil, withdraw yo
urself now!” Kilosh was shouting.
“Don’t you understand, Kilosh? Can’t you unbend enough to see it?” Zweil pointed across the chapel at the Saint, who watched him with reproachful silence.
“I will summon the temple guards and have you ejected if you do not cease and depart now!” Kilosh stormed.
Zweil, his head pulsing, was about to reply when he felt a smoky, rusty tang in his mouth.
He looked at Kilosh and coughed. Blood spattered into his raised hand.
“Zweil? What’s the matter with you?”
Oh my dear lord Emperor, Zweil thought This is it. I’m having a stroke and—
And that was all he thought. Soundlessly, he pitched forward and cracked his head on the flagstones.
“Zweil?” Kilosh said, more mystified than anything else. He stooped beside his elderly colleague, felt for a pulse and started to call for help. There was a shriek from behind him.
He turned to see that the Saint had fallen to her knees. In the light of the phospha lamps, he saw a frightened, horrified look on her face. Her shaking hands were dabbing at the blood streaming from her nose.
“Help me!” Kilosh screamed. “Help me here!”
There was nothing left of the tank apart from a heap of blackened metal shreds. Dense blue smoke filled the narrow street, making it hard to breathe, Bonin was coughing and choking as he ran back. His ears were still ringing.
“Milo! Milo!”
The boy was face down in a ditch, covered in ash and pebbles. Bonin reached him about the same time as Alphant did. Milo came to as they rolled him over. He was miraculously alive and intact.
But the girl, nearby, curled up by a broken kerb, was not. The blast of the tank round, which had dug the ground up beneath both of them and hurled them into the air, had landed her hard. Her neck was broken and she was dead.
Alphant cried out in despair.
Milo hadn’t seen any of this, but at the sound of the cry, his guts tightened.
He got up and knew, long before he actually saw her body, that something awful had just happened. Something huge, something dark, something more than all the waste and death and slaughter around them.