“Maybe it is. Tell me, do you want to test it by taking her from this world?”
Gaunt didn’t reply.
“Well, my boy? Do you know better than the sector’s most venerated martyr? Does Lugo or the Warmaster? Will you risk losing everything, a thousand inhabited systems, forever, just to find out? Never mind your orders or their seniority, have they the right to take that risk either, or order you to do it?”
“I don’t believe they do. I don’t believe I do,” replied Gaunt quietly after a long pause.
“I don’t believe you even have to consider the question,” said Hark, approaching them from behind. “You have utterly unambiguous orders, sir. They leave no room for interpretation. Lugo made your duty plain.”
“Lugo made a mistake,” Gaunt said, fixing Hark with a clear, hard stare. “It’s not one I care to take any further.”
“Are you breaking orders, sir?” asked Hark.
“Yes, I am. It hardly matters. My career’s over, my regiment’s finished, and there’s every chance we won’t get out of here alive anyway. I’m breaking orders with a clear conscience, because it’s about fething time I showed a bit of backbone and stopped blindly obeying men who are clearly and demonstrably wrong!”
Zweil’s gaze darted back and forth between the two Imperial officers in total fascination, hanging on every word. Hark slowly put on his silver-braided cap, sighed heavily, and moved his hand to open the button-down cover of his holster.
“Oh, don’t even bother, Hark,” Gaunt snarled contemptuously and walked away.
They were high enough now for the snow that Sanian had warned them about to become a reality. It was light but persistent, and settled on their clothes and eyelashes. Further up the pass, snow clouds choked visibility so badly the great mountains themselves were temporarily invisible, masked out by the storm.
They had finally said goodbye to the Wounded Wagon two hours earlier, abandoning it at a point on the sooka where an old rockslide had long since carried the last of the negotiable track away. Loading up with everything they could carry, they had continued on foot.
The track was as thin and desolate as the air. To their right towered the sheer south faces of the innermost and highest Sacred Hills. To their left, a great slope of scree and bare rock arced downwards into the mysterious shadows of gorges and low passes far below. Every few steps, one of them caught a loose stone with their toe, and it would skitter and slither away down the decline.
The Ladder of Heaven had been cut by early pilgrims soon after the foundation of the Shrinehold six millennia before. They had engineered the work with zealous enthusiasm, seeing it as a sacred task and an art of devotion. A fifty kilometre staircase rising four thousand metres up into the peaks, right to the Shrinehold. Few used it now, Sanian had explained, because the climb was arduous, and even hardy pilgrims preferred the march up the passes. But that softer option wasn’t open to them now.
Sanian led them to the foot of the Ladder as the first snows began.
It didn’t look like much. A narrow, worn series of steps carved into the mountainside itself, eroded by weather and age. Lichens clung like rust to the surfaces. Each step was about sixteen centimetres high, a comfortable enough pace, and the steps were uniformly two metres deep from front to back, except where they sectioned and turned. The Ladder wove up through the rocks and disappeared above them.
“This looks easy enough,” said Greer, stepping lightly up the first few.
“It isn’t, I assure you. Especially with the weather closing like this. Pilgrims used to choose this approach as an act of chastening,” said Sanian.
They started up, Greer eagerly hurrying ahead, followed by Daur, Corbec and Dorden, then Milo and Sanian, Nessa, Derin and finally Vamberfeld and Bragg.
“He’ll kill himself if he doesn’t pace his climb,” Sanian told Milo, pointing to Greer far ahead of them.
The main group fell into a rhythm. After about twenty minutes, Corbec began to feel oppressed by the sheer monotony of the task. He started to roam with his mind, trying to occupy his thoughts. He considered the distance and altitude, the depth and width of the steps. He did a little sum or two in his head.
“How many steps do they say there are?” he called back to Sanian.
“They say twenty-five thousand.” Dorden groaned.
“That’s just what I made it,” Corbec beamed, genuinely pleased with himself.
