Some kind of sanctuary
‘So many civilians,’ Tragan comments.
‘As many as we could bring,’ replies Sigismund. ‘As many as would follow.’
They stare down through the grille of the metal walkway at the pilgrim files passing below them, an unending stream pouring from the Septenary Portal down the square-cut access tunnel into the interior chambers of the site. More than three thousand have passed by already, six or seven abreast, and the vast tail of the pilgrim column tracks away down the gorge outside and out across the copper plains. The Seconds, and Tragan’s postern guards, are herding them in as fast as they can.
‘They are from the Palace?’ Tragan asks.
‘They are the Palace,’ says Sigismund. ‘They are the city-habs and the Dominions. They are all that remains of it, all that matters. We seek only sanctuary.’
‘Well, we have space enough,’ the Dark Angel replies. ‘A mountain’s worth. But there is no sanctuary here, brother.’
‘The Death Guard?’ Sigismund asks.
‘The Pale King’s devils besiege us,’ says a voice. They turn as Corswain approaches along the walkway. His eyes are narrowed, sceptical. His fine wargear is mackled with blood and mire.
Tragan bows his head. Sigismund nods respectfully.
‘Lord seneschal,’ says Sigismund.
‘Lord Champion,’ Corswain returns.
They look each other in the eye.
‘An odd happenstance,’ Corswain remarks.
‘Odd indeed. No deliberation or compass brought us here.’
‘And to the seventh portal, yet,’ Corswain replies. ‘A numeral particular to your Legion.’
‘Indeed,’ says Sigismund. ‘I noted the fact.’ He can tell the Hound of Caliban is beyond wary. He trusts nothing and no one outside his own. Nor, thinks Sigismund, has he any reason to. ‘What can I say, my lord?’ Sigismund asks. ‘What can I do? I want to secure your good faith.’
‘Faith, Sigismund?’
‘Trust, then.’
‘Do we not show it?’ Corswain asks, glancing at the silent procession passing below. ‘We open our door, even though the storm assails us. We let you in.’
He pauses. He watches the filthy tide of pilgrims.
‘They make no sound,’ he says quietly. ‘They make no complaint.’
‘They are past fear, lord.’
‘Nor do they weep.’ Corswain looks back at Sigismund. ‘No lamentation, despite all you report they have been through.’
‘They are past that too,’ says Sigismund. ‘This shelter is a miracle to them.’
‘A cold miracle,’ says Corswain. ‘There is no comfort here. No provision. An empty mountain, nothing more.’
‘And the Death Guard assails you?’
‘For days now, relentless. Typhus and his marshalled host, an insect swarm inflamed by witch-blood magick. His trickery has been foul, and his deceits have been many. We have barely kept our heads, or the minds within them.’
‘No wonder then you regard us with suspicion,’ replies Sigismund. ‘I have seen their rancid sorcery for myself.’
‘You have contested them?’
‘Indeed. The companies of Skulidas Gehrerg.’
‘That vermin?’
‘The Cadaver Lord.’
‘One of Typhus’ chieftains,’ Corswain mutters.
‘We clashed with them on the desert plain beyond the gorge.’
‘There is no desert beyond the gorge,’ says Corswain.
‘There is now, lord seneschal,’ says Sigismund.
‘How so?’
Sigismund shrugs. ‘I know not. I care not. The world is broken and reshaped by the warp. All I know is, Gehrerg is dead, by my hand.’
‘You killed him, Champion?’ Corswain asks, his gaze quizzical. He looks aside at Tragan. ‘One less to bother us.’
‘I will kill more, Hound of Caliban,’ says Sigismund. ‘I will kill as many as you permit, unless it robs the First of honour. What few men I have with me, I will pledge to your side.’
‘Yes, so few,’ says Corswain. ‘A multitude comes to us, yet not to relieve our travails. So very many, and yet so few of them warriors.’
He sighs. He seems exhausted.
‘You slew the Cadaver Lord?’ he asks Sigismund.
‘I did, seneschal. Face to face.’
‘With this hand?’ Corswain asks, gesturing at Sigismund’s chain-wrapped right fist.
‘With this hand, lord.’
