by Ian Watson
Were the judges looking for anyone in particular? True to Samjani’s account, the great ornamented plasteel main gates were firmly closed.
This could be due to the sheer crush of pilgrims during the holiest time of a holy year. Judges in residence might not wish a paste of people to be squeezed through their portals willy-nilly into whatever great courtyard lay behind those gates.
The reason could also be, as Samjani implied, that this courthouse had become preoccupied by its own internal politics, since Sabulorb seemed genuinely pacified.
JAQ RECALLED A courthouse he had once visited, on a warmer world. Its gates had always been wide open. Vigilant Arbites had scanned the crowds within its courtyard. That courtyard had supported a whole community of arguing petitioners who might have been camping there for weeks or months on end, and of caterers who served herbal teas and spiced cakes to the petitioners, and of cooks who brewed and baked, and of clerks who took depositions, and of legal counsels who coached petitioners in the phrasing of their depositions, all of which concerned niceties of Imperial decrees which had been delivered hundreds or even thousands of years earlier. Some petitioners might spend half their lives in that great guarded yard, which was only the outermost region of the courthouse. The most devout supplicants might even become recruits to the ranks of the warrior-Arbitrators, their original legal case no longer of any significance to them.
Here on Sabulorb it was otherwise. The court was closed.
Jaq said to his companions, ‘There’s a lot to be said for acting under the very eye of the law.’ Pious hubbub almost drowned his words. No one else nearby could have overheard. 'The law’s gaze ranges far. It may not notice what is beneath its very feet.’ Grimm nodded at a towering viewscreen mounted on a gantry at the next intersection. Beneath, offerings were raining into a great bronze bowl, their tinkling quite inaudible. At present the viewscreen was blank. Now they noticed that many other viewscreens were mounted at regular intervals.
The abhuman accosted a pilgrim for information. It seemed those viewscreens had no connection whatever with the courthouse nor even with ordinary police surveillance.
Six million people could not reasonably hope to witness the unveiling of the True Face directly. To behold the unveiling on screen anywhere in this holy city was deemed equivalent to being a direct eyewitness. Spectators would even gain a clearer view on a screen.
‘I don’t accuse the judges of laxity,’ said Jaq. ‘But perhaps they’re more interested in their own splendid power than in rigorous investigations. This is sometimes the temptation. A courthouse can seem a world unto itself.'
Behind those gates, beyond whatever courtyard, would be an immense labyrinth of halls and dungeons, armouries and barracks, firing ranges, scriptories and archives, warehouses and kitchens and gymnasia and garages. A courthouse wasn’t unlike a fortress-monastery, a sovereign domain where the robed judges presided over the marshals of the court, and those marshals over the well-armed dedicated Arbites who would enforce the law of the Imperium, were it to be violated.
‘I presume,’ said Jaq, ‘that the present Lord Badshah hatches no plots, no more than that Hakim Badshah did. Why should he? He can pay for the upkeep of this courthouse through taxation. The local administration was purged of hybrids years ago. Judges must consider their mere presence a sufficient curb upon treachery. This is wrong, wrong – yet it suits our purpose. We might be more conspicuous in a smaller city. Anyway, we ought to remain near the spaceport – unless we can detect an unknown opening to the webway buried under desert sands!’
To detect such an opening, by using Azul Petrov’s amputated rune-eye...
The dead Navigator’s warp-eye had been imprinted with a route to the Black Library which was in the webway. Might the eye somehow signal the presence of a webway portal?
Yet how might the lethal eye be used, except to deliver a killing gaze? And why should any hidden opening even exist on Sabulorb?
THEY HAD ONLY proceeded a hundred paces more – bringing them near to that great bronze bowl beneath the viewscreen – when a hectic babble arose from ahead, far louder than the regular hubbub. Like a storm-wind an outcry rushed through the host of people, in a medley of divergent dialects:
‘Displaying the True Face early!’
‘Dey dizblay dze Drue Face!’
‘Prieshts shtarting dishplay Hish fashe!’
‘Ostentus vultus sanctii.’
It could only be a wild rumour. Those viewscreens remained blank. The priests of Occidens couldn’t possibly be unveiling the True Visage in public two days prematurely.
