Soldiers of the Imperium, page 75
Aerand did her best to bury her satisfaction at the confessor’s uncomfortable accession, and stepped up to the hololithic table. With a flick of her wrist, the machine whined and then died, the top of the table falling suddenly dark. From the pages of the ancient tome atop it, she carefully unfolded a fraying, yellowed map.
‘The answer was painfully clear once I knew what to look for, and where to look for it. Before landing on this Throne-cursed surface, I surveyed every paltry piece of Imperial data in the Emperor’s Grace’s archives that fell below my security clearance. There was precious little, but the conspicuous absence of any aerial imaging told me that even basic mapping of this world had not been completed in centuries. Truth be told, I should have seen the connection sooner.’
From a satchel on her back Aerand pulled out a small, dark box. It gave her substantial anxiety to think of the deck of the Emperor’s Tarot that had previously occupied it. Unprotected and unshielded from the warp, the deck within her pocket was at risk of unknown contamination, but she had needed the psionically shielded vessel for something more important. Carefully, she set the box on the table and lifted the lid.
‘I don’t know why it took me so long to see the obvious linkage. The mythos surrounding the corpsewood trees should have been more than trigger enough. The name alone and the curious method of their growth make it painfully evident in retrospect.’
As Aerand reached into the psionic box and removed the tiny corpsewood sapling, she felt the familiar chill of the empyrean lance up her arm. While it had taken her days to suspect that such a thing might – must – exist, it had taken her only a few hours to find one once she knew what she was looking for. She’d ventured to the very edge of the mist wall, now encroaching through Providence’s inner breakwater at the places where it had already failed.
The ocean still poured in slowly through those gaps, carrying the flotsam of war along with it. Within minutes she had come across a body, bloated and pale already only a few days after it had been drowned. The corpsewood sapling had already sunk its roots deeply enough into the man’s flesh that she’d had to bring the corpse’s whole hand with her.
The raw, cold flesh flopped onto the table with a sickening thud. The Cadian veterans who watched showed no sign of surprise, but Confessor Libertinum practically jumped from his seat.
‘What is the meaning of this, adept?’ he shouted. ‘You profane this holy place with your very presence, let alone the mutilated flesh of heretics!’
‘I do,’ Aerand admitted. ‘To illustrate a point. Why are there no corpsewood trees in Providence, confessor? Why did they reach no further than the very outskirts of Charity when they cover the surface of this Throne-cursed planet like grass?’
‘They are not savages here,’ Major Restripa replied. ‘The populace knows to clear and burn their dead, and they are more than capable of felling arborage.’
‘This corpse had been dead no more than a few hours, sir. And Charity has not been occupied in a year, and yet this is the first sapling I’ve seen growing near any Imperial settlement. And I suspect the first you’ve seen since you arrived on this world.’
As she spoke, the thin, wispy stalk sprouting from the corpse’s hand began to shrivel, until it was soon nothing more than a limp stalk of wood. At the sight, Libertinum made the sign of the aquila and muttered a benediction beneath his breath.
‘That tree was healthy a moment ago, within a psionically shielded vessel.’
Silence at the table before Kobald raised his head. ‘There were trees at Burnum,’ he mumbled. ‘But not Temperance or Justice. I don’t remember seeing any near Fortitude either, but that’s hardly more than a chapel’s ruins.’ As he spoke, the lieutenant seemed to realise his own point. ‘The chapels. Holy sites.’
Aerand nodded towards Libertinum. ‘I think so. I sensed a latent taint on the trees the first time I saw them, but not strong enough to confirm my suspicions. But now I’ve watched witches twist these roots and branches with ease and seen new saplings grow beyond their previous boundaries only under the cover of accursed mists in which the faces of the dead walk again. The only conclusion is that these twisted, stunted trees possess a psionic connection to a powerful psychic entity. One that cannot survive proximity to the Emperor’s light. The trees could not spread before, but as we lost battles, and chapels fell to the traitors and were defiled, their pestilence rushed into the gap.’
