I saw it now in the ancient, beautiful Gothic words of the sacred song. It was an evil parody of the Imperial liturgy. It echoed the words but used them to put a shimmering gloss on this awful sacrifice.
Part of me, the doubting part, whispered that the true Imperial ritual did the same thing, asking men to give up their lives and souls for the Emperor. I quashed it. There is a difference between asking men to act heroically and truly of their own free will and feeding them into a fire in white-hot cages.
I knew looking at the beautiful statue with its beatific face that whatever it represented was nothing holy but something evil and clever which used a shroud of holiness to conceal a corrupt and rotten heart. Below me men burned as flames leapt higher. I thought it could be me down there and realised that we were doing the right thing by opposing the cult even if it cost us our lives. Then it occurred to me that it was most likely going to do just that.
We gaped in horror as more of our comrades were burned. The local people watched agog. I wondered what had made them come. Was it the spectacle? Were they particularly devout? Was this some form of entertainment for them? They did not look any different from the average citizen of Belial and yet here they were, watching people die as if it were entertainment.
I looked from face to face. Some of them wore expressions of awe. One or two of them licked their lips and sweated as if they were taking some sort of pleasure in the brutish spectacle. Most looked a little stunned. I would like to say it was all down to the unholy power of the ritual the Sons of the Flame were enacting but I am sure it was not.
Many of the people looked on, eyes narrowed, features concentrated. They were simply fascinated by the fact of death. For many of them, this was as close as they were ever going to come to it until the day they died. There was an awful mystery here, beyond even that of the rituals of the Angel. I think they were hoping to see something mystical, to get a glimpse of the reality that lies beyond reality, to be witnesses at the moment of transition from life to death, to see something spiritually meaningful.
In this, they were doomed to disappointment. All they saw were men dying. All they heard was a choir drowning out screams. All they smelled was incense and roasting flesh. If there was anything mystical in the air, it was a horror, a sense of something dreadful slowly approaching, a monster lured by the savour of the killing, drawn to the scent of burning meat and departing spirits.
As the ritual ended and the cranes swung the old cage out and a new cage into position, ushers moved us out of the gallery so the next set of spectators could enter and bear witness. It was all well organised, a great machine designed for no good purpose, human sacrifice on an industrial scale.
We shuffled through the exit and back down a set of stairs along with all the believers. I looked at Anton and saw he was as appalled as me. Ivan looked glassy-eyed. Hesse looked almost sick. Anna had the same air of restrained calm she always wore. I was not in a position to see how Drake or the Understudy or Macharius reacted. I wish I had been.
The trudge down the stairwell was long and there was no way of avoiding it and we found ourselves out in a courtyard where vendors sold souvenirs – small metal cages, and bits of burned bone that purported to be from victims already cleansed. Somehow this was the worst part of it all. People were buying trinkets and souvenirs as if this day was important to them and they wanted to carry away some small thing as a reminder.
It was all I could do to keep from shooting.
We huddled together in the corner of the courtyard. It was not unusual, there were other small groups of pilgrims gathered in a similar manner, praying or discussing what they had witnessed in low, awed voices. All of us looked to Macharius for guidance, even Drake. He looked back at the inquisitor.
‘How long?’ Macharius asked. ‘How long before whatever they are summoning manifests?’ His tone was low enough so that it would not carry far.
‘I do not know, hours possibly, days at most. I have read about these things but it is the first time I have witnessed a ritual of such potency from so close at hand.’
‘And what happens if they succeed?’
‘The Angel will manifest, only it will be no Angel and its manifestation will be a dark and unholy thing.’
‘How can we stop it?’
‘Somewhere in there a psyker of vast power is drawing all the mystical energy from those deaths and weaving it into a lure for a daemon-god. If we could kill the psyker that would do it…’ Something about his tone told us that it was not quite so simple as that, if you could call walking through a temple full of fanatics and assassinating a psyker powerful enough to summon a daemon prince simple.
‘But…?’ Macharius said.
‘But if we succeed in slaying him then there will be no one to control all the energy, the ritual will run out of control. At very least it is likely that anyone in the vicinity will be killed. At worst, a hole will be torn in the fabric of reality and hell will crawl through.’
‘Hell is crawling through anyway,’ said Macharius. ‘This way there is at least a chance of stopping it.’
Drake nodded. He was a brave man but something was clearly preying on his mind. ‘Also, if we die in there, there is a good chance our souls will be sucked into the hells from which they are summoning the daemon. They will be devoured and we will be damned for all eternity.’
‘We’ll be damned anyway if we don’t at least try.’
Macharius looked at us. His steely gaze flickered from face to face. ‘We do not have any choice. We must stop this. If we do not our comrades will be destroyed and our armies on this planet overwhelmed. The souls of millions will be lost.’
His voice was quiet enough not be overheard at any distance and yet I heard every word distinctly. He was right, of course. Something had to be done. For a moment I wondered whether I was the man to do it. Briefly I considered the possibility of simply running but under the gaze of Macharius it was no possibility at all. There was nowhere I could flee to anyway. If the Angel of Fire manifested itself, this whole world would be doomed and my soul and most likely my life would be lost.
