‘Just a blessing then, to consecrate your efforts here and protect you and your Angels in the prosecution of the God-Emperor’s will. After all, does not the God-Emperor fight on our side?’
‘Our bolters protect us under such circumstances,’ Kersh told the pontifex. ‘And as I indicate, we are unlikely to be planetside when the sun rises. If there is an evil here then we shall not dally in its destruction. Further evils wait for our bolt-rounds and blades on other worlds, and we are not in the habit of keeping the Emperor’s enemies waiting.’
‘Well,’ Oliphant said finally, holding on to a weak smile, ‘we shall see, sir. Let me instead introduce you to three of our flock charged with cemetery world security. I think they are best placed to advise you on our problems.’
Three figures stepped forwards from the shadowy gathering around the edge of the chamber. ‘May I introduce High Constable Colquhoun of the Charnel Guard, Palatine Sapphira of the Order of the August Vigil and Proctor Kraski of the enforcers.’
‘Honoured to be serving beside you,’ Colquhoun said crisply. He gave a grim but reverent salute to the rim of his feather bonnet before returning his black-gloved hand down beside the tapered barrel of an officer’s laspistol. Palatine Sapphira, conversely, had a pout of positive dislike crafted into her uninviting features. Her slim, cobalt power armour sported two chunky Godwyn-Deaz-pattern bolt pistols at the thighs and an ermine cloak that hung from her shoulders. She compulsively fiddled with a silver aquila hanging around her neck and burrowed into the Excoriator with her dark eyes.
‘The pontifex has overplayed our part, I’m afraid,’ she told Kersh with a voice of steel. ‘My mission here only looks to the preservation of Umberto II’s remains and the security of the Memorial Mausoleum.’
Kersh had encountered the Order of the August Vigil before, on the genestealer-infected shrineworld of Alamar, where Sisters of the order had been charged with safely evacuating the bones of Saint Constantine in advance of planetary Exterminatus. Their Order Minoris specialised exclusively in the security of Ecclesiarchical relics and sites of Cult significance.
Unlike the immaculate Guard officer and Battle Sister, Kraski was a grizzled veteran. An arbitrator in the senior years of his life, he was charged with keeping order and upholding Imperial Law with a small team of enforcers on the tiny cemetery world. His ragged beard moved to the motion of his jaw working on a vile slug of chewing tobacco, while the smashed lens of a bionic eye stared back at Kersh with blind obsolescence. His enforcer carapace was scuffed and blistered, while the black fur of his greatcoat was dusted with the sandy, Certusian earth. Sitting slung across one of his shoulders, however, was the gleaming barrel and pump-mechanism of an oiled and lovingly maintained combat shotgun.
‘Words are for poets and priests,’ Kraski told the Excoriators, pushing the plug of tobacco from one side of his mouth to the other with his tongue. ‘I’ll take you straight to the Exclusion Zone and there you can see the work of evil first-hand.’
The Scourge nodded. ‘After you, proctor,’ he said with solemn appreciation. The corpus-captain had the feeling he was going to like the arbitrator.
The maid Marika knew only her holy duties. As a vestal it was her privilege to escort the Lord High Almoner about the narrow passages and crooked stairwells of Obsequa City. The Lord High Almoner had a sacred responsibility: the redistribution of wealth. The Adeptus Ministorum taxed Certusians on the Imperium’s behalf and its demands were harsh. Maid Marika very much enjoyed her role, amongst two trains of her sister vestals, accompanying the Almoner during his ceremonial act of virtue, pressing coin back into the hands of the poor and needy.
Marika gently swung her incense burner back and forth on a silver chain, allowing the fragrant mist to billow about her and behind the Lord High Almoner’s train. A sweet indication of their passing that hung in the air and reminded common Imperials that the God-Emperor still had a charitable thought for them. The incense often made Marika light-headed and the virgin indulged this, walking about the sheer city streets in a dreamy daze.
As she crossed St Lanfranc’s corpseway, at the rear of the train, she became enveloped in a cloud of incense and stopped by the cobbled crossroads to rub her watery eyes. As both the smoke and tearful blur cleared she was struck by a vision. Marching down the corpseway were demigods in plate, the giants of legend and antiquity, only immortalised for common Imperials in the stonework of cathedral architecture. Marika could not believe her smoky eyes. The Adeptus Astartes. On Certus-Minor. Her gaze fell from the scars on their immortal faces, across the scars decorating their ancient ceramite and down to their dread weaponry. The cavernous muzzles of handheld cannonry. Sheathed blades of unimaginable keenness, honed to death-dealing perfection. Thick digits. Broad hands. Housed in ceramite and throbbing with the God-Emperor’s own murderous strength.
