“There! Down there!” cried Rawne, his laspistol already drawn.
In the reliquary itself, Greer dived for cover behind the altar. He’d overturned the hardwood relic casket in his frantic search, spilling the ancient pieces across the floor. The glass covers over the gospel stands were smashed. The venerated Imperator armour was half-slumped off its palanquin.
“Where is it? Where’s the gold, you bastards?” he screamed, ripping off several shots. Rawne cried out in pain as he was twisted round off his feet. Gaunt grabbed Zweil and threw himself down on top of the old priest as a shield. Corbec and Daur ducked hard. Dorden, just reaching the door, sought cover behind the frame.
“Greer! Greer! What the feth are you doing?” bawled Corbec.
“Back off! Back the hell off or I’ll kill you all!” yelled Greer, firing three more shots that punched into the shrine’s door or chipped the black corundum of the walls.
“Greer!” cried Daur. “It’s me! Daur! What are you doing?”
Several more shots whined over his head.
Daur had his laspistol out. He glanced at Corbec, hunched on the polished tiles next to him.
A meaningful look.
“Greer! You’ll blow everything! You’ll min it for us!”
“Where is it, Daur?” shouted Greer, slamming a new clip into his sidearm’s grip. “It isn’t here!”
“It is! Gak it, Greer! You’re screwing up all the plans!”
“Plans?” murmured Rawne through gritted teeth. Dorden was hastily dragging him back into the cover of the doorway. The bullet had punched through Rawne’s forearm.
“You weren’t going to do anything until I gave you the word!” Daur yelled, trying to edge forward. Greer fired again, crazing several six thousand year old shell-tiles.
“Plans change! You Ghosts were gonna ditch me!”
“No! We can still do this! You hear me? You want to? I can show you the gold! Go with me on this!”
“I dunno…”
“Come on!” cried Daur, and leapt upright, turning to point his laspistol at Corbec, Gaunt and the others. “Drop the guns! Drop them!”
“What?” stammered Gaunt.
“I guess you got us, Daur,” said Corbec, tossing aside his laspistol and staring at Gaunt as hard as he could.
“I got them covered, Greer! Come on! We can ran for it! Come on! I’ll take you to the gold and we can leave these bastards to die! Greer!”
Greer rose from behind the altar, his gun in his hand. “You know where the gold is?”
Daur turned, his aimed weapon swinging from the sheltering Ghosts to point at Greer.
“There is no gold, you stupid bastard,” he said, and shot Greer between the eyes.
Dorden ran into the room and knelt by the bodies of Bragg and Vamberfeld. “They’re a mess, but I’ve got pulses on both. Thank the Emperor the maniac wasn’t packing a las. We need medic teams here right now.”
Standing in the doorway, clutching his bloody arm, Rawne spoke into his microbead. “Three, in the sepulchre. I require medical teams here right now!”
Gaunt got back to his feet, and helped the winded Zweil up.
“Captain Daur, perhaps you’d give me a warning next time you plan to play a bluff that wild. I almost shot you.”
Daur turned to the colonel-commissar and held out his laspistol, butt-first. “I doubt there’ll be a next time. This is my fault. I led Greer on. I knew he was dangerous, I just didn’t realise how gakking far he’d go.”
“What are you doing, Daur?” asked Gaunt looking at the gun.
“It’s a court-martial offence, sir,” said Daur.
“Oh, at least,” said Corbec, with a wide grin. “Saving the lives of your commanding officers like that.”
“Nice,” Rawne nodded at Daur. “I never realised you were such a devious bastard, captain.”
“We’ll talk about this later, Daur,” said Gaunt, and walked past the altar and Greer’s spread-eagled corpse. He stared in dismay at Greer’s wanton desecration.
“Just so I’m absolutely sure,” Zweil whispered to Daur. “There really isn’t a trove of ayatani gold here, is there?”
Daur shook his head. “Just you know, checking.”
Gaunt righted the relic casket and began putting the scattered fragments back reverently.