‘That bloody Dorean colonel. Or one of his witches,’ Captain Havas hissed. ‘Let me loose my remaining Earthshakers and turn this entire quadrant into a muddle of potholes. Chances are we’ll catch the bastard in the crossfire.’
‘Emperor’s bones,’ Captain Vyse sighed. ‘You get more idiotic every time you speak, Havas. These trees have grown across Visage for ten thousand years. The Doreans arrived less than a decade before us.’
Captain Havas nearly rose from his seat, the man’s burly shoulders curling up as his face turned beet red. ‘Who then,’ he hissed, ‘if not for those heretics? Are you volunteering as the culprit or simply admitting that your ceaseless patrols have failed to turn up anything more than empty cities and Imperial casualties?’
The room fell silent following the exchange, before Major Restripa eventually sighed.
‘Enough theatrics, adept. Get to the point. If not one of the Doreans or their marsh priests, then who?’
‘The Witchbringer.’
Libertinum scoffed. ‘The Witchbringer? Didn’t we just discount that deluded fool of a colonel? I remember him from the moment he stepped off his landing craft. The man was scarcely capable of commanding a regiment, let alone a whole planet.’
‘Despite the confessor’s condemnation, the Dorean has proved capable of much more than that – organising a guerrilla insurrection for the better part of a decade while uniting former Imperial soldiers and a native Chaos cult,’ said Aerand.
But whatever his virtues – whatever his strengths – she believed what his crone had uttered with her final breath.
‘The Witchbringer is not a man,’ she repeated.
Finally, she turned to the ancient volume on the table. One that had been far more difficult to find than the withered corpsewood sapling resting beside it.
In the deep recesses of the cathedral, Ordinate Jossen lay curled in a sobbing ball. She had left the Departmento Munitorum clerk’s mind full of nothing but endless series of unbalanced ledgers and equations fraught with fallacies. She had offered the man an opportunity to help her, even used her will to push him towards compliance, but in the end his own stubbornness had been his downfall.
She’d had no time to complete the veritable mountain of requisition forms he’d required in order to peruse the archives under his control, so she’d settled for a faster, less elegant solution.
She nodded towards the confessor. ‘The oldest map I could find of Visage’s founding. From Lucius Javax’s original ledgers. If I’m not mistaken, I believe the map itself may have been penned in the priest-itinerant’s own hand.’
Javard Libertinum’s face grew somehow even darker as he reached out for the volume before Vyse snatched it away.
‘Adept,’ he growled. ‘You presume too much. That is a sacred relic and the sole property of the Ecclesiarchy. Leave this cathedral immediately. Else I am not to blame for what I might do.’
The pair of cherubs perched on the rafters behind the confessor suddenly took flight and circled over him like waiting raptors. Aerand had no illusions that the creatures were anywhere near as placid as their childlike forms might suggest.
‘Do as he says,’ Major Restripa sighed. ‘I’m done with this charade.’
‘Sir–’
‘Enough. The confessor is right. You presume far too much, Adept Aerand. You do not command this regiment, nor even one of its companies any longer. And it appears you have lost even the ability to command yourself. Although I’m not sure I should have ever expected more from a psyker.’
‘Sir–’
The major shot a glare of pure ice in her direction, then briefly made eye contact with the confessor. His hand drifted to the sidearm on his belt. Slowly, Aerand nodded, then turned to leave the room, drawing out the moment as long as she could.
Then, just in time, Captain Vyse spoke.
‘Throne above,’ she muttered, staring down at the map. Lieutenant Kobald leaned over the dusty volume, then let out a long and slow whistle.
‘Major,’ he called. ‘Come and look at this.’
Begrudgingly, Restripa rose from his chair, motioning for Aerand to wait.
