Saints and martyrs, p.33
Saints And Martyrs, page 33
‘I will,’ Stern said. Macrina’s tone was neutral, but she had come instead of Dagover. The flush of hope warmed Stern’s veins. That was the strength that she needed. She was ready.
Dagover was waiting for them in the vestry. If he was surprised to see Macrina arrive with Stern, he did not show it. They gathered around the great table, looking down at maps they already knew too well.
‘We have been stymied,’ said Macrina.
‘I disagree,’ said Dagover. ‘We have confirmed that the plateau to the east is the enemy’s stronghold. I believe it was our approach that triggered the escalation. The foe sought to destroy us, and Sister Superior Stern in particular. The attempt failed, and the most significant weapon in our foe’s arsenal has been destroyed.’
‘True,’ Macrina granted. ‘I give thanks to the Emperor that we will no longer encounter our sisters in such a desecrated form. The daemon engines that are making their way here are not insignificant, though. Enough of them, and they will breach the cathedral’s defences.’
‘Then we must defeat the true foe before that happens,’ said Stern.
Macrina looked at her. ‘How?’
‘By finishing what we began. We have not retreated, Canoness, and we are not in a stalemate. We know where the enemy is, and that is where I will go.’ Stern turned to Dagover. ‘Alone, this time. I will confront and destroy him.’
‘Him,’ Dagover said. ‘You know something the rest of us do not?’ He did not sound as if that idea pleased him.
‘You are Ordo Xenos, inquisitor. You have not fought as many forms of the Ruinous Powers as I have. In making war against them, I have come to know the nature of daemons, their worshippers, and all of their degree. The patterns are more visible to me.’
And there had been a cost for this knowledge, Stern thought.
‘The presence of so many daemon engines, and the nature of what happened to the fallen Sisters of Battle suggests the actions of a Master of Possession.’
‘Yes,’ Macrina said slowly. ‘Yes. Your reasoning is sound. But the scale of what is being done here is colossal. If you are correct, then this is a Master of Possession whose power is truly monstrous.’
‘I believe that is the case,’ said Stern.
‘You plan to confront him alone?’
‘I see no other choice.’
‘A massed advance,’ Dagover suggested. ‘We do not act separately this time.’
‘No,’ said Stern. She bowed to Macrina. ‘I mean no slight to your commandry, Canoness, when I say it would be too slow. I can get to the plateau faster on my own.’
‘This is our fight too,’ Macrina said coldly. ‘Do not think you can take it from us. We were lured here, and we will not be spectators.’
‘It is interesting that you, and therefore we, were lured to this particular location,’ said Dagover. ‘A point on the planet so close to the centre of power.’
‘The closer to the centre, the greater the power,’ said Stern. ‘This is where our enemy has the greatest chance of victory.’ She turned to Macrina. ‘Canoness, I would never dishonour the order by suggesting it stand aside. But I must go alone. Think of how many means of attrition and distraction the enemy could use. Advancing on the ground, we could well be truly stymied. Our foe has an inexhaustible supply of troops. Too far from the shelter of the cathedral, and there are limits to what any of us could do to stave off defeat.’
Macrina scowled, but did not contradict Stern.
‘If the Order of Our Martyred Lady makes a stand here,’ Stern continued, ‘then it still takes the battle to the enemy. You can fight long and hard in the cathedral. The forces against us will be divided by two targets, as they were earlier, but you will be in a stronger position.’
‘And your position?’ Dagover asked. ‘Will it be stronger?’
‘That is irrelevant,’ said Stern. ‘It is what is necessary. It is what I am called upon to do.’
X
POSSESSOR
The Lord of Severitas strode the length of his ramparts, watching the coming of night. There were threats to his reign out there. He knew that one would almost certainly come for him before dawn. The knowledge did not concern him. He felt no need to think about it. Instead, he enjoyed the death of another day, and revelled in the power of the faith of others.