“What’s keeping Lesp?” growled Dorden. He was trying to keep compression on Bragg’s most serious injury. “I need a medicae kit. Both of them are bleeding out! Colm! Get some pressure there on Vamberfeld’s chest. No, higher. Keep it tight!”
The sound of running footsteps came from outside. Milo and Sanian burst in through the doorway and stopped dead.
“I heard shooting,” said Milo, out of breath. “Oh, great God-Emperor! What’s happened? Bragg!”
“Everything’s under control, lad,” said Corbec, his hands drenched in Vamberfeld’s blood. He wasn’t convinced. In the reliquary, Gaunt seemed almost beside himself with agony as he tried to set things right.
“What was that?” asked Rawne sharply, looking around.
“What was what?” said Corbec.
“That noise. That hum.”
“I didn’t… Oh, yeah. That’s kind of scary.”
“A vibration!” said Rawne. “The whole place is shaking!”
“It must be the Infardi attacking!” said Milo.
“No,” said Zweil with remarkable calm. “I think it must be the Infardi reaching the sepulchre.”
The candles flickered and went out all at once. Pale, undersea light washed through the ancient tomb, green and cold. The holograms of the Adeptus Astartes dissolved and vanished, and in their place columns of bright white hololithic light extended from floor to ceiling. The black stone walls sweated and a pattern of previously invisible geometric blue bars glowed into life out of the stone, all the way around the chamber. Everything shook with the deep, ultrasonic growl.
“What the feth is happening?” stammered Rawne.
“I can hear…” Daur began.
“So can I,” said Dorden, looking up in wonder. Silent, phantom lights like ball lightning shimmered and circled above their heads.
“I can hear singing,” said Corbec. “I can hear my old dad singing.” There were tears in his eyes.
In the reliquary, Gaunt slowly rose to his feet and gazed at the bier on which Saint Sabbat lay.
He could smell the sweet, incorruptible fragrance of spices, acestus and islumbine. The body of the saint began to shine, brighter and brighter, until the white radiance was too bright to stare at.
“Beati…” Gaunt murmured.
The light streaming out from the bier was so fierce, all the humans within had to close their eyes. The last thing Corbec saw was the faint silhouette of Ibram Gaunt, kneeling before the saint’s bier, framed by the white ferocity of a star’s heart.
The light died away, and the sepulchre returned to the way it had been before. Blinking, speechless, they gazed silently at each other.
For the time it had lasted, no more than a few seconds, a calm but inexorable psychic force of monumental power had penetrated their minds.
“A miracle,” murmured Zweil, sitting down on the floor. “A proper miracle. A transcendant miracle. You all felt that, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” sobbed Sanian, her face streaming with tears. Dorden nodded.
“Of course we did,” said Corbec quietly. “I don’t know what that was, but I’ve never been so scared in my life,” said Rawne.
“I’m telling you, Major Rawne. It was a miracle,” said Zweil.
“No,” said Gaunt emerging from the reliquary. “It wasn’t.”
SEVENTEEN
SABBAT’S MARTYR
“There are no miracles. There are only men.”
—Saint Sabbat, epistles
The Ershul’s final assault began at two o’clock on the morning of the seventeenth day. In the silence of a snow-less, clear night, under the spasming auroras of the warp storm, they committed their entir
e strength to the attack on the Shrinehold. Support columns of reinforcements had been pushing up the pass all day and into the night. The Ershul were legion-strength. Nine thousand devotee-warriors. Five hundred and seventy armoured machines.
Just under two thousand able-bodied Imperial troops defended the Shrinehold, supported by the last four Conquerors, one Executioner, one Destroyer, and a handful of Chimeras, Salamanders and Hydra batteries. All they had on their side was the strategic strength of their walled position and the comparative narrowness of the approach across the promontory.
The staggering power of the Ershul bombardment hammered down onto the Imperial lines. The honour guard did not fire back. They were so low on ammunition and shells they had to wait to pick their targets. The Ershul host advanced towards them.
Standing on the inner wall, Gaunt surveyed their approaching doom through his scope. Even by his best estimate, they would be able to hold out for no more than twenty or thirty minutes.
