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Sanctuary and Sacrifice - Andy Clark

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About the Author

An Extract from ‘Dawn of Fire: The Gate of Bones’

A Black Library Publication

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Sanctuary and Sacrifice

Andy Clark

Pilgrims flowed along Processional Piety Through Sacrifice in their hundreds of thousands. Threadbare hoods thrown up against the cold drizzle, they trudged along in a human river whose motion was relentless and inevitable. Crumpled parchment, broken holy icons and countless food wrappers crunched under their feet. Voices rose in fervent prayers, cutting through the endless drone of conversation and complaints until they echoed from the surrounding buildings like the distant roar of waves upon a shingle shore. Prayer spires and shrine-plexes crowded in on both sides of the processional, cherub-studded edifices of Imperial might in whose flanks stained-glass windows glinted and from whose ramparts strings of prayer banners stretched out to criss-cross the skies above. Higher still, aero-haulers puttered back and forth in long lines while the flaring engines of endless pilgrim ships made false constellations amongst the day's low-cloud.

Some of the endless faithful looked up in wonder at the structures that surrounded them. Most just traipsed onwards, jaded by the onslaught of statuary and sacred architecture they had faced since first setting foot on the cardinal world. Some had eyes not for magnificent buildings, but rather for the black-armoured enforcers who stood in small knots astride grav-pulpits hovering above the crowd. Ornately decorated and armoured, each platform provided the Imperium's law-keepers with vantage points from which to stare down in judgement.

It was against these prying eyes that Jaceth Petrokhin kept his hood thrown up. In his experience, the enforcers had little chance of singling anyone out amidst the endless tide of humanity flowing from the space ports to the shrines and cathedra; their task was overwhelming. Those who belonged to the bone-whittler gangs were easier to spot than most, though. They wore scrimshawed piercings of stolen saints' bones, the better to bless their criminal endeavours. Jaceth's gang also painted their faces with ground bone powder to give themselves a spectral appearance. All this tended to stand out, even to the tired eyes of overworked enforcers. Jaceth didn't believe for a second that sticking bones through his skin would bring him divine protection, though Throne knew he did it anyway just to fit in, and so he remained as unobtrusive as he could while he worked the crowd.

Jaceth allowed the masses to press him behind a bent old pilgrim whose tattered bag had slipped part way open. It was the work of moments to dip a hand in, disguising the motion as a clumsy stumble and coming away with a handful of credit-tokens. Jaceth had muttered something apologetic and melted away before the old fool even turned to see who had bumped him. The theft itself likely wouldn't be noticed for hours.

Slipping the filched currency into a slot cut in his own robe, Jaceth wondered idly what his pious parents would have made of their eldest son robbing from pilgrims. They had been influx themselves, twenty-three years on a slow ship from Bardessa. Jaceth had been conceived and born during that voyage. He had grown to his early teens before ever seeing anything other than the inside of a voidship.

Son of first gen 'grims, thieving the last few credits from new influx, he thought, as though trying to goad himself into a stab of guilt. It wouldn't come. Jaceth's contempt for the blind faithful had been cemented during his teenage years, as he had watched his parents settle for a life of grinding poverty amidst the influx slums of Bonewash on the banks of Divine Concourse Canal. By the time they died a prayer-filled and futile death of oskpox, they had successfully brainwashed his three younger siblings to the Imperial creed. Only Jaceth, it seemed, had felt anger at the callous way in which the Emperor had stolen their parents away. Only he had sought to escape Bonewash, to score something better for himself by joining the Pale Saints. They weren't the biggest bone-whittler gang, not by a long chalk. One small hideout down in the 'combs near the Tower of Proclamation, just a handful of them fleecing 'grims on other gangs' territories.

For now, he told himself, echoing the insistent mantra of their leader, Dredge. Were small for now.

'Hows the pickings?' came Dredge's voice through the black-market ear-bead Jaceth wore. Thari had scored them from a contact in the stairmarket below the macro-shrine to Saint Holphin. Thari's contact swore they were defence militia surplus. From their pitiful range and the constant squall of static, Jaceth doubted the veracity of that claim. They did the job, though, kept the five of them in touch amidst the streaming cattle of the influx.

'Rich enough,' he replied, muttering into his hood.

'Speak up, Protector,' sneered Dredge. 'Divine bloke like you got nothin' to fear.' Jaceth scowled, as he always did at Dredge's lumpen jibes. His parents had named him for Saint Jaceth the Protector, possibly in some misguided hope that the name would inspire him to act as the guardian of his younger siblings. Dredge knew that Jaceth resented the association, was about as pious as a stub-gun slug, and so took every opportunity to remind him of it.

'Ignore him,' came Thari's voice through the fur of static. She always gave the same advice. Dredge was big, had some vat-muscle or so went the tale. He wasn't all that bright, though. Six years and a hundred pounds Jaceth's senior, Dredge didn't like admitting that he needed the younger bone-whittler's bright ideas and keen eye. Inevitably, he asserted his dominance with a constant stream of mockery and casual violence. He did it to them all. One didn't get to run a bone-whittler crew without asserting oneself as alpha canid.

But he singled Jaceth out worst.

Still better than praying myself to death in Bonewash like a good little 'grim, Jaceth reminded himself.

'Influx got some good shine on 'em,' said Narletha. Her voice was a staccato rattle of words like an autopistol going off. She always spoke the same way, too fast, words tumbling over one another. A few years hooked on klynka would do that to a person.

'How about you, Saint Pieter?' asked Dredge, then laughed at his own jest. Jaceth reckoned Pieter for the most dangerous member of their fledgling gang. Tall, wiry-strong and deadly with his bone-handled shivs, the pale, dark-haired lad frightened Jaceth more than Dredge ever would. He was also mute, whether by choice or accident, so of course it was Dredge's new favourite game to question him repeatedly over the vox. They didn't even know Saint Pieter's real name, had just christened him for the catacomb they first met him in.