‘It always seemed that there should have been a pattern,’ Kobald muttered, turning the volume for Restripa and the remaining officers to see. ‘Providence, Temperance, Fortitude, Ire. I’ve had squadrons through half a dozen settlements on this planet, and it always seemed they were too regular, too symmetric, to be random. But there weren’t enough left standing for us to see the pattern.’ The Sentinel commander’s voice was laced with excitement, which Captain Vyse more than matched, her eyes riveted on the yellowing page.
‘There have to be a hundred chapels marked on this map, all massed into rings nearly the entire continent wide. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say it was a cordon.’
‘Just like Providence’s sea wall.’
Vyse paused at that, then looked up towards Aerand. ‘Except this wall was designed to keep something in. Wasn’t it?’
Aerand nodded. ‘I believe so.’
‘And “Witchbringer”. That’s not just a name, is it? Whatever’s sitting in the empty space on this map is the reason there are so many psykers on this world. The reason a ragged cult of swamp-dwellers had the strength to pull three damn moons over our heads.’
Major Restripa glared at Vyse, then shared a look of mounting concern with Confessor Libertinum.
‘This is nonsense,’ Captain Havas barked. ‘It might just as soon be that spot is useless for building. Or a trench where the ocean is twice as deep.’
Silence for a moment. It was possible, certainly, yet every person in the room knew the idea was patently false.
Too many coincidences. Too many secrets that fitted.
‘And what do you want me to do with these suspicions?’ Major Restripa leaned over the table, both hands gripping its worn, dark edges. The man looked exhausted, harried.
Vyse and Kobald responded almost in unison. ‘I want you to pursue them.’
‘How?’ Restripa sighed. ‘We are besieged and surrounded. We are barely holding the last reservoir of Imperial power on this world. If I send a single soldier beyond these walls, I am afraid they will utterly collapse around us.’
‘So let them,’ Aerand replied.
Conversation ceased at the audacity of the thought, an ugly mix of emotion dripping from the cupola’s occupants. A slow, cool rage flowed from Confessor Libertinum, laced with the bitter flavour of suspicion. Major Restripa himself was more difficult to read, as if he wanted to be convinced, but something unspeakable held him back. Aerand resisted the urge to reach out and simply knock down the mental walls the major had erected. The rest of the 900th’s commanders appeared uncertain, aside from Captain Havas, who was clearly eager for nothing more than the major’s approval.
‘Major,’ the confessor remarked slowly. ‘Providence’s cathedral is the only sanctuary you have. If you let it fall into the hands of the cultists, there will be no safe place on this planet.’
Captain Vyse scoffed. ‘Look around you, confessor. Look at the tide rising outside your window and the scorch marks already staining these walls. How safe, exactly, do you think your cathedral is?’
‘Without the Imperial Guard it will burn completely.’
‘Then let it burn,’ Kobald replied. ‘We’ve been tasked with defending a planet, not a building. If surrendering Providence means winning us Visage, then it’s a price we should be more than willing to pay.’
‘And if you are wrong?’ the confessor shot back. ‘If there’s nothing more than an empty swamp waiting on that map and you’ve abandoned the city to gain you nothing?’
‘Then we’re no worse off than we will be here tomorrow,’ Aerand replied.
In the last moments, there had been a shift in the room, and if she could not drive the dagger home now, then she would at least give it an earnest shot.
‘I am not suggesting we trade victory for defeat, major. I’m suggesting we abandon a clearly failing stratagem in favour of one that has an actual chance to succeed.’
Around the table, half a dozen faces waited for the major’s decision, orders of march and supply lists already racing through their heads. These officers could stomach the prospect of defeat. What they could not tolerate was the thought of inaction.
Restripa released the table and sighed, casting one final look towards the confessor.
‘Very well,’ he muttered. ‘If we must burn, we will burn brightly.’
‘Adept,’ Major Restripa called as she passed beyond the outer door of Javax Cathedral. As she crossed the threshold, she felt a weight rise from her shoulders. From one of the saint-encrusted windows above, Libertinum stared out at her with ire, those accursed little cherubs fluttering around him like carrion fowl.
‘Major,’ she replied, drawing to attention in preparation for the castigation she’d undoubtedly earned.
