The Relentless Dead, page 21
He was to be disappointed. Graven wasn’t in his office, nor in the mess hall where he and his command squad had been sleeping. In fact, there was no sign of his squad at all. Nor of the other that had arrived last night. No Krieg Death Korpsmen anywhere. No Skarangard. Petrakov collared a few aides and a stores quartermaster, but none could – or would – tell him where their commander might be.
His gate guards reported that a pair of Krieg Chimeras had rolled out of the compound an hour ago. With turret hatches closed, the guards had not identified their occupants, nor thought to question them. The only surprise was that they had headed north, not east towards the mausoleum. What was Graven playing at?
I should have acted earlier, Petrakov chided himself. I should never have doubted myself.
He sent out a general vox-message. Any soldier who laid eyes upon Graven was to report his whereabouts at once. He had half-hoped his commissar might step in and issue a warrant for Graven’s arrest. Instead, he advised prudence, while agreeing that there was cause for concern.
Serafina was less circumspect. ‘Is it not abundantly clear to you by now,’ she raged over a vox-channel, ‘that Graven has become possessed?’
Petrakov gave an honest answer. ‘I don’t know that he is. Opinionated he may be, but he was always so.’
‘The witches control Graven and, through him, an army of unquestioning drones. They will lay waste to our sacred shrine.’ The Sister Superior was starting to sound hysterical. ‘I hold you responsible for this, Colonel Petrakov. You allowed things to escalate this far.’
‘Sister Superior, I assure you–’
‘I expect you to do your duty, colonel. Honour your vows to the Emperor, and the promise you made to me too. Protect Saint Josefina.’
Rain pattered on the wooden roof of another hut.
Colonel Graven lay awake on his back, on his bedroll again.
Once out of sight of the command compound, his Chimeras had changed course. Skarangard’s squad had headed west, to find a fellow commissar whose support she judged might prove decisive. Graven’s vehicle, under the Ecclesiarchal Tower’s glare, had crawled towards a hamlet north-east of the mausoleum. Not the closest, for that could have been predicted.
He had hoped to find the settlement abandoned. An Attilan squad had visited here, but neglected to file a report yet. To his disappointment, from his turret, he had seen figures gathering to meet him. Another battle was the last thing he had needed, but he had been ready for it.
There had been no battle. Half a dozen older workers were holed up here, in hiding, so they claimed. Faced with the grim visages of nine Death Korpsmen, they had been apprehensive – one had even dared suggest that their arrival would draw trouble, pleading with them to move on. As one elder had succinctly put it, however, ‘By now, we know our tormentors’ aspects. They look like us.’
Graven had had the six workers clapped in chains.
They had protested bitterly. He had sworn to release them when his kill team left the hamlet, which would be in mere days. He had no reason to suspect them, nor to trust them either. Free, they would have been a distraction.
‘Any of those workers could have slipped away into the catacombs,’ he explained out loud, ‘and reported our location to the witches.’
Any of those workers could have reached a vox-caster, he kept to himself, and reported our location to command headquarters. For as long as Petrakov couldn’t find Graven, he couldn’t question him. For as long as Graven could avoid Petrakov’s questions, he didn’t have to lie to him.
Lie to my commanding officer. When put in such stark terms, it felt unreal. That his path could have led him here. ‘On Krieg, we were trained not to doubt.’ His watchmaster’s words. Graven had been taught to follow orders. He had not been taught to give them, but like any Krieg who lived too long, he found himself in that position.
‘Doubt makes us weak and I reject it.’ Easy for the watchmaster to say. He only had to remember his training. Put his faith in the chain of command. Obey. Much harder for Graven, who had to find faith in himself.
As a young Korpsman, he had heard the story of Veteran Colonel Tyborc, who had led a Krieg regiment during the Siege of Vraks. Perhaps the most infamous engagement in the Death Korps’ history, the siege had lasted seventeen years and claimed some fourteen million Korpsmen’s lives before ending in glorious victory, cementing his people’s reputation for single-minded perseverance.
