Legion of the Damned

like he did before, when you and mama stayed with Aunt Merelda up near Great Umberto’s tomb.’

‘Papa!’

‘Peace, child. I will be with him,’ Donalbain said, smiling as he came up behind them. Goody moved from her husband’s embrace to her brother-in-law. The large fosser looked down at her. ‘Where’s your sister?’

‘Merelda’s on her way down with the boys,’ Goody replied before returning to the arms of her husband.

‘Have you got everything?’ Woodes asked her as Donalbain picked up Nyzette.

‘Everything the pontifex instructed us to take,’ Goody replied, taking a sling bag from her shoulder. She pulled a roll of blankets from the bag and as she did caught a glimpse of the open grave behind Woodes, the open coffin and the skeletal woman within. ‘Oh, Holy Throne,’ she exclaimed, clasping her mouth with her hand.

‘Don’t look at it,’ Woodes said, taking one of the blankets and covering the desiccated cadaver.

‘Can’t we remove it?’ Goody said, horrified.

‘Not without arousing suspicion,’ Donalbain said, angling the child’s head away. ‘Besides, disturbing the grave is desecration enough. Removing the body before the end of tenure? That’s sacrilege. The pontifex would not hear of it.’

‘What else have you got there?’

Goody opened the bag to show her husband the meagre rations of food she’d managed to collect and the water satchel she’d filled from one of the city’s holy fountains. She also had a small, pack-powered handlamp and a bunch of black lilies. The flowers grew along the Certusian lakeshores and were used for decorative arrangements during burial ceremonies. Goody aimed to use them to mask the musty grave-stench of the coffin. Woodes caught sight of a small knife. A stiletto shearing-blade, hidden amongst the death-blooms. He caught Goody’s eye and nodded bleakly. If events did not unfold according to plan, with silence from above and provisions spent, the blade would become the most essential of her gathered items.

Woodes looked at his wife, her gaunt but beautiful face. He took her again in a tight embrace. Over her shoulder he saw Donalbain nod. Woodes’s eyes drifted skywards to the darkness, knowing that they had little time, that the enemy would not wait. Looking down he saw that there were now several Excoriators stood on the rubble battlement looking down at them. The Emperor’s Angels were still like statues in their scarred plate, impassive and beyond the concerns of mortal men.

‘All right,’ the fosser said finally, feeling Goody’s slender body against his own. ‘Quickly, into the casket.’ Helping his wife down into the grave and taking his child from her uncle, Woodes kissed Nyzette and passed the terrified child down to his wife stood in the coffin. Goody smiled – a gesture, under the circumstances, so telling in its strength and generosity that it brought tears that streaked the fosser’s gravedust-smeared cheeks. The mother and child curled up around one another in the space allowed by the sarcophagus occupant. Using the slingbag as a pillow and a second blanket for warmth, the terrified pair looked up at Woodes and Donalbain. ‘Remember,’ Woodes began, ‘only ring the bell when you hear others. Wait as long as you can. You cannot alert the enemy to your presence.’ His wife nodded.

‘You stay alive,’ Goody told them. ‘Both of you.’

‘I will see you soon,’ Woodes promised. And he meant it.

Moving around to the other side of the grave, Donalbain used his shovel to close the lid. Resting the tip of the blade against the rusty lid he pressed down and re-sealed the casket. Woodes tapped on the top of the coffin with his own shovel and was rewarded with a knock in return.

With Donalbain looking for Merelda and his own young ones, the two cemetery worlders began tossing sacred Certusian earth down onto the casket and into the hole. With each disbelieving shovelful, Woodes shook his head. He could not fully reconcile in his mind the fact that he had just buried his own wife and daughter alive. That all about him, fathers, husbands, brothers and sons were doing the same for their loved ones.