Restripa paused before her, drawing himself up. For a moment, he looked as if he might strike her, then the fight faded from the man, and he deflated. Where Confessor Libertinum’s aura had exuded nothing but spite, the major’s was laced with more subtle notes, and it did not take a witch’s sense to discern that the man was exhausted. Torn in a struggle between duty and the fear of something greater, and at the moment she could not tell which held the upper hand.
‘The confessor has requested that you do not accompany the regiment beyond Providence’s walls.’
Aerand winced. She had been prepared for a battering, but not for this. ‘And who will keep the mists from swallowing the regiment, sir?’
‘Confessor Libertinum has assured me that he and his preachers are more than capable of performing the necessary rites.’
Aerand scoffed. ‘And they do not need to sleep or rest? They may offer as many prayers and consecrations as they like, but those will not stop las-fire or burn your enemies.’
‘I agree. And I told the confessor as much. That said, the man does not trust you, adept. And quite frankly, neither do I. When we pass beyond these walls you are not to leave my sight. If you do, I shall assume that you have deserted, or worse.’
Aerand opened her mouth to reply, but the major raised a hand.
‘No debate, Aerand. For once just shut your mouth and take a bloody order.’
There was something tired in the major’s response. The frustration of a man who had struggled internally for too long, and Aerand could sympathise with that weight. She had carried her own command only briefly, but she understood those pressures better than almost anyone else. And yet, more was buried in the major’s unease. A fear – not only of her, but of what waited for them when they finally arrived at their goal.
The kind of fear only felt by one who knew what would face them.
Aerand probed out discreetly towards Restripa, his aura laced with foreboding and guilt. She thought again of Jarrah Kellipso, and the major’s response when she’d asked him about the primaris psyker days ago on the wall. Her suspicions drifted to Restripa’s shared glances with Confessor Libertinum, unspoken conversation that hinted at dark secrets shared between the two men. Slowly, she pressed her mind towards the major, the fingers of her consciousness brushing the edges of his thoughts.
‘The Witchbringer,’ she said. ‘You always knew what it was.’
In her voice, the slightest hint of her will. She watched Restripa’s face twist painfully, as if he wanted to confess but couldn’t quite bring himself to. He started to open his mouth, and she pushed just a bit further. Then, suddenly, she felt her intrusion slapped back.
Restripa’s violet eyes bored into her own, his face once again a mask of cold iron. ‘You’re dismissed, adept,’ he growled. ‘We leave within the hour.’
Chiding herself, she nodded, slowly raising her cowl.
‘And lord psyker,’ the major called out after her. ‘Touch my mind again, and I will put a bolt through yours before you unwrap a single bloody thought.’
CHAPTER 11
One thousand torch lamps glimmered in the sweating night, the bright flames of a conflagration streaming around them. The Colonel felt the earth shake as another fusillade from the Basilisks within the city tore into the soft earth around Providence like jaws. Already, muck and mire boiled in the wake of an endless bombardment from the full force of the Cadian artillery company. But for all of its anger, the campaign had done nothing more than complete the utter devastation of Providence’s outer skirts, and draw more attention to the sortie it was trying to mask.
‘There have been casualties,’ Sergeant Gross remarked coolly, practically reading the Colonel’s thoughts. The two had stood side by side for enough years that no psionic connection was required for such a simple feat. ‘But still fewer than those missing from the flood by half.’
The Colonel nodded. Casualties were expected – inevitable, even – and the Dorean losses had been far fewer so far than either he or Sergeant Gross had any right to expect.
‘It appears the crone’s efforts were more than enough, then, to bring the Cadians out from behind their walls. And it appears they’ve brought the psyker lord with them. I had feared them to be wiser than that.’
Beside him, Sergeant Gross allowed himself a brief smile. It was truly a rare expression for the man, a brief softening of the dark wrinkles and crow’s feet etched into his countenance from decades of responsibility and hard living. There had been a time the man had smiled more. A time they all had.