‘Then let me take it,’ Corswain says. He holds out his hand and they clasp. ‘I need your sword, Sigismund, and the swords of your men, however few they are. In return, you get my trust, and what sanctuary I can offer to the Emperor’s people.’
He looks to Tragan.
‘Bring them in, Tragan,’ he orders. ‘All of them, as fast as you may, even if we fill this empty hill to bursting point with their numbers. Sigismund? Walk with me.’
They follow the walkway into the borehole tunnels of the mountain, and thread their way along the dim passages where water drips and deep cold settles. Even from a distance, they can hear the steady tramp of the pilgrims shuffling into the lower chambers in ever-increasing numbers.
‘The Destroyer assaults come in waves,’ Corswain says as they walk. ‘It has been an hour since their last assault, but they come steadily, like the tides. Sometimes a dozen in quick succession.’
‘An hour, you say?’ asks Sigismund.
Corswain shrugs.
‘A guess only,’ he admits. ‘Their focus from the start has been the pass leading to the Tertiary Portal, our weakest defence. They have been relentless there. I wonder if Gehrerg’s companies had been despatched to find a second point of attack. Or to block your advance.’
‘Or they had as little idea where they were as we did,’ replies Sigismund.
‘Is the world really so twisted out of joint?’ asks Corswain.
Sigismund nods.
‘And it changes constantly,’ he says. ‘Like water, like clay. Moulding and remoulding at the whim of the warp.’
‘Well, this mountain remains unchanging,’ says Corswain. ‘As set and immutable as the ages.’
‘You retook it?’
‘By drop assault, from the hands of daemons. We hoped to light its beacon to guide salvation here.’
‘But it remains unlit?’
‘Quite broken,’ says Corswain bitterly, ‘its apparatus destroyed. I doubt it will ever shine again. I fear, friend, I took ten thousand warriors and wasted them on a foolish gamble.’
‘What else could you have done?’
‘Made for the heart of the Palace,’ Corswain answers, imagining it. ‘A fast assault to break the siege.’
‘I fear you have no comprehension of the magnitude of the enemy’s numbers,’ says Sigismund. ‘If you had taken that course, you would be dead by now.’
‘Dead maybe,’ says Corswain, ‘but with a sense of accomplishment.’
They walk on in silence.
‘And you?’ Corswain asks. ‘You leave the line, and the heart of battle, to shepherd civilians?’
‘I never left the line,’ replies Sigismund. ‘I am the line.’
The boldness of his remark makes the Hound of Caliban laugh, and the sound of it rolls in echoes down the stone tunnel.
‘The truth is,’ says Sigismund, ‘they found me. And the Emperor bade me lead them from the ruins.’
‘He spoke to you?’ Corswain asks, eyes bright.
‘In His way. By means that could not be denied.’
‘He does not speak to me,’ Corswain responds.
‘He will,’ says Sigismund. ‘Besides, lord, what is the Imperium but the people who compose it? Who are we fighting for, if not them? To safeguard the people is to safeguard the Imperium, and to protect that is to protect the Emperor Himself. Our citizens are the body of the Emperor.’
They climb steep granite steps and emerge into the open on the highest fighting platforms of the Tertiary Portal. It is bitter cold. Ash-snow and black rain fall in equal measure. Sigismund strains to see the towering black slopes of the Hollow Mountain, its summit lost in banks of snow-cloud and slate haze.
Adophel approaches, and Sigismund greets him, then waits as Corswain, in terse and broad terms, recounts to his Chapter Master the unlikely events at the Septenary Portal. Adophel’s brow furrows in cynical disbelief. More trust to be earned. More trust from all of them. Sigismund sees the squadrons, orders and gun-shields of Dark Angels cowled and huddled along the ramparts, resting in the frozen wind as they watch the pass and wait for renewed attack. Many cast questioning glances his way.
He ignores them, and walks down to the lip of the platform. He stares out at the steep black pass instead. A bad place for a fight. Too tight, too choked. It should be easy to hold. How did the traitors even reach the fighting levels? The cliffs are sheer, and sheened with rain and ice.
He muses. Is this the same pass he entered from the copper desert, or another route of approach? How can it be? It looks the same, and yet not the same at all. He stepped into the Septenary Portal out of baking desert heat, and here it is winter. Unless…
Unless magick. The warp. The ring of trickery with which, Corswain said, dread Typhus had encircled and cursed this hollow peak.
