Chapter Five
Suspiriana Obligatio
The Thunderhawk Impunitas dropped out of the heavens.
St Ethalberg was a bitter, unforgiving world. As soon as the gunship broke the upper atmosphere it tumbled through a maelstrom of glass-shard gales and caustic snowstorms. Below, the planet surface was a stake trap of steeple-colossi, lofty towers and hive-shrine spires. A dark world of vertiginous devotion, reaching up into the chemical blizzard above.
Zachariah Kersh entered the cockpit. The helmscarl and his crew went to kiss their fists but the corpus- captain stopped them.
‘As you were.’
Kersh stared out through the hail-dashed canopy. Ahead was their destination. Carved from the frost- shattered peaks of the Vatic Heights was St Ethalberg’s administrative and episcopal capital. Here the monstrous pinnacles of the Palace Euphorica breached the clouds, the palace in turn nestling like a behemoth amongst the dark and forbidding sprawl of the grand cathedrals. It was from the daunting heights of the Palace Euphorica that the Ecclesiarchy provided spiritual guidance for the billions of pious St Ethalbergers below and for trillions more beyond the cardinal world and across the subsector. Highest of all was the bulbous tower known as the Pulpit, containing both the cardinal’s throne room and an Adepta Sororitas Preceptory.
‘My lord,’ the co-helmscarl called. Looking out to the left and right of the Thunderhawk, Kersh saw a pair of Vendetta gunships falling into escort position.
‘Identify.’
‘Ethalberg Inclements, fourth reserve.’
‘Defence force?’
‘Aye, my lord.’
‘Confirm our credentials and take us in,’ Kersh commanded.
Flanked by the local military aircraft, the battle-scarred
Silas Keturah and his neophytes were all clad in their ceremonial carapace and dark, hooded cloaks, which streamed behind them in the relentless gales. They clutched slender sniper rifles to their chests. Each trailed a clutch of neat cables that disappeared beneath their mantles as well as large magnocular sights, laser guidance and long barrels terminating in a chunky muzzle, decorated with a fluttering Chapter pennant. The Scout squad took ceremonial flanking positions and walked the Excoriators party into the cardinal’s palace. For his unpurged sins, Kersh had Ezrachi, Epistolary Melmoch and Chaplain Shadrath accompany him.
Above the landing pad, amongst the busy Gothic architecture of the Pulpit, Kersh spotted gun emplacements and demi-turrets mounting heavy stubbers and autocannon. This didn’t surprise the Scourge. The Palace Euphorica was not only the cardinal’s seat, it was also the residence of the planetary lord. On St Ethalberg these positions were one and the same. The local defence force therefore had the responsibility of securing the palace perimeter, though they were rarely tolerated beyond its gates. Kersh looked up at a crow’s nest and watched the Ethalberg Inclements shiver in their Guardsman’s flak and sink down into the moth-eaten fur of their lined jackets.
The Excoriators marched, dwarfed by the gargantuan archways, naves and vaulted aisles of the cathedral palace. They were greeted by a gushing wretch of a cleric-warden, whose responsibility it was to officiate the north-west advent-archway. Due to the altitude, and like everyone else who worked within the palace, the warden wore a smeared plas altitude mask. The warden chattered inanely as he led the Space Marines inside, the warmth of his breath a continual stream of white haze escaping his mask.
Inside the monstrous dimensions of the Palace Euphorica, flocks of ancient priests and miserable novitiates moved across the polished obsidian expanse like birds, while others emerged from the myriad confessional booths and private chapels lining the chambers. Muscular fraters in sectarian skirts and conical sackcloth hoods observed the Adeptus Astartes with obvious suspicion from the darkness of ragged eyeholes. Kersh observed the Redemptionists with equal suspicion, and in particular, the slung-straps and crescent clips of grubby autoguns that were protruding from behind their bully-boy backs.
The ambulatory along which they walked was punctuated with lecterns, pulpits and altars, while statues of all-but-forgotten saints and ecclesiarchs seemed to watch the Excoriators pass beneath their stony gaze. Behind these, at intervals along their path, Kersh spotted the gleaming darkness of the revenant’s plate – the deathless thing appearing much like a statue itself. The open space about the Excoriators was thick with the bass of devotional choirs and sibilant chanting, but the air itself was thin and gelid.
Through an endless succession of cavernous chambers, the Space Marines were led by the warden into the equally enormous palace throne room. Kersh snorted. A chill mustiness assailed his nostrils like the smell of bad meat in an ice-locker. The throne room itself boasted power-armoured sentinels: bolter-wielding members of the Adepta Sororitas. With their claret-coloured plate and dusty black vestments, Kersh recognised the Daughters of the Emperor as belonging to the Order of the Bloody Rose. He nodded his head at the Celestian in respect but found that his generous gesture was not returned.
Although the throne room was large, it seemed crowded, as befitting a centre of episcopal and administrative authority. A woebegone choir seemed to hold the same despondent note while a small legion of cenobite scribes scratched commandments and observances into vellum with barbed quills. Armed Redemptionists milled about the devotional throngs, while vergers lit candles and restocked globes of billowing incense that swung on extensive lengths of chain suspended from the chamber ceiling.
At the epicentre of the activity was a vaulted throne, sat atop a tall stone column. The column was situated between a nest of other stunted pillars, each displaying a fully armed Sister of Battle, standing statuesque around the throne. A rickety scaffold had been constructed about the structure to enable access to the column’s summit and the frame was swarming with Sisters of various Orders Hospitaller. The throne itself was illuminated by a shaft of kaleidoscopic light falling from a circular stained-glass window situated in the ceiling. The desiccated husk who sat upon the throne was buried in a mitre and the heavy robes of his calling. A mind of mulch, within the wasted body of an ancient, Cardinal Bonifacius Pontian occasionally dribbled recitations or befuddled prayers to the gathering.
At first Kersh took Pontian to be the source of the chamber’s crisp stench. The cardinal had probably been quietly rotting away on the throne for the best part of a half-millennium. But the smell was not Pontian. Casting his eyes up the wall of both sides of the throne room, the Scourge regarded what he thought at first glance to be decorative stone statues and gargoyles. Water ran from the goylespouts and down the architecture in the manner of an ornate water feature, to be collected in the fonts that lined the wall below. The water was clearly collected from the steeple architecture, after falling as caustic sleet from the bitter cardinal world sky. Upon second inspection, however, Kersh saw that the forms were not statues built into the wall but unfortunates chained from it. Heretics, witches and mutants – unbelievers all – suspended from the cathedral-palace walls. Their faces and extremities were black and frostbitten, their features dissolved in the baptism of an agonising chemical-freeze. Their slow suffering, in turn, blessed the waters of the fonts below – waters that were being collected and distributed in vials to favoured priests and devout clerics across St Ethalberg and the subsector beyond.
‘Sir,’ Ezrachi said, drawing the Scourge’s attention back to a pack of priestly jackals who were approaching the Excoriators. The cleric-warden backed away like a beaten dog. Four ecclesiarchs presented themselves; old, wiry men, knotted with age and cunning. The first had been surrounded by Sisters of the Order of the Eternal Candle, who had parted at his brusque insistence. He limped over to the Adeptus Astartes using an ornate cane and was joined by a priestly inferior, who had fire in his eyes. Another ecclesiarch had been in deep discussion with a Guard officer and his ensign, while a thick-set third had been flanked by two brutish Redemptionists, who looked more like bodyguards than part of the priest’s pious congregation. Peeling off from their retinues, the four converged on the advancing Excoriators.
‘Corpus-Captain Kersh,’ the first announced with a sickly smile. He jabbed his cane towards the Scourge. ‘I
