Kneeling to Lucia’s right, Silvana’s armour gleamed with the reflected light of the Simulacrum of the Argent Shroud, now folded in her lap. Her face seemed serene, yet it carried strong, hard angles, lines like absolute fearlessness.
‘First, Sister, I will speak my welcome.’ Her voice was soft, but it had a constant, odd scratch, almost as if something in her throat were rusting. ‘I am Silvana, of the Argent Shroud. I was the first martyr, offering my life to ensure Dominica’s survival, and it is my sacred task to take action in His name, pushing ever for the heart of the encroaching darkness. Too many lives are lost through chatter, through procrastination, through the inability to make a decision. You will observe that I do not like wastage, of either words or time. While it will be Mina’s task to ensure your basic training, it is mine to make the larger military assessments. It is not our task to fight, but fight we will, if He decrees it necessary.’
‘I understand,’ Avra said.
‘Perhaps you should voice your question, Sister,’ Dominica said.
‘My question.’ Silvana appeared to think for a moment, though Avra would have guessed that the questions, like the ceremony, had been performed many times.
Outside, a sergeant bellowed for quiet; from somewhere, a raucous voice told him what he could do with his quiet, and Avra’s lips twitched. She stopped herself smiling, schooling her expression to a proper reverence.
‘My Sisters,’ Silvana said, ‘have spoken about rage, and pain. So my question to you is this – tell me of your courage, Sister. Tell me of your initiative.’
Once again, Avra cast her mind back to the schola, to her tutor and her data-slate, to the legends that she and her fellow novices had learned. Every Sister – be she Militant, Hospitaller, Dialogus or Famulous – was taught His lore, lessons of honour, discipline and courage. It was only when you were submerged in the font’s holy waters, and then donned the sacred garments of your Order, that the greater legends were revealed.
Avra said, ‘We faced the necrons upon Psamitek. The layers of their tombs stretched down to the heart of the planet’s carven stone. They came upon us from a hundred positions and we could not hold against them. But, with my Sisters, I struck at their very heart, at the deathplace of their overlord. And thus, they faltered.’
‘A good example,’ Silvana answered. Her voice still burred, but there was a kindness to it, something different to Mina’s clipped, practical tones, and yet different again to Lucia’s gentle severity. A sense of kinship rose in Avra’s heart and she closed her eyes, offering a prayer of thanks for the courage of these Sisters that seemed so powerful and yet so human.
‘In my middle to later years,’ Silvana said, ‘I was an abbess at the Schola Progenium, honoured by Him to assist in the education of our younger Sisters Militant.’ In the soft light from the Shroud, the lines on her face were shadowed and she looked almost girlish, but her stance and shoulders bore the weight of both wisdom and age. ‘I used to say to my novices – we are Sisters both of, and in, Battle. We must learn structure, and manoeuvre, and warfare. We must learn restraint, and self-control. With prayer and faith, we must learn to use our anger, and our pain, to further His glory.’
The odd catch in her voice had faded as she spoke, and her tones became almost rhythmic, as if she recited some great poem or saga, some lore of times ancient.
‘Yet there are times when a Sister finds herself bereft of such structure, or when she must rely on the keen edge of her daring. And this is the story that is mine to tell. A story of the Wars of Faith, of course, but a story of our saint’s great and audacious courage.’
‘We all have courage, my Sister.’ There was the faintest catch to Mina’s voice, a sound like an old disagreement, but Silvana only smiled at her. When Mina said nothing further, the older Sister continued.
‘We have all seen battle against orks, have we not?’ She raised a silver-grey eyebrow at Avra, who shook her head, though she remembered her classes well enough. ‘They are everywhere,’ Silvana continued, ‘like some fanged and fecund plague. As fast as we purge them from one place, they invade from another, all noise and commotion. Their engines are loud, their voices coarse, their relentlessness – frankly – exhausting.’ Again, that flicker of a smile. ‘And, my Sisters, discipline is as alien to them as it is doctrine to us.’