He ignores the thought and its implications. All that matters is the now, the next step. To be present in the moment is all he needs to do.
Adophel appears beside him. ‘Some tale,’ he remarks.
Sigismund ignores the jibe.
‘I’ll find places for your men,’ Adophel says. ‘Positions on the platforms. They must keep to them. We are spread thin. Every man must know his place and hold it, and be ready to move if commanded. Will they do that?’
‘This is your scheme of repulse to run, Chapter Master,’ Sigismund replies. ‘They will do exactly as you tell them.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘They wouldn’t remain in my company of Seconds if they didn’t know what to do with an order.’
Adophel nods. ‘I hear you have human marksmen,’ he says. ‘How much ammunition do they have left? And what–’
‘How do they scale the cliffs, Adophel?’ Sigismund asks.
‘What?’
‘The Death Guard. The cliffs are sheer and treacherous. How do they scale the cliffs?’
Adophel grins at him. It is an ugly smile.
‘They climb like spiders, Champion,’ he says. ‘They climb like daemon spiders.’
‘And wait like them,’ Sigismund muses. ‘Wait in silence, in their crevices and nooks, and then pounce. Do you smell that?’
‘What now?’ asks Adophel.
‘They’re coming again,’ says Sigismund.
Adophel stares out into the pitch shadows of the gorge. He sniffs the wind.
‘Damn you, you’re right.’
‘What is your business here?’ asks the warrior in the mask. His voice seems to hold all the echoes of the mountain chamber, and they do not hide his disapproval.
‘Shelter,’ says Keeler. Pilgrims file past them on both sides, casting frightened glances at the masked Dark Angel.
‘I wasn’t informed,’ he says. ‘Lord Seneschal Corswain–’
‘Can’t be everywhere, I imagine,’ she replies. ‘We are no threat. These are refugees from the Palace. They need a place to stop. A place to hide. Nothing more.’
‘These chambers are in use, all of them,’ the Dark Angel replies. ‘These… people will interfere with my work. Their presence–’
‘Your work is to remake this beacon?’ she asks. ‘To restore the Astronomican? You are of the Librarius, then?’
‘I am Cypher,’ he says.
‘I am Keeler,’ she responds, staring up at him.
‘Means nothing,’ he replies.
‘While “cipher” means… everything? Anything?’ she asks.
‘I care not for your tone,’ he snaps.
‘I care not for your indifference,’ she says.
Three more Dark Angels have approached them.
‘We cannot work around this,’ Tanderion complains to Cypher. ‘This rabble is filling the sub-chambers, and there is no end to them.’
‘They are dampening the acoustics,’ says Asradael. ‘The sheer mass of them is altering the resonance from this level to the upper circle. And as we recalibrate, more flock in, and so the resonance shifts again–’
‘They need a place to shelter,’ Keeler snaps.
Asradael glances at her. His face is oddly burned.
‘And food?’ he asks. ‘And water? What will they eat?’
‘Each other?’ suggests Tanderion.
‘Silence,’ says Cypher. ‘Keeler – Keeler? Keeler, I am not unmoved by the plight of these pour souls, but this mountain is an instrument. A mechanism. It is not a bunker or a hab basement. My brothers and I have worked for hours–’
‘Days,’ says Cartheus.
‘Whatever time has passed,’ says Cypher, ‘we have laboured to restore function here. It is a delicate and subtle process, and hazardous in the extreme, as Asradael’s scars attest. And now, this influx disturbs everything we have so far achieved.’
‘I’m sorry,’ she replies.
‘We are Librarius,’ says Cypher, ‘as you remark. The five of us have many subtle arts at our–’
‘Five?’ she asks.
‘Our brother Zahariel is at work below,’ says Tanderion.
‘We have certain gifts,’ Cypher tells Keeler, ‘but the mechanism of the mountain is unfamiliar to us, and we are learning as we go. You must take these people away and let us work.’
‘They will go where they please,’ says Keeler. ‘I have no command over them. I could sooner dam a river or turn a glacier.’
