1ST DAY OF PEACE – 0616 HOURS
IMPERIUM NIHILUS – PLANET KOPHYN
SHAMBACH ORE DISTRICT – LO:800-8/LA:631-2
They bore Saint Celestine out through the mines and into the cold night air. Meritorius allowed Captain Kasyrgeldt to assist her and her Sisters in bearing the Saint out of the daemon’s lair. Tears ran down their faces as they walked, stately and sombre, bearing Celestine upon a makeshift bier.
The crimson glare was gone from the tunnels, so that only bare lumen globes lit their path. The awful droning dirge had halted in the instant of the War Engine’s demise. Now silence reigned, and in it the clink of wargear and the whine of armour servos was as loud as Celestine’s ragged breathing. The Cadians were too exhausted, or else too stoic, to set up any sort of mourning cry for the fallen Saint, and when the priests had attempted to exhort them to it, Meritorius had silenced them with a cold glare.
This would not be a grotesque spectacle of zealotry. She had witnessed where such perversions of the Imperial faith led a man, and his body burned at her back, consigned to the same fires as the daemon. Meritorius knew it would be dignified, for it was what she deserved.
They laid the Saint upon the stone flags of the courtyard through which they had entered the mines. They set her broken Geminae Sisters beside her, offered the same honour in death as their mistress. The Cadian medicaes did what they could, applying gels and dressings, but they expressed their doubts that Celestine would even regain consciousness, let alone live through her terrible wounds.
And so Meritorius and Kasyrgeldt stood, attending the Saint as her breath rattled in and out, unsure what else to do. Aides came and went, providing the Cadian captain with data-slate reports that she looked over swiftly before muttering orders and sending her subordinates hurrying away. Meritorius nodded in approval. Major Blaskaine was right to promote that one. Command came naturally to her.
‘Listen, the fighting has stopped,’ said Kasyrgeldt.
Meritorius realised the Cadian was right. She could hear fires burning, voices crying out in loss or bewilderment or pain, but no gunfire.
‘The city languishes beneath a pall,’ she said. ‘Do you suppose that, with the daemon’s banishment, its influence over the populace was broken?’
‘I fear the truth is rather grimmer,’ said Kasyrgeldt as she scanned a data-slate handed to her by one of her aides. ‘We’re receiving reports of mass suicides amongst the cult forces. They correspond with the daemon’s demise.’
‘All of them?’ asked Meritorius, aghast. Thousands upon thousands, taking their own lives in unison, she thought. And all of them once loyal servants of the Emperor.
‘All of them,’ confirmed Kasyrgeldt.
‘Perhaps it is better,’ said Meritorius. ‘They were irrevocably tainted. There would have been no forgiveness for them this side of the grave.’
‘I’m just glad they aren’t still in the field and seeking revenge,’ said Kasyrgeldt. ‘I feared this would prove a pyrrhic victory at best and yet, here we stand. Thanks to her.’ She looked down at the prone form of the Saint. ‘Should we offer up prayers?’
‘My Sisters already do so, but if any of your soldiers wish to join them it would seem appropriate,’ said Meritorius. ‘The Emperor should know the victory that the Saint led us to this day, and of our gratitude to her.’
‘He does…’ came Celestine’s rasping voice as her eyes opened. They knelt at her side.
‘Rest, my lady, don’t exert yourself,’ said Kasyrgeldt. ‘You’ve been sorely wounded.’
Celestine offered the Cadian a wry ghost of a smile.
‘The Cadian talent for understatement… still survives, I see,’ she whispered, and a cloud passed across her features. ‘I am… sorry, captain. I fought at the fall of your world, and… I could not save it.’
Kasyrgeldt appeared lost for words, and so Meritorius spoke for her.
‘Saint, you have led us to a great victory upon Kophyn with the light of your faith.’ More soldiers were gathering now, Cadians and Battle Sisters and even a few surviving Astorosian tankers forming a sombre crowd around the fallen Saint. Many bore hastily dressed wounds, while others leant on lasguns as makeshift crutches. Still they only had eyes for Celestine, and Meritorius thought briefly that they must resemble some scene from scripture. Perhaps, if she ever escaped this world, she would see to it that the moment was recreated in glassaic or tapestry.