He turned and looked at Rawne and Hark. Rawne’s arm was thickly bandaged.
“I don’t really think it matters how we fight this now, but I want you both to head down and rally the men for as long as you can. Do anything you can to buy time.”
The men nodded.
“The Emperor protects,” Gaunt said, shaking them both by the hand.
“We’re not done yet, sir,” said Hark.
“I know, commissar. But remember… sometimes the carniv gets you.”
The officers strode away down the wall steps together.
Walking towards their deaths, Gaunt thought, taking one last look at the major and the commissar. And I should be there with them.
He turned and hurried back to the sepulchre where the others were waiting.
“A miracle!” ayatani-ayt Cortona was declaring yet again, his principal clerics gathered around him.
“I keep telling you it’s not,” growled Zweil, “and I have it on good authority.”
“You are just imhava! What do you know?” snapped Cortona.
“A feth of a lot more than you, tempelum,” said Zweil.
“You’ve been hanging out with the wrong crowd, picking up filthy language like that,” Corbec said to Zweil.
“Story of my woebegotten life, colonel,” said Zweil.
Gaunt entered the sepulchre and everyone turned to him.
“There is so little time, I have to be brief. This was not a miracle.”
“But we all felt it! Throughout the Shrinehold! The blessed power, singing in our minds!” cried Cortona.
“It was a psychic test pattern. The activation signature of an ancient device that I believe is buried under the shrine.”
“A what?” asked one of the ayatani.
“The Adeptus Mechanicus constructed this place to house the saint. I believe they laced the entire rock underneath us with dormant psyker technology the power — and purpose — of which we can only guess at. Was I the only one who got that from the psychic wave? It seemed quite clear.”
“Technology to do what?” sneered Cortona.
“To protect the beati. In the event of a true catastrophe, like this influx of the warp. To safeguard her final prophecy.”
“Preposterous! Why did we not know of it then?” asked another Shrinehold priest. “We are her chosen, her sons.”
“Six thousand years is a long time,” said Corbec. “Time enough to forget. Time enough to turn facts into myths.”
“But why now? Why does it manifest now?” asked Cortona.
“Because we came. Her Infardi. Gathered together in her sepulchre, we triggered the mechanism.”
“How?”
“Because our minds responded to the call. Because we came Because through us, the mechanism recognised the time for awakening had come.”
“That’s nonsense! Blasphemy, even!” cried the ayatani-ayt. “It presumes you soldiers are more holy than the sacred brotherhood! Why would it wake for you when it has never woken for us?”
“Because you’re not enlightened. Not that way,” said Zweil, drawing a gasp from the priests. “You tend, and keep vigil, and reread the texts. But you do so out of inherited duty, not belief. These men really believe.” He gestured to Corbec, Daur and Gaunt.
There was a lot of angry shouting.
“There’s no time to debate this! You hear that? The forces of Chaos are at the gates! We have a chance to use the technology the saint has left for us. We have barely any time to figure out how.”
“Sanian and I have been studying the holograms, sir,” said Milo. He gestured to the glowing bars of light in the shrine’s corundum walls, lights that had not yet faded.
“There are depictions of her holy crusade,” said Sanian, tracing certain runes. “The triumphs of Frenghold, Aeskaria and Harkalon. A mention of her trusted commanders. Here, for instance, the name of Lord Militant Kiodrus…”
“You’re going to have to cut to the chase,” Gaunt interjected. “We’ve only got a few minutes left.”
Sanian nodded. “The activation mechanism for the technology appears to be here.” She pointed to a small runic chart glowing on the wall. “The pillar of the eternal flame, at the very tip of the promontory.”
“How are we to use it?”
“Something must be put in place,” said Sanian, frowning. “Some trigger-icon. I’m not sure what this pictogram represents.”
“I am,” said Daur. He rose from his stool and took the silver trinket from his pocket. “I think this is what we need.”
“You seem remarkably sure, Ban,” said Gaunt.
“I’ve never been so sure about anything, sir.”