‘No, they clearly follow you,’ says Cartheus, peering at her. ‘I can see it in you. Like a banner…’
‘What are you?’ Asradael asks.
‘I am Keeler,’ she replies. ‘Simply that… nothing more. A devoted servant of the Emperor of Mankind. Just as you are. But… Wait, please.’
She turns and beckons to Eild. When he comes over, she whispers to him. He returns in short order, steadying Zhi-Meng with his arm.
‘Who are these minds, Euphrati?’ the old man asks as she takes his hand.
‘Angels, sir,’ she replies. ‘Angels of the First.’ She looks at Cypher. ‘This is Nemo Zhi-Meng,’ she says.
‘I’m delighted,’ replies Cypher, without emotion.
‘Lord Zhi-Meng,’ she repeats. ‘One of the Senior Twelve of the High Council.’
‘Then I am also honoured,’ Cypher shrugs.
‘He is choirmaster of the Astra Telepathica,’ she says.
Cypher hesitates.
‘My word, Euphrati,’ Zhi-Meng says, tilting his blind head. ‘You have impressed him. His mind races!’
‘You will not look there,’ Cypher warns sharply.
‘My lord Zhi-Meng always abides by the protocols of psykanic privacy, sir,’ says Keeler. ‘He will not violate the intimacy of your mind. Will you, Nemo?’
‘Of course not, Euphrati,’ says Zhi-Meng. He turns his sightless eyes towards Cypher. ‘I would not cause offence, or disrespect your psychic space, my lord Cypher.’
‘I am quite sure,’ says Keeler, ‘that Lord Zhi-Meng has a great deal of knowledge regarding the workings of the Astronomican. Knowledge he will gladly share with you and your brothers and so assist your labours of repair.’
‘I have,’ says Zhi-Meng. ‘I will.’
The Dark Angels glance at each other.
‘I’m sure he does,’ says Cypher. He clears his throat. ‘And we will gladly accept that help.’
‘Come, my lord,’ says Cartheus, reaching out a hand to the old man. ‘Let me find you a beaker of water, and a place to sit.’
They lead him away. Cypher looks at Keeler.
‘Did you know his usefulness when you brought him here?’ he asks.
‘I didn’t even know I was coming here,’ she replies.
The voice of Typhus is roaring down the pass. The storm comes first, then the blizzard, then the rain and the flies.
Then the Death Guard spring from their lochetic stillness and assault the cliffs.
‘Blind Spur!’ Adophel yells above the roar of assault. ‘Corpse Slope! Gateway Cliff! Falchion Ridge!’
The Angels of the First scramble to positions. Lances clatter as they are angled down through bulwark slits. Choke nets unfurl. The first support guns begin to bark and spit.
Sigismund watches for a second. Death Guard, preceded by a carious stink, are advancing storm-swift. Their dark ranks are forming lunate and blade-edge formations, as though upon a flat field of war, but they are ascending the cliffs like swarming insects, without scaling ladders or siege frames. Some have ropes and grapples, but most do not. They ascend the vertical in howling packs, armour gleaming like ox-hide and beetle-carapace in the streaming rain and bruised light.
Like spiders. Like spiders, Adophel said. He was right. They are moving as one, like an ocean wave, crawling over everything, mocking logic.
‘Where do you want me?’ Sigismund shouts. His Seconds have not yet been led up from the mountain below, let alone set in place.
‘With me, then!’ Adophel yells back.
They reach a fighting platform on the lower tiers – Falchion Ridge, it would seem – as the Destroyers begin to spill over the rail. Sigismund, pausing only to offer a salute with his black sword, pitches in beside Adophel and four other Angels of the First. He kills a traitor with his first strike, dropping the corpse onto the platform, then reaches the rail and sends two more tumbling backwards into the darkness below with a single cross-stroke that rips their breastplates open like mouths.
He kicks away a grapple-hook that has lodged in the lip of the platform, then leans over and stabs down into the head of a traitor who has just drawn level with the platform deck. The tip of the black sword goes deep through helmet, skull, brain and throat. The traitor goes limp, and falls back into the abyss, but Sigismund’s blade is wedged tight in ceramite and bone, and is pulled away with him. The chain snaps tight around his wrist. Sigismund hauls on it, straining, and the blade dislodges. The Destroyer drops like a fish unhooked from a line. Sigismund drags his blade back up, seizes the grip, and has just enough time to twist and skewer a traitor scrambling up to his left. The Chapter Master is braced to his right, lopping heads and limbs with a notched war-axe. Beyond him, a son of the Lion swings a shrilling chainsword to saw hands and bodies off the rail.