At the height of the fighting, as the sky was torn asunder and daemons had poured from it, Colonel Tyborc had ordered his soldiers to turn back. Against orders. Orders given by a non-Krieg commander. A decision that had kept their lives from being expended futilely.
Graven had learned this story not from propaganda vids but from comrades in the trenches, where the consensus had been that Tyborc was a hero. Never had he heard mention of him from a more official source. Never had he met an officer called Tyborc, honouring this hero’s name. He had come to understand that Tyborc had done what he had had to do, but in a way officially discouraged.
He was said to have served out his time in attendance to an inquisitor lord, and that Krieg high command had been glad of the opportunity to forget the whole difficult business.
Graven knew it was hubristic to compare himself to Veteran Colonel Tyborc. Still, he wondered if, two hundred years from now, his name too might be whispered in Krieg trenches. Not that it matters.
What mattered was that he did what was right, what he knew to be right. He had not lied to his watchmaster and commissar. He had no doubt any longer. Not really. The spectres wanted him to take the easy way, to not think but to follow, to plough through the ossuary tunnels inch by inch. To give them time. So, that was the last thing he ought to do.
This is why the Emperor brought me here, he thought, after testing me on Maximus Arkanos. Finally, he understood.
From the darkness around him, he heard the soft breaths of sleeping Korpsmen. One was awake, keeping a watch for spectres, listening for movement from the six prisoners upstairs. Two more patrolled outside, their footsteps regularly passing by the window. Graven had taken his watch as the sun set. Though he had been, and still was, deeply tired, he felt sleep beyond him.
Suddenly, sunlight streamed through window shutters and a Korpsman was prodding him awake. He sat bolt upright, snatching up his pistol. ‘What is it?’
‘It is past dawn, sir,’ came the calm reply.
Graven blinked, absorbing this information. He couldn’t remember the last time he had slept so deeply for so long. The night before the bomb, his mind unhelpfully prompted him. More to the point, the last time he had slept in peace. Six hours of blissful oblivion, such as he had never thought to feel again.
There had been no bad dreams.
Centaurs and Chimeras had been pulling up all day, disgorging quiet, faceless soldiers. A dozen or more Krieg squads pitched their tents in narrow byways between the well-appointed tombs of wealthy pilgrims.
Having sprung up over centuries, these tombs formed an inward-looking circle around Saint Josefina’s Grand Mausoleum. Newer tombs were squeezed between the old ones, jostling with them for a view of the hallowed structure.
Shortly after noon, Serafina had marched out to remonstrate with the new arrivals. She had taken with her a full squad of Battle Sisters.
A lieutenant and a watchmaster had met her. The Sister Superior had to allow that they had been perfectly respectful. She couldn’t have said that either plotted treachery, but still their conversation hadn’t dampened her exasperation.
The Krieg didn’t know why they were here. They were awaiting further orders. Serafina had implied, not caring to be tactful, that their orders were senseless when their foes were known to be elsewhere. Colonel Graven, they had stated, had his reasons, but upon these they refused to speculate.
‘Swear,’ she had demanded, ‘to protect this sacred place from any threat, no matter from where it arises.’
‘With our lives,’ the Krieg lieutenant had answered without hesitation, ‘for as long as the Emperor requires it.’
Serafina had been far from reassured. She had voxed Petrakov repeatedly, but he had no more information. Colonel Graven’s intentions were unknown, as were his whereabouts. In the meantime, the Krieg had kept on coming.
Petrakov had spoken with his Attilan counterpart, who had redirected ten Rough Rider squads to the mausoleum area. Under pressure, he had further agreed to pull two dozen of his own Vostroyan squads out of the ossuary. ‘Possessed or not,’ he had asserted, ‘Graven would be mad to make a move against us with his forces so outnumbered and, if I may say so, outclassed.’
The Sisters of Battle were also more than ready to defend their faith.
Serafina slept on a basic cot in her monastic cell. She woke a short time after midnight, not knowing why – until she felt vibrations in her bed’s metal frame. Placing a bare foot on the cold stone floor, she felt a tremble running through it too. Though still faint, it was inexorably building. It rattled her black power armour on its nearby stand.
