Atonement. He must seek atonement.
His legs were cramped from the hours of kneeling. He could barely feel them any longer. When the bells rang for evensong, he jerked upright. Shooting pain through his limbs surprised a cry from him. He fell back and smacked his head against the floor. Blood, warm and stinging, flowed down his face. He rubbed it from his eyes and crawled to the pillar in the centre of the vestry. Vismar was not here to help him to his feet this time. He could not use her strength to overcome his weakness. He must atone through his own force, or fail utterly.
He embraced the pillar. He pushed against it, clawed for purchase, and at last hauled himself up, smearing the stone with his blood. He wavered back and forth, almost falling again. The pain diminished slowly, and he wept to feel it leave. It was clean pain, deserved pain. It felt like the beginning of an offering.
He gasped at the revelation. He looked at the blood on his hands, and a smile of gratitude trembled on his lips.
The bells rang, filling him with urgency. The banners of the cardinal’s family hung next to the shrine. He tore them down. He strained until he ripped away a braided rope of silk, then piled the banners on the floor next to the pillar. He grabbed a votive candle from the shrine and set the flame against the banners. They burned reluctantly. They smouldered, filling the vestry with smoke. Orla rubbed his palm across the edge of the pyre, and was rewarded with a fresh wave of pain. He rubbed ashes over his face, then turned to his desk and took the amasec goblet that stood there. It took him three tries to smash it against the edge of the desk. Then, working hurriedly while the bells still rang, he took the shards of crystal and embedded them in the rope.
He left the vestry, taking the rope with him.
When he appeared at the pulpit, the choir began to sing, then faltered in its hymn as the people took in the sight of his face and his robes smeared with ash and blood. Realising that they stared, they tried to pick up the song. Orla held up his hands for silence.
Before he spoke, he reverently draped the rope over the lectern. He rubbed his fingers over a coil, and cut himself.
He smiled. He closed his eyes, experiencing a moment of gratitude before the weight of his shame descended on his shoulders once more. Then he met the expectant looks of his congregation. They knew, he thought. At a level they could not articulate, they knew what he was going to say. He would give voice to what was rising in their souls. He would speak the words of atonement.
‘I have failed you,’ he began simply. He raised his hands as if seeking blessing, then let them fall. ‘Children of the Emperor,’ he said, ‘it was my responsibility, and my calling, to guide you through the darkness. It was through me that you should always have known where to look to see the light of the Master of Mankind. Yet I failed you. I stood before you, as I do now, and I made gestures of worship. I asked you to pray, and you prayed. I bid you sing, and you sang. And I deceived you. I lied. I dared to instruct you in matters of faith, but I had lost my faith.’
He paused, lowering his head in shame at his hypocrisy. The silence of held breath filled the cathedral.
‘Was I alone, though?’ Orla asked, the whisper cutting through the vaults like a sharp gust of wind. ‘Was I alone?’ the cardinal repeated, louder now. ‘Was I the only one present who struggled to believe, and then failed?’
‘No,’ came the response. Hesitant at first, barely audible, uttered by a few souls so overcome by grief that they could not hold back the truth. ‘No.’ Louder now, more and more people taking courage from their neighbours. ‘No!’ The confession held in so long, concealed in the darkness of wounded hearts, bursting out now. ‘NO!’ A howl, a roar, the collective shame summoned by the individual one of the cardinal.
‘No,’ Orla said. ‘No! I was not alone! You were not alone! We were not alone! We are not alone. The proof has come to us that the Emperor still reigns over the Imperium. Proof that we should not need, proof that confronts us with our failure, and our shame. Oh, brothers, oh, sisters, what have we done? Oh, sisters, oh, brothers, I abase myself.’ He pulled his mitre from his head and held it before him. ‘How can I wear the mark of my office when I have so dishonoured it? I cannot.’ He put the mitre down and pointed to his face. ‘Look at these marks, though. Look at them! Look! They are the signs of my unworthiness, and the signs of my penance.’ He took a deep breath. ‘Penance!’ he shrieked. ‘That is what remains to me, and here I will not fail.’ He tore off his cardinal’s robes. He ripped open the shift beneath them. He seized the rope and lashed it against his naked torso. The rope raised a long welt. The crystal shards tore it open. ‘Emperor!’ he screamed. ‘Hear me! See me! This is my penance! Let me atone! Do not turn your gaze from me, I implore you!’ He hit himself again and again. The pain stole his breath. His eyes widened in grateful agony, and he dared to look upwards into the gloom of the vaults.