Her smile moved back to Mina, less like an apology and more like an act of inclusion – a reminder that their shared Sisterhood was far stronger than any old flaring of discord. Avra was finding that she liked this quiet older Sister, with her voice still flowing like a song.
‘And so,’ Silvana said, ‘my tale takes us to the great invasion of Tirzah Kai, and to orks without number. Stamping and shouting, mocking and murdering, flinging filth and fire. And slaying and eating the men, women and children of the planet’s towns and villages – in truth, no words can do complete justice to the horrors of a greenskin invasion. Kai was a small world, little able to defend itself. It bore only the crudest of weapons and armour. Its people worshipped an icon of His glory so ancient that it no longer even carried His face.’
She turned her own up to His likeness, her expression almost penitent. Her lips moved in a silent prayer, perhaps for forgiveness, and she went on. ‘Yet He had blessed the world of Kai with a dark and buried wealth – with deposits of promethium deep within its core. And so, in His name, came the Adeptus Mechanicus, to build mines and to teach industry, and with them came the ever-proud soldiers of the Imperium, mustered to hold back the xenos tide.
‘And at their core, even as we are today, stood Katherine herself, and her Sisters of the Fiery Heart.’
Silvana’s blue gaze stopped on Avra, and the younger woman found herself blushing, though she was not sure why. Perhaps it was just the weight of the drawn parallel, and the responsibility that she now bore. It seemed that all of her new Sisters were insistent upon this point, each in her own way.
She accepted it, admitted her humility, set her shoulders to carry it.
And Silvana began her story.
Katherine and her Sisters were upon the world of Kai, stationed with company command, and at the very heart of the Imperium’s counter-assault. Over them, warships streaked the skies with fire, their debris tumbling like meteors, amid rains of molten metal. Much of the planet’s surface was a great ash-plain, pocked with craters. Clouds of grey dust billowed constantly skywards, filling the overheated air. Amid this endless, churning powder rose dark, rocky islands upon which dwelt Kai’s people, defending themselves from not only orks, but also from the local predators: the vicious, many-legged carnivores that stalked relentlessly about them.
The xenos invasion was monstrous, a clash of human and greenskin in a vicious and terrible confrontation.
At the heart of the battle, Katherine and her Sisters defended Camp Righteous. Their armour was sealed against the clouds of ash, they bore flamer and bolter and hymnal, and they inspired the Militarum to greater and greater efforts. The rage of the orks came at the fortified camp many times, but the greenskins were erratic and unruly and their attacks fell apart, even as the Sisters fought them back. With Katherine’s shield as their banner, the defenders held the camp against invasion.
But one does not presume to interpret the will of the Emperor, and there are times when He calls upon us in ways we cannot anticipate.
Silvana paused, again looking up at His likeness and sketching the sign of the fleur-de-lys upon the front of her armour. Outside, the ever-watchful Sentinels were moving again, and the faint whine of their servos crept through the chapel, reminding all six Sisters that their time was short.
Picking up the pace of her recitation, Silvana kept speaking.
The onslaught of the greenskins was unceasing, their numbers infinite. They soon surrounded Camp Righteous, spreading out to threaten camps Vengeance and Retribution, forcing their way even to the mineheads. And they were not only on foot. Their metal contraptions rattled and clanked, belching forth smoke and flames. There were bikes and trikes and buggies, all rasping with eager rage. There were larger contraptions that carried gleefully chanting orks into battle. There were other vehicles, larger still, that carried great siege weapons – unreliable yet devastating. And their constant roar ran around and around, the noise as unrelenting as the shouting of the orks themselves.
The soldiers were exhausted, and they began to make mistakes.
Listening, Avra found herself caught by the story. One of her squadmates had told her of orks, though not in planetwide numbers; the Sister had been aboard an old hulk, searching for an injured member of another Order… This was the first of the tales with which she could really identify, and it called to her heart with a thrum like Silvana’s voice.
Told her that she understood this.
Could do this. In His name.