When they weren't working the surface crowds or out on the rob, bone-whittlers spent most of their time down in the 'combs and carved out their territories amidst the deep chambers and tunnels where pilgrims didn't venture. It was safer down there.

Quieter too.

'Twenty minutes more then we meet up at the feet of the Big Angel, yeah?' asked Thari.

'Like you say,' agreed Jaceth, the words leaving his mouth before his brain had a chance to vet them. He knew the candle he held for Thari Esop was doomed to be snuffed. The fierce, shaven-headed young woman did little more than tolerate him. Yet they shared a rejection of faith and a disdain for this world that felt to Jaceth like a collaborator's bond. He couldn't help but idolise the things she represented.

Still, he'd spoken out of turn and Dredge wasn't about to let that slide.

'Makin the calls now, Protector?' he asked, sure as the plainsong bells. In his question Jaceth heard the certainty of a beating to come and pondered, not for the first time, simply vanishing through the crowds. The Tunnelwraiths were a much bigger local gang. It wasn't such a huge trek to reach Bonefinger territory if he put his mind to it. Either gang might take him in.

Or they might shiv me and leave me for the enforcers, he thought. Besides, he wouldn't leave Thari, stupid though he knew that was. So instead he adopted his most placating tone,

'Sorry, Dredge, I thought it was you that said—'

Jaceth's voice was drowned out by the sudden moan of clarions. Laud-hailers and gargoyle-faced vox-speakers grew like weird fruit throughout the city's architectural tangle. Normally they broadcast an overlapping melange of prayers, sermons and auto-hymns that you could only escape in the deep'combs. Now they howled as one, a choral alarm that rose until it echoed like thunder from stone and marble.

'Thrones name is this?' came Dredges shout over their ear-beads, all but drowned by the dirge. Jaceth didn't know, had never heard this awful sound before. He knew only that it filled him with disquiet bordering on dread. Those feelings increased as he saw the enforcers get very still, all at once.

Listening to their own vox, he thought, gripping the handle of his bone-shiv.

The crowd stirred around him. They were still moving, any who wanted to stop earned along by the pressure from the thousands following behind. Children cried and clung to parents. Adults looked up fearfully, as though by staring at the source of the clarion they could somehow understand its import. Voices were raised in frightened cries, in hurried prayers and shouts of alarm or pain. Even that clamour could barely cut through the endless drone of the speakers.

Throne, why doesn't it stop? It's so damned loud! Seriously! Please, make it stop!

Jaceth could feel panic threatening as the choral sirens droned on and on, and the crowd became ever more agitated. Pushing turned to shoving turned to people falling with unheard shouts to vanish beneath trampling feet. Wild-eyed 'grims reached frantically for one another as the press of the crowd pulled them apart. Jaceth could barely keep his own feet, fighting to let the crowd flow around him without carrying him away as Thari had taught him to.

He knew something was very wrong when the enforcers shouldered their shotguns, worked their pulpit controls and hovered up and away. Jaceth had never seen them abandon their posts like that. Yet there they went, landing at docking cradles built into the flanks of the shrine-towers and vanishing without a backward glance.

'What do they know we don't?' he shouted over the vox, but wasn't sure if any of his fellow Pale Saints heard him.

The crowd surge worsened. Punches were thrown. Elbows jabbed out. People screamed. A pair of influx stumbled past Jaceth, close enough to carom off him as they grappled over a scroll bag. The crowd surged again and they both went down, their shouts drowned in the mindless animal roar.

'Free pickings! No 'forcers, no rules, grab everything you c'n get your hands on,' Narletha was cackling, barely audible through the ear-bead.

'Don't be a hollowskull, 'letha,' shouted Jaceth. 'Everyone get your arses to the Big Angel, now!'

'Deep'combs take that,' swore Dredge, sounding furious. 'Grab what you can, Saints.'

Trust Dredge to take all this as a challenge, thought Jaceth, panic, anger and frustration mingling together.

'Deep'combs'll take you at this rate, Dredge,' spat Thari. 'Jac's right, Big Angel right bloody now!'

Dredge made an inarticulate noise of disgust that might have been refusal or assent. Jaceth didn't care. Thari was heading for the statue of the Big Angel, so he was too. He could see it over the heads of the panicking crowd, a marble figure fifty feet tall. It was clad top to toe in armour with a grilled helm, a stylised backpack, an aquila emblazoned over its chest and a winged blood drop carved onto one of its hulking shoulder guards.

If only they were real, he thought, semi-coherently, as he fought his way towards it. He didn't even know why he'd thought it, but something about the endless drone of the laud-hailers had filled him with a fear he couldn't place. Something worse was coming, instinct told him that much, and a few comforting lies made real flesh and blood would be very welcome right now.

Jaceth was so fixated on reaching the Big Angel that the flash of light caught him completely by surprise. He felt fierce heat, like from a pyre. Something slammed down into the crowd to his right, its impact shaking the ground and sending people reeling. Jaceth was almost thrown off his feet, clawing and cursing to stay upright. He stared in incomprehension at the huge chunk of masonry that now jutted up over the crowd like a blood-splattered island. From one of its blackened flanks, half a marble cherub regarded him blankly with its single, scorched eye. It was shrapnel, he realised, hurled into the crowd by some tremendous force.

'What... what...?' Jaceth stared about. Bodies thudded against him as he sought the source of the lethal impact. 'Saint's bones,' he breathed as, casting about, he saw that one of the spire-tops had crashed down upon the packed processional. Jaceth's mind felt sluggish, but he tried to reason out what could have caused this. An accident maybe? He went cold as the thought of insurgents surfaced. They'd all heard whispers about the weird cults that took root in the deep'combs, below even those levels the bone-whittlers would chance. Whispers that had redoubled since the poisoned stars opened in the night sky. They were crazies, so the stories went, who not only believed the Angels were real but that some of them had turned against the Golden Throne. Rumour had it they worshipped these Traitor Angels, along with nightmarish gods and even the Nine Devils of Ecclesiarchical scripture. All rubbish, Jaceth knew, no more convincing than the priests' own spiel. But the insurgents believed it, and they were cracked and violent enough to act on those beliefs. If this was their doing, he didn't want to be anywhere near it.