‘Join me!’ Orla called to the congregation, lashing himself between each sentence. ‘Seek forgiveness with me! We will never erase the shame of having dared to turn from the Emperor’s light while we lived. Let our final acts be those of perfect, absolute penance!’
He staggered against the lectern. The whipping hurt more than he would have thought possible, and he rejoiced in the sacrifice of his flesh. His arms, chest and back were soaked in blood, and he was growing weak. If he had not looped several coils around his wrist, he would no longer have been able to hold the rope.
Below him, the congregation answered his call with a frenzy of self-mortification. The people tore their clothes and their flesh. They howled in grief, and called punishment down on themselves for the sins of their doubts. They shouted praise of the Emperor, but this was no hymn. It was a desperate, maddened shriek. The cathedral walls shook with anguish. The people seemed to vie amongst themselves for the most extreme form of atonement, yet though the insanity of the mob had taken hold, every soul was isolated, too, enclosed in a bubble of tortured faith. As Orla gathered his breath and strength to resume his flagellation, he saw worshippers who had given in to the impulses he had had earlier, and torn out their eyes. People were dying, smashing their heads open against pillars or tearing their guts open with the points of candelabra.
What Orla saw was horrible. It was also beautiful. It was the great and final renewal of faith on Angriff Primus. It was the festival of atonement.
It must not end here, he realised. It was not enough to bring penance to the cathedral. He must do everything he could to save Algidus and all the world.
All the people must witness what was happening here. He must spread the message. There was a way back to the Emperor.
Grief mixed with joy and bodily agony. He descended from his pulpit. Arms upraised, he shouted his love for the Emperor at the top of his lungs. He made his way down the nave of the Saints Unforgiving. He paused every few yards to lash his back bloody. The congregation followed, and he took the great penance from the cathedral to the streets.
The mob of flagellants filled the square before the palace gates. People flowed into the square from the direction of the cathedral, while just as many ran, howling the message of penance, into other avenues leading off the square. Lights blazed from every window of the Administratum complexes that bracketed the approaches to the palace. Functionaries appeared at the windows and ran out the doors, adding their voices to the collective cry.
Outside the gates, Setheno and Furia moved into the mob.
‘Hold!’ Setheno shouted, her helmet’s vox-caster turning her voice into a thunder louder than the cries.
The portions of the crowd nearest the Sister of Battle and the inquisitor recoiled from her. Space opened up around the two women. But the penitent did not stop. They shouted their praise of the Emperor even louder. They held out pleading hands to Setheno, hands bloody from tearing at their faces and chests. She recognised one of the men. He was Cardinal Orla’s deacon. His robes were in tatters now. His eyes were wide, and h
e was screaming incoherently. The people howled louder and louder, as if the violence of their faith would make her receptive to their entreaties.
They begged for her mercy for a few seconds, and then were swept away by the flood. The flagellants avoided Setheno and Furia, and they became stones in the midst of a furious current. Though the people seemed eager to die for the Emperor, giving up their bodies in repentance, they turned away in fear of actual judgement. They had just enough self-awareness for that.
‘The faith of the populace has been renewed,’ Furia said.
‘This is faith uncontrolled,’ Setheno replied. ‘Without discipline, it can easily fall into heresy.’ She had to use her vox-casters to make herself heard, and Furia’s words were distorted by the high volume of her bionic larynx.
‘Then we must impose discipline.’ Furia lashed out with her neural whip, paralysing the flagellants in her vicinity.