Faced by the soldiers’ exhaustion, Katherine made a choice. A cadre of Sisters with her, she sought the Militarum commander and told him her intention.
‘We must end this,’ she said. ‘I will take a small force and we will locate the warboss. When we have slain the creature, you will coordinate all three camps for a counter-attack, and the rest of this assault will falter.’
The commander was wise – he made no argument. He commanded his men and women to commence a full bombardment, every camp raining death upon its besiegers. With the orks thus distracted, Katherine and her Sisters departed in silence and in stealth. Their armour black against the planet’s ash-filled night, they moved as silently as Sisters can, taking a careful route through the greenskin horde…
‘Do you have something to say, my Sister?’
As Silvana had told her tale, Mina’s expression had become steadily grimmer, darkening to a thundercloud. Dominica watched them both, saying nothing, but Avra was beginning to understand the odd, old flex of tension between these two Sisters. The Adepta Sororitas did not refuse to face the enemy – such was cowardice, unthinkable – and to ‘sneak’ through the greenskins’ camp was tantamount to blasphemy. It refused their honour and calling, their role in His wars. It sent a shock through her blood, though she said nothing.
The others, it seemed, also understood. Lucia commented softly, ‘Be at ease, my Sisters. We have all seen battlefields, and we all drive for victory. Sometimes He calls for extreme measures.’
‘Such have been my schola teachings,’ Silvana continued, her smile back in place. The light from the Shroud bathed her with an odd serenity, her armour glittering like black water. With a questioning glance at Mina, who held her gaze but said nothing, she went on.
The Sisters’ silence was necessary – they moved to target only the warboss. His throne and minions were easy to spy – and to hear – through the morass. Orks lead from the front, the biggest always at their head, and they did not have to go far to discover him.
Blessed by the Emperor, the Sisters moved without detection. The orks were busy cavorting, shouting and fighting. They were loud, boastfully dismissive of the Imperium’s barrage, of the tumbled fragments of the shattered ships, of the occasional too-curious predator. They saw only their own noisome machines, banged together from oddments of metal. They burned great campfires, their fuel carried by grots. They rode their noisy vehicles in wide circles, making clouds from the dust. In places, they had captured defenders and predators both, and the Sisters’ stomachs turned. Yet He had bid that Katherine seek their warboss and she commanded her squad onwards. They dealt neither wrath nor mercy, and they eased carefully through the greenskin horde. By His blessing, they were not assailed.
Soon, they spied their target: the warboss himself, sitting upon a great and soiled throne. He was the loudest of all, and garishly clad. His shoulders and belly were vast, his fangs yellow and rotted. A line of skulls hung about his neck, and chunks of metal glinted in his ears. Even as the Sisters closed upon his location, they could hear him bellow the words of the orks’ familiar chant.
But he was also wily, a sly intelligence in his burning red eyes.
As Katherine came close, so he pointed one muscled arm and roared, ‘Humies!’
The word echoed loud through the little chapel and Silvana paused. The others had a tight feeling of anticipation, caught by the tension of the tale. Outside, the Sentinels had stopped again and the air was sharp and still.
But Silvana said, ‘I, too, have faced orks. In great numbers. I was injured in mind and in body, and hence He led me to take my place at the schola, to teach a new generation of Sisters. Yet the injuries inflicted upon me would not leave me in peace, and while my body healed, my mind did not. And He came to me with the vision we have all seen, of the chapel and of our greatest Sisters kneeling within, and so I came here, back to the battle, to confront my horrors and to heal that mental scar.’ She touched the Shroud like it was a talisman. ‘Sister Avra, our new Katherine, be not shamed by our disagreements. As we fight together, each defending the Sisters to her sides, so do our skills and disciplines overlap and balance each other. Sister Mina is a proud warrior, she faces the foe head-on. It is my task to think in… broader terms. Sister Arabella will tell you more of our harmonies, but I say this – we overlap, each skill in its turn. And there are no odds that we cannot face, in His name. No force that can withstand us, in His grace. No enemy that we cannot defeat, in His blessing. We stand in the light of sacred Terra, and we bear the saint herself, her shield to defend us, her very sarcophagus to lead us – and each and every army with whom we stand – to victory. As you listen to these tales, remember that she who fought the Wars of Faith – she is here. With us. It is her glow that touches our armour. Her very strength that we bear.
