Helsreach Read online

  ‘Nero…’

  Nerovar ejected another tube and tossed it to the Reclusiarch. DARGRAVIAN, it read. He had been the first to fall.

  ‘Nerovar…’

  The Apothecary ejected a third vial. This one he held in his fist, his gauntlet clutching it just shy of crushing it into shards. CADOR showed between Nero’s fingers.

  ‘Answer me,’ the Apothecary demanded. ‘Is what we do here worthless? Is there nothing to be proud of in our sacrifice?’

  Grimaldus didn’t answer for several moments. He looked around the modest, broken temple, the light of thought bright in his eyes.

  ‘The city is falling, brother. Sarren and the other humans faced that fact today. The time has come for us to choose where we will die.’

  ‘Then let it be where we will be remembered.’ Nerovar reverently handed the vial bearing Cador’s cryogenically frozen gene-seed organs to the Chaplain. ‘Let it be where our deaths will matter, and give birth to tales worthy of being recorded in humanity’s history.’

  Grimaldus looked at the three vials resting in his gauntleted palm.

  ‘I know of a place,’ he said softly, a dangerous flicker appearing in his eyes as he looked back up at his battle-brother. ‘It is far from here, but there is no holier place on this entire world. There, we shall dig our graves, and there, we will ensure the Great Enemy forever remembers the name of the Black Templars.’

  ‘Tell me why you have chosen this place. I must know.’

  The truth is… surprising, but as I speak the words, there is no doubt within them. This is what we must do, and it is how we must die. Our lives are sacrifice, from implantation of the gene-seed to its extraction from our bodies.

  ‘We will die where our deaths matter. Where we can spite the enemy with our last breaths, and inspire the warriors of this city.’

  ‘Now those,’ Nero says, ‘are at last the words of a Reclusiarch.’

  ‘I am a slow learner,’ I confess. This brings a smile to my brother’s lips.

  ‘Mordred is dead,’ Nero said, keeping his voice low. ‘But he trusted you as his heir above any other for one reason. He believed you were worthy.’

  I say nothing.

  ‘Do not die without ever living up to him, Grimaldus.’

  CHAPTER XX

  Godbreaker

  Maralin moved across the botanical garden, her fingertips trailing along the dewy leaves and petals of the rosebushes.

  They were not hers, but that didn’t stop her admiring them. Only one of her sisters had the patience and skill to grow roses in the choking air and sickened soil of the city, and that was Alana. All other blooms in the botanical garden were raised by cultivation servitors, and in Maralin’s opinion, it showed. Her fingers danced along the wet petals of the soot-darkened roses, amazed as always at how lovelier and fuller Alana’s flowers were in comparison to the modest blooms grown by the augmented slave workers.

  They lacked inspiration, clearly, and no doubt the severance of their souls had much to do with it.

  Passing through the spacious garden, she entered the rectory. The building’s air filters were straining, keeping the main chamber cooled. Prioress Sindal was sat, as she almost always was, at her oversized desk of rare stonewood, scribing away in meticulous handwriting.

  She looked up as Maralin entered, peering through the corrective eyelenses that had slipped to the end of her nose.

  ‘Prioress, we’ve received word from Tempestora.’

  Sindal’s cataracted eyes narrowed, and she gently sprinkled sand across her parchment, drying the fresh ink. She was seventy-one years old, and she didn’t just look it – she also sounded it when she spoke.

  ‘What of the Sanctorum?’

  ‘Gone,’ Maralin swallowed.

  ‘Survivors?’

  ‘Few, and most are wounded. The hive has fallen, and the Sanctorum of the Order of Our Martyred Lady is overrun by the enemy. We received word now that there aren’t enough survivors to retake their Sanctorum as of yet. Our own sisters in the Ash and Fire Wastes are moving to support.’

  ‘So Tempestora is gone. What of Hive Stygia to the north?’

  ‘Still no word, prioress. They are surely enduring the siege as we are.’

  The old woman’s hands were palsied, though she found that writing always steadied them for reasons beyond her understanding. They shook now as she set the completed parchment aside, on a loose pile of several others.