‘Can we?’ said Setheno. But she raised her sword, searing the evening with its light. The people cried out, and the circle around the women widened, but the riot did not lessen.
‘Where is the militia?’ Furia demanded.
‘It is doubly absent.’ Only a few of the penitent wore the uniform of the Angriff Primus defence force, and there were no formations on the square, trying to restore order. ‘We can regain the square, but not without a massacre,’ Setheno told Furia. The futility of doing so was evident. The clamour resounded far beyond the square. The mass penitence was sweeping the city. ‘To maintain control of Algidus, we will have to take more drastic means, and on a larger scale.’
‘That is not why we came to fight.’ Furia’s whip lashed out, its electrical flash halting still more penitents.
‘Nevertheless, we will have to.’
Setheno strode back towards the gates. Furia followed. Once they were back inside, Furia said, ‘Our arrival caused this, didn’t it?’
‘Yes.’
The inquisitor was expressionless, but her body language conveyed unease. ‘I thought so, but hoped you would tell me I was wrong.’
‘What is it that you dread?’
‘That we are the trigger for the incursion foretold by the prognosticars.’
‘If that is the risk, then restoring calm in Algidus is all the more critical,’ Setheno said. She did not believe the goal was achievable. The fragile order she had imposed during the Noctis Aeterna was collapsing. She had always known it was a temporary measure, one that would end in favour of either the restoration of Imperial rule or a concerted assault by the Ruinous Powers. The end had come now, and she had no false hopes. She had very few hopes at all. That was the curse of her clarity of vision. She suggested the attempt because she wanted to gauge Furia’s reaction. She knew the inquisitor to be an Amalathian. The orthodox response would be to embrace the strategy of imposing discipline on Algidus and thus preserve what there was of Imperial order on Angriff Primus. The nature of the threats to the Imperium she had fought had brought her into frequent contact with more radical inquisitors. A Recongregator like Inquisitor Dagover might see the opportunity in what was happening to push the Imperium in a direction that would be more favourable to its survival than stasis.
Then again, there might be nothing ahead except disaster. If so, she would fight to the end to save what could be saved.
‘We may have a duty to make the attempt,’ Furia said. She was clearly pessimistic.
‘But…?’ Setheno prompted.
‘I know better, canoness. This is only the beginning.’
A system ripped from its place in the galaxy, its moons stripped away, and the number of planets orbiting its sun almost doubled. It hardly seemed a beginning. Except Setheno knew Furia was correct. Angriff Primus’ real tragedy was only now ready to unfold.
The Catharsis approached Angriff Primus slowly, pulling back when it became clear the Tyndaris was performing orbital patrols of the planet. Tarautas ordered another day’s wait. During that time, the passive scans picked up a spike in vox activity from Algidus. Ecstatic calls for penance filled the ether. Tarautas smiled as he listened to fragments of the vox-casts. The speakers were so consumed by the need for atonement that they were blind to the pleasure they were taking in destroying themselves.
‘There,’ he said, in the strategium. ‘Brothers, there is our call. I said it would come. As soon as the enemy ship takes up stationary orbit over Algidus, we will prepare to make planetfall.’ Already he could see that the preparations made by Erossus and his brothers before their deaths would prove their worth.
‘How do you know we will get that opportunity?’ Gothola asked.
‘Because they will have to.’ He gestured to the sounds of an ecstatic unravelling. ‘The rest of the planet is a lost cause. They will concentrate their strength in Algidus. And when they do, we can approach over the horizon from their position.’
‘To attack?’ said Casca.
‘Not quite,’ Tarautas said. ‘To provoke.’
Chapter Eleven
The Machinery of Betrayal
In the palace strategium, Furia said, ‘There is a way of ending the disturbance immediately.’
The entire strike force was present for the briefing. Crowe kept track of the seconds of his presence, weighing need against harm. He looked up from the tacticarium table’s lithograph of Algidus. ‘You are going to suggest orbital bombardment,’ he said.
‘I suggest we consider it.’