‘In His name.’
‘In His name.’ The Sisters repeated the blessing, the whisper shivering round the chapel like a faint breath of wind.
Mina was nodding, her expression now serious, approving. Dominica’s lean, dark face had softened to a smile, and Arabella almost shone, her eyes as bright as electro-candles.
Lucia said, ‘I hear you, my Sister. Injuries of the mind can be the worst of all to bear, but still, we fight on.’
‘We fight on,’ Silvana repeated, agreeing. ‘No matter what the odds, no matter how deep the darkness, we fight on.’
She smiled, and continued.
And so, Katherine confronted her target. There, alone in the centre of that mighty greenskin horde, so our saint and her Sisters raised their weapons. They closed ranks, shoulder to shoulder. While they were vastly outnumbered, He was with them; He had called them to this very duty, and their objective was not to fight the army in its entirety, but to execute its boss. And to perish in so doing, if that be His will.
Seeing them, the boss was on his feet and stamping down from his throne. He waved his minions back, leering in horrific and toothsome glee. He picked up his huge axe in one massive, warted hand. He would slay these interlopers himself. A show of strength.
The Sisters confronted him, weapons raised. As they did so, the greenskins about them gathered into a ring, fangs bared and weapons bristling. Word of the Sisters’ presence was flowing out through the ork camp like some susurrus of scorn, and more and more of the creatures were abandoning their posts and incoming, jostling and shoving to be able to see.
They fought amongst themselves, snarling and barging, but the warboss bellowed and they stopped, their fangs all bared. He came forth, opened his jaws as if to speak.
Katherine did not wish to hear his words. She barked the order, and the Sisters raised their bolters and opened fire.
But the boss was quick, fast indeed for a beast of such size. Dismissive of the Sisters’ weapons, he moved sideways, then lunged forth, slashing the axe at Katherine’s shoulder, and strong enough to slice her through to the hip.
But the axe hit the shield with a great and mighty clang, and the greenskin crowd set to whooping and jeering. The sounds of engines and clattering metal had stopped, and more and more of the creatures were approaching.
With a greenskin’s poor discipline, they had moved away from the camps, coming to see the fight for themselves. The commander’s bombardment had ceased, and that, of course, had been a part of Katherine’s plan. Over the vox, she said, ‘We must buy the Militarum time, allow them to fully muster. Hold your fire, and we will play this warboss’ game.’
The ring of greenskins was slavering and baying, but the boss had ordered them back. And Katherine’s Sisters, too, ceased their assault, forming to a compass defence and watching in every direction.
Katherine herself challenged the warboss. And he grinned, his fangs still covered in shreds of flesh and gore.
He moved like some huge predator, his ears jangling with steel tokens. Around him, campfires glittered like gems, and fragments of burning metal still streaked down through the sky, like meteors of destruction. Katherine faced the huge beast without fear. Fastening her bolter, she drew her sword and, using her shield to defend herself, she cut at his shoulders and face. But the beast moved back, his face a foul and mocking leer.
The Sisters began to sing and the orks became louder, drowning out the hymnal with their rough, ragged chant. But the Sisters did not stop, their vox-casters chiming loud from their armour, and the orks faltered at their words, as if His very voice sang with them, bass and deep beneath their sacred harmonies.
Angered at his troops’ weakness, the warboss slashed and slashed again. Katherine blocked with her blade and her shield. The creature was strong, but her sacred armour and strength were enough to withstand his brutality. She sought gaps in his defence, struck through them at the thing’s muscle and hide. Yet the ork was armoured with heavy plates of rusted steel, and it did not look like he would slow.