That was when the clouds tore open and another bright flash of light speared down from on high. It stabbed into the stained-glass dome of the Confessional of Saint Macharet and blew it apart. Jaceth cried out as his retinas were seared by the vivid crimson beam. He felt rather than saw the dome's shrapnel rain on the crowd, each impact shaking the ground as rubble battered the tightly packed bodies. Smoke billowed around him. His foot slid in something and he almost fell.

A hand grabbed his arm and kept him upright. Blinking away washed-out after-images, Jaceth saw Thari glaring at him as she held him against the crowd.

'Thanks,' he managed to gasp.

'That's las-fire,' she said, leaning close to his ear and shouting to be heard.

'That's bloody orbital las-fire. Someone's bombarding us!'

Jaceth blinked stupidly at her as his brain struggled to catch up. He didn't know anything about Thari's past, had never been able to prise any details from her. In that moment, as bloody carnage and mindless panic whirled about them, all he could think was, How do you know that?

She made an impatient sound and hauled on his arm to get him moving. Together they staggered and shoved, clinging to one another's stolen robes. More bright flashes lit the sky, thankfully none so close as the last. Jaceth tripped over fallen shapes, slipped in blood, retched on smoke and dust. He heard someone gasping, 'Oh Throne, oh Throne, oh Throne,' and thought it might have been him.

The howl of the laud-hailers cut out with shocking suddenness, replaced by a deep, reassuring voice.

'Faithful, beloved, do not fear! Misguided heretics think to test their strength against the might of the Emperor this day! They realise not that the Emperor protects! Remain calm as you make your way to the nearest site of sanctuary, and there offer prayers of thanks to the God-Emperor for deliverance. Faithful, beloved...'

The speech looped endlessly, its calm-surety rendered surreal by the cacophony of screams and thunderous detonations.

Nothing useful, nothing true, thought Jaceth, semi-coherent. Bastards.

From somewhere nearby came a rattling percussion that no 'comb ganger could ever mistake. He and Thari shared a frightened look.

'Autoguns,' she said. The explosive thump of a grenade going off followed it. Harsh voices yelled words that Jaceth didn't recognise, and these voices weren't frightened. They were exhilarated.

War cries.

They finally reached the feet of the Big Angel. Jaceth wasn't sure if he was relieved or disappointed to see Dredge stood on the statue's plinth, staying out of the crowd. Saint Pieter sat on his haunches beside the gang's leader, dark hair veiling his face as he stared at the sky. Dredge reached down with one meaty fist to haul Thari up and out of the melee. He left Jaceth to scramble by himself.

'What is this?' Jaceth panted as he fought to get his breath back. His body hurt, as the bruises from collisions and flailing fists registered at last.

'Grakking invasion's what,' said Dredge, and Jaceth realised the big lad sounded as excited as he was alarmed. He looked up and saw an unhealthy shine in Dredge's eyes.

Anarchy. Violence. That's enough for you, and 'combs take the consequences, Jaceth thought with disgust. Some emotions must have shown on his face, for Dredge scowled and reached down with a hand dripping in knuckle rings to grab Jaceth by the front of his robe. Dredge's eyes were dark pits of stupid cruelty, stark in the white-painted expanse of his face. Despite the chaos shaking the city, it was this very personal threat of violence that made Jaceth tense up and cower, lips skinning from his teeth.

'Not the time, Dredge,' said Thari, slapping a hand on his wrist. 'Stay here to deal out beatings, we don't make it back to the 'combs.'

Dredge hesitated, swept his gaze across the panicking masses, the beams of light piercing the heavens, the pyres and billowing smoke amidst the crowd. He grunted and dropped Jaceth, who felt a rush of gratitude for the temporary reprieve.

'Where's Narletha?' Thari asked, scanning the shoving, heaving, screaming masses. Jaceth saw no sign of the strung-out little addict. A pilgrim tried to scramble onto the plinth, just a robe and staring eyes and a round, dark scream of a mouth. Saint Pieter casually kicked him back into the crowd and he vanished.

'Grak should I know?' asked Dredge, his tone surly. 'Stupid junkie's probably still tryin' to pick pockets.'

'What's that?' asked Jaceth, pointing skywards. The clouds were beginning to tatter like burned parchment as the livid beams of fire broke through, and now small dark shapes could be seen falling in clusters towards the shrinescape below. They left trails of smoke in their wakes.

'Bombs?' asked Dredge.

'Too small, coming in at the wrong angle,' said Thari, surprising Jaceth again with her incongruous knowledge. 'More like drop craft but... weirdly small.' She rubbed at the bone-shards piercing her forearms, a habit that meant Thari was really nervous.

'Throne do you know what bombs look like when they're falling?' asked Dredge, chin jutting aggressively.

'They're not falling, are they?' she shot back, pointing skywards. 'Look at the angle.'

'More 'n' bigger behind,' said Jaceth, who felt strangely numbed by the whole thing. He watched as jaggedly shaped heavy landers plunged through the atmosphere, as flashes of light speckled their flanks and pilgrim ships fell burning from the heavens. He watched as though through a plate of plasglass, as if it was all happening to someone else.

'Letha? You out there?' Thari tried the ear-bead again. 'Letha?'

'We need to get down to the 'combs,' Jaceth said dully.

'We need to get down to the 'combs,' echoed Dredge, much louder, asserting quite clearly that this was his idea. 'Grak 'Letha, if she's still down there she's dead. Where's the nearest downstair?'

'Won't work,' said Jaceth, shock slurring his words. 'Cryptwraiths own this turf.'

'Yeah? And?' snarled Dredge, balling his fists again.