As an inquisitor, Furia had the authority to order Exterminatus for Angriff Primus if it came to that, but she was presenting the bombardment only as a possibility. She was deferring to Crowe’s leadership.
‘The proposal has the merit of efficiency,’ Setheno said. ‘We must consider whether there is any point in delaying what will have to be done in the long run.’
That was true. The presence of the Grey Knights was widely known in the city now. There was no way of containing the spread of the tales by that many witnesses. In the end, it would be necessary to cleanse Algidus.
‘It must be done,’ said Styer. ‘But not precipitately.’
‘What makes you hesitate?’ Crowe asked.
Styer turned to Gared and gestured for the Librarian to speak.
‘I have concerns about the effect of killing so many at this particular moment of religious frenzy. The release of uncontrolled psychic energy would be tremendous, and it would be occurring in a situation that we do not, as yet, understand.’
‘Meaning it could be precisely the action we are being manipulated to take,’ said Crowe. ‘I am concerned, too, with the symbolism. We descend on a planet that has managed to hold on to Imperial order during the Noctis Aeterna.’ He nodded to Setheno, acknowledging her accomplishment. ‘We then meet a sudden upsurge of faith with the destruction of the city and the masses of the faithful.’
‘The circumstances are hardly that simple,’ Sendrax protested.
‘They are not, but that does not make what I have said untrue. Justicar Styer is correct. We would be precipitate. Will we engage in this slaughter when there is no incursion? What better way is there to trigger such an incursion, while tainting our actions at the same time?’
‘I agree with your reasoning, castellan,’ said Setheno. ‘Be that as it may, we cannot let this riot of undisciplined penance continue unchecked either. Epistolary Gared is right to warn us about the psychic energy. That danger exists now, too.’
‘I believe the danger that energy poses is imminent,’ Gared said. On a screen next to the table, he called up a display of the Angriff system. ‘Lieutenant Ambach has succeeded in identifying the surplus planets as Desma and Contritus. It is Desma that is in close approach to Angriff Primus. While we have been concerned with this and other abnormally close intersections, there is another configuration that is only now becoming clear.’ He tapped the screen, changing the hololithic image. ‘This is how the relative p
ositions of the seven planets appear from Algidus when Desma rises tonight.’
‘An alignment,’ said Drake.
‘What does this portend?’ Sendrax asked.
‘We cannot say,’ said Crowe. ‘But the conjunction of unleashed energy with that event is ominous. We must therefore do what is possible to contain the energy. We will begin with blocking the main boulevards.’ He stabbed a finger at intersections on the tacticarium table’s map, radiating outwards from the Cathedral of the Saints Unforgiving. The lithographs turned bright red at the target areas. ‘The Malleus Maleficarum can bring down the structures at the nearest points. The Stormravens will take the ones further out. We must turn the streets into holding pens. We will seek to divide the mob, and thus limit its energy.’ He grimaced. The strategy was sound, but frenzy spread like wildfire. The Grey Knights were in a race they were unlikely to win with the resources they had.
‘This is urban pacification,’ said Sendrax, disgusted. It was a task beneath the honour of the Grey Knights.
‘Yes. It is also our most viable tactic at this moment.’ It was hardly satisfying, though. Its limitations and all the ways it would fall short leapt out at Crowe. ‘Any news of the militia?’ he asked.
‘The barracks appear to be empty,’ said Berinon. He and Warheit had taken the Purgation’s Sword and the Harrower on reconnaissance flights since the disturbance had begun. ‘We have seen some troops in the streets as flagellants, but not in large numbers. The majority have vanished. Vehicles and armour are still in place, from what we have been able to see.’
That was a small mercy in the midst of a developing pattern that pointed towards disaster. ‘Then we must assume an imminently hostile force, and amend our strategy. Brother Warheit, the intersections will be your responsibility. Brother Berinon, render the militia barracks inoperable. Begin with the bases closest to the cathedral sector.’ Dividing the gunship duties would halve the effectiveness of both approaches. So it would have to be. He could not see the full shape of the design that was forming, but he saw all too well how limited any strategy to stop it would be.
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