He held the faith of millions in his grasp. It coursed through his veins. It made reality dance to his command. Its nimbus crackled down his cloak, flashing crimson and violet and blue and green as the cloak billowed in the wind. At each step, he tapped the rockcrete of the rampart with the tip of his staff. When he did, the surface twisted. For a brief moment, he walked upon flesh, and it screamed in pain.
Varak Ghar sighed with pleasure. He flexed his arms as if rolling the shape of faith from shoulder to shoulder. He gloried over its possession. The setback his forces had suffered earlier in the day was so trivial that it was barely an irritation. If his victory had not come then, it would come tonight, or the next day. He rather liked the delayed gratification. He could savour the slaughter a little bit longer.
Faith was an engine. It was the greatest of engines. Next to it, Krezen Pak’s creations were trivialities. They were amusing, and they were useful, but they were nothing without the daemonic life that Varak Ghar gave them when he tore up the veil to the warp and brought in the entity that would give movement and volition to a construct. The engines were one physical extrusion of faith. They were but the iceberg tip of the power the Word Bearers Master of Possession commanded.
The corruption of Severitas was his masterwork, a culmination of millennia of labour and study. It was here, finally here, that he had harnessed the collective faith of a population. So much energy, so much power, was contained in belief. How many cults had he founded, on how many worlds, before he had discovered the precise teachings that would accomplish what he sought? He had lost track. In the end, he had achieved his goal. He found the words, the shaping words. The revelation of Chaos spread through the population, and the people turned to the worship of the true gods. In the way they worshipped, they made Varak Ghar their intercessor. They believed that it was only through him that they received the blessings of the gods. And so all their energy of belief was directed to him, seeking his favour, his blessings of power.
Millions of prayers. Millions of rituals. All of them centring on Varak Ghar. With every prayer, he grew stronger. The faith of Severitas flowed through him like an electrical current, unending, ever-blazing.
He possessed an entire world.
But a challenger had come, and she refused to be stopped.
He would have to show her the error of her ways.
Bootsteps approached from behind. Varak Ghar growled under his breath. He moved to the parapet and stood still, looking west. He resented having his solitude disturbed, especially by Krezen Pak.
‘Are you indulging in victory before you have earned it?’ the Warpsmith asked.
Reluctantly, Varak Ghar turned his head to gaze at the other Word Bearer. He was a full head taller than Krezen Pak, and the great, curled horns of his skull added still more to his height. The Warpsmith’s features were hidden inside his crowned helmet. The red glow of his eye-lenses shone balefully from its shadowed crevices. His eight clawed mechadendrite limbs moved restlessly, a signal of his anger.
‘Victory has already been earned,’ Varak Ghar said. ‘It is certain. It is written.’
‘It did not look written yesterday. It looked anything but written.’
‘You are bitter over the loss of your trinkets. Your horizons should be broader.’ Krezen Pak was a mere labourer. His daemon engines were nothing without the entities that Varak Ghar summoned. What the Warpsmith made was useful, but only to the extent that the constructs were endowed by Varak Ghar’s creative flame.
The mechadendrites twitched. The claws snapped. ‘My engines–’ Krezen Pak began.
‘Had better do what I ask of them,’ Varak Ghar interrupted, reminding the Warpsmith of his place.
Krezen Pak refused the lesson. ‘You should ask more of yourself,’ he said. ‘What of your creations? What of those corpses that were going to hand us victory in a single march?’
Varak Ghar shrugged. ‘They would have, if not for the greater enemy.’
‘If not… If not…’ Krezen Pak snarled. ‘If not for her, the Adepta Sororitas would have been destroyed days ago. You did not need to reanimate them then. You did so in answer to the one who came to save them.’
‘I did,’ said Varak Ghar. ‘That is true. Everything I have done and everything I have commanded for quite some time has been in answer to her. Her coming was foretold.’
‘Then why does she still live?’
‘To make her death all the more satisfying.’
Krezen Pak’s limbs scraped and tapped against the crenellations of the wall. ‘I am not satisfied.’
He never was. What of it? Varak Ghar cared little for his satisfaction. Krezen Pak was here to serve him. ‘And?’