Fifty kilometres. Troops could cover that in a day, easy. But fifty kilometres of steps…
This could take days. Hard, painful, bone-numbing days.
“I maybe should have asked you this about five hundred metres ago, Sanian, but how long does this climb usually take?”
“It depends on the pilgrim. For the dedicated… and the fit… five or six days.”
“Oh sacred feth!” Dorden groaned aloud.
Corbec concentrated on the steps again. Snow was beginning to settle on them. In five or six days, when they reached the Shrinehold, Gaunt should be virtually all the way back to the Doctrinopolis if he was going to make the evac. They were wasting their time.
Then again, there was no way in creation Gaunt’s honour guard was going to get down the mountain past that Infardi host. Chances were he’d use the Shrinehold as his base and fight it out from there.
They’d have to wait and see. There was no point in going back now. There was nothing to go back for.
Alone, Ibram Gaunt pulled back the great old bolt and pushed open the door of the Shrinehold’s sepulchre. The voices of male esholi filtered out, singing a solemn, harmonious, eight-part chant. Cold wind moaned down the monastery’s deep airshafts.
He didn’t know what to expect. He realised he had never imagined coming here. Slaydo, the Emperor rest him, would have been envious.
The room was surprisingly small, and very dark. The walls were lined with black corundum that reflected none of the light from the many rows of burning candles. The air smelled of smoke, and musty dryness, the dust of centuries.
He stepped in, closing the door after him. The floor was made of strange, lustrous tiles that shimmered in the candlelight and made an odd, plastic sound as he walked on them. He realised they were cut and polished sections of chelon shell, pearlescent, with a brown stain of time.
To either side of where he stood were alcove bays in the corundum. In each glowed a life-size hologram of a White Scars Space Marine, power blades raised in salutes of mournful triumph.
Gaunt walked forward. Directly ahead of him was the reliquary altar. Plated with more polished chelon shell, it shone with ethereal luminescence. Inlaid on its raised front was a beautiful mosaic of coloured shell pieces depicting the Sabbat Worlds. Gaunt had no doubt it was cartographically precise. Behind the altar rose a huge, domed cover that overhung the altar block like a cowl. It was fashioned from a single chelon shell, a shell that had come from an incredibly massive animal, far larger than anything Gaunt had seen on Hagia. Beneath it, behind the altar, lay the reliquary itself, a candlelit cavern under the shell. At the front were two hardwood stands with open lids in which, behind glass, lay original manuscripts of the gospels.
Gaunt realised his heart was beating fast. The place was having an extraordinary effect on him.
He moved past the gospel stands. To his left stood a casket on which lay various relics half-wrapped in satin. There was a drinking bowl, a quill pen, a jiddi-stick worn black with age, and several other fragments he couldn’t identify.
To his right, on top of another, matching casket, lay the saint’s Imperator armour, painted blue and white. It showed the marks of ancient damage, blackened holes and grooves, jagged dents where the paint had been scraped off. The marks of the nine martyring wounds. There was something odd about it. Gaunt realised it was… small. It had been purpose-built for a body smaller than the average male Space Marine.
Ahead of him, at the very rear of the shell dome, lay the holy reliquary, a bier covered in a glass casket.
Saint
Sabbat lay within.
She had wanted no stasis field or power suspension, but still she was intact after six thousand years. Her features had sunk, her flesh had desiccated, and her skin was dark and polished. Around her skull there were traces of fine hair. Gaunt could see the rings on her mummified fingers, the medallion of the Imperial eagle clasped in her hands across her bosom. The blue of her gown had almost entirely faded, and the dry husks of ancient flowers lay around her on the velvet padding of the bier.
Gaunt didn’t know what to do. He lingered, unable to take his eyes off the taut, withered but incorruptible form of the beati.
“Sabbat. Martyr,” he breathed.
“She’s under no obligation to answer you, you know.” He looked around. Ayatani Zweil stood beyond the altar, watching him.
Gaunt made a dignified, short bow to the saint and walked back out past the altar to Zweil.
“I didn’t come for answers,” he whispered.