'If we're running for the 'combs, so are they, and so are as many of this lot as can find a hole to crawl down,' said Thari, seeing Jaceth's point. 'Lots more Cryptwraiths than Pale Saints, Dredge.'

'You scared of those scrawny little gheists?' spat Dredge, squaring up to Thari.

'I'm scared of catching a shiv in a dark tunnel, or getting crushed in the press, or... Throne's sakes, Dredge!' spat Thari. Dredge sneered at her frustration, and the hatred Jaceth felt for the big ganger in that moment cleared his head a little. The glass cracked and reality flooded through.

'Penitent's Stair, base of the Tower of Proclamation,' he said, loud enough to gain the attention of his three gang-mates. 'Let the maggots crawl down the nearest hole and get stuck there, Dredge. Your gang's better than that, right? And when this is all done and the Cryptwraiths are mauled up, we'll have their patch too, yeah?'

The tower in question rose, proud and mighty against the burning skies. It was about a mile away on foot, but the tunnels beneath it offered the quickest and cleanest path down to their hideout.

'Yeah, let them get buried in influx. We'll have the lot when the fires burn out,' said Dredge. He looked around at them and made an irritated shooing gesture. 'Well, move then!'

Jaceth rose unsteadily. His companions did the same. Dredge brandished his stub gun, and the power maul that was his favoured trophy. The thing's machine-spirit was long expired, but it still made a damned good club, albeit one he had to keep under his robes most of the time lest the enforcers spot it. The usual rules didn't apply now, though, and so he wasted no time in jumping down from the plinth and laying into the crowd with his pride and joy. Saint Pieter followed him, hard eyes flashing. Thari brought up the rear, tugging on Jaceth's robes to get him moving too.

The crowd had lost its collective mind by this point. It was a wild beast that trampled over its own fallen and tried to scatter in all directions at once. The gunfire had grown louder, closer. Dredge might be a thug but even he had the sense to see this was no place to stay. He ploughed a path straight towards the nearest alleyway, a dark slit between two towering buildings. As they followed, Jaceth leaned close to Thari.

'What's happening?' he asked, and hated the fearful note in his voice.

'I mean... looks as though we're being invaded, don't it?' she asked in a return.

'Invaded?' he asked, knowing he sounded vacant but unable to stop himself. The preachers talked about enemies from beyond the stars but who listened to their drivel? 'Invaded by who?'

'Jac, how the grak should I know?' she spat. He recoiled, stung, and followed her in silence.

There were people crammed into the alleyway, too. The press of them had flattened the handful of lean-tos and backmarket food stalls that had once lined the cramped through-way. Some people had stopped, leaning against the walls, gasping or clutching wounded limbs. Dredge shoved and bludgeoned his way down the alley, and as Jaceth followed he felt like cursing at the frightened livestock who stared and whimpered and prayed.

Gunfire clattered so loud that they all ducked. It echoed through the alley, bouncing off the walls, and Jaceth couldn't tell if it came from ahead or behind. Something huge exploded with a dull roar that he felt as much as heard. The ground shook and he heard a brittle splintering. Jaceth looked up to see stained-glass windows shattering high above them.

'Look out!' he yelled, before the jagged shards fell like brightly coloured rain. He pressed himself to the wall and, for a mercy, avoided the falling shards. Dredge wasn't so lucky. He spat curses as blood ran from a deep cut on his shoulder.

Without thinking, Jaceth tore a strip from his tattered robe and moved to bind the wound. Dredge jerked away, giving him a look of such ferocious reproof that Jaceth recoiled.

'Oh Throne's sakes,' spat Thari, snatching the makeshift bandage from Jaceth and winding it swiftly over and under Dredge's wounded shoulder. 'Idiot,' she hissed.

'Bitch,' he shot back, but allowed her to minister to his wound.

Moron, Jaceth thought but didn't quite dare say.

Saint Pieter gave them all a measured look from beneath his lank hair then set off along the alley again. Dredge and Thari followed, and Jaceth trailed them. They emerged into a small garden cloister, accessed from the main processionals by several arched pilgrimsways. Ornate architecture rose on all sides. Several spindly trees and a profusion of white-blossomed flowers grew here, none of which Jaceth knew the names of. Influx were knelt in the mud around them, praying fervently. Something shot overhead, a dark shape there and gone against the square frame of sky. Its roar made everyone jump.

Dredge led the way into another alley, brandishing his maul at the few 'grims who got in his path. Jaceth followed through the gloom. His hand was sweaty around the plastek handle-wrap of his shiv. The thunder of gunfire and explosions was a constant backdrop as though the city's heart was racing in panic.

At the end of the alley, Dredge halted and raised a hand in warning. The noise ahead was colossal, autoguns and something bigger hammering away. Jaceth heard the distinctive snap of las-fire too. He peered around Dredge and saw smoke boiling through the air, half obscuring the processional ahead. Rubble and bodies were scattered about. Fires danced here and there, while through the murk whipped bullets and las-bolts as thick as an insect swarm.

Crouching, edging forward, Jaceth got a better look. To his left he saw a barricade, fashioned from toppled statuary and several wrecked vehicles. Figures massed there, clad in a motley of robes, rags, scraps of armour, ghoulish-looking rebreathers and Throne-knew-what else. They were gathered under a big, tattered flag, black cloth overlaid with a horned and flaming skull. Jaceth had never seen its like. The insurgents, for surely they were insurgents, were pouring fire down the processional towards where several blue-armoured Chimeras had pulled to a halt. Serried firing lines of Astra Militarum stood between the armoured vehicles, contemptuous of cover as they shot off their lasguns.

'Can't go this way,' Jaceth wheezed through the smoke.

'No other way to go,' spat Dredge. 'Tower's just past the next shrine-block.'

'There was a door back along the alley, I could pick the lock,' suggested Thari.