“Right. No more time for talk. Pass me that and I’ll—”
“Sir,” said Daur. “It was given to me. I think I’m supposed to do this.”
Gaunt nodded. “Very well, Ban. But I’m coming with you.”
“Rally! Rally, my brave boys and girls!” Soric yelled above the roar of explosions. Infardi shells had torn the gate and the front part of the inner wall away. “This is what we were born for! Deny the arch-enemy of mankind! Deny him now!”
Gaunt, Corbec, Milo, Sanian and Daur approached the back gate of the outer Shrinehold wall. The din of battle behind them was deafening.
They readied their weapons. Sanian hefted up her lasrifle.
“We’re going to get killed out there,” Milo told her. “Are you sure you want to do this?”
“My way, remember? War. War is the only true way and I have found it.”
“For Sabbat!” cried Gaunt and threw open the gate.
“Power batteries have failed!” Pauk’s gunner told him.
“Restart them! Restart them!” the lieutenant shouted.
“The couplings have burnt out! We’ve put too much stress on them!”
“Hell, there’s got to be a way to—” Pauk began. He never finished his sentence. Usurper shells atomised the old Executioner tank Strife.
“Pull the line back! Feygor, pull the line back!” Rawne yelled. The Ershul or whatever their fething name was were all over their positions now.
The pillar seemed a hundred kilometres away across the snow, gleaming at the very end of the jagged promontory. Gaunt and his party ran forward in the snow, las-fire from the circling enemy flank zapping over and between them.
“Come on!” Gaunt yelled, firing his bolt pistol at the green-clad Ershul storming forward to cut them off.
“No! No!” Corbec yelped as a las-round hit his leg and brought him down.
Sanian turned and fired her gun on full auto, ripping into the enemy. She wasn’t used to the recoil and it threw her over into the snow.
“Sanian! Sanian!” Milo stopped to pull her up as Gaunt and Daur ran on. “Come on! I’ll get you back to the—”
The butt of her gun hit Milo in the side of the head and he fell over unconscious.
“Bless you, Milo, but you won’t rob me of this,” she muttered. “This is my way. I’m going to take it, in the name of the saint. D
on’t try to stop me. Forgive me.”
She ran after the others, leaving Milo curled in the snow.
Twenty metres ahead of her, Daur was hit. He fell sideways into the snow, screaming in anger.
Gaunt stopped and ran back to him. The wound was in his side. He was yelling. There was no way he was going to be able to carry on.
“Ban! Give me the trigger-icon! Ban!” Daur held the silver trinket out, clasped in his bloody fingers.
“Whoever does this will die,” he said. “I know.”
“The psychic burst told me that. It needs a sacrifice. A martyr.”
“I know.”
“Sabbat’s martyr.”
“I know, Ban.”
“The Emperor protects, Ibram.”
“The Emperor protects.” Gaunt took the silver figurine and began to run towards the pillar. Ban Daur tried to rise. To see. The las-fire of the enemy was too bright.
The thunder of war, of armageddon, shook the walls. Hands bloody, Dorden fought to save Bragg’s life in the Shrinehold antechamber Lesp had turned into a makeshift infirmary.
“Clamp! Here!”
Lesp obeyed.
It was futile, Dorden knew. Even if he saved Bragg’s life, they were all dead.
“Foskin!” Dorden yelled over as he worked. “How’s Vamberfeld doing?”
“I thought you had him,” said Foskin, jumping up from his work on another of the injured.
“He isn’t here,” said Chayker.
“Where the feth has he gone?” Dorden cried.
Through the prismatic scope of his sight, LeGuin saw Captain Marchese’s P48J blow out in a swirl of sparks.
Barely a second later, the same AT70 that had killed Marchese and his crew put a shell through the side of the Grey Venger. LeGuin’s layer and loader were both disintegrated. The Destroyer lurched and stopped dead, its turbines failing for the very last time. Fire swirled through the compartment, up under LeGuin’s feet. His hair was singed.
He tried the hatch above him. It was jammed shut.
Resignedly, Captain LeGuin sat back in his command chair and waited for the end.