Such a rumour was readily believed by pilgrims who had travelled from the far side of the planet and from other planets of other stars. To miss the crucial moment would be intolerable, excruciating. To miss out, after fifty years! Rumour spread like a firestorm.
Here came a variation on the rumour, which seemed to lend it a crazy logic:
‘Being private viewing for those who are bribing!’
‘So many bribing, private viewing being public!’
‘Being classed as public viewing!’
The viewscreens remained ominously blank.
The consequence was sheer panic. The crowd was surging. From side avenues, pilgrims stampeded into the surge. A tide of bodies heaved and thrust and clawed and screamed. Jaq, Grimm and Lex fought for refuge in the lee of the bronze bowl. Even when empty, the bowl must weigh a tonne.
Part of the mob alongside the courthouse began to appeal dementedly. Fists battered on the courthouse gates. A thousand voices demanded justice.
‘We paid!’
‘We were paying!’
‘Pious pilgrims petitioning!’
Was this supposed injustice within the jurisdiction of the courthouse? Not at all. Of course it wasn’t.
A violent affray at its very gates was of vital concern to a courthouse. Fists thumping on the plasteel gates were engaged in criminal assault. From high lancet windows lasguns soon were pointing downward. Clamped to the long slim barrels were tubes. From loudspeaker-gargoyles a voice boomed forth: ‘CEASING AND DESISTING FROM THIS ASSAULT ON THE GATE OF A COURTHOUSE, GOOD CITIZENS AND PILGRIMS! REMOVING YOURSELVES PEACEFULLY IN THE EMPEROR’S NAME!’ Yet the assault continued.
Again the gargoyles blared: ‘DESISTING AT ONCE! NOT DASHING YOURSELVES AGAINST THE ROCK OF A COURTHOUSE, PILGRIMS! DISPERSING! BE NOT COMPELLING LETHAL RESPONSE!’
The appeal was in vain. The battering at the gate persisted.
Moments later it seemed as though the unseen Arbitrators above were scattering large silver coins upon the crowd. Coins by way of a token refund of the costs which pilgrims believed they had incurred in vain. Coins by way of additional offerings to the Emperor, which pilgrims might pluck up and toss into a bronze bowl.
The coins began to explode amidst the crowd.
‘Frag grenades!’ exclaimed Grimm, ducking low.
Fragmentation grenades, no less. Those tubes coupled to the lasgun barrels were grenade launchers.
Each grenade was shattering into scores of zipping razor-sharp slices. These tore through clothing. They lacerated flesh. They severed arteries and windpipes. They maimed and blinded. They slashed runes of blood upon upraised hands and cheeks.
Such a slipping and a screaming there was. Such tormented frenzy, as of goaded beasts. Quite a few pilgrims carried about them some weapon other than a simple knife or studded brass knuckles. Only a fool walked any world without some protection. Stub guns appeared. Handbows. Even some laspistols. What were people who hadn’t yet been injured or blinded to do? Should they wait for more grenades to rain down? Wait for pulses of las-fire? Running away was almost impossible. Too many other bodies were in the way. Upright bodies. Staggering bodies. Collapsed bodies.
Armed pilgrims fired back at those lancet windows. They fired bullets and mini-arrows and laser pulses. Small chance of scoring a hit, or even of aiming straight. Yet now the very courthouse, and justice itself, were demonstrably under
attack.
Smoothly the main plasteel gates rumbled open – and the crowd heaved.
Inside of the gateway, further access was blocked. Three armoured vehicles stood alongside one another, wreathed in engine fumes.
On two of these vehicles heavy stub guns were mounted. On the middle one, an autocannon. The roofs of all three vehicles were platforms for a team of Arbites. Eerie reflective visors rendered them featureless. How dark their uniforms were. They were so many ebony automatons with mirror-screens instead of faces.
From grenade launchers popped such a cocktail of frag and choke-gas and flash-flares. Then the serpent-mouth muzzle of the autocannon blazed solid shells. From the big stubbers clattered a storm of heavy bullets.
Shells and bullets reaped a swathe through the dazzled, gasping, bleeding mob. Another swathe, and another. Heavy bullets ricocheted off the bronze bowl behind which Jaq and Lex and Grimm were sheltering.
