Saints and martyrs, p.53
Saints And Martyrs, page 53
Branwen had tears in her eyes as she sponged her way along the flagstone corridor, dunking her brush into the bucket of caustic soap and slapping it down onto the dirty steps.
It was true, of course. She was a foundling. Everyone knew the story. An unwanted babe, spat out of the city and left at the abbey gates with just a swaddling blanket wrapped about her and a few hours of life within her hungry frame.
She would have died but for the charity of maid-of-all-work Kolpitts, who had taken her in and raised her as her own. And Branwen had tried so many times to be worthy of the life of servitude and prayer. But it was so very hard… Especially when she was so hungry.
‘Careful!’ a voice said.
Branwen had not heard the Sister approach. And now she had splashed the Sister’s armoured boot with filthy water. She did not dare look up. ‘Forgive me, holy Sister!’
The Sister knelt beside her and put her hand out. Branwen flinched as the Sister’s hand touched her chin and lifted her face. Through her tears the maid-of-all-work found herself looking directly into the Sister’s eyes. Her suit of armour was black as night, with a curling tracery of interwoven stems, acid-etched into the ceramite. Her face was fine as marble, her gaze resolute. Branwen was mortified. It was not just any Sister, but Lizbet of the Sacred Sword, the most sublime of the Battle Sisters in the abbey. Stories filtered down to the scullery maids of her skill with bolt and blade. Of terrible foes cut down in their pride. Heretics purged. Vengeance made real.
‘Forgive me!’ Branwen whispered and tried to pull away, but Lizbet held the maid’s hands. They were scabbed and raw. Lizbet pressed them between her own and spoke a prayer of spiritual fortitude. At the end she said, ‘For your enemies are brought down and broken, and we are risen and victorious.’
Branwen stared like one smitten. Sister Lizbet rose with the gentle whine of servos, her black power armour gleaming with reflected candlelight.
The refectory door opened and Sister Lizbet passed inside. For a brief moment the sound of prayer spilt out. Branwen could not understand a word, but the sound transfixed her. So pure, so transcendent was the song of angels that a wave of raw emotion swelled within her, filled her heart with fierce joy. She could still feel the touch of Lizbet’s hands and as she looked at her own, she saw that the raw scabs were gone.
Tears of joy rose through her as she finished her scrubbing and hurried down to the abbey cellars, bucket in one hand, rag in the other. The edificium was a place of wide walkways, heavy with prayer, but the stairs wound down to the servant quarters. They were dark and narrow, the undressed stone marked with simple icons of faith.
Branwen rushed into the slop hall, tipped the dirty water away, hung her bucket onto its hook, dried her hands upon her skirts and hurried through the wide chambers to the scullery.
It was the only warm room, where the maids sat before the fire in the moments when they could draw breath. There was a long trestle table, with plain wooden benches along either side, and a cast iron candelabra hanging from the stone ceiling, the candle flames guttering in the draughty chamber.
Branwen saw the table was empty, the stacked wooden plates picked clean. The day’s single meal had been eaten.
Branwen would not cry, she told herself, not when others were out there on the Obscurus Front, dying in their millions. The God-Emperor suffered for all time upon the Golden Throne, and what was her hunger compared to that?
She lifted her face to the candle flames to stop the tears from falling, and one of the cooks breezed in with a damp cloth and wiped the trestle boards clean.
‘What’s wrong, girl?’ the cook called out. ‘Don’t you have work to do?’
‘Yes,’ Branwen said, ‘but I have not eaten since yesterday, and I came down and–’
‘Then don’t be late next time!’ the cook snapped.
‘But–’ Branwen started.
‘Throne above! The pilgrim fleet has arrived, girl. We don’t have time for your fussing.’
Click here to buy Pilgrims of Fire.
Further fiction from Black Library featuring the Adepta Sororitas
THE ROSE AT WAR
Includes the novellas The Bloodied Rose, Wreck and Ruin and The Rose in Anger plus several short stories
Danie Ware
MORVENN VAHL: SPEAR OF FAITH
Jude Reid
PILGRIMS OF FIRE
Justin D Hill
SISTERS OF BATTLE: THE OMNIBUS
Includes the novels Faith & Fire and Hammer & Anvil plus two short stories
James Swallow
THE BOOK OF MARTYRS
Alec Worley, Phil Kelly & Danie Ware
MARK OF FAITH
Rachel Harrison
THE ROSE IN DARKNESS
Danie Ware
REQUIEM INFERNAL
Peter Fehervari
Other stories from the Warhammer 40,000 universe
LEVIATHAN
Darius Hinks
• DAWN OF FIRE •
Book 1: AVENGING SON
Guy Haley
Book 2: THE GATE OF BONES
Andy Clark
Book 3: THE WOLFTIME
Gav Thorpe
Book 4: THRONE OF LIGHT
Guy Haley
Book 5: THE IRON KINGDOM
Nick Kyme
Book 6: THE MARTYR’S TOMB
Marc Collins
Book 7: SEA OF SOULS
Chris Wraight
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Celestine: The Living Saint first published in 2019.
‘Celestine: Revelation’ first published digitally in 2020.
Ephrael Stern: The Heretic Saint first published in 2020.
The Triumph of Saint Katherine first published in 2022.
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