Back and forth they fought, sword striking axe, axe striking shield. The beast used the claws upon his free hand to slash at her face and throat; he moved the axe to both hands and spun it like a staff to strike at her with the butt. But every time, her shield was too swift and she blocked the incoming attack, her feet skidding in the ash at the power of the ork’s blows.
The fight continued, and the singing grew louder. The orks began to fidget, to glance at one another and snort with laughter. Blow and counter-blow struck and clashed. Katherine’s armour took strikes from the axe; they were enough to almost knock her from her feet, but she stayed upright and fought on. She struck at her opponent’s face, her blade taking one of the warboss’ flaming red eyes.
At this, the boss stopped, blood seeping down his face and over his fangs. His own forces were starting to mock him, shuffling and grinning and nudging. He was losing status, and he knew it. Stepping back, he turned his head, ogling Katherine from his one good eye. He continued to leer, fangs bared; he ran his tongue over his own blood.
In the vox, Katherine said, ‘We are out of time. Commander, are your troops set?’
The commander’s voice responded, ‘Yes, ma’am. Upon your command.’
Once more, she drew her bolter.
At the motion, the warboss roared, ‘Boyz! We gets ’em!’
Released to combat, the mass of slobbering greenskins threw themselves forwards. Few had firearms, fewer still the space to shoot, but that did not stop them. They loosed their rounds, injuring themselves and each other, stamping and trampling in their eagerness to get at the Sisters. They pulled each other down to the flattened-hard ash.
The boss himself advanced, still bellowing, kicking the smaller orks out of his way. Katherine barked her orders over the vox, one to the commander, one to her Sisters, but the Sisters’ drill was good, their unity strong. They needed no commands to enact His will.
And they opened fire.
The boss roared as the first wave of xenos went down in a hail of rounds and flame, in explosions of flesh and blood and gore. The wave behind them staggered and slipped, falling over their own dead and dying. Uncaring, driven by savagery, they stomped their fellows down into the ash and came onwards, their eyes and weapons glittering. The hard pulse of their chant had grown louder, now.
Snarling, shrugging off the bolter fire, the warboss raised the axe over his head and brought it down, two-handed. It was a mighty blow, and it hit Katherine’s shield with a clang that made her ears ring.
But the Sisters fought on. There were only four of them, Fiery Hearts all, and the whoosh and roar of one Sister’s flamer detonated the ammo of the closest ork. The explosion was blinding, deafening. It bathed the boss in fire and blasted the smaller creatures back.
It was not enough.
The orks broke over the Sisters like an angry green tide, its foam-spray grey as ash. Yet the four of them stood like the very rock of Camp Righteous itself. Firing until their magazines ran down, they fought with fists and feet, and they stayed upright amid the rush. Katherine saw this from the corner of her eye; she was still focused on the boss, fulfilling His command and her own mission. She would behead this xenos army before she perished.
A mob of gretchin, each one no higher than her hip, were coming for her – more afraid of the boss than they were of the Sister. With a shout of prayer, she let off a full suppression with her bolter, blasting them backwards. Battering one out of the way with a slam of her shield, another with a well-aimed foot, she broke through their rank with ease.
Learning their folly, they fled, squeaking, and she faced the warboss once more.
In one part of her warrior’s mind, she was still aware of her Sisters behind her, of the heave and struggle of the impossible odds they faced. She was also aware of the commander, barking vox-orders and deploying his troops. There was the rumble of tank tracks, the boom and thump of artillery. Fire streaked the sky.
At the back of the greenskin horde, some creatures were bawling warnings. Engines were coughing back to life, rasping into motion as the besiegers realised their mistake.
The boss snarled, smart enough to understand that he’d been tricked.
Katherine shot him, her full rate of fire, but he seemed indomitable, the rounds hitting the plates of his chest with myriad detonations. He juddered, but walked through her attack as if propelled by some demented, heretic belief. A round in his shoulder blasted flesh and bone; still, he did not stop. A round hit his upper arm, shredding the muscle; he moved his axe back to a one-handed grip. His blood still slid down his face from the missing eye, but he did not care. The vast ork kept coming.
