Saints and martyrs, p.20
Saints And Martyrs, page 20
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.
BEYOND, PART 6
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.
CELESTINE: REVELATION
ANDY CLARK
Machoria burned. The heat of its flames beat against her back. Blood-stink was in her nostrils, the cries of the fearful and wounded in her ears. Ash skirled around her on furnace winds. Celestine flexed her knuckles about the grip of the Ardent Blade. She planted her feet more firmly upon the roadway that led from the city gates and willed away the pain of her wounds.
‘Emperor, give me strength,’ she murmured, drawing comfort from the familiar words. The God-Emperor was always with her. In every war cry, every swing of her blade and every step she took. They had a pact, she and He.
While it endured, so too did that bond.
Still, His presence was hard to feel in this place. Warp fires swallowed the sky all the way to where the Khori Mountains rose like jagged horns on the horizon. Closer to hand, what had once been hydroponic fields had been reduced to blackened bedrock. The crops had been annihilated by the enemy’s bombardment, the waters turned to a steam that mingled with the blood-haze in the air. Corpses rose in tangled mounds before the walls. Some were the bodies of agri-labourers unfortunate enough to be caught outside the gates before they shut. Those were many days old now, barely more than bone. Others, fresher, had been soldiers of the Astra Militarum, brave men and women of the Coskan Minotaurs and the Sarmathian 86th.
All martyrs to the Emperor’s glory, she thought. All alike in death.
Their living comrades occupied trench lines that stretched along the foot of the walls to Celestine’s right and left. Others manned the Machorian battlements, doing their best to keep the city’s guns firing, even as flames licked up from the buildings below. They traded fire with the enemy’s artillery, hurling ordnance towards the foothills of the Khori range. Relentless volleys screamed back at them.
Horns brayed from within the mists. The sound was brazen, a ferocious roar that swelled until Celestine swore her bones vibrated. It droned on and on until she feared it must drive the Imperial soldiery mad.
At last, the horns faded. As they did, the panicked voices of Coskans and Sarmathians became audible from the trenches.
‘Steady, sons and daughters of Sarmathia, steady!’
‘They come again!’
‘No, please, no. Emperor preserve us.’
Gunshots rang out as regimental commissars did their duty.
Celestine wished her Sisters still stood by her side. All had fallen, every one of the Mission whose presence had anchored the Machorian garrison’s faith. Even her Geminae Superia were lost, their deaths more painful to Celestine than any physical wound. The enemy had come again and again, had focused their hate upon the Battle Sisters and spent countless lives to see them fall. Now Celestine was alone amidst the masses, a figurehead to those who remained but as separate from them as a lonely mountaintop was from the ocean floor. In divinity lay isolation.
The beasts come to finish me, and if I fall then all is lost.
She could see them now, insubstantial figures charging through the mists. Their war cries echoed as though across an impossible gulf. Yet their eyes shone fire-bright, hundreds of coals burning through the veil as the foe drew closer.
Daemons.
Celestine saw many-legged fleshmetal monsters lumbering through the enemy ranks, things whose maws blazed like furnaces. Cavalry came on like an avalanche of brass while there, in the centre of the line, strode a towering abomination clad in spiked brass armour. It bore an axe taller than Celestine in each fist. Eight horns crowned the monster’s helm. Braziers blazed atop its shoulders, skulls blackening amidst their flames.
‘Arnokh,’ Celestine growled. Then, in a calculated gesture of contempt, she turned her back upon the advancing horrors. She swept her gaze instead across the soldiers cowering in their trenches and raised her voice to a shout.
‘Soldiers of the Imperium. Men and women of the Emperor’s realm. Our enemies come to test us yet again.’
Servo-skulls hovered low, recording her address with auto-receptors and transmitting it to the thousands of Imperial soldiers still clinging to this city by their fingernails. Celestine felt their desperate need as a weight upon her soul, trying to drag her to her knees.
‘They have assailed us time and again. They have thrown at us all their hate! All their rage! But have we buckled before them? No!’
She could sense the foe getting nearer with every heartbeat, their menace swelling at her back, the ground vibrating beneath her feet.