‘I fought alongside you, and…’ she paused, choking. ‘I offered the Emperor’s counsel, nothing more. It was your faith, your strength and courage, your determination… that brought us victory this day.’ Around the circle, the wounded soldiers stood a little taller, fires kindling in their eyes at the Saint’s words. Meritorius felt a surge of tremendous love for Saint Celestine in that moment, for she had helped her to stoke the fires of her own faith again and now they burned hotter than ever before.
‘The daemon is banished, yes?’ asked Celestine, coughing painfully. Her balled fist came away from her lips arterial red.
‘It is, Saint,’ answered Meritorius. ‘We slew it by bolt, and by blast, and by flame.’
‘An initial inspection suggests that the War Engine was as much machine as daemon,’ said Kasyrgeldt. ‘Our enginseers are working on the hypothesis that the locals had some sort of Dark Age thinking machine hidden away up here, and that for whatever reason they activated it when the Rift came. We can only guess at their motivations, or how the machine-intelligence came to be corrupted by a daemonic entity, but…’ Kasyrgeldt tailed off as she felt everyone’s eyes upon her.
This is an officer who boils everything down to data to cope with loss, Meritorius realised.
The Saint placed her hand upon Kasyrgeldt’s and nodded slightly.
‘My thanks, captain. It is good to… to know the nature of the corruption that we have put a stop to here today. But there is such a thing as blessed ignorance, for the daemon corrupts those who seek to understand rather than abhor. Burn… everything that remains, and have your priests purge their…’ The Saint broke off as another coughing fit wracked her.
‘Of course, my lady,’ said Kasyrgeldt.
Meritorius felt a slight warmth upon the nape of her neck. She looked up, and saw the first light of the dawn sun was creeping around the mountain peak.
‘What do we do now, Saint?’ she asked, looking back down.
‘You have served,’ said Celestine, her voice wavering down to a whisper. ‘You have found faith and duty within yourselves… you must strive every day to keep them in your heart. You are the soldiers of the Emperor, and you will carry your light forwards into… the darkest of places without… without fear or doubt.’
‘My lady, we will do as you ask,’ said Kasyrgeldt. ‘But I fear we will never do so beyond the bounds of this world, for we have no way to escape it.’
‘The Emperor… provides,’ whispered Celestine with a smile.
The Saint’s breath rattled painfully in her ruined chest. Surely, thought Meritorius, she did not have long. The sun’s rays limned the mountain peak as the sky flushed pastel blue and russet above them. A spear of sunlight fell upon the courtyard, and the assembled soldiery gasped in awe as it crowned Celestine with a flickering halo. Meritorius thought she saw peace in the Saint’s eyes in that moment, but something else as well, a sense of foreboding perhaps.
‘Sir!’ came a shout as a vox-officer pushed through the circle to reach Kasyrgeldt’s side. ‘Sir, it’s a damned miracle!’
Kasyrgeldt shot the man a sharp glare. ‘Strevsky, show some damned respect,’ she snapped in a low voice. ‘Now, what is it? What’s a miracle?’
‘Ships, sir,’ said Strevsky, suitably chastened but still burning with excitement. ‘Imperial Navy ships in orbit and requesting to speak to our senior officer.’
‘How can that be?’ asked Kasyrgeldt in wonderment. ‘We were cut off. No
one even knew we were here.’
‘Astropathic vision, sir,’ said Strevsky. ‘The captain wasn’t too clear, but it sounds as though someone saw something divine, a golden figure that led them through the storms and got them here, now…’
‘The Emperor provides,’ breathed Meritorius. She looked down at Celestine, but her words of thanks died on her lips. The Saint’s eyes had turned glassy and unblinking. Her body had become utterly still.
Saint Celestine had passed beyond the veil.
Consciousness, sudden and violent.
Her eyes snapped open and hellish red light poured in. She gasped and sat up, one hand going to her ruined chest. She found it whole beneath her palm, the material of her shift undamaged, the flesh beneath it unsullied.