This courthouse was like a cudbear pestered while hibernating in its den. Or a nest of death-wasps.
FOUR
Mayhem
WITH EACH IMPACT of a stray bullet the bowl rang like a bell. The note did not linger. Nor did the trio wish to linger. Yet except in the ever-widening killing zone around the courthouse gateway hardly any open space existed. Everywhere else there was an undulating herd of hysterical humanity.
Those guardians of justice need not have opened the gates. Their gates were of plasteel. Their walls were massive.
Any assault upon a courthouse, however misconceived or provoked, was such a snub to Imperial authority. How could the Arbites have stayed ensconced in their stronghold in the face of defiance? Perhaps the conduct of the pilgrims wasn’t really tantamount to rebellion. Yet if there was no overwhelming response the incident might lead on to worse defiance. Moderation on the part of the courthouse could so easily be misinterpreted.
Had some judge been poring over books of precedent for months in anticipation of some such incident? The holiest of days was at hand. This city was packed to the seams with fervent visitors. Shandabar was no hive-world city, but right now its population seemed similar in density. Judges rejoiced in a proud tradition of launching shock troops against rioters. Order could so easily tumble into disorder beyond the capacity of the local police to contain.
The autocannon and the heavy stub guns fell silent. Arbitrators leapt down from the vehicles. Firing energy packets from their lasrifles, they fanned out. At first they hardly bothered to aim into a seemingly limitless host of pilgrims. Due to the lumpy carpet of corpses, the Arbites’ footing was unsteady, and their progress leisurely. Their helmets filtered the lingering choke-gas, which had not drifted in the direction of the crouching trio.
In hope of escaping death, many pilgrims began to throw themselves face down. This exposed the armed resisters in their midst as targets for more precise surgery. Energy packets flew further, causing more distant pilgrims to dive.
So it happened that for their own safety more and more pilgrims further and further away prostrated themselves. Prostration quickly gained a momentum of its own. A tidal wave of kowtowing spread outward. Bodies forced other bodies down willy-nilly. Where the trio sheltered, all bodies bowed low in the general direction of the Occidens Temple – as though in abject adoration of Him-on-Earth. Such limitless homage filled the whole locality. Pictures of this scene could have been included in devotional holos, were it not for all the blood and untold hundreds of trampled corpses in the background. A picture in sepia might have disguised the bloodshed.
The Arbites had ceased fire. They were stepping across a field of limp or grovelling flesh – like some invigilators of prayer whose duty it was to punish any worshipper who raised his face.
Thus was the human cosmos righteously controlled for the salvation of souls. Thus was disorder curbed. Thus was the superfluity of humanity pruned. In defence of law and stability the harshest measures were often, tragically, mandatory.
At this spectacle of governance exercised to such potent effect Jaq felt a spasm of heartfelt reverence. He experienced such a poignant nostalgia for simplicities – not that his career as an inquisitor had ever been simple, but long ago it seemed to have been so lucid in its purity by contrast with the tormenting dilemmas which now beset him.
Yet a moment later a frisson of horror at the carnage shook him. How much death could be justified by the demands of discipline and stability? But he knew the answer. The alternative – of cosmic anarchy – was infinitely worse. If the Imperium failed – or when it failed – the cruellest Chaos would reign, and reality itself would fall apart.
‘Now we get going!’ declared Grimm.
Across the stepping stones of ten thousand sprawling pilgrims.
‘No!’ Lex called out, too late. His hand missed clutching Grimm to drag him back behind the bowl. The little man was bustling on his way, shoulders ducked, big boots bounding across living bodies. Away, away before the dark faceless Arbites came close in their tour of inspection.
Probably Grimm was right, and Lex was wrong in this instance. Without another thought, Lex hauled Jaq into motion. ‘Run, Jaq, run!’
The impact of Lex – even of Jaq – upon prostrate bodies was more momentous than Grimm’s had been. Bodies squealed and writhed or reared in injury or protest. Injured or offended pates were too slow to delay Lex’s dash, or Jaq’s.
‘Halting, in His name!’
‘HALTING NOW!’
Arbites had noticed the decamping trio, which was what Lex had hoped to avoid.