“You did. You told me so, as we were coming from Mukret.”
“That was then. Now I’ve made my choice.”
“Choices and answers aren’t the same thing. But yes, you have. A fine choice, may I add. A brave one. The right one.”
“I know. If I doubted that before, I don’t now I’ve seen this. We have no business moving her. She stays here She stays here as long as we can protect her.”
Zweil nodded and patted Gaunt on the arm. “It’s not going to be a popular choice. Poor Hark, I thought he was going to shit out a kidney when you told him.” Zweil paused, and looked back at the reliquary. “Forgive my coarse language, bead. I am but a poor imhava ayatani who ought to know better in this holy place.”
They left the sepulchre together, and walked down the drafty hall outside.
“When will you make your decision known?”
“Soon, if Hark hasn’t told everyone already.”
“He may remove you from command.”
“He may try. If he does, you’ll see me breaking more than orders.”
Night was falling, and another storm of snow was racing down from the north-west. Ayatani-ayt Cortona had allowed the Imperial forces to pitch their camp inside the outer wall of the Shrinehold, and the space was now full of tents and chemical braziers. The convoy vehicles had been drawn up in the lea of the wall outside except for the fighting machines, which had ranged out and dug in, hull down, to guard the approach up the gorge to the promontory. Troop positions had also been dug in the snow banks outside and the heavy weapons fortified. Anything coming up the pass was going to meet heavy resistance.
Making use of an anteroom in the monastery, Gaunt assembled the officers and section chiefs of the honour guard. The Shrinehold esholi brought food and sweet tea, and none of the priesthood complained about the amasec and sacra being portioned around. Ayatani-ayt Cortona and some of his senior priests had joined them. The lamps twitched and snowstorm winds banged at the shutters. Hark stood at the back of the room, alone, brooding.
Before he went in to join them, Gaunt took Rawne to one side, out in the chilly hall.
“I want you to know this first,” Gaunt told him. “I intend to disobey Lugo’s orders. We are not moving the saint.”
Rawne arched his eyebrows. “Because of this fething stupid old prophecy?”
“Exactly because of this fething stupid old prophecy, major.”
“Not because it’s all over for you?” asked Rawne. “Explain.”
Rawne shrugged. “We’ve known from the start that Lugo’s got you cold. When you return to the Doctrinopolis, be it empty-handed or with this old girl’s bones, that’s the end. End of command, end of you, end of story. So as I see it, you really haven’t got anything to lose, have you? Not to speak of. Telling Lugo to feth off and shove his orders up his own very special Eye of Terror isn’t going to make things any worse for you. In fact, it might leave you feeling better when they come to drag you away.”
“You think I’m doing this because I don’t care anymore?” asked Gaunt.
“Well, do you? This last week, you’ve not been the man I started serving under. The drinking. The rages. The foul, foul fething moods. You failed. You failed badly. At the Doctrinopolis, you fethed up good and proper. You’ve been a wreck ever since. Oh…”
“What?” growled Gaunt.
“Permission to speak candidly, sir. With effect retroactive.”
“Don’t you always, Rawne?”
“I fething hope so. Are you still drinking?”
“Well, I…”
“You want me to believe you’re right, that you’re doing this for real reasons and not just because you couldn’t give a good feth about anything anymore, then smarten up. Clean up. Work it out. I’ve never liked you, Gaunt.”
“I know.”
“But I’ve always respected you. Solid. Professional. A warrior who works to a code. Sure, because of that code Tanith burned, but you stuck by it no matter what anyone else thought. A man of honour.”
“That’s the closest you’ve ever come to complimenting me, major,” said Gaunt.
“Sorry sir, it won’t happen again. What I need to know is this… Is it that code now? Is it honour? This fething mission is an honour guard… Do you mean it to deserve that title?”
“Yes.”
“Show me then. Show us all. Show us this isn’t just spite and bile and frustration coming out of you because you fethed up and they caught you for it. Show us you’re not just a drunken wreck going down fast and bitterly trying to take everything and everyone with you. It’s over for you, any way you cut it but it isn’t for us. If we go along with you, the lord general will have us all court-martialled and shot. “We’ve got something left to lose.”