The guns of the Krieg, she thought. But no, her sentries would have seen their Earthshakers brought up in the night and would have roused her. Besides which, a feeling accompanied this tremor: a sense of something evil thickening the air. She could almost taste it, feeling it might even choke her, and as the quake built, the evil taint grew stronger.
Serafina screamed for servitors to assist her in donning her armour. From somewhere close outside, too close, she heard the first crack of las fire.
The witches and their weak-minded thralls had begun their attack.
XV
The horses sensed the tremor first.
Sergeant Batu heard their consternation and, an instant later, knew its cause. She leapt to her feet, beside her campfire, raising the alarm. Around her, ten Attilans stirred. Half, her own squad, knew what the quake portended, having felt its like three nights before. They were pulling on helmets and gloves, racing for their mounts. They were tired, but that didn’t slow them.
They had ridden through the evening, into the night, to be here, close to the mausoleum. Sanctuary’s refugees had been left to defend themselves, until another squad could reach them two days hence. The order had come directly from Colonel Tegana. Uncharacteristically, he had been circumspect about his reasons. Clearly, trouble was anticipated. Ominously, he had reminded Batu that not even allies could be trusted.
She had known that some Krieg were stationed here. Still, the number of Korpsmen had surprised her. She had wondered if Colonel Graven’s squad was among them, but evidently not. Their ranking officer was a masked lieutenant who had not offered her a name. He had made his command post in a disused tomb – according to a grave worker, bust open a century ago, its lordly occupant violently disinterred once a scandal in his past had come to light.
Batu had asked, boldly, why so many Krieg were present. Like her, the lieutenant had said, they had their orders – only theirs had been issued two days earlier. The Attilan’s eyes had narrowed in suspicion. Unable to see the lieutenant’s eyes, still she had felt his mistrust in return.
Saint Josefina’s Grand Mausoleum towered over the jumbled tombs around it. From its forecourt, surrounded by a railed wall, broad steps swept up to a tall portico, topped by a marble pediment inlaid with gilded fleurs-de-lys. Above this sat a more compact third storey, from which three spires reached for the clouds, the centremost and tallest crowned by the ‘I’ of the Adeptus Ministorum.
Batu had had no time to appreciate its grandeur. Venturing close, she had been met by hostile glares from two Battle Sisters at the wrought iron gates atop the steps. Withdrawing, she had set up a campsite within the necropolis, from which she had to crane her neck to see the spires’ tips. The Attilans slept out in the open, against the leeward sides of a pair of marble tombs, which kept them mostly dry. She had placed herself on first watch, wanting time to think.
All signs had pointed to a most disagreeable conclusion. She was here to watch the Krieg. Perhaps to fight them, if given a reason?
‘Never trusted them,’ one of her Guardsmen, sharing the watch with her, had grumbled. ‘Hiding their faces like they do, barely talking, and have you seen the bones they carry with them? Morbid.’
‘Ah, they ain’t so bad,’ Batu had said. ‘Not so different from us, once you get to know them.’ She prayed that she was right. The Krieg lieutenant could have lied to her face – how would she have known? – but surely not her ‘Watchmaster No-Name’. Not him too. She would have felt more confident had he been here. Her stomach might not have turned so at the thought that her ten Rough Riders were so badly outnumbered and surrounded.
If the Krieg plan treachery and know they are suspected, they will strike tonight. Deal with the enemy in their midst before more of us arrive. Is that why we were sent here? To test them? To reveal their intentions by our deaths?
She had told herself that she was being paranoid. Something about this place. The night had crawled past its midway point and nothing bad had happened. The watch had changed, but Batu had remained awake. The Krieg, most of them, had been sleeping. She had begun to relax.
Now, she swung herself into her saddle. Warning cries came from all directions, echoing between the stone walls of the tombs. It didn’t sound at all as if the Krieg had expected this. She heard a lasgun crack. She hadn’t seen a zombie yet, but her every nerve told her they were close. It occurred to her that many would find themselves sealed inside their own memorials.