  ‘Helsreach has weeks left, but little beyond that. The siege is almost at our own gates.’

  ‘That… brings me to the second of the morning’s messages, prioress.’ Maralin swallowed again. She was clearly uncomfortable, and resented being the one sent to deliver these messages, but she was the youngest, and often relegated to these tasks.

  ‘Speak, sister.’

  ‘We received a message from the Astartes commander in the city. The Reclusiarch. He sends word that his knights are en route to stand with us in the defence.’

  The prioress removed her eyeglasses and cleaned them with a soft cloth. Then, carefully, she placed them back onto her face and looked directly at the young girl.

  ‘The Reclusiarch is bringing the Black Templars here?’

  ‘Yes, prioress.’

  ‘Hmph. Did he happen to say why he felt the sudden wish to fight alongside the Order of the Argent Shroud?’

  He had not, but Maralin had been paying close attention to the scraps of information that made it over the vox with any clarity. This, too, was one of her duties as the youngest, while her sisters were preparing for battle.

  ‘No, prioress. I suspect it ties into Colonel Sarren’s decision to break up the remaining defenders into separate bastions. The Reclusiarch has chosen the Temple.’

  ‘I see. I doubt he asked permission.’

  Maralin smiled. The prioress had fought with the Emperor’s Chosen before, and many of her sermons had included irritated mentions of their brash attitudes. ‘No, prioress. He didn’t.’

  ‘Typical Astartes. Hmph. When do they arrive?’

  ‘Before sunset, mistress.’

  ‘Very well. Anything more?’

  There was little. The compromised vox-network had offered several suggestions of severe enemy Titan movement to the north, but confirmation wasn’t forthcoming. Maralin relayed this, but she could tell the prioress’s mind was elsewhere. On the Templars, most certainly.

  ‘Damn it all,’ the old woman muttered as she rose from her chair, placing the quill in the inkpot. ‘Well, don’t just stand there gawping, girl. Prepare my battle armour.’

  Maralin’s eyes widened. ‘How long has it been since you wore your armour, prioress?’

  ‘How old are you, girl?’

  ‘Fifteen, mistress.’

  ‘Well, then. Let’s just say you couldn’t wipe your own backside the last time I went to war.’ The old woman’s forehead barely reached Maralin’s chin as she shuffled past. ‘But it’ll be good to deliver a sermon with a bolter in hand again.’

  Elsewhere in the Temple of the Emperor Ascendant, the sisters were making ready for war. The Order of the Argent Shroud were not in Helsreach in any significant force, their contributions thus far being little more than a series of fighting withdrawals from churches across the city.

  Ninety-seven battle-ready sisters manned the Temple’s walls and halls, standing guard over several thousand menials, servitors, preachers, lay sisters and acolytes. The Temple itself was formed of a central basilica, surrounded by high rockcrete walls bedecked in leering angels and hideous gargoyles staring out at the city beyond. Between the walls and the central building, acre upon acre of graveyard reached out from the basilica in every direction. Thousands of years before, they had been lush garden grounds, grown and tended by the first of Armageddon’s settlers. Those same settlers were buried here, their bones long turned to dust and their gravestones weathered faceless by time. Interred alongside them were generations of their descendants; holy servants of the Imperium; and the
respected dead of Armageddon’s Steel Legions.

  No one was buried here now; the graveyard was considered full. Official records numbered the graves around the basilica as nine million, one hundred and eight thousand, four hundred and sixty. Currently, only two people knew this was incorrect, and only one of them cared about the discrepancy.

  The first was a servitor who had been a gardener in life, and had devoted several of his living years, before the augmetics had stolen his reason and independence, to counting the graves as he tended the gardens around them. He’d been curious, and it had satisfied him to learn the truth. He kept it to himself, knowing to report it to his superiors might bring down accusations of laxity in his primary duties. He was, after all, a garden-tender and not a stock-counter or cogitator. Three months after he had satisfied himself with the truth, he was found stealing from the Temple’s tithe boxes, and sentenced to augmetic reconfiguration.

