Kersh had instructed the Techmarine to demolish a second row of buildings and a third in concentric circles around the exterior of the city. In the two interior masonry mounds, the corpus-captain had ordered narrow rat-runs excavated by hand at intervals along the impromptu battlement. These in turn were imbedded with the last of the armoury demolition charges, with screw-lever detonators situated at the rat-run end. Kersh fully expected to order strategic retreats and planned on the rat-runs giving the Certusians and Excoriators the ability to pull back to a waiting secondary and tertiary palisade if overwhelmed. The demolitions would then collapse the runs after use, preventing enemy troops following and forcing them to embark on another las-slashing climb, giving the fleeing cemetery worlders and Charnel Guard time to set up carried weaponry in new emplacements.
The shattered-stone parapet swarmed with fearful Certusians, men, mostly, who had been selected by the lord lieutenant to bolster the ceremonial numbers of the Charnel Guardsmen on the perimeter. Some had been armed with auxiliary lasfusils from the defence force armouries, while others had to contend with scuffed and dusty remnants from storage – autoguns and stub-service carbines. Rough emplacements boasted heavy stubbers, battered incinerator units, mortars and the occasional autocannon. Where firearms weren’t available, improvised weaponry in the form of picks and shovels were carried in the sweaty palms of grave fossers and hearsiers.
Punctuating the line of cemetery worlders were the Charnel Guard themselves. The dour Guardsmen were dressed in dusty black flak, swathed in sable cloaks and aiming their single-shot lasfusils over the rubble palisade. Their ceremonial duties had ill-prepared the Guardsmen for the kind of meat-grinding battle ahead, the Certusian soldiers better versed in the rites of death than the art of dealing it to the Emperor’s enemies. Kersh bit at his mangled bottom lip and watched a lance-lieutenant straighten a Guardsman’s cloak and dust off his shoulder when he should have been modulating the beam-focus on his lasfusil.
In a rough gun emplacement nearby, Kersh spotted his personal serfs. Amongst the rubble, Oren was leaning into the stock of a brute autocannon. Old Enoch was stacking ammunition crates behind the weapon, while Bethesda spoke to several unarmed Certusians whose duty it was to run further ammunition to the emplacement. When the assault began, a good deal would rest on the ability of the heavy weapons to keep firing. That was why in the main Kersh had ordered Chapter serfs to take responsibility for the emplacements. They were more likely to hold their nerve in the face of the enemy and do their duty. As the absterge turned she pointed out the Scourge to the cemetery worlders she was addressing – no doubt to bolster their faith and confidence. She risked a brief smile at her master which Kersh saw but didn’t acknowledge. As she turned back he saw the powerpack, looped cable and chunky las-pistol attached to the belt of her robes. It was Bethesda’s job to keep the supply line running. An emplacement without ammunition was an invitation to disaster.
The night air was still and an evil-smelling fog bank was rolling in across the burial grounds, reducing visibility and range. Peering along the battlement with the keen sight of his remaining eye, Kersh saw Brother Micah. The company champion had not been happy about being away from the Scourge’s side, but the corpus-captain had insisted he needed a spread of experience and loyalty around the perimeter. Micah had had to settle for the next section along, barely a sprint away along the ruin palisade. He brought up a fist to the sky and then kissed it, which Kersh proceeded to mimic.
The city was strangely quiet. Along Kersh’s section of the perimeter there was tension and dread etched into the face of every Certusian the corpus-captain settled his eye on. Women, children and a sparse sprinkling of remaining preachers ran back and forth between the city centre and the perimeter line, up and down the vertiginous, cobbled cuttingways and alleys with water, food and ammunition.
The thousands not employed in such service were gathered in the cramped cloisters, quads and plazas about the Memorial Mausoleum, holding a candlelight vigil with Pontifex Oliphant and creating a prayer cordon around the resting place of Umberto II. The Memorial Mausoleum’s vault – where the ancient remains of the former High Lord of Terra and Ecclesiarch resided – was deep enough, it was said, to survive an apocalyptic strike by an asteroid. It was there, the safest place on the planet, that Kersh had intended Oliphant to hide.
This, after the corpus-captain had argued at length with Palatine Sapphira and, with grave reservation, that the Sister of the August Vigil had consented to allow a small number of significants to occupy the sacred chamber. She had been worried about body heat elevating the tiny vault’s temperature above a preservative optimum. Oliphant had undone the corpus-captain’s hard work with the Sister, however, insisting that he share the same fate as his people. Kersh had been angry at first, but had been secretly impressed with the cripple; he had never observed such concern in a priest or planetary governor before. The Excoriator was at least a little reassured that the pontifex had chosen the Memorial Mausoleum as the site of his flock’s gathering, under the dispassionate gaze of the Sisters of Battle, stationed about the mausoleum with their primed boltguns.
The city between the limits and the heights was all but empty. Citizens ran supplies down blood-splattered streets as Proctor Kraski and his enforcers herded the last of the city-based hordes and fire-lighting crazies into tight alleys and cul-de-sacs. There they went to work with their combat shotguns, putting the mobs out of their degenerate misery. Kersh could hear the howls and screams of rage and death echoing about the city’s lofty walls, tunnels and winding stairwells. In the tallest towers and the busy architecture of the most elevated rooftops, Scout Whip Keturah was stationed with Squad Contritus, watching and waiting – the empty streets below and the misty necroplex beyond the perimeter line falling under the constant sweep of their magnocular scopes.
Keturah had returned early from his search. Two of his Scouts were still missing, but when fireballs started tumbling out of the unnatural sky and thundering into the burial grounds, the Scout whip had abandoned the sweep – unwilling to risk the Thunderