The Emperor’s meek-seed had plenty to say, but their words seemed distant, almost unintelligible. He-Who-Had-Been-Scarioch detested them all.
Joachim – but a battle-virgin compared to him – who had been elevated to whip. Melmoch the mutant with his witch-ways. Brother Boaz, who had bested him once in the practise cages and had never allowed him to forget it. The disgraced chief whip, Uriah Skase, who had failed so completely when demanding Trial by the Blade. And Zachariah Kersh, Scourge of the Fifth Company, the warrior who failed his Chapter Master, surrendered his standard and dropped his blade. Him, the Scarioch-Thing hated the most.
The Excoriators looked at Scarioch.
‘He is taken,’ Melmoch said. ‘The gall-fever has him.’
‘You seem awfully eager to write him off, witchbreed,’ Joachim shot back. ‘Perhaps you suffer the fever, too.’
‘His soul is but a plaything for the Ruinous Powers now,’ Melmoch replied.
‘Like yours?’
Melmoch let the goading insult wash over him. ‘Is that what you would want for your brother?’
‘Skase?’ Joachim urged.
‘Can’t we just keep him secure?’ Brother Boaz offered.
‘Like a caged animal?’ Melmoch asked.
‘Until the fever passes…’
‘This will not pass,’ the Epistolary told him. ‘He is the Blood God’s now. The first of our kind to fall to his hunger.’
‘He’s not the first,’ the Scourge said with regret. ‘Ishmael is lost to us, also.’
‘We don’t know that,’ Skase growled back.
‘You know what must be done,’ Kersh said.
‘Skase…’ Joachim pleaded.
He-Who-Had-Been-Scarioch seared into the chief whip with his bloody, anathemic eyes. The words exchanged around him boiled his blood with their meaninglessness.
Uriah Skase brought up his bolt pistol. The damned Excoriator looked up the length of its chunky barrel at his chief whip.
‘I’m sorry, brother.’
The Scarioch-Thing snarled.
Skase fired.
Kersh entered the square. There were people everywhere. All of the small plazas, dirge-cloisters and devotional quads were swamped with cemetery worlders. The throngs parted for him, Adeptus Astartes as he was, even though the Certusians had precious little space and what little they had they had devoted to blankets, shroud tents and tiny shrines. Like pilgrims, the Certusians had gathered in the shadow of the Umberto II Memorial Mausoleum, thousands of them. Despite their need and number, the distribution of water and food was orderly and the atmosphere dour and reverent. Many of the cemetery worlders were at prayer and those who weren’t bowed their heads respectfully as the corpus-captain moved through the parting crowds.
With Excoriators and the remaining Charnel Guard holding the city perimeter, and Squad Whip Keturah’s Scouts haunting the towers and belfries of Obsequa City, creating a city-maze of kill zones, common Certusians had been forced to make do with the harsh stone of the squares and the cobbles of the tight esplanades for beds. Kersh walked through them all: women and children, the old, the sick, Oliphant’s remaining priests and the droves of newly arrived menfolk – those who could not cope with the horror of the front line and had fled their stations on the perimeter during the initial assaults. The Excoriator saw what exposure to the madness of the warp did to ordinary mortals. Some men rocked like infants, others couldn’t stop weeping while others had gone mute. Some were babblers, incessantly speaking of the horrors they had seen, while others had simply crawled under a blanket and had not come out.
‘The pontifex?’ Kersh put to a preacher carrying a water-satchel and distributing drinking water.
The priest directed him to the next plaza where the scene was altogether different. Kersh nodded to a Sister of Battle in full armour and hefting the bulk of a heavy flamer. He couldn’t help wondering what havoc the scorched nozzles of the weapon might wreak on the city perimeter. Beyond, Kersh began to get an idea. The plaza was stained with soot. Smoke drifted from blast marks, and macabre cages of incinerated bodies decorated the blackened stone where the roasted bones of tightly-packed mobs had melted and warped into giant works of demented art. Amongst these scenes of charred horror, parents attempted to comfort their children, and cemetery worlders tried to concentrate on their devotions.
Framed in the imposing architecture of the Memorial Mausoleum, Kersh found Pontifex Oliphant hobbling between the still smouldering remains, administering last rites to the dead. Several soot-smeared labourers with picks and saws had the unenviable duty of separating the merged forms while stone-faced vestals carried coffins across the plaza and tried their best to fit the twisted skeletons inside. Kersh noted that the Sisters of the August Vigil had stationed themselves about the crowds as well as on the nearby porch-barbican. A meltagun-wielding shadow in cobalt power armour watched the proceedings impassively from nearby.
‘Corpus-captain,’ Oliphant greeted him, the ghost of a smile on his slanted lips.
‘How are you coping, pontifex?’ Kersh asked.
Dragging his slack leg and shoulder, the ecclesiarch turned. ‘Don’t worry about me, corpus-captain. I have my life, which is more than I can say for these unfortunate souls here.’
Kersh bit at his bottom lip. ‘Pontifex,’ the Excoriator began uncomfortably. ‘I want to apologise for your losses here–’
‘Corpus-captain, please…’
‘No,’ Kersh pressed. ‘The strategy was mine and it failed. Certusians abandoned their posts and fled back through the city where my Scouts had no orders to fire upon them.’
‘You could have had no idea…’
‘I could have and I should have. It takes a particular breed of man to face the arch-enemy, to hold his nerve and keep his mind. There are sights men in their multitude were not meant to see. Evils that should remain unknown. Horrors to which humanity should not be subjected. Beings in whose presence mortals succumb to madness.’
‘What of those that are more than mortal? Are you immune to such experiences?’
‘No, pontifex, we are not,’ Kersh told him honestly. ‘But it is the purpose for which we have been bred and we do not shirk from it.’
Oliphant watched two vestals carry away the black, encrusted remains of a heat-warped skeleton. Kersh saw him lift one young woman’s face with one of his grim smiles.
‘I was conducting the prayer vigil. The people, patient and in great number, gathered in the open spaces around the Mausoleum. We gave thanks to the great Umberto II – whose spirit watches over us on this darkest of nights – and the God-Emperor, whose servants are never far away.’ Oliphant gave the Excoriator a meaningful stare, confirming to the corpus-captain that he was referring to the Adeptus Astartes. ‘We were engaged in our prayer cordon when our number were surprised by shouting from the streets beyond. Forgive me, corpus-captain, but at first we thought the enemy might have bypassed your insufficient number. When wives saw their husbands, and children their fathers, the crowd rejoiced. Until the killing started. I will not describe the bitter spectacle – not in the presence of the dead for whom we would wish nothing but an eternal peace. Many died, and in the mayhem it was impossible to tell murderer from victim. In the end, Palatine Sapphira ordered her Sisters to take blunt but decisive action to put an end to the atrocity. They cleansed the afflicted crowds with holy flame and…’ the pontifex struggled, seeming not to have further words for the description, ‘…that was an end to it.’
‘Pontifex,’ Kersh said, seeing the pain on the man’s face: his physical infirmity, the grief he felt for his people, and the spiritual agony he suffered at having such carnage taint the sacred earth of his cemetery world. The Excoriator felt it only fair to prepare the ecclesiarch for the truth that more was coming. ‘Let me speak plainly, as a warrior. What you have seen is but the beginning. The comet’s malign influence has turned your people against themselves and further bolstered the enemy’s number. My Epistolary suspects t
hat the horrors we have witnessed thus far are merely immaterial overspill, the detritus of the warp, bleeding through into our existence. The Cholercaust is yet even to arrive. When it does, it will make what we have seen so far seem like nothing. An invasion made up of countless cultists, the Blood God’s daemonkin and, worst of all, our Traitor brothers – the World Eaters. They are Angels insatiable in their thirst for slaughter, unparalleled in their desire for wanton carnage. They were and unfortunately still are amongst the best the immortals have to offer on the battlefield. They head a Blood Crusade that has never known defeat – that has sundered hundreds of Imperial worlds – and they will kill everything on the surface of this planet.’
The ecclesiarch’s half-smile began to fall.
‘You are saying that defeat is certain. That you can’t protect us…’
‘I’m not sure anyone can,’ Kersh told him honestly.
‘But, I heard you tell your Angels–’
‘They are warriors,’ Kersh said, shaking his head. ‘They need to hear that. We are sustained by our faith.’
‘Faith in yourselves…’
‘Yes,’ Kersh nodded. ‘But to you I offer solemn truths. We are few in the face of legion. My men and I will fight for you. We will fight with the last of our strength, with but a single breath in our lungs and a single drop of blood left in our bodies. But when we fall – and we will, for the equations of battle are cold and certain – your people will be put to the blade.’
Oliphant’s head began to bob gently with dark understanding. Then he looked at the Excoriator with warm eyes and his simple smile.
‘You have your faith,’ he told Kersh, ‘and I have mine. You remember, when we first met, I said that I knew you would come?’
‘I do.’
‘He came to me, corpus-captain.’
‘He?’
‘The God-Emperor…’
‘Pontifex, with respect, you would not be the first cleric to claim to have experienced a divine visitation,’ Kersh said softly.
‘I know not whether I were dreaming or awake,’ Oliphant continued, staring off into the distance. ‘The God-Emperor came to me. Glorious in His corpse-lord’s plate – black as the depths of space – yet impossible to look upon, like a sun or the fierce glare of some bright star.’
Kersh couldn’t believe what he was hearing.
‘You have seen this?’
‘Many times,’ Oliphant confirmed, his gaze still fixed some way distant. ‘Before you arrived. And since. It is how I knew His Angels were coming. That help was on its way. That we were destined for the Adeptus Astartes’ protection.’
‘You see him still?’
‘From time to time,’ Oliphant smiled. ‘He walks among us. He is in the corner of the eye, in the shadows, waiting to reveal His true purpose. It is His mysterious way.’
‘I don’t know what that is,’ Kersh told him honestly. ‘But I don’t think it is your God-Emperor.’
‘We shall see, sir,’ the pontifex said. ‘He will reveal Himself to you in due course.’ Kersh grunted. ‘The God-Emperor fights on our side, Angel. Have faith in that.’
Kersh thought of the Emperor – now all but a corpse on his sarcophagus-throne.
‘Pontifex,’ the Scourge said. ‘The Adeptus Astartes live for victory and the Great Dorn has shown us that there are many kinds. Stood amongst the corpses in the Imperial Palace, with the Emperor – all but dead – returned to the safety of its thick walls, the primarch would have felt little desire to celebrate victory. Walking from the deathtrap of the Eternal Fortress – a survivor of Iron Warriors ingenuity and the Iron Cage – Dorn would have felt no jubilation. These were not victories in a traditional sense – those to which mortals aspire when they see demigods crafted in stone and bronze, and hear of the exploits of heroes. Demetrius Katafalque, in the Architecture of Agony teaches us that these were victories, that frustration of the arch-enemy’s desires and the impediment of evil is a kind of victory. That in a galaxy perpetually at war – in an existence of continuous slaughter – survival is victory.’
‘What are you saying?’ Oliphant mumbled, entranced by the Excoriator’s words.
‘Do you trust me, pontifex?’
‘I do, Angel.’
‘And do your people trust you? Will they do as you ask – no matter how strange and daunting the road you ask them to take?’
‘They are my flock. I am their shepherd. The God-Emperor shows me the path that I might lead and they follow.’
Kersh looked around at the crowds of cemetery worlders. He imagined the Certusians in their thousands and thousands, huddled about the Memorial Mausoleum. He took a deep breath and nodded slowly to himself.
‘Gather your flock, pontifex,’ the Scourge told him finally, ‘and as many shovels as you can lay your hands on. Your people take the crow road tonight…’
Sister Sapphira rose from the baptismal waters of the communal font. Rivulets of holy water cascaded down and around the curves of her purified flesh. Droplets splashed against the surface of the pool and then spattered the cool floor of the chancery as the palatine stepped out into the towels and attentions of her Sisters.
She stood there in silence as members of her mission proceeded to dry her and dash her with consecrated ash from an itinerant stoup. All the while, incense burned from globes suspended from the ceiling and prayers were whispered by the attending women. As Sapphira’s limbs, torso and bust were bound with sackcloth ribbon, Sister Klaudia – wearing her cornette and ceremonial robes – read from Saint Severa’s Articles of Faith and Flame and offered blessings to her palatine and superior.