An abhuman – and a giant, and another man: what made them act so guiltily? That absconding squat might have been overlooked. He wasn’t a big fellow. Squats weren’t worshippers of the Emperor. Their technical skills were merely useful to the Imperium. The squat must have been caught up in the confusion by chance.
A decamping giant as well? And another robust individual too? A trio was more than coincidence. Could this be a case of ringleaders?
Arbitrators were giving chase. Three of them. One for each fugitive, should the three split up. Merely to shoot the fugitives in the back would be to lose a source of intelligence under interrogation in the dungeons of the courthouse. Thus it was as a snatch squad rather than an execution team that the three Arbites pursued.
How it went against the grain for Jaq or Lex to run away as though they were criminals! Those mirror-masks were keeping up a nimble pace across backs and buttocks and heads. The fugitives had a good start and were even gaining distance.
A side alley hove into view – a lane crowded with hectic pilgrims. These ecstatics seemed to imagine that a viewscreen, which they couldn’t see frontally, had lit up with the Unveiling. This must be why the mass of worshippers were cringing in adoration. Ignorant of the truth, the pilgrims elbowed and clawed.
Grimm hurled himself amidst them upon hands and knees. He was a grotesque child scuttling and scrabbling his way through adult legs.
Lex barrelled into the jam of bodies. All of his weight of muscle and ceramically reinforced bone carved a path. Jaq was immediately behind him.
‘STOPPING THOSE MEN!’
Now there was more elbow room – and even open space, merely confined by alley walls. Some pilgrims were still plunging in the direction of the boulevard. Lex cannoned into several deliberately to knock them over. Grimm, up on his feet again, tripped a couple with his big boots. Fallen bodies writhed on cobbles. The trio turned a corner and raced.
They had entered a cul-de-sac. They skidded on animal bones and offal. A dead dog lay butchered and trussed. Over a fire of coals, a second dog was roasting on an improvised spit, left deserted. The proprietors of the barbeque had dashed off towards the boulevard. Had they supposed that the distant detonation of grenades was the popping of celebratory firecrackers?
AT first glance, there seemed little choice but to turn tail and collide with the Arbites.
FOR GENERATIONS GANGS of children had scribbled their graffiti in this appendix of an alleyway. Names and o
bscenities in rotund script rolled across the stone walls – and also across an iron door, which they almost camouflaged.
A second glance sent Lex rushing shoulder-first towards the door. Any external handle had long since been broken off. Lex crashed against the iron. Rust cascaded. The door groaned.
A second time he hurled himself. The door yielded with a screech of snapping hinges. He forced it open.
Within was a dingy warehouse. Protected by gratings, some small dirty skylights provided meagre illumination.
What lay piled along all those ranks of plasteel racks? Oh, those were saddles – and bridles, and reins, intended for camelopards. Glance back: lasguns at the ready, the mirror-faced Arbitrators leapt around the corner, into the cul-de-sac. Jaq and Grimm were hardly through the doorway before Lex was heaving a rack of saddles over as a blockage. The Arbites responded by opening fire. Packets of energy exploded against plasteel shelves and tumbled saddles – and winged inside the warehouse too. Outbursts of energy lit the interior stroboscopically as the trio hastened, ducking behind racks, towards a more massive door with a wicket set in it.
This wicket was sure to be locked. Manual bolts secured the greater door. Who would expect anyone to want to break out of the warehouse? Lex heaved a floor-bolt upward, hauled a roof-bolt downward. From behind came the sound of Arbitrators clambering over or through the obstruction.
Give them some pause for thought! Tugging the boltgun from its hiding place behind his back, Lex fired a single shot along an aisle: RAARKpopSWOOSHCRUMP.
Arbites were highly trained, zealous men. They ought to recognize the characteristic noise of a bolter. Surely this merited a few moments’ reflection. Was that gun a relic of the Ultramarines’ visit decades ago? Was it contraband from off-world? Had some local gunsmith succeeded in jerry-rigging such a weapon?
Perhaps Lex’s action only increased the zeal of the Arbitrators. The trio fled into a road seething with pilgrims who seemed enraged. As Lex fought a way through a torrent of persons, the furious buzz was of murdering mirror-heads – or of mirror-heads murdering. The babble was so confused.