And then, her bolter clanked empty.
Behind her, her Sisters were singing, tight notes of pure fury. They could not win this, but they would offer their lives in His service.
A cold hand in her heart told her: this boss was too powerful. She may fail this mission. And such was not permitted. In His name.
Over the vox, she said, ‘Sisters, re-form to attack pattern zero-one. We will alpha strike the warboss. Weapons ready, and on my mark–’
‘Which begs the question,’ Mina said, cutting hard across Silvana’s tale, ‘why they did not do this in the first instance. If their target was to slay the boss, why did they not simply open fire? You are not telling me that one duels a xenos with honour?’ The flare of disagreement was back in her tone.
‘I said nothing of honour, my Sister.’ Silvana’s response carried its burr like an edge of annoyance. ‘They bought the commander time to muster, and to hit the ork horde in the back.’
‘Such is not the duty of a Sister of Battle–’
‘Sisters, please.’ Arabella tried to quell the disagreement, but Dominica caught the younger Sister’s gaze and stopped her with a pointed look.
Avra looked from face to face around the group. She could sense that this was an old issue, resurfaced once more to accompany the familiar tale.
‘We know the answer,’ Dominica said. ‘We have had this discussion many times.’ There was authority in her tone, telling the Sisters to behave themselves. ‘With the passage of vast time, so battle-stories are retold, and knowledge is distilled. Fact becomes tale, tale becomes legend, legend becomes myth. Our Sisters Dialogus are guardians of His sacred lore, but we’ – the word was pointed – ‘we are warriors. And it is not our place to question the sagas of our saint, whatever they may be. It is our place to learn from them. You, my Sister,’ she said to Mina, ‘you are a warrior without peer, a soldier foremost, and your thoughts are forthright, honest and true. But you’ – she directed this to Silvana – ‘you are also a tutor. And you bring us a tale of great boldness, of an action beyond a Sister’s usual discipline, and this, also, has its place.’ Her tone was a warning. ‘Be this fact, or legend, or somewhere in between, it exists to illuminate an aspect of ourselves. And, my Sister,’ she said to Mina, ‘we do not only think in straight lines.’
Mina inhaled, stung. The rest of the group had quietened, watching Dominica. The older Sister turned back to Arabella.
‘When Sister Silvana’s tale is done and her gift given, you will offer your story, to remind all why we stand together. And why, together, we are stronger than the total of our single parts.’ Her dark eyes took in Avra. ‘I will tell my tale after Arabella, and then, my new Sister, you will tell us a tale of your own.’ Her lean face had turned watchful, almost assessing. ‘Understanding, like the stories, comes in many layers.’
The others had subsided, demurring to her leadership.
‘Silvana?’ she prompted.
Bathed by the light of her Shroud and by the reflection that came from her armour, Silvana once again picked up the thread of her tale.
‘We will alpha strike the warboss,’ Katherine said. ‘Weapons ready, and on my mark… Mark!’
The Sisters moved with perfect fluidity. Shifting from their compass defence, they re-formed to a single line, and opened fire at the huge bulk of the bloodied boss. Katherine was already moving, sideways and out of range. Taking the moment to reload her bolter, she checked the enemy to both sides.
The orks had been startled by the Sisters’ sudden movement, and more and more of them were moving away, back to the rocky rise of the camp, and to the rumble of the incoming ranks.
But not enough… not enough.
Even as the four Sisters of the Fiery Heart assaulted the boss with faith and fury, even as the boss bellowed in pain as his flesh burned, as his face and skull were battered by the full rate of fire from the heavy bolter, so they were buried completely by the orks’ assault. In their armour, they were strong, they could withstand the individual blows and attacks, but the weight of the entire force was too much. As the boss staggered to his knees, the line of Sisters was gone. But still, they sang. The vox was alive with their voices, refusing to submit.