‘Maid Marika!’
Fury – untold. An awakening.
The Adeptus Astartes were gone. The vestal stood alone and had done for some time.
Chancellor Gielgus ventured through the perfumed smoke that cloaked the alleyway. ‘Marika, where in Terra have you been?’ he scolded. ‘The train is stopped. The poor are waiting. The High Almoner is furious.’
As the chancellor approached he could hear the whoosh of the incense burner swinging around at speed. Finally, he came upon the silhouette doing the swinging. ‘Stop that, child,’ he ordered. The Maid Marika was still but for the blazing arc of the incense burner, which was pouring out smoke. As he came closer, stroking his beard, the chancellor said, ‘What has come over you?’
Something was wrong with her face. As he neared and the mist between them became thinner, he could see that the vestal’s eyes were blank orbs of unseeing red. ‘Marika?’
Chancellor Gielgus only heard the beginning of a wrath-fuelled screech. The silver incense burner broke its searing orbit and smashed down on the top of his skull. Brained, the old man fell to the gutter, only to have the demented vestal fall upon him again and again with bludgeoning blows from her flailing burner. His stymied calls for mercy – and then help – went unanswered, as through the smoke the blood sprayed and the Maid Marika became as one with her unnatural rage.
Braughn Menzel rested his boot against the blade of the shovel and forced the tool down through the sandy earth. The cutting crunch of the spade filled the fosser with a strange satisfaction. There was nothing like the sound of sharpened plasteel slicing through cemetery world earth. The gravedigger needed something to keep him going. His shoulders burned and his back ached. The grave was unfinished and he would have a hundred more to dig before the end of the week. The mortuary lighters brought an unending supply of the dead from necrofreighters down to the Certusian surface. The prestige of spending just a century in the same precious earth as Umberto II drew cadavers from light years around. Senior officers of the Guard, Imperial Navy commanders, the inbred swine of hive-world Houses, merchants, Navigators, planetary nobility and devoted members of the Ecclesiarchy itself were all buried in Certus-Minor’s sacred topsoil. On the other side of the cemetery world Braughn’s opposite toiled, digging up coffins and sarcophagi for shipment back to the families following the expiry of the lease. An unending cycle of inhumation and exhumation on a planetary scale.
Tossing the dirt up and over his shoulder, Braughn came to a stop. He rested against the shovel’s stalwood shaft. Sometimes Braughn allowed his sons Yann and Otakar to watch the mortuary lighters at work when they should have been digging with him. At thirteen and fifteen there was precious little excitement in their lives, and the best that they could hope for was recruitment into the Charnel Guard and the possibility of one day travelling off- world with an Imperial Guard regiment. There would be no watching for lighters today – not with word that the Emperor’s Angels had come to Certus-Minor. The boys had caught a glimpse of the Space Marine gunship as it left Obsequa City and thundered overhead bound for the Great Lakes. Braughn little expected his sons’ eyes to leave the sky for the rest of the day.
He reached over the side of the grave and took a plas bottle from beside the tombstone. Yann had brought mule’s milk from their shack at the cenopost. His mother had corked it with a rag which Braughn proceeded to extract before squeezing the liquid into his parched mouth. He gulped down the sour milk with relish before wiping his mouth with a dusty sleeve. An odd noise grabbed his attention, a dull, metallic thud.
‘Boys?’ Braughn called. When no answer came, the fosser kicked a toe grip into the grave wall and grabbed the edge of the tombstone in an effort to haul himself out of the grave. Halfway out of its depths Braughn looked up to see his youngest son Yann laid out in the cemetery world grit. Braughn felt his heart drop. ‘Yann!’ he yelled miserably. The side of the boy’s head had been caved in and his lifeblood was leaking into the earth. The fosser tried to scramble out of the grave. ‘Otakar!’ Braughn called with fearful urgency. Turning his head, the fosser found his eldest son stood behind the tombstone. He held his shovel above his head like an axe. His eyes were blood-blind