She blinked as her vision slowly returned, as she perceived the osseous mountain upon which she had awoken. She did not know her name, nor where she was, nor how she had got here. As panic threatened, she felt a slight warmth upon her cheek, like the light of a candle or the brush of small, warm fingers.
In that moment she knew she must follow it, and that if she did, all would eventually be well.
About the Author
Andy Clark has written the Warhammer 40,000 novels Kingsblade, Knightsblade and Shroud of Night, as well as the novella Crusade and the short story ‘Whiteout’. He has also written the novels Gloomspite, Blacktalon: First Mark and several short stories for Warhammer Age of Sigmar, and the Warhammer Quest Silver Tower novella Labyrinth of the Lost. Andy works as a background writer for Games Workshop, crafting the worlds of Warhammer Age of Sigmar and Warhammer 40,000. He lives in Nottingham, UK.
An extract from Vaults of Terra: The Hollow Mountain.
Niir Khazad was alive.
It had been borderline, for a while. Erunion, Courvain’s chirurgeon-philosophical, had worked patient hours over her, adjusting the vials and the sutures, snagging and twisting the flesh, until she was finally stabilised and her heart was beating and her lungs were pulling in air. When she awoke at last, it was his skinny face that she saw first, peering over half-moon spectacles as if scrutinising a disappointing lab specimen.
‘You’re tough,’ he admitted.
She knew that. Being born and raised on a death world had given her no alternative. During her long career, she’d suffered frequent and significant physical trauma and had always pulled through. On the mag-anchor platforms in low orbit over Dramde XI she’d taken a bolt-round through her shoulder that had pulled a fist-sized chunk of flesh with it. That should have killed her, as should the poison-laced spike in her stomach under the hive-slums of Hydra Demetrius. Back then, though, she had been able to draw on the services of Inquisitor Hovash Phaelias. Her old master had been a thorough man, with a well-supplied armoury and well-maintained apothecarion, and so her medical care, when needed, had been exemplary. Now, through a fog of pain suppressors, she barely knew where she was, let alone how reliable her treatment had been. Looking at Erunion, with his ghost-pale skin and flickering gaze, it was hard to be confident.
‘Yes,’ was all she croaked, proudly.
She gained strength after that. The chirurgeon shuffled away, coming back every few hours with more tinctures and needles. Servitors clunked and drooled around her cot, attending to the antiquated machines with their dumb, clumsy movements.
Her sense of self, of place, of memory, began to return. She remembered the long hunt, when it seemed like the world itself had turned against them all and her master’s retinue was picked off, one by one. During that time she had never tried to persuade him to leave, to flee off-world from a Terra that had become their enemy. An inquisitor did not flee, not when there was quarry to hunt. Right until the end, she had assumed that he would discover who their hidden enemies were and then find a way to counter them, but in that she had miscalculated. Phaelias was dead now, as were all the others. Only she remained, a fugitive plucked from the shadows of the great hive-spires and absorbed into another coterie of killers and misfits. Even then, death had still come for her in the deep catacombs under the Palace itself, where xenos and myth-pulled gods had fought amid the swirling shadows.
But she had cheated it again, one more time. Now she breathed, painfully. She blinked, painfully. She swallowed, and felt the rawness of her throat where the tubes had been. By the time she came fully back to her senses, the lumens in the chamber were dialled low. In the hazy murk, it took her some time to realise she was not alone.
‘Welcome back, assassin,’ said Erasmus Crowl.
She had never spoken to him before. She had only ever heard the name ‘Crowl’ when Spinoza had mentioned it, and such references had been fleeting and in haste. By the time the two of them had ended up in the same chamber at last, the las-bolts were already flying and the greatest of Rassilo’s hunters was coming for her with murder in their eyes.
Still, it was hard to mistake him. He wore black robes trimmed with silver. His hair was slicked back to his skull, pulled away from a gaunt face of scars and sickness. He sat calmly, hands on his lap, still as the shadows around him. Only his voice, which had a soft, dry surface timbre, gave away a little more humanity.