I saw reflections of my doubts in Anton and Ivan’s eyes. We could wait. Sejanus would get here with the army soon. Surely, the might of that great force would be enough to overcome what was happening here.
‘There is no time for anything else,’ Drake said. He sounded resigned but ready. ‘If it costs our lives, they will be well spent if we can stop the Angel of Fire.’
‘If we die here, we will die as heroes of the Imperium,’ said Macharius. ‘And if we triumph, our names will be remembered for as long as it endures.’
I could see that swayed Anton and Ivan and the New Boy. They were nodding now. I guess they were thinking what I was thinking. Death and damnation lay on all sides. There was no escape from it no matter which way we leapt. Macharius was offering us the possibility of glory.
‘Can you find this psyker?’ Macharius asked Drake. He studied the nearby pilgrims, looking as relaxed as if this were some holiday outing.
‘His presence is hard to ignore. I am surprised you cannot sense him yourself. The aura is that strong.’ Drake pitched his voice low so that only we could hear it.
‘You will need to lead us to him.’
‘He will be guarded,’ Drake said. The discussion was between him and Macharius. The rest of us waited on their words. Drake was the expert. Macharius was our leader.
‘They are overconfident,’ said Macharius. ‘They expect no trouble here. We can use that to our advantage.’
‘As you say,’ Drake said. Clearly he was not confident. ‘We do not have any allies here.’
‘There are companies of Imperial soldiers down there,’ said Macharius. He indicated somewhere below us. He was thinking about the men we had seen being sent to sacrifice. There were scores of them. He did not seem to have any doubts that we could somehow free them. We stood at the mouth of hell, half a dozen men in the midst of a world full of heretics, and when he
told us that we were going to do the impossible, we nodded our heads and thought, yes we can do this.
‘If we can find them,’ said Drake.
‘I know where they are,’ said Anna. ‘I have studied the plans of this place. I can find them and I can free them.’
She nodded to a doorway in the wall. It was marked as forbidden. ‘That doorway leads to a maintenance section. It must lead also to the machinery of sacrifice. The prisoners will be kept there.’ She obviously had a very clear idea of the topography of the cathedral in her head.
‘Open it,’ Macharius said. He did not seem to have any doubts she could. She began to walk over to the doorway as if it was the most natural thing in the world. We followed her. Her hands flickered over the lock and the door was open. She walked through and we followed before anyone had a chance to object. Up ahead I could hear the whine of heavy machinery and the creak of cages on heavy rollers. The air smelled of grease and incense and men cramped together with no latrines. We walked forwards and came out on a ledge in a tunnel. There were the cages full of prisoners. There were robed guards. We were in the secret heart of the cathedral now, where the mechanisms of sacrifice were visible. There were stairs leading up from here that pilgrims would never see. I wondered if Anna knew where they went too.
‘How do we get them free?’ Hesse asked.
‘We’ll need to be fast,’ said Macharius. ‘Overpower those guards. You will take the keys, Lemuel, and open the cages. Get the prisoners out. Tell them to grab what weapons they can and free the others.’
‘Once they are freed, we need to go up,’ Drake said. ‘And keep going up till we find the heart of this evil.’
Macharius nodded and rattled off orders, clearly and calmly, telling every man exactly what to do, speaking exactly as if we had a chance of pulling off his mad scheme. He did not repeat anything. He spoke as if he had complete confidence in us. He knew we understood and would not let him down. He was right in that too.
We followed him down towards the lines of cages where the prisoners waited. We walked directly towards the guards as if we had every right to be there. One or two of them glanced at us, wondering what was going on, asking themselves if something was wrong, then pushing the thought aside and telling themselves someone else would deal with it. A priest walked over to us and said, ‘You are in the wrong place, pilgrims, be gone or be burned!’
Macharius shot him. All hell broke loose.
I raced forwards, producing my shotgun from beneath my robe. I opened fire at the closest guard and took him down. A moment later I rammed the butt of the shotgun into the face of a second. Bone broke. Blood flowed. I bent down and picked the keys from the guard’s belt. I handed them to the nearest prisoner. ‘Free yourself!’ I told him.
The man just looked at me stunned. Like the guards, he did not quite understand what had happened. ‘Free yourself and free your brothers! Macharius is here!’
It was as if I had spoken a magic word. The hopelessness disappeared from the man’s eyes. His shoulders squared, he began to work the key in the lock and free the others. As one man got free of the chains, I picked up the guard’s weapon and handed it to him. ‘Arm yourself. Arm the others. Take what you can! Kill!’
Along the line others were doing the same. I caught sight of Macharius. He was fighting with a group of guards. In action, he was utterly lethal, a whirlwind of movement, a blur of motion, too fast to be pinned down or targeted. More of our men were breaking free now, attacking the heretics with anything they could pick up: their chains, censers, weapons ripped from the hands of screaming guards. More and more of those to be sacrificed were joining them. A chain reaction rippled through the cathedral as our soldiers broke free, ready to make a desperate last stand. It was hopeless but it was better than being burned alive in those incandescent cages and having your soul devoured by daemons.