  The second person who knew the truth was Prioress Sindal. She had also counted them herself, over the course of three years. To her, it was a form of meditation; of bringing herself to a state of oneness with the people of Armageddon. She had not been born here, and in her devoted service to the people of this world, she felt her meditative technique was apt enough.

  She had, of course, filed amendments to the records, but they were still locked in the bureaucratic cycle. The Temple’s cardinal council were notoriously foul at having their staff deal with paperwork.

  Most gravestones were stacked close together in clusters of bloodline or fealty, and there was no conformity in the markers – each was a slightly different size, shape, material or angle to those nearby, even in sections where the rows were ordered in neat lines. In other parts of the graveyard district, finding one’s way along a pathway was akin to navigating a labyrinth, with weaving a way between the graves taking a great deal of time.

  The Temple of the Emperor Ascendant itself was, by Imperial standards, a thing of haunting and gothic beauty. The spires were ringed by stone angels and depictions of the Emperor’s primarchs as saints. Stained glass windows displayed a riot of colours, showing scenes of the God-Emperor’s Great Crusade to bring the stars into union beneath humanity’s vigilant guidance. Lesser depictions were of the first settlers themselves, their deeds of survival and construction exaggerated to deific proportion, showing them as the builders of a glorious, perfect world of golden light and marble cathedrals, rather than the industrial planet they had founded in truth.

  The Sisters of the Order of the Argent Shroud had not been idle during the months of warfare that ravaged the rest of the city. Lesser shrines in the graveyard were both heavy weapon outposts and chapels to their founder, Saint Silvana. Angular statues of solid silver – each one of the weeping saint in various poses of grief, triumph and contemplation – stood silent watch over turret pods and barricaded gun-nests.

  The walls themselves were reinforced in the same way as the city walls, and bore the same ratio of defence turrets per metre. These remained manned by Helsreach militia.

  The Temple courtyard’s great gates were not closed. Despite the protestations of the cardinal council, Prioress Sindal had demanded the doors be kept open until the last possible moment, allowing more and more refugees to enter over the weeks of siege. The basilica’s undercroft housed hundreds of families who hadn’t been able to enter the subterranean shelters, for reasons of criminal activity, administrative error, or outright bad luck. Bunched together in the gloom, they came up for morning and evening prayer, adding their voices to the singing pleas that reached up the immaculately-painted ceiling, where the God-Emperor was depicted staring off into the heavens.

  The Temple of the Emperor Ascendant was, in short, a fortress.

  A fortress filled with refugees, and surrounded by the largest graveyard in the world.

  We are the last to arrive.

  Twenty-nine of my brothers already await my arrival, with our cargo gunship grounded nearby. It brings our total force to thirty-five, if one was to count Jurisian labouring on the forlorn hope, bring the weapon across the Ash Wastes.

  Thirty-five of the hundred that landed in Helsreach five weeks before.

  One of those awaiting our arrival is the one warrior I have done all I can to avoid for the last five weeks.

  He kneels before the open gates of the Temple’s compound, his black sword plunged into the marble before him, helmed head lowered in reverence. As with the Templars around him, almost all evidence of scripture parchment, wax crusader seals and cloth tabard is gone from his armour. I recognise him because of his ancient armour and the dark blade he prays to.

  Jurisian himself has worked on that armour, repairing it with reverence each time he has been honoured with the chance to touch it. Before Jurisian, a host of other Masters of the Forge maintained the relic war plate through the centuries, back to its original forging as a suit of armour for the Imperial Fists Legion.

  While our armour shows dull grey wounds under the stripped paint, this knight’s war plate, forged in a time when primarchs walked the galaxy, shows gold beneath the battle damage. The legacy of Dorn’s Legion is still there if one knows where to look; between the cracks, revealed by war.

  The knight rises, pulling the sword from the marble with no effort at all. His helm turns to face me, and a faceplate that once stared out onto the battlefields of the Horus Heresy regards me with eye lenses the colour of human blood.

  He salutes me, sword sheathed on his back and his gauntlets making the sign of the aquila over his battered breastplate. I return the salute, and rarely in my life has the gesture been so heartfelt. I am finally ready to stand before him, and endure the judging stare of those crimson eyes.