‘I would prefer to stop her before she reaches this position.’
Varak Ghar shrugged. ‘Your preferences are what they are.’ And they were irrelevant.
‘You are too certain. We have not fought the likes of her before.’
‘We have not. I wonder if many of our brethren have. We came to Severitas, we took it, and then the omens of her coming began. We are here for a purpose. The gods have tasked us with her destruction.’ Glory upon glory. Glory upon glory. He kept his pleasure to himself. If Krezen Pak was too lowly to understand it, he was too lowly to share in it.
‘Beware your arrogance, Master of Possession.’
Varak Ghar growled. His fingers tightened around his staff, but he held back from striking the Warpsmith. This was not the time. He was confident in victory, but he was not a fool. There was work to be done. ‘Very well,’ he said, when he had calmed himself. ‘What would you do? The new assault on the cathedral is already underway.’
‘Destroy her there if we can.’
Krezen Pak’s stupidity was beyond tolerating. Varak Ghar would have to rid himself of the fool before long. ‘What?’ he asked acidly. ‘Do you imagine I have given orders that she be left untouched?’
‘Send all the engines in. If they do not kill her there, she will encounter them between the cathedral and here.’
‘Oh, very well. Do as you please.’ What did it matter? Let the Warpsmith have his way, and he would leave Varak Ghar in peace for a time. If Krezen Pak could not see that he was repeating the very tactics whose failure he had decried moments ago, let that be on his head. There was a chance a greater mass of weapons might succeed. Varak Ghar would be disappointed if they did, though he would accept that as the will of the gods. More likely, though, the engines would weaken her. She would not be able to see the greater trap waiting for her.
The flesh on Varak Ghar’s skull had petrified thousands of years before. It resembled a cracked, grey clay coating over bone. He could not smile. Yet he could still feel the sensation of pleasure that would have made him smile. He felt that now. Tiresome as he was, Krezen Pak did serve a purpose. Varak Ghar saw now that the greater effort on the ground below the plateau would be the prologue to his personal triumph. Krezen Pak was his tool always and forever, even when he tried to go his own way.
How perfect were the dictates of fate!
‘Go on then. Release the engines. Let her play with them.’ He was careful to show disdain. It would not do for Krezen Pak to think he was acting according to Varak Ghar’s wishes after all.
Deny it he would, but the Warpsmith was Varak Ghar’s possession too.
To the west, on the hill of the Cathedral of Saint Thecla the Unyielding, a star rose, piercing silver in its baleful purity.
‘There,’ said Varak Ghar. ‘She comes. I think we will put an end to things.’
As the star flew towards the plateau, Varak Ghar stretched out his hand. His grasping fingers closed, and his will reached down to the tens of thousands of his followers near the base of the cliff. He had given them their faith, and now he demanded it back. His jaws opened in the ecstasy of power as he seized the strength of collective faith for himself.
Beside him, Krezen Pak was silent.
The Warpsmith felt awe, then, Varak Ghar thought. That was good. He should.
Stern passed over the heretics closing in once more on the cathedral. They chanted their unholy prayers louder than ever. No human tongue should have been able to form those poisonous words, those malefic syllables. Stern heard the same song that the risen Sisters had proclaimed. The memories that it summoned were dangerous, and poisonous to the soul. In the midst of the heretics came the daemon engines. Maulerfiends crushed celebrating cultists beneath their feet. Heldrakes screamed in the falling night, and flew towards the roof. There were more of the giants carved out of manufactories, walking cauldrons striding forwards to the siege.
The assault was massive. Not a wave but a tide, an ocean coming for the Sisters of Battle. The commandry was fierce, and the walls of Saint Thecla’s were colossal. That would not be enough. Not in the long run.
She could stop that engine. And the one after that. She could hold back the tide.
No. She could not. She would be a single breakwater against a storm surge. The most she could do was briefly delay the crash. There was only one way to stop the enemy. Only one way to win. She would not be helping if she stopped to fight. If she did, she would be the one being delayed. She would be making herself the guarantor of the enemy’s victory.