‘We will never give way to these abominations. Why? Because they are filth, dredged from the darkness to test our faith, and that faith is strong!’
Celestine brandished the Ardent Blade high so that it gleamed like a star in the firelight. Soldiers gripped their lasguns tighter at that sight, stood taller, or so she hoped.
‘The God-Emperor is with us this day! His will is wrought in me, and I shall lead you to victory! Now fight, sons and daughters of the Imperium! Fight with me, and win!’
Celestine spun to face the foe’s onslaught. As she did so, she tried to believe her own words. Yet even as the guns of the Imperial Guard sang their hymn of death, even as daemons were struck down to tatter away in bursts of embers, she could not help but doubt.
The abominations are legion, and our soldiers so weary, she thought. Emperor, I am so weary.
Then the enemy were upon her and there was no more time for thought.
Blood-skinned daemons hissed, hacking at her in a frenzy. Celestine met their wild onslaught with controlled wrath. A parry, warp-forged darkness ringing against adamantium then a sweep that took her assailant’s head. A sidestep, a swing and a second attacker lunged past her with a howl of rage. She cut downward. Slicing the daemon in two, the Ardent Blade passed through the beast’s spine and out through its chest as easily as though Celestine had cut smoke. A third daemon fell to her blade. A fourth. With a thought, she triggered her jump pack, its outstretched wings carrying her clear of the foe.
‘For the God-Emperor!’ she yelled, surging back into the daemons and banishing two more with a mighty swing of her blade. Gore flecked their lips as they battered at her guard. Celestine’s sword sank into the eye socket of another daemon and blew it apart in a cloud of embers.
Keep fighting, she told herself. The Emperor is with you.
Celestine readied herself for a fresh onslaught.
It didn’t come.
The abominations melted back into the mists like wraiths, giving her a glimpse of las-fire blistering the air, of shells raining down upon the daemonic hordes. Wild with terror, soldiers ran from the monsters that hacked their way into the Imperial lines.
A new presence loomed before her. Arnokh the Bloodlord, master of this infernal host. Once he had been a Space Marine of the Emperor’s own Legions. What stood before her now was a charnel horror whose perfidy had burned worlds.
How far they fall…
‘The Emperor’s angel,’ he hissed.
‘The Blood God’s puppet,’ she replied, dropping into a guard stance. Arnokh was thrice her height and many times her stature, an armoured mountain driven by hate. She drowned in the stinking gloom of his shadow.
‘You have fought well for a corpse-worshipper,’ said Arnokh with a mocking chuckle. ‘I will honour your efforts by taking your head myself.’
‘Mightier than you have tried and failed,’ she spat.
‘There are none mightier than Arnokh the Bloodlord,’ he roared, hefting his axes and storming forward.
‘There is the Emperor,’ she replied with a grim smile. ‘There is me.’
Arnokh’s first swing came down like a thunderbolt. Celestine triggered her jump pack and sprang aside, leaving the axe to crater the roadway. One foot touched the ground before she fired her jump pack’s thrusters again and jetted forward, blade levelled at her enemy’s throat. Arnokh swayed aside but his sheer bulk counted against him. The Ardent Blade stabbed deep into his collarbone, giving a hiss like quenched steel as it met his blood. Celestine slammed one foot into Arnokh’s chest, ripping her blade free and firing her jump pack a third time. She twisted in the air, metal wings whirling as she spun away from his return blow. An axe passed so close to Celestine’s face that she could hear the damned souls screaming within the blade.
She landed in a fighting crouch.
Molten gore spilled from the wound in Arnokh’s shoulder. Celestine smiled without mirth, inclining her head.
‘You fight well, for daemon spawn.’
Arnokh bellowed. Celestine’s smile vanished as she felt empyric energies whirling towards her foe. The braziers on Arnokh’s shoulders flared as though someone had flung promethium on their flames. The blood-mist poured into him and his flesh glowed crimson, black veins standing out across his body as it swelled with might. His eyes blazed behind his visor, and suddenly, the blood-mist was thick enough to choke.