'No, we're going this way,' Dredge replied, seeking to disguise his fear as anger. 'They're not shooting at us, are they? Just duck and run right through. Bones'll do the rest, yeah? And we've got the bloody Protector with us.'

Dredge slapped a hand on Jaceth's back. Before Jaceth could react he felt himself being propelled forcibly into the processional. His scream of alarm mingled with Dredge's cruel laughter and Thari's shout of anger. Every muscle in Jaceth's body clenched in panic. His breath wheezed as he stumbled into the grinding teeth of the firefight, still trying to grasp that he was about to die.

Dark shapes raced overhead. Explosions rippled. The air was fire. Jaceth let gravity take him, falling flat amidst rubble and bodies, hands over his head. The impact punched the air from his lungs and he gasped, eyes tearing up.

Not dead, he thought, bewildered. How am I not dead?

'Now's our chance, grakking move!' Dredges voice sent a surge of anger through Jaceth. Feet thumped right by his head, and a hand snaked down to pull at his robes.

'Jac, get up! Thrones sake, get up!' Thari, hauling him to his feet, forcing him to move. He could barely see through the smoke and flames. Something had gone wrong with the processional. Everything was the wrong shape, dark silhouettes flowing and blending together in a melange of senseless devastation. Yet somehow he lived. The thought kept recurring, playing over and over in his head like the empty words from the laud-hailers.

Didn't die. Should have died. Didn't die.

What had saved him? Dumb luck? Maybe, but he'd never been lucky. The bones or the Emperor on high? Unlikely. They'd never helped before.

His stumbling thoughts lurched again as gunfire resumed. It was ragged now, pot-shots and snap-fire, but it was enough to send rounds sparking from the rubble.

Dredge screamed. Blood puffed from one muscular calf. He went down in a heap. Saint Pieter stopped to grab Dredge under his arms and started hauling him towards the waiting mouth of another alley. Thari and Jaceth ran straight past, not even sparing their fallen leader a glance. They reached the dark, welcome safety of the next alleyway and there Jaceth stopped. Thari looked at him in bewilderment.

'Grak are you doing?' she asked. 'He pushed you into a bloody gunfight! If he makes it out, I'm shivving him myself!'

'We can't just leave Pieter,' Jaceth said. Frustration and fear warred in his chest. He turned back, took a step into the street. Pieter was a hazy figure, dragging the groaning, cursing Dredge towards safety.

Something whipped down and hit the processional, barely twenty yards away. The impact sent chunks of ferrocrete flying. Jaceth's overloaded brain caught snatches of something metallic and painted bloody crimson. He struggled to process the image of huge metal talons driven into the ground, of a horned and blazing skull painted across the thing's flanks, and of huge figures dropping from its underside. The smoke closed in again but now there were sounds emerging from it, sounds so monstrous and terrifying that Jaceth froze. Voices roared vox-amplified oaths.

'Praise the Octed! Praise the Dark Gods!'

There came volleys of thudding booms, the flash-bloom of muzzle flare, a thrumming crackle.

'Who are…?' he croaked.

Thari just gasped.

Saint Pieter and Dredge appeared suddenly at the mouth of the alley. Something enormous loomed behind them that gave off the stench of sulphur and electricity. Something with burning red eyes. Gunshots came, impossibly loud.

Dredge and Saint Pieter came apart. Jaceth tasted their blood in his mouth.

Shock pulled a veil over the next few moments. Jaceth had a vague sense of terror, of running for his life as his breath rasped hot in his throat. Then, for a short time, nothing.

Jaceth found himself on his hands and knees amidst rubble and corpses. He tasted bile. His ears rang and his vision see-sawed. For a miracle he realised that Thari was alive, crouched on her haunches, rocking back and forth. They had made it to the edge of Proclamator's Square. He saw the canal where it ran into the square from the east and the tower, rising above them.

'What was that thing?' she asked him, her voice pleading.

'I... it looked...' like the Big Angel. But no, he couldn't voice that thought aloud because if angels were real then what else was too? 'We have to get inside,' he said and pushed himself to his feet.

The world spun. Waves of sound rolled in from every side. The ground shook as three grey-and-red battle tanks rolled from the mouth of a processional and accelerated across the square with snorts of exhaust fume. The vehicles passed them, their crews completely disinterested in two blood-spattered 'grims crouched amidst the ashes of disaster. Yet their onset was enough to scare Thari onto her feet. Swaying and shell-shocked, the two Pale Saints picked their way across the square to the nearest arched tower entrance. Skulls stared sightlessly as they approached like wayward gheists.

A symbol of the Emperor's protection, or something, he thought, but then the Emperor didn't protect, did He? Hadn't protected Narletha. Hadn't protected Dredge or Saint Pieter.

But I didn't die, so what protected me?

Thari tugged at his sleeve and he followed her. The tower appeared deserted but for a priest's crook left abandoned in its entrance. He and Thari stole through the cool gloom and slipped down the Penitents Stair.

Every downward step rendered the fighting on the surface a little more distant. As the stairway coiled into the subterranean realm of the 'combs, Jaceth breathed a little easier. He was shaking. At some point, he and Thari had clasped each other's hands. Once he would have thrilled at the thought. Now he just clutched her hand and she his, the two of them like lost youths in some cautionary sermon.

The 'combs enfolded them and Jaceth allowed himself to hope that they might be safe, at least for now. The tunnels felt familiar. It was the closest thing to a home he had ever known. He walked a path through corridors, chambers, crypts and stairwells that required no conscious thought. Several times, he heard the echo of voices or footfells up ahead. Once there came a long scream, suddenly choked off. The two gangers simply changed course and vanished through side-chambers and passages. Jaceth had no desire to meet anyone else down here, no more than he wanted to stop and think about what he had seen. Neither of them spoke.

How could they? Where would they start?

An hour ago, we were picking pockets and I was wondering what to eat for even'bell meal, he thought. Now? It's too huge.