Sapphira felt the sting of the baptismal bath, replaced by the chill of the chancery air, in turn replaced by the raw irritation of the sackcloth. The chamber-candles flickered, allowing the shadows to momentarily encroach. About the chancery pillars and devotional stonework of the entrance-archway, the palatine thought she saw movement. The Sister’s spine became host to an irrepressible shiver and her bare flesh pimpled. Her nightmare had returned. A giant in midnight plate. An emissary of death. A vision of netherworld insanity.
It had haunted her. She could feel its presence, like a predator stalking its prey. A thing of the beyond, come to test her faith. She had sensed it while at devotion, during lonely sentinel duty and down in the consecrated vault, where she attended upon the sacred bones of Umberto II and her obligations of protection and preservation. She had even awoken to the nightmare watching her sleep in her private cell. From the darkness Sapphira saw the glow of unnatural life, the radiance of an eye watching her through the rent of a battle-smashed helm. It was the horrid attention of that eye and visions of the ghostly warrior that drove Sapphira to hope that her own eyes deceived her. She prayed to Saint Severa and Umberto II for guidance, and had almost begged confession of Pontifex Oliphant. She could not bring herself to confide in her Sisterhood – especially at a time of such uncertainty. With the discovery of the Ruinous monument and the arrival of the Adeptus Astartes, there never seemed to be an appropriate time to admit her affliction, and Sister Sapphira had taken refuge in the regularity of baptismal baths, consecrational dustings and blessings.
The light of the all-seeing eye dimmed as two Sisters in the slender, cobalt plate of their calling entered the chancery. It had been the breeze accompanying the Sisters’ entry to the mission-house that had initially guttered the candles. The first cradled a heavy flamer while the second held a meltagun to her breast. Presenting themselves before their palatine, the pair of dominiate Sisters placed their weapons on the floor and rose, taking off their helmets. Sister Klaudia concluded her blessings and stepped aside to acknowledge Sister Lemora and Sister Casiope.
‘Sisters,’ Klaudia acknowledged. ‘With what justification do you disturb the palatine?’
‘The Adeptus Astartes have visited the pontifex,’ Casiope reported, nodding first to Klaudia before addressing her superior.
‘And?’ Sapphira prompted.
‘T
he cemetery worlders are being moved from the city centre and out onto the necroplex,’ Sister Lemora confirmed.
‘The necroplex?’ the palatine marvelled. ‘Out beyond the perimeter?’
‘Yes, my lady.’
‘Insanity.’
‘Yes, my lady.’
‘Palatine,’ Sister Klaudia said. ‘I fear the Excoriators are not to be trusted.’
‘They are the Emperor’s Angels, Sister,’ Sapphira reminded her. ‘You think them corrupted?’
‘I think they’re Dorn’s savages,’ Klaudia told her honestly. ‘They fight like dogs amongst themselves and this Scourge that leads them is detested and distrusted even amongst his own kind.’
‘What do you think?’ Sapphira put to the other two Sisters.
‘They are gene-breeds, engineered for battle,’ Lemora said. ‘I think they’ve probably settled on using the Certusians as cannon fodder.’
‘You?’
‘The cemetery worlders are not my concern,’ Casiope told her. ‘We are the Sisters of the August Vigil. Our first duty must be to Umberto II’s sacred remains. The Cholercaust is here. Planetfall is imminent. It’s time to withdraw to the vault.’
Sapphira remained silent for a moment, her eyes searching the darkness. She turned to Sister Klaudia.
‘Begin preparations to garrison the vault,’ the palatine told her. Klaudia nodded in satisfaction. ‘Back to your posts,’ she said to Lemora and Casiope. ‘I will see the Scourge and determine the Adeptus Astartes’ intentions. My armour!’ she called, and the Sisters surrounding her peeled away to recover their palatine’s plate.
Chapter Sixteen
The Apotheon
‘Commander!’
Lieutenant Heiss knocked again briskly on the cabin door. She looked at the matt reflection of herself in the scuffed metal. Even in such a surface she could see her auburn curls and freckled face. ‘Commander,’ she called again. ‘We’ve had a vox from the surface. New orders from the Adeptus Astartes.’
Heiss had been on the bridge of the Adeptus Ministorum defence monitor Apotheon when the message had been received. She had never spoken to an Emperor’s Angel before and would have been more anxious but for the vision of approaching destruction that dominated the lancet viewscreen.
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