Macharius beckoned. I followed. Macharius had his distraction. I was stunned by his ruthlessness. Having freed the men, he had left them to fight. He was sacrificing their lives so that we had a chance. The horrible thing was that he was right, and what was even more awful was the fact that the death he had granted them was better than the one the prisoners had been going to face.
We raced up the stairs, on our way to meet the psyker at the heart of this wickedness.
I made sure my shotgun was loaded. Below us I heard the sound of conflict.
Twenty
Drake led us up through a maze of corridors, balconies and stairwells. There were no glow-globes, only gas-lamps carved in the shape of the fire-winged angel. The air was dry. It was warm enough to make you sweat and got warmer with every step we took. We came to a junction.
‘Left,’ Drake said. No one asked him how he knew. We just took his instructions.
We heard footfalls on the stairs ahead of us. A squad of guards rushed down to meet us. We opened fire. There were a score of them but they fell in the first burst. One tried to raise a weapon but Drake raised his hand and gestured and the guard suddenly froze, the weapon falling from his nerveless fingers. The veins in his forehead bulged. The tendons in his neck stood out like cables pulled taut. Fear and rage warred in his eyes. He fell clutching his heart and I did not need to be told he was dead.
‘Put on those uniforms,’ he said. We dug around amid the corpses, performing the unsavoury task of finding garments not too burned and blood-spattered. Eventually we looked like a small squad of Temple Guards who had been in the wars.
Below us far away came the sounds of battle. The smell of burned flesh reached my nostrils yet again, a reminder of the fate awaiting us all.
Up and up we went following an intricate web of walkways, balconies and bridges woven around the central space of the cathedral. I realised that the whole core of the place was an empty space surrounding a great central chimney-pipe that rose all the way to its peak and the statue of the Angel.
We circled many times around the central space, crossed a web-work of bridges. Looking down made me dizzy we had climbed so high. Below us the fight rumbled on. At least I think it did. I heard the sound of shots and screams drifting up the central well. The Guard kept going though it seemed like we had been walking for leagues. My breathing got rough. Ten years as part of a tank’s crew does not leave you at optimum fitness for climbing artificial mountains.
The sounds of fighting faded. I did not know whether it was because our comrades were overcome or simply a product of distance but I feared the worst. The air became hotter and the oppressive sense of presence became deeper. I felt like I was walking towards something hellish – that is the only word I can think of to describe it. It was like going into the maw of a great beast. Macharius marched steadily on. Drake went with him. I followed. I always followed.
We emerged onto a massive landing. There were many priests there and many guards. There was nothing else for it but to keep walking forwards as if we had every right to be there.
The heretics did not expect intruders – why should they? This was their most sacred temple. We wore the robes of their sect.
I sweated and my hands felt clammy. At any moment I expected us to be denounced and seized and thrown into one of those terrible cages. My flesh crawled at the thought. I had already decided I would turn my shotgun on myself if the worst came to the worst but only after taking down as many of these bastards as I could. We walked into another enclosed space and Drake came to a halt. Instantly we all formed up around him.
I looked about to see if anyone had noticed our small group huddled together. So far no one had. Maybe they thought we were wrapped in some evil prayer. Many of the heretics present seemed to be. Many were on their knees intoning dark hymns of praise.
Drake paused for a moment, grimaced then shrugged. He began to move confidently further into the complex of chambers. We followed him into a large chamber, lined with leather-bound codexes. Through a massive arched window I caught sight of the outside of the city, far below us. I had not realised we had come so far
although I should have realised it from the ache in my legs. A priest looked at us and said, ‘What are you doing here? What is your business?’
Macharius raised his pistol and shot him. ‘My business is with your master,’ he said.
Heretics poured into the room. They had the advantage of numbers but we had the advantage of confusion. They did not know what was happening; all they saw were people in their own robes fighting. They had no idea who was responsible for what. ‘They have come to assassinate the master,’ Macharius said in his commanding voice. ‘Quickly, we must protect him.’
We strode forwards deeper into the sanctum. I knew then that my life was all but over. No matter what happened, there was no way out of this place. We were surrounded by our enemies and at some point suspicion would fall on us or someone would work out what was going on. So far, speed and confusion had carried us through but our luck was bound to run out sooner or later.
I noticed every little thing, the faint shimmering halo of light that played around Drake as he used his powers, the smooth interplay of muscles as Macharius moved ahead of me, the strange blankness in the eyes of the Understudy, the way the light gleamed on Ivan’s metal cheekbones. Anna’s eerie, trance-like calm as she fired shot after unerring shot and never missed. Once a heretic got close to her. She killed him with a blow to the windpipe with the side of her hand that was almost too fast for me to see.
I noticed the almost drugged stares of the heretics. They looked like men on the edge of an ecstatic religious trance, who were expecting some great revelation, who might at any moment be transported into the heavens to meet their gods.