They ducked down a flicker-lit passageway and came face to face with a stone slab. Saint Jaceth the Protector stared out at them in bas-relief. Dredges idea of a joke.

Joke's on you now, grak-wit, and may the deep'combs take you, he thought savagely.

Thari wrapped her fingers around one edge of the stone slab. It looked way too heavy to move, but they had set it on crude runners. Jaceth had designed it, he and Thari had built it, and Dredge, Saint Pieter and Narletha had heaved the slab onto its runners what seemed like a lifetime ago. It would slide easily to one side once the catch was released. Jaceth listened for its telltale click, a noise that told him he was home.

No click. Thari was pushing the slab aside automatically.

Why no click? Was it already—

'Thari!' he yelped, but too late. The slab rolled aside, and the resounding bang of a stub gun echoed along the tunnel.

Thari's head snapped back. Her legs buckled. She crumpled to the ground.

Jaceth stood, gaping, white noise filling his head and pressure crushing his chest. He blinked, took in the beaten and bloody figure swaying in front of him. Narletha Cos held the stub gun in shaking hands and smoke crawled lazily from its barrel. The hideout was a tossed and tumbled ruin around her, the belongings of the dead flung about as though after a hasty search.

'Left me there,' she spat. 'Left me there left me there left me there!' Her voice rose to a shriek. Her thumb levered back the gun's crude firing hammer. Jaceth moved without thinking. His instincts knew before his conscious mind that turning your back on a crazy with a gun was as good a way to commit suicide as any. He found himself charging at Narletha instead, her bloodshot eyes widening below her ratty, acid-green fringe.

She squeezed the trigger.

Nothing happened.

Jaceth hit her and the gun spilled from her hands. They went over in a tumble and a scream tore loose from somewhere deep within him. Narletha screamed too, snatched at her shiv. He was quicker...

Jaceth was slumped in the corridor when they found him. He was staring up at the impassive stone face of his saintly namesake, Thari's lifeless body cradled over his lap. He was thinking about how much he hated Saint Jaceth, and the Emperor, and the entire damned Imperium.

Footfalls thumped on stone. Figures halted, looming over him. Breath hissed and sucked through rebreather hoods. Robes rustled in the quiet. Jaceth looked up and met the eyes of the insurgents' leader. The big man looked down at him, staring from within a horned half-mask beneath a black hood.

Jaceth's mind reached for reassurance, for the only phrase he could think of that might save him. What right did a non-believer like him have to such comfort, though?

Didn't die in the street. Didn't die in the hideout. If the Emperor doesn't protect... well...

Jaceth glanced into the hideout, took in the ruin of the poor excuse he'd called a life. He looked down at Thari, still dead, always dead.

And what came next made sense.

'Praise the Octed,' he said. The unfamiliar words were seared into his thoughts. 'Praise the Dark Gods.'

The big man glanced at his followers. One of them chuckled nastily. Another shrugged.

'Think it's that easy, do you?' asked the horn-masked insurgent.

He looked back up and met horn-mask's eyes. 'Does any of this look easy to you?' he asked, and with those words he realised the depths of his own anger.

Horn-mask grunted as though conceding the point. He held a hand down to Jaceth. With gentle care, the last Pale Saint raised Thari's head and laid her on the cold stone floor. That would have to do. He reached up and allowed himself to be pulled to his feet.

'Got a gun?'

Jaceth shook his head no. He blinked in surprise as an autogun was pushed into his hands, a heavy industrially stamped model that he'd have had to save for half a year to afford. It had an eight-pointed star crudely etched into its casing.

'You've sacrificed, but the Dark Gods always want more,' said the big man. 'Prove yourself today and maybe you get to join us in their worship.'

More mindless faith, thought Jaceth, but no, this felt different. This felt tangible, and after all, something had protected him. Calling his losses a sacrifice made them feel somehow worthwhile.

'And who are you?' he asked the insurgent, his voice a hoarse rasp.

'The Cult of the Blade Unsheathed.'

'Fine,' said Jaceth, hefting his new weapon. 'The Cult of the Blade Unsheathed. The Dark Gods. The masters.'

The Cryptwraiths, he thought. The Pale Saints. The Emperor. All the same in the end.

'Sacrifice, then,' he said, and, following his new companions, Saint Jaceth's namesake left his sanctuary behind.

INTRODUCTION

Dawn of Fire: The Gate of Bones Limited Edition

I should say, first of all, that I've never been asked to write an introduction to one of my own novels. Then again, I've also never been asked to write a novel for a series as big as this one. Hopefully, as you read on, you'll feel I've done justice on both counts.

When Nick Kyme first told me that we were going to be releasing a series of novels based on the Indomitus Crusade, I was tremendously excited. This was cutting-edge Warhammer 40,000 background, a galaxy-spanning story of a desperate last-ditch fightback against the final darkness. It had already enjoyed prodigious attention from a raft of Warhammer 40,000 Studio and Black Library veterans. It was the predominant setting and backdrop for an entire edition of the tabletop game, for goodness' sakes! Now we were going to drill down into the heroes and villains of it all, the boots-on-the-ground, blood, mud and smoke everywhere, 'oh-Throne-it's-all-on-fire-and-has-anyone-seen-my-arm' carnage of humanity's biggest unified military undertaking in ten millennia.

This was going to be something special.

Initially I thought that Nick was going to ask me to consult on the series, perhaps in its initial planning stages. I'm lucky enough to be the lead Warhammer 40,000 Studio background writer. I've been doing that job along while and learned my craft from some of the industry's most prolific and talented creatives, and if there's one thing I know, it's how to write fiction set in our dark and dystopian galaxy. I'd also been privileged to do a lot of the in-Studio development work on the nitty-gritty of the Indomitus Crusade: how its organisation worked, what its major goals were and so forth. With all that in mind, I figured I could probably help.

Makes sense, right?

Then Nick asked me to write Book Two in the series. Once I'd determined it wasn't some cruel sort of prank, I just about lost my mind. Its quite small and thus easy to lose, but still...