“I know,” said Gaunt. He paused for a moment and watched the driving snowflakes build and pile up against the glass of the hall windows.
“—Well?”
“Would you like to know why this matters to me, Rawne? Why I took the disaster at the Doctrinopolis so badly?”
“I’d be fascinated.”
“I’ve given the better part of the last two decades to this crusade. I’ve fought hard every step of the way. And here on Hagia, the blind stupidity of one man… our dear lord general… forced my hand and mined all that work. But it’s not just that. The crusade that I’ve devoted these years to is in honour of Saint Sabbat, intended to liberate the planets she first made Imperial worlds six thousand years ago. I hold her in special regard, therefore, and am dedicated to her honour, and that bastard Lugo made me fail on the very world sacred to her. I didn’t just feth up during a crusade action, major. I fethed up during a crusade action on the saint’s own holy shrineworld. But it’s not just that either.”
He paused and cleared his throat. Rawne stared at him in the gloom.
“I was one of Slaydo’s chosen, hand-picked to wage this war. He was the greatest commander I’ve ever known. He took on this crusade as a personal endeavour because he was absolutely and utterly devoted to the saint. She was his totem, his inspiration, the role model on which he had built his military career. He told me himself that he saw this crusade as a chance to pay back that debt of inspiration. I will not dishonour his memory by failing him here. Here, of all places.”
“Let me guess,” said Rawne. “It’s not just that either, is it?”
Gaunt shook his head. “On Formal Prime, in the first few months of the crusade, I fought alongside Slaydo in a fierce action to take the hive towers. It was one of the first big successes of the crusade.
“At the victory feast, he brought his officers together. Forty-eight of us, the chosen men. We caroused and celebrated. We all got a little drunk, Slaydo included. Then he… he became solemn, that bitter sadness that afflicts some men when they are at their worse for drink. We asked him what was wrong, and he said he was afraid. We laughed! Great Warmaster Slaydo, afraid? He got to his feet, unsteady. He was one hundred and fifty years old by then, and those years had not been kind. He told us he was afraid of dy
ing before finishing his work. Afraid of not living long enough to oversee the full and final liberation of the beati’s worlds. It was his one, consuming ambition, and he was afraid he would not achieve it.
“We all protested… he’d outlive us all! He shook his head and insisted that the only way he could ensure the success of his sacred task, the only way he could achieve immortality and finish his duty to the saint, was through us. He called for an oath. A blood oath. We used bayonets and fething table knives to cut our palms and draw blood. One by one we clasped his bleeding hand and swore. On our lives, Rawne, on our very lives. We would finish his work. We would pursue this crusade to its end. And we would damn well protect the saint against any who would harm her!”
Gaunt held out his right hand, palm open. In the blue half-light, Rawne could still make out the old, pale scar.
“Slaydo fell at Balhaut, that battle of battles, just as he feared he would. But his oath lives on, and in it, Slaydo too.”
“Lugo’s making you break your pact.”
“Lugo made me ride rough-shod through the saint’s Doctrinopolis and set ablaze her ancient temples. Now Lugo wants me to defy the beati and disturb her final rest I apologise if I seemed to take any of that badly, but now perhaps you can see why.”
Rawne nodded slowly.
“You had better tell the others,” he said.
Gaunt walked into the centre of the crowded anteroom, declined a drink offered to him by an esholi, and cleared his throat. All eyes were on him and silence fell.
“In the light of developments in the field and… other considerations, I hereby inform you I am making an executive alteration to our orders.”
There was a murmur.
“We will not be proceeding as per Lord General Lugo’s instruction. We will not remove the Shrinehold relics. As of now, my orders are that the honour guard digs in here and remains in defence of the Shrinehold until such time as our situation is relieved.”
A general outburst filled the room. Hark was silent.
“But the lord general’s orders, Gaunt—” Kleopas began, rising.