The only thing that kept his arms moving and the shovel blade slicing through the mound of soil was the knowledge that they would all be safer below ground than above it when the Cholercaust arrived. That they would hopefully be spared the wanton butchery of the Chaos degenerates. With their families as safe as they could make them, the disturbed earth patted down and the promethium-soaked, misshapen daemon-forms dragged back over the burial site, Woodes snatched up his autorifle. Making the sign of the aquila, he knelt down in front of the grave marker. It bore the name Erzsebet Dorota Catallus. He would not forget it. An ice-water determination built in the pit of his stomach. A cold fury he held in reserve for the bastard invaders who were bringing death and destruction to his tiny part of the Imperium. Carrying their weapons and shovels, the cemetery worlders began to make their way back up towards the battlement, to take their positions and ready themselves for the carnage ahead.

I have been watching for a while. This is what it is to lead. A moment’s inspiration, the hot quake of an idea or strategy in the privacy of the mind. Abstraction given form through word and order, followed by the rapid shift of men’s hearts. Even Angels, who need to be led no less. Loyalty. Pride. Trust. Action. Before your eyes, command becomes reality. What you saw in the orderly, bloodless theatre of the mind unfolds in the drawing of blades and the priming of firing mechanisms. It rapidly devolves into a nightmarish version of your imaginings, replete with deadly, unseen movements, fears that find their form. That’s what it is to lead, to dip the toe of one’s boot into the calm, crystal waters of possibility, but to march on as you find yourself up to your helmet in the raging torrent of your brothers’ blood.

Standing atop the perimeter battlement, I survey the killing fields. A sea of obscene bodies swallowing up the graven architecture of mausolea, tombstones and statues. Out there, amongst the past chaos of battle, are the cemetery worlders. Those it is clear I am here to protect. The duty I was bred to perform. A little of the Emperor’s burden taken on my shoulders. What had been the silent insanity of a strategy in my mind is now consigned to history. I told Pontifex Oliphant and for his sins the ecclesiarch lent his words to my own. Thousands of cemetery worlders, ordered to bury their Certusian kin alive. The brief spark of mortal existence, burning brightly under the ground, where blood-soaked minds would not think to look for them.

For a moment I think my revenant returned. I have not seen his ghastly form in a little while. Where he haunted the shadows, there is now but empty darkness. His bale eye gazes upon some other unfortunate, for it no longer looks upon me. I should feel reassured. While I had grown accustomed to the being’s attentions and fell presence, it was either the manifestation of an unnatural existence or some symptom of a fractured mind. Neither were particularly attractive prospects and I should feel relieved at the thing’s absence. Still, I find myself looking. In the gloom of the Long Night; in the reflection of glass darkly; in the corner of my eye.

I feel brother Excoriators about me. They, I know are there. Immortals on the rubble palisade. Like me, come to watch what common men will do at the word of an Angel. With the slice and cut of shovels through gritty earth on the air, we watch – silently impressed. It can’t be easy to dig a grave for your loved ones. Less easy still to fill one containing them.

‘Anything?’ I ask.

Melmoch is beside me.

‘No astrotelepathic communication,’ the Epistolary answers. ‘Nothing from the hosts and destinations to whom I appealed. I can only reason that the comet’s malign influence is too much of a barrier for my skill.’

I nod. ‘Thank you for trying,’ I say as we watch the cemetery worlders go about their solemn task. ‘You think the dust will mask them?’

The Epistolary considers the question.

‘This place is saturated with death,’ the Librarian concludes. ‘The earth is sacred and overpowering in its purpose. We see what we expect to see. The enemy will see a cemetery. He will taste loss. He will smell the stench of death. The Blood God’s servants are warriors all. Their unthinking art is murder. Their weapon of choice is carnage – not the shovel. I think our charges safe.’

I nod my acknowledgement and appreciation of the Epistolary’s support.

‘What if no one survives?’ Chief Whip Skase asks grimly, his mind soaked with bloody thoughts.

‘Then we lose,’ I answer – a statement of the obvious. ‘We get to rot above the ground while those we sought to protect – the Emperor’s subjects – are left to do so below us. That is why we must fight. Fight and survive. The Blood God’s disciples have come here to battle, and we will give them one. In doing so we shall take their eyes off the prize – their intended slaughter of innocents and through this the sundering of this world. We fight to win, but if we lose, I want to go to my death knowing that our enemy will leave sated and swiftly move on.