but at first we thought the enemy might have bypassed your insufficient number. When wives saw their husbands, and children their fathers, the crowd rejoiced. Until the killing started. I will not describe the bitter spectacle – not in the presence of the dead for whom we would wish nothing but an eternal peace. Many died, and in the mayhem it was impossible to tell murderer from victim. In the end, Palatine Sapphira ordered her Sisters to take blunt but decisive action to put an end to the atrocity. They cleansed the afflicted crowds with holy flame and…’ the pontifex struggled, seeming not to have further words for the description, ‘…that was an end to it.’
‘Pontifex,’ Kersh said, seeing the pain on the man’s face: his physical infirmity, the grief he felt for his people, and the spiritual agony he suffered at having such carnage taint the sacred earth of his cemetery world. The Excoriator felt it only fair to prepare the ecclesiarch for the truth that more was coming. ‘Let me speak plainly, as a warrior. What you have seen is but the beginning. The comet’s malign influence has turned your people against themselves and further bolstered the enemy’s number. My Epistolary suspects that the horrors we have witnessed thus far are merely immaterial overspill, the detritus of the warp, bleeding through into our existence. The Cholercaust is yet even to arrive. When it does, it will make what we have seen so far seem like nothing. An invasion made up of countless cultists, the Blood God’s daemonkin and, worst of all, our Traitor brothers – the World Eaters. They are Angels insatiable in their thirst for slaughter, unparalleled in their desire for wanton carnage. They were and unfortunately still are amongst the best the immortals have to offer on the battlefield. They head a Blood Crusade that has never known defeat – that has sundered hundreds of Imperial worlds – and they will kill everything on the surface of this planet.’
The ecclesiarch’s half-smile began to fall.
‘You are saying that defeat is certain. That you can’t protect us…’
‘I’m not sure anyone can,’ Kersh told him honestly.
‘But, I heard you tell your Angels–’
‘They are warriors,’ Kersh said, shaking his head. ‘They need to hear that. We are sustained by our faith.’
‘Faith in yourselves…’
‘Yes,’ Kersh nodded. ‘But to you I offer solemn truths. We are few in the face of legion. My men and I will fight for you. We will fight with the last of our strength, with but a single breath in our lungs and a single drop of blood left in our bodies. But when we fall – and we will, for the equations of battle are cold and certain – your people will be put to the blade.’
Oliphant’s head began to bob gently with dark understanding. Then he looked at the Excoriator with warm eyes and his simple smile.
‘You have your faith,’ he told Kersh, ‘and I have mine. You remember, when we first met, I said that I knew you would come?’
‘I do.’
‘He came to me, corpus-captain.’
‘He?’
‘The God-Emperor…’
‘Pontifex, with respect, you would not be the first cleric to claim to have experienced a divine visitation,’ Kersh said softly.
‘I know not whether I were dreaming or awake,’ Oliphant continued, staring off into the distance. ‘The God- Emperor came to me. Glorious in His corpse-lord’s plate – black as the depths of space – yet impossible to look upon, like a sun or the fierce glare of some bright star.’
Kersh couldn’t believe what he was hearing.
‘You have seen this?’
‘Many times,’ Oliphant confirmed, his gaze still fixed some way distant. ‘Before you arrived. And since. It is how I knew His Angels were coming. That help was on its way. That we were destined for the Adeptus Astartes’ protection.’
‘You see him still?’
‘From time to time,’ Oliphant smiled. ‘He walks among us. He is in the corner of the eye, in the shadows, waiting to reveal His true purpose. It is His mysterious way.’
‘I don’t know what that is,’ Kersh told him honestly. ‘But I don’t think it is your God-Emperor.’
‘We shall see, sir,’ the pontifex said. ‘He will reveal Himself to you in due course.’ Kersh grunted. ‘The God- Emperor fights on our side, Angel. Have faith in that.’
Kersh thought of the Emperor – now all but a corpse on his sarcophagus-throne.
‘Pontifex,’ the Scourge said. ‘The Adeptus Astartes live for victory and the Great Dorn has shown us that there are many kinds. Stood amongst the corpses in the Imperial Palace, with the Emperor – all but dead – returned to the safety of its thick walls, the primarch would have felt little desire to celebrate victory. Walking from the deathtrap of the Eternal Fortress – a survivor of Iron Warriors ingenuity and the Iron Cage – Dorn would have felt no jubilation. These were not victories in a traditional sense – those to which mortals aspire when they see demigods crafted in stone and bronze, and hear of the exploits of heroes. Demetrius Katafalque, in the
‘What are you saying?’ Oliphant mumbled, entranced by the Excoriator’s words.
‘Do you trust me, pontifex?’
‘I do, Angel.’
‘And do your people trust you? Will they do as you ask – no matter how strange and daunting the road you ask them to take?’
‘They are my flock. I am their shepherd. The God-Emperor shows me the path that I might lead and they follow.’
Kersh looked around at the crowds of cemetery worlders. He imagined the Certusians in their thousands and thousands, huddled about the Memorial Mausoleum. He took a deep breath and nodded slowly to himself.
‘Gather your flock, pontifex,’ the Scourge told him finally, ‘and as many shovels as you can lay your hands on. Your people take the crow road tonight…’
Sister Sapphira rose from the baptismal waters of the communal font. Rivulets of holy water cascaded down and around the curves of her purified flesh. Droplets splashed against the surface of the pool and then spattered the cool floor of the chancery as the palatine stepped out into the towels and attentions of her Sisters.
She stood there in silence as members of her mission proceeded to dry her and dash her with consecrated ash from an itinerant stoup. All the while, incense burned from globes suspended from the ceiling and prayers were whispered by the attending women. As Sapphira’s limbs, torso and bust were bound with sackcloth ribbon, Sister Klaudia – wearing her cornette and ceremonial robes – read from Saint Severa’s
Sapphira felt the sting of the baptismal bath, replaced by the chill of the chancery air, in turn replaced by the raw irritation of the sackcloth. The chamber-candles flickered, allowing the shadows to momentarily encroach. About the chancery pillars and devotional stonework of the entrance-archway, the palatine thought she saw movement. The Sister’s spine became host to an irrepressible shiver and her bare flesh pimpled. Her nightmare had returned. A giant in midnight plate. An emissary of death. A vision of netherworld insanity.
It had haunted her. She could feel its presence, like a predator stalking its prey. A thing of the beyond, come to test her faith. She had sensed it while at devotion, during lonely sentinel duty and down in the consecrated vault, where she attended upon the sacred bones of Umberto II and her obligations of protection and preservation. She had even awoken to the nightmare watching her sleep in her private cell. From the darkness Sapphira saw the glow of unnatural life, the radiance of an eye watching her through the rent of a battle-smashed helm. It was the horrid attention of that eye and visions of the ghostly warrior that drove Sapphira to hope that her own eyes deceived her. She prayed to Saint Severa and Umberto II for guidance, and had almost begged confession of Pontifex Oliphant. She could not bring herself to confide in her Sisterhood – especially at a time of such uncertainty. With the discovery of the Ruinous monument and the arrival of the Adeptus Astartes, there never seemed to be an appropriate time to admit her affliction, and Sister Sapphira had taken refuge in the regularity of baptismal baths, consecrational dustings and blessings.
The light of the all-seeing eye dimmed as two Sisters in the slender, cobalt plate of their calling entered the