His armour red-hot, his flesh cooking as it fused to the metal, the front of his face all but destroyed, the warboss could still snarl. And, with impossible might, he came back to his feet. His ruined mouth made one bellow, one stinking roar that cut through the boiling mêlée.
‘WAAAAAAAAGH!’
Katherine did not comprehend, but his forces did. Still commanded by the boss’ power and size, they spared a moment to gawk in rebellious incredulity; then, grumbling, they turned to the incoming Militarum.
Two of the Sisters rose, their armour battered and damaged. Two did not. About her, many orks also did not regain their feet – though several looked like they had been slain by their comrades.
Katherine pointed her bolter at the faceless, eyeless monster. It could not see her, but it bared its remaining fangs.
‘You face His wrath,’ Katherine said, her voice a paean. ‘His shield and His daughters! We do not falter, we do not fall, we do not fail! And we do not fear! Now, in His name, you will perish!’
But she did not pull the trigger – there was no need. One of her Sisters cried out over the vox, her voice like a tocsin. And there, streaking down through the sky, came the searing line of His wrath. It plummeted, swift and burning, like a falling star: a streak of molten metal, hissing as it came.
And it was His word and His law.
It hit the ground behind the boss, throwing him forwards onto what was left of his face. Katherine held her shield to defend herself; she was knocked from her feet, but unhurt. Her Sisters, too, had tumbled from the impact, but they scrambled back up, weapons bristling.
The air was full of flame, and ash, and the sudden hot winds of convection. The meteor was an angled corner, though the heat of its re-entry had blurred its metal edges to a molten softness. And it glowed, its glare like an angry eye.
The warboss, fallen forwards like a broken statue, did not move again.
The orks were scrambling around, now, shouting amongst themselves, the grots and gretchin shrieking. Holding her shield high, her voice loud through her vox-caster, she continued to shout, ‘Such is the fate of those who defy the Emperor! Such is His strength that we carry, His wrath that we will rain upon your heads. You cannot face us, xenos scum!’
Behind the horde, the tanks opened fire.
The crowd of orks was thinning, now, running in every direction. A few at the front, the bigger creatures, were still snarling and surging forward, but their support was fading fast. They eyed the fallen boss, and then the Sisters.
And the Sisters answered with a full suppression from the heavy bolter, with the roar and flash of the flamer, with the smaller bolters barking rounds into the clouds of overheated ash.
The commander’s voice bellowed orders to advance.
Jeering empty threats, the last of the orks fled.
At the end of her tale, Silvana looked around at her Sisters. ‘We have heard a tale of rage, tightly controlled, a tale of pain, and what it teaches. Mine is a tale of daring, Sisters, of a bold plan and a bolder execution, and of His blessing that comes with both. Do you understand?’
‘I’m beginning to understand,’ Avra said, ‘that you…’ She paused, not sure how boldly she could speak, but went on with her chin lifted. ‘That you… test each other.’ It wasn’t quite what she meant and she searched for the right words. ‘That you… that you don’t all sing the same tune, or the same notes, but that the hymn you make together is–’
‘Harmony,’ Arabella told her, smiling.
‘Harmony,’ Dominica repeated, seeming pleased with her realisation. ‘An individual voice can sing His praise. But it takes more than one to raise the full might of a chorus.’
‘I understand,’ Avra said, again. Dominica gestured at Arabella, who smiled, her expression like the sun coming up.
‘I’m glad,’ Arabella told her. The youngest of the Sisters reached out her hands, took Avra’s in her own. ‘I’m glad you are here, my new Sister, and I’m glad to make you welcome. And I’m also quite glad to no longer be the youngest of our march.’ A flicker of mischief, and Dominica raised a warning eyebrow. Arabella stiffened, but Avra had the impression that her light humour danced ever below the surface, her own manifestation of faith.
Her own part of the chorus.
‘And so,’ she said, ‘it falls to me to tell you why we are together, united in our march across the galaxy. And why we are Sisters, both of and in Battle.’ She shot Silvana a smile.
‘It grows late,’ Dominica said. ‘Speak on.’