Hellsreach - Aaron Dembski-Bowden [121]
Most gravestones were stacked close together in clusters of bloodline or fealty, and there was no conformity in the markers – each was a slightly different size, shape, material or angle to those nearby, even in sections where the rows were ordered in neat lines. In other parts of the graveyard district, finding one’s way along a pathway was akin to navigating a labyrinth, with weaving a way between the graves taking a great deal of time.
The Temple of the Emperor Ascendant itself was, by Imperial standards, a thing of haunting and gothic beauty. The spires were ringed by stone angels and depictions of the Emperor’s primarchs as saints. Stained glass windows displayed a riot of colours, showing scenes of the God-Emperor’s Great Crusade to bring the stars into union beneath humanity’s vigilant guidance. Lesser depictions were of the first settlers themselves, their deeds of survival and construction exaggerated to deific proportion, showing them as the builders of a glorious, perfect world of golden light and marble cathedrals, rather than the industrial planet they had founded in truth.
The Sisters of the Order of the Argent Shroud had not been idle during the months of warfare that ravaged the rest of the city. Lesser shrines in the graveyard were both heavy weapon outposts and chapels to their founder, Saint Silvana. Angular statues of solid silver – each one of the weeping saint in various poses of grief, triumph and contemplation – stood silent watch over turret pods and barricaded gun-nests.
The walls themselves were reinforced in the same way as the city walls, and bore the same ratio of defence turrets per metre. These remained manned by Helsreach militia.
The Temple courtyard’s great gates were not closed. Despite the protestations of the cardinal council, Prioress Sindal had demanded the doors be kept open until the last possible moment, allowing more and more refugees to enter over the weeks of siege. The basilica’s undercroft housed hundreds of families who hadn’t been able to enter the subterranean shelters, for reasons of criminal activity, administrative error, or outright bad luck. Bunched together in the gloom, they came up for morning and evening prayer, adding their voices to the singing pleas that reached up the immaculately-painted ceiling, where the God-Emperor was depicted staring off into the heavens.
The Temple of the Emperor Ascendant was, in short, a fortress.
A fortress filled with refugees, and surrounded by the largest graveyard in the world.
We are the last to arrive.
Twenty-nine of my brothers already await my arrival, with our cargo gunship grounded nearby. It brings our total force to thirty-five, if one was to count Jurisian labouring on the forlorn hope, bring the weapon across the Ash Wastes.
Thirty-five of the hundred that landed in Helsreach five weeks before.
One of those awaiting our arrival is the one warrior I have done all I can to avoid for the last five weeks.
He kneels before the open gates of the Temple’s compound, his black sword plunged into the marble before him, helmed head lowered in reverence. As with the Templars around him, almost all evidence of scripture parchment, wax crusader seals and cloth tabard is gone from his armour. I recognise him because of his ancient armour and the dark blade he prays to.
Jurisian himself has worked on that armour, repairing it with reverence each time he has been honoured with the chance to touch it. Before Jurisian, a host of other Masters of the Forge maintained the relic war plate through the centuries, back to its original forging as a suit of armour for the Imperial Fists Legion.
While our armour shows dull grey wounds under the stripped paint, this knight’s war plate, forged in a time when primarchs walked the galaxy, shows gold beneath the battle damage. The legacy of Dorn’s Legion is still there if one knows where to look; between the cracks, revealed by war.
The knight rises, pulling