She tried to lift her head from the pallet, and failed. ‘Inquisitor,’ she croaked.
Crowl got up, tipped away the metal can of water by her cot and replaced it with a fresh one. She took a cautious sip.
‘I wished to give you longer to recover,’ Crowl said. ‘They’re serious wounds. Spinoza thought you might die from them.’
Spinoza. Luce Spinoza. The woman – Crowl’s interrogator – who had tracked her down and in all likelihood saved her life. She was cut from exceptional cloth, that one – rougher, harder, more ebulliently physical. Khazad and she were similar in many ways – warriors schooled in the Imperium’s imaginative arts of combat – but the man before her was a breed apart. Frailer in body, it seemed, but with an evident mental strength that even now, even here, was capable of chilling with a word.
‘Does she live?’ Khazad asked. It was hard to remember precisely how things had ended, down there in the deeps under those immense walls.
‘She lives, Emperor be praised. I think it would be very hard to end her, and I am grateful for that.’
Khazad swallowed again. It was slowly getting easier. ‘Then, can I–’
‘Peace,’ said Crowl, quietly. ‘You are not under edict of interrogation. Questions will have to come when you are stronger. For the time being, I wish you to know you are safe.’
Khazad smiled weakly. ‘Nowhere safe.’
‘Ha. Maybe not. But there are degrees of danger. Do you know where you are?’
Khazad nodded.
‘Most who come here never leave,’ Crowl said. ‘You, of course, may leave whenever you wish. I know a little of the Shoba doctrine. You will need to locate those who wronged you.’
‘Yes,’ she said vehemently. ‘I know names. If any still live–’
‘Indeed, and I approve of the sentiment.’ He leaned forward, into the pool of murky light, and Khazad saw the deep rings of black under his eyes. ‘You must take whatever path seems right to you,’ he said. ‘Either alone, or, if you choose, with us. Spinoza might have told you I habitually worked alone. That was partially true, for a long time, but things are becoming perilous here. An assassin of the Shoba school would be of use to me. It wouldn’t be the safest option, given how things are, but think on it, when you’re recovered.’
Khazad looked at him directly. ‘No time needed. I stay here.’
Crowl raised an eyebrow. ‘Really? You don’t wish to consider it?’
‘Spinoza trust me. I trust her. Have no other master – you will do.’
Crowl chuckled. ‘I see.’ He got up, and Khazad saw for the first time how lean he was out of the armour she’d witnessed him wearing before. In his long robes he looked like a coiled whip, frayed and flaking from overzealous u
se. ‘Get better then,’ he said, seriously. ‘Get stronger.’
Khazad began to feel her awareness slipping away again. Erunion must have piped something down the tubes that still ran into her arteries, something that would knock her out and accelerate the healing that still needed to be done.
‘Will be ready,’ she said fiercely, keeping her eyes open as long as she could.
‘Good,’ said Crowl. ‘They’ll come for you again, now. They’ll come for me, too.’
‘Yes.’
‘Just so you know. It isn’t over.’
Sleep rose up to smother her again, hot and cloying.
‘Never is,’ she murmured, thinking back over all those injuries. ‘Always start again.’
Maldo Revus, too, was recovering.
His body, too, was a thing of consummate toughness, honed and shriven over decades until every muscle was like boiled leather, held together by its scars and bearing the marks of its armour pieces. He had limped out of the catacombs with Spinoza, his carapace plate riddled with dents and his helm visor blurred with his own blood. That was the way such things usually ended, of course, so he had no complaints about it.
Perhaps, though, as he aged, the recovery times were lengthening a little. It had been eight years now, with Crowl. Before that he had served as a sergeant with another Inquisitorial detachment, and before that he had been a private soldier in a storm trooper division on permanent void duty. His memories beyond that were blurred, perhaps due to the strain of near-constant combat, perhaps due to the after-effects of the mind-wipes he had undergone multiple times during preliminary training. There was no true beginning for him, no commencement, just a growing set of impressions, steadily becoming firmer, solidifying into his current state as Crowl’s loyal killer.
Celestine - Andy Clark Page 20