The combat is gruelling. The defenders are fixed on one plane, trying to angle their blows towards another. The Death Guard, in contrast, seem entirely liberated, as though they are no longer constrained by the rules of the world.
In the tunnels and chambers of the mountain, the cowering pilgrims huddle in their thousands, scared by the howling din of combat outside. The mountain is too big and solid to shake, but the noises of battle echo down the stone flues and rock-cut tunnels, reverberating and amplified like weaponised sonics.
‘Be calm!’ Keeler cries out, moving through the crowded chambers. ‘Be calm! Be still! They cannot reach us in here!’
The panic is spreading. These lost souls walked en masse into the Death Guard in the desert, she thinks. They were fearless then, but now… What is it? Is it the weirdly amplified noise? The unnatural acoustics are upsetting. She can feel the sound in her diaphragm.
Or is it that the pilgrims thought they were safe here, that they had finally reached the shelter they had prayed for, only to have it taken from them?
She clambers up onto a raised rock ledge.
‘Be still! Hush!’ she calls out, her arms spread. ‘You are safe! The Emperor has led us here! He has delivered us to this place! His will alone has done this!’
‘You led us!’ someone shouts.
‘I did not!’ she calls back. ‘I did not! I followed, just as you followed! I had faith, just as you had faith! I was brought here, just as you were! I heard His voice! We all heard His voice! This is where He wanted us to be! This is the space He has provided for us! So be still! Be calm! Set aside your fears!’
They are beginning to quieten, and that peace is spreading from chamber to chamber, through the giant archways and massive rectangular apertures.
She drops her voice. It still carries as an echo throughout.
‘Fear is no use,’ she says. ‘It has no purpose. Know not fear. Cast it out. Close it in your hearts and turn it into hope. Turn it into duty. Turn it into fierce faith in Him and Him alone, and by His will, you will be saved. By His will. By the grace of the Throne.’
She begins to recite some verses of the Lectitio. Some of them join in, their voices quiet.
An eerie tranquillity falls upon the chambers, despite the echoing din from without. Weeping stops. Faces grow calm. Some pilgrims murmur to themselves, their hands clasped in front of their mouths. One heart, one focus, one mind, one will.
At the side of one chamber, Cypher looks up. There was a deep tremble of light, just for an instant. He sees brief sparks of coloured light travel, fluttering, along the seams of mineral in the rock.
He glances at the old man.
‘Did you see that?’ he asks quietly. Stupid. The man’s blind.
But Zhi-Meng nods.
‘I felt it, lord,’ he whispers.
‘And can you explain it?’ Cypher asks.
‘The confluence of the mountain,’ says Zhi-Meng, ‘was shaped to respond to psychic broadcast, and to amplify it. The choirs, you see? The massed choirs, in their stalls–’
‘Yes, yes.’
‘Well then, the psycho-acoustics are infinitely sensitive,’ says Zhi-Meng, ‘so they might react, briefly of course, to any strong emotion, even from a group of non-active minds. Fear, of course. Hope. Grief. Collective anxiety, or collective presence. It is all about what is emoted, however raw. Emotion is an energy, Lord Cypher, the core of a psyker’s bond with the warp. So yes, the will of a few thousand minds like this, caught in the same moment of emotional response, united by that, if you will, could indeed produce those sparks of light in the rock. The mountain feels them.’
‘What about…’ says Cypher. He hesitates. ‘What about a million minds? Two million?’
Zhi-Meng shrugs.
‘A greater focus?’ he suggests.
Cypher steps away. He crosses the huge chamber, picking his way between the knots of pilgrims gathered in huddles on the floor. He looks up at Keeler and beckons her down.
‘What, my lord?’ she asks, joining him.
‘I don’t know what you are,’ he says.
‘So you said.’
‘But whatever it is,’ he says, ‘I want you to do that again.’