She spurred her horse along the shortest route to the necropolis’ edge. Behind the barred gate of a squat white tomb, she saw a cadaver in lords’ robes straining to reach her with its nails. Contained, it could be dealt with later.
Zombies were rising in the surrounding fields, spying living flesh and drawn towards it as in Sanctuary. Death Korpsmen massed along the edges of the tombs, fixing their bayonets. Ten Attilan Rough Riders thundered past them. Batu charged a knot of zombies, scattering them, her lance’s frag tip bursting as it struck one’s head. Attilans considered it an honour to be painted by enemy blood, but these things didn’t bleed like living creatures.
The earth tremor wasn’t subsiding. Already it had lasted twice as long as the previous one. It seemed more widespread too. Batu saw disjointed figures hauling themselves to their feet as far as the moonlit horizon.
She came around for another attack run. Hers had not been the only mount to plough through zombies like a battering ram – still adjusting to their newly gained ambulatory state, they were reeling and some broken. ‘Keep it up,’ she bellowed, ‘keep them disorientated!’ They had to press their advantage of numbers while they had it, but she feared it would not last very long.
The Krieg, however, mostly held their fire.
They know lasguns don’t hurt these things, thought Batu. They’re conserving ammunition, waiting for a chance to get in close and use their blades. By drawing the zombies away from the Krieg, the Attilans had robbed them of that chance. That’s all it is. Unless…
She never completed the thought. Her horse was swarmed, zombies clawing and biting at its barding’s seams. A hoof lashed out, staving in a brittle skull, but that did not dissuade the rest.
Then, out of the corner of one eye, she saw that two Korpsmen by the tombs had assembled a large, heavy weapon, which looked like – yes, it was – a flamer. One braced the other as he hefted it and aimed, and first one group of zombies, then another close beside it, were engulfed by cleansing fire.
The flames licked the backs of several of Batu’s attackers, and though they hardly seemed to care, two crumpled as their clothes caught fire and their bones weakened. That gave her an opening, through which she spurred her horse. A single zombie clung to its flank, but was dislodged by a lance swipe.
Batu yelled directions to her riders. She had them clear a quadrant of the battlefield, to give the Krieg flamer a clear shot.
A pair of flame-wreathed skeletons lumbered after her. Her horse wheeled around and shattered both with a double hoof strike. ‘Nice work, Hunor,’ Batu whispered in its ear, using the secret name known only to her.
The flamer roared again, and more zombies were unceremoniously cremated. No longer did she doubt the Death Korps’ loyalties. She wondered why she ever had, why her colonel – More likely, thought Batu, that Vostroyan colonel speaking through him – ever had.
‘Aim for their heads! Cut their throats!’ the Krieg lieutenant yelled.
He matched his actions to his words, stepping forwards and slashing at the leading zombie. His sword bayonet cut deep but didn’t slow the creature, which was suddenly upon him. It clawed at his greatcoat, at his mask.
Stepping up behind it, a Korpsman landed a resounding shovel blow, snapping the zombie’s weakened neck. It lost neither strength nor focus. It tried to wrestle the lieutenant to the ground, but, emaciated, it lacked his flak-armoured weight. He slammed the zombie onto its back, stamped on its chest. He thrust his blade into its throat again, working it from side to side until its last tendon was severed.
It continued to glare up at him, taunting him. Its tenacity had delayed him longer than he could afford. Others had closed in, and before he could turn, one leapt on the lieutenant’s back. It clamped his ribs between its knees, attempting to pry off his gorget.
He threw himself back into a tomb wall, feeling the zombies’ bones breaking, but still it clung on. The Korpsmen around him were fending off similar threats. Where are my flamer teams? He only had two, and with foes to all sides of them, doubtless they were busy elsewhere along the perimeter.
None of which helped him. The lieutenant had sight of four squads, his own included, along the necropolis’ eastern edge, and they were being overwhelmed. The influx of zombies had been manageable at first – frag grenades had proven somewhat effective against them – but more were rising from their muddy graves each second. Where at first they had numbered in the dozens, now there were hundreds of them – and the grenades were running out.
