Hellsreach - Aaron Dembski-Bowden [120]
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