  ‘Hail, Reclusiarch,’ he says to me.

  ‘Hail, Bayard,’ I say to the Emperor’s Champion of the Helsreach Crusade.

  He watches me, but I know he is not seeing me. He sees Mordred, the knight whose weapon I bear, and whose face I wear.

  ‘My liege.’ Priamus comes forward, kneeling before Bayard.

  ‘Priamus,’ Bayard vox-laughs. ‘Still breathing, I see.’

  ‘Nothing on this world will change that, my liege.’

  ‘Rise, brother. The day will never come that you must kneel before me.’ Priamus rises, inclining his head in respect once more before returning to my side. ‘Artarion, Bastilan, it is good to see you both. And you, Nero.’

  Nerovar makes the sign of the aquila, but says nothing.

  ‘Cador’s fall tore at my heart, brother. He and I served in the Sword Brethren together, did you know that?’

  ‘I knew it, my liege. Cador spoke of it often. He was honoured to serve at your side.’

  ‘The honour was mine. Know that fifty of the enemy died by my blade the day I heard of his passing. Throne, but he was a warrior to quench the fires of the stars themselves. I miss him fiercely, and the Eternal Crusade is poorer without his sword.’

  ‘You… do great honour to his memory,’ Nero’s voice is choked with emotion.

  ‘Tell me, brother,’ Bayard’s tone lowers, as if the refugees standing and staring at us outside the great gates have no right to hear of what we speak. ‘I heard his death-wound was in the back. Is this so?’

  Nero’s nod comes with reluctance. ‘It is.’

  ‘I also heard he killed nine of the beasts alone, before succumbing to his wounds.’

  ‘He did.’

  ‘Nine. Nine. Then he died facing his enemy, as a knight must. Thank you, Nero. You have brought me comfort this day.’

  ‘I… I…’

  ‘Welcome, brothers. It has been too long since we stood united.’ There are general murmurs of assent, and Bayard looks to me.

  I smile behind my mask.

  They rode in the back compartment of a trundling Chimera armoured personnel transport, their backs thumping against the metal walls with each sharp turn. It had been parked on the highway itself, riddled with bullet holes and las-burns, but still very much fuelled and rea
dy to roll. Andrej and the others had dragged the bodies of dead Legionnaires out onto the road, and the storm-trooper had forced the dockers to say a short prayer over the corpses before he would, as he put it, ‘steal their ride’.

  ‘Manners cost nothing,’ he told them. ‘And these men died for your city.’

  The troop section in the back of the Chimera was a typical slice of Guard life, smelling of blood, oil and rancid sweat. On creaking benches, Maghernus and his dockers, along with Asavan Tortellius recruited to their cause, sat and waited for Andrej to get them all the way down the Hel’s Highway.

  He was not a good driver. They had mentioned this to him, and he professed not to know what they were talking about. Besides, he’d added, the left tank tread was damaged. That was why he kept skidding.

  Also, he’d amended last of all, they should shut up. So there.

  Andrej cycled through vox-channels, still getting no luck on any frequency. Whether every vox-tower in the city was gone or the orks had some intense jamming campaign going on was beside the point at this stage. He couldn’t get in touch with his commanders, and that left him to his own devices. As always, he would go forward. It was the way of the Legion, and the creed of the Guard.

  The way he saw it, the Reclusiarch owed him a favour. In this case, going forward meant making a stand with the black knights until he could find someone, anyone, from his command structure.

  There’d been a particularly galling moment when he’d managed to contact elements of the 233rd Steel Legion Armoured Division, but they were in the middle of being annihilated by an enemy scrap-Titan formation and had no time for pleasantries. Fate was laughing at him, Andrej was sure of it – the one Imperial force he’d been able to reach were minutes from being wiped out anyway.

  This was no way to fight a war. No communication between any forces? Madness!

  Smoke and flames were on the horizon ahead, but that indicated next to nothing of any use in determining direction or destination. Smoke and flames were on every horizon. Smoke and flame was all each of the horizons had become.