I think what I'm trying to say is that getting to write this book was both incredibly exciting and extremely intimidating. No creative effort ever exists in a vacuum. If you're going to be a professional writer then you quickly make peace with the fact that various other professionals are going to be scrutinising your work, issuing kill orders on your favourite darlings, pointing out all the places that you could improve on your efforts and in general being brutally honest with you about the manuscript you just spent months of your life sweating blood over.

They don't do this because they're mean jerks. They do it because it is their job, and because they care about the final quality of the piece, and because they are genuinely trying to help you be the best writer you can possibly be. This is a privilege and an opportunity to learn, every single time, no matter how experienced a writer you are. It's how authors evolve into successful authors, and how successful authors remain so.

With all that said, when you know that your creative efforts are going to be scrutinised by no less than Nick Kyme and Guy Haley, it is both awesome and, frankly, a bit scary.

And yet here it is, written, edited, printed and hopefully the best flippin' book about future space war and murderous daemon-worshipping super soldiers it can possibly be! And yes, I am doubtless biased, but I really hope you're in for a bit of a treat with this one. For starters, it's a tale of the oldest conflict in the history of the Imperium, of rival faiths and those who adhere zealously to them clashing brutally, with the fate of mankind on the line.

Everyone in this story believes, to one extent or another, that they're right to be doing what they're doing. Sure, some of them have a more subjective grasp of right and wrong than other, less daemon-worshipping types, but I think that's really important; stories should have believable, empathetic antagonists as well as protagonists. Let's be honest, the coolest bad guys are those who really believe that they are in the right.

Moreover, this is a tale of battling against the odds, of devoted champions forced to improvise and strive as they seek to come out on top. It's a story which I hope contains some shocks and surprises, and provides enough character drama and development along the way that it's about more than just pulse-pounding action and grimdark carnage. I mean, that's there, obviously. In spades. But with luck you'll find there's more than just grand battles going on here, and that some of the personal journeys and conflicts draw you in and leave you with things to think about after you've put the book down.

The setting, too, is exciting. One of the joys of the Warhammer 40,000 galaxy is that it offers a near-limitless bounty of potential backdrops. So long as you retain that gothic fantasy twist to the worlds that you portray, the only real limit to your settings, or to the spectacular events you set within them, is your imagination. When I was briefed that this story would be taking place on Gathalamor, though, I was particularly inspired. This is a world with a bloody and intriguing history, a deeply spiritual holy site within the Imperium that - thanks to the apostate Cardinal Bucharis - has known more than its fair share of heresy and internecine warfare. It is a world of towering shrine-spires and stained-armaglass domes, of deep and shadowy catacombs descending like geological strata into forgotten depths. It is home to countless billions, a jewel in the Imperial crown and the keystone to a gateway leading deeper into the storm-tossed galactic void.

In short, it is a dramatic and intriguing world whose ghosts do not rest easy, and an incredible stage on which to tell a story.

So, with all this said, read on and dive into Book Two of Dawn of Fire, The Gate of Bones. I hope you enjoy reading this desperate tale as much as I enjoyed writing it, and I hope it leaves you wanting more...

Andy Clark

Nottingham, 2020

About the Author

Andy Clark has written the Warhammer 40,000 novels Fist of the Imperium, Kingsblade, Knightsblade and Shroud of Night, as well as the novella Crusade and the short story ‘Whiteout’. He has also written the novels Gloomspite and Blacktalon: First Mark for Warhammer Age of Sigmar, and the Warhammer Quest Silver Tower novella Labyrinth of the Lost. He lives in Nottingham, UK.

An extract from Dawn of Fire: The Gate of Bones.

Fists beat against the gates. I hear them, feel them, a tumult of impacts, an avalanche of flesh and bone. Insistent. Unceasing. Screams mingle with the thunder of flesh on metal. Cries. Pleas for help. Lamentation. Barking voices demanding orders. Fervent whispers of hope as faith gutters and dies.

Other things, not human.

I stand in the shadow of the gates and upon either side of me waves rise. They are stone and boiling surf. They are madness made real. They rear high and close, only to melt away like mists. The stench of death surrounds me. I gag upon the reek of corpses. I retch smoke. The sky is dark, and all the stars run together like wax and swirl, swirl, swirl into a vortex. I feel its pull and fear impales me. I cry out, though I have no mouth to scream, no eyes to see, no body to turn towards the glimmer of light I feel at my back.

Hope. That light is hope, but it is not for me to look upon. Not now. I must listen to the screams. I must watch the curdled stars.

I must see what I am to be shown.

The gates must burst before the fury that presses from beyond. Chains stretch. Hinges groan. And what then, if I am caught before those sundered gates in the light of poisoned stars?

Terror twists in my chest. I must see. I draw closer.

Closer.

Sound bludgeons me, a roar of amalgamated pain, a chimera of terrors that makes me whine. Charnel stink enfolds. My skin burns. Dismay reaches strangler’s hands about my throat.

I draw closer still. I must see.

I see. Each gate bears a brass plaque. They are small. Something like verdigris obscures their words and I know that this is malign and deliberate.

Closer.

The taint churns, becomes thick and dense to obscure all. Yet there is a torch, suddenly, a torch in a sconce set at the very mouth of the gate. I take it up. In its flickering flames I have the knowledge and the weapon that I need. The smoke rises, chokes me. I scour the plaques with fire, and the corruption falls away. It hates me for this. It will punish me. I cannot care.

The plaques are clear and I can see the words engraved. They mean nothing. I commit them to memory, nonetheless. I am the eye that sees, the listening ear, the quill and the parchment page. Others will interpret. Others will understand. I see, and I record.

Sangua-Terra.

Vigilus.

Translocuter First Class Tane hurried along the corridor. He crossed pools of stark illumination thrown by electro-sconces, quickening his step through the patches of shadow, wincing at the ring of his footsteps on the deck.