She grimaced in pain at the thought of what she was leaving her sisters to face, and she flew. But as she did, she realised how naturally, how easily, she had thought of the Sisters of Battle as her sisters. The joy gave her strength. It submerged the pain of her wounds. And she gave thanks to the Emperor for guiding her to this moment.
She turned her gaze from the swarm of heretics and monsters. She rose higher, and the cultists became ants below, an undulating movement in the darkness, obscured by smoke and briefly revealed by flame.
She focused on the plateau. The true enemy waited there. He had held Stern and her sisters back until now, but in doing so, he had shown his hand.
‘Guide my flight, Father of Mankind,’ she prayed. ‘Make me your spear, that I may pierce the heart of your foe.’
Faster, higher. She flew on the wings of sacred wrath. The plateau came into sight. Streaks of fire led from its base, the marks of the daemon engines’ passage. Until she was about a mile from the base, the heaving insect carpet of the heretics was still below her. Then the landscape changed. It stilled. All the daemon engines had passed, making for the cathedral. Stern was surprised, though, that the thronging of the heretics seemed to have stopped completely.
The stillness felt ominous. There was something in the air, something dark, as if great sorcerous currents were at play, so huge they were almost beyond perception.
She flew lower, and saw that this sector of the city was not deserted. The roads were clogged with bodies. Thousands upon thousands of corpses surrounded the base of the plateau. They lay frozen in the agonies of death. They were desiccated, hollowed out, like the husks of wasps.
On her guard, Stern headed up towards the top of the plateau. The sensation of flying through a field of power grew stronger. It was a feeling of being pulled, not spiritually but physically, as if a tremendous will were seeking to yank her soul from her body.
An immense action was occurring. It had drained the essence from every heretic for a span of miles. Stern wondered if her foe could really be what she had surmised. Could what she saw be the work of a single being? Could she hope to defeat him?
Yes. Because it was not she who would defeat him. It would be the God-Emperor, acting through her.
Stern reached the peak of the plateau. Before her, a fortress brooded. It was a patchwork, and it was a unity. It was a conglomeration of desecrated chapels and twisted manufactories, forced together to create a bastion of the Ruinous Powers. Flying buttresses and ore conduits entwined like sinew. The fortress looked like a flayed beast, its muscles exposed.
The central block was the height of the Cathedral of Saint Thecla. It was wider than the cathedral. Its wings, two-thirds as tall, extended for a mile to the north and to the south. They curved inwards at their tips, the daemonic architecture turning the ends of the fortress into talons. Chimneys thrust out of the fortress like spines, belching foul, black smoke. There were no windows, except near the crown of the central mass. Two wide, jagged apertures pulsed red, the eyes of madness.
Beneath the eyes, the entire middle of the façade was densely packed with grilles that opened and closed, unleashing geysers of flame. They formed a single, gargantuan maw. The fortress seemed to look back at Stern, and welcome her arrival in its own right.
She streaked towards the crown, Sanctity held before her, its blade shining in anger. Then all the grilles opened at once. A wall of flame thundered up at the sky. The fortress roared. It roared. It lurched, a thing given abhorrent life and motion. Its wings tore themselves up from the ground. They reached around for her, so huge they blotted out the world. She shot up, racing for freedom, but the fortress was too vast, and too quick. With rockcrete and metal screaming and grinding like a mountain rockfall, its terrible embrace came for her.
Talons a hundred feet long slammed together, and seized their prey.
XI
THE BLOOD OF FAITH
Dagover kept asking himself how this would end, and what he still hoped to achieve. He struggled to see what, exactly, he thought he was reaching for, even in the midst of the siege.
The cannons roared from the battlements of Saint Thecla’s. Crater upon crater opened in the street. The bodies of the heretics, reduced to fragments and blood, turned the shattered streets into a swamp of gore. Daemon engines, hit full-on by shells, blew up, taking scores of cultists with them.