Lots of whispers about Ganymede, he thought each time he crossed the terminator between light and dark. It wasn’t long ago this moon was interdicto extremis. He couldn’t forget that.

They said that the moon was safe, cleansed of whatever had haunted its depths. They had been quick to excavate new corridors and chambers beneath the surface, filling them with cogitators and holocasters, the generatoria and datastacks and vox-arrays of the Officio Logisticarum. They had garrisoned Ganymede with regiments of Astra Militarum. There was a veritable army of priests thronging the central corridors, whose numbers rivalled the archivists, lexographers, numeromancers, adepts-materialum, prelates and countless other personnel. They trumpeted Ganymede to be the first of the hub-fortresses that would spring up behind the fleets of the Indomitus Crusade and provide an unbroken chain of support more ambitious than anything the Imperium had achieved before.

Such was Primarch Guilliman’s vision, and they would see it realised.

‘Well they don’t have to walk these endless corridors, do they?’ Tane muttered, clutching his aquila pendant with one hand and gripping a data-slate with the other.

He spoke to himself because it was better than the quiet, but only just, and the shadows seemed to lean in to listen.

Tane had survived long enough to know that when the Imperium decreed somewhere safe, it only meant acceptably perilous. He’d been on Vorliot during the withdrawal, making it to one of the designated safe-zones for evacuation. In his opinion, ‘safe’ was not the right word to describe anything that involved that many orks. After his recruitment into the Officio Logisticarum and subsequent assignment to Ganymede, Tane paid more attention to the rumours of malefic phenomena than he had to the moon’s threat descriptor of nil.

A patrol of Valhallans appeared from nowhere, making him jump. The men and women offered Tane crisp salutes before sweeping past and off down a stairway. He hastened on, following las-etched signs for the Astropathy Transinterpretation Sanctum. Ganymede was a maze, and even after weeks on station Tane still got lost.

Why so jumpy? he asked himself scathingly. A rhetorical admonition. Truth was, Tane knew what had him on edge. I shouldn’t have read it, he thought. Emperor knows I heard half of it from her gibbering anyway, but still…

Knowledge is a burden, ignorance a blessing. The words had been embossed upon a steel plate a hundred feet high in his scriptorium on Vorliot. The motto had always angered Tane, for he was a curious man. The trait had landed him in trouble several times, almost fatally on one occasion. It eventually led to his induction into the logister corps, so the recruiting adept had told him.

Today, Tane saw the truth in those words. He wished, for once, to be ignorant.

Shouldn’t have read it, he told himself again as he passed through a grumbling servo-hatch.

It wasn’t as though he understood most of the astropathic communique anyway. He had never heard of Vigilus, nor Sangua-Terra. But images kept coming back to him, as vivid as though he had suffered the visions himself. She was a powerful witch, that one. Insidious, the way she spread her dreams about like that.

Best not to think of it. In that place, no one knew exactly who might be dipping into a man’s thoughts. Ganymede was lousy with psykers.

Tane shook off his nerves and hurried onward. The astropath’s duty had been to receive her vision, and it had left her slumped in the grip of a coma. Another adept had recorded it and another translated it. They weren’t looking too good either. Tane’s task, by comparison, was simply to hang about and convey the record of her words to the Transinterpretation Sanctum where it could be properly considered by wiser minds, then disseminated. Or not.

‘Hardly life or death, my part of it,’ Tane chastened himself.

He reached a wider corridor, more brightly lit, but the oppressive feelings didn’t leave him. If anything, they felt more intense. Surrounded by people heading to and fro, he retreated into his own private world of fear, and paranoia burgeoned.

He held the slate tighter to his chest.

The archway to the Transinterpretation Sanctum appeared not a moment too soon, and he hurried through it, and over to the immense admissions desk. A stern-looking adept in the green robes of the Adeptus Astra Telepathica gave him a distasteful look from on high. Gimbal-mounted rotary lasguns tracked him as he approached.

‘I need to see someone,’ he said. ‘Someone important.’

‘And who would that be, Adept Tane?’ said the woman.

‘Someone more important than you!’ he hissed. He looked about himself as if he might be overheard. He would be, too. He was in one of the most secure places in the Imperium. There were always ears listening.

But secure didn’t mean the same as safe. Nowhere was safe.

‘I have a message. It’s an important one,’ he said. ‘Someone needs to see it now.’

‘Put it in the slot where you put all the rest,’ she said, pointing at a lipped marble opening in the front of the desk. ‘Get your chit, have it stamped, and go back to your duties.’

He gave her a defiant look.

‘No?’ she said. ‘Maybe I should summon security, and they can explain the proper procedure to you.’ She smiled unpleasantly. ‘They’ll use methods that you won’t quickly forget.’ Her hand moved towards an unseen button. She didn’t like him. He didn’t need to be a psyker to know that.

Tane took a deep breath. He wasn’t supposed to know what was in the message. He hoped his masters could smooth that over later.

‘It’s Imperium Nihilus,’ he said. He meant to sound firm, but he blurted it like a child with a secret he could no longer hold. ‘It’s a message from Imperium Nihilus, from a planet on the other side of the Rift. A planet called Vigilus. Don’t you see? They’re alive. The Imperium is still there. This message has to be heard now, by someone of proper rank.’ He shivered. ‘The primarch will need to be informed.’

‘You are in no position to determine what the Lord Imperial Regent hears, Adept Tane.’ The adept stared down her long nose at him for a long time. Then her hand, still poised to press, moved to another unseen button, and descended. There was a click, and the characteristic hiss of an opening vox-channel followed.

‘I need to speak to Logister Gunthe,’ she said, not taking her eyes off Tane.

Tane didn’t hear the reply.

‘Yes, I am serious.’ She narrowed her eyes. ‘Priority Alpha-Red.’

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First published in Dawn of Fire: The Gate of Bones in Great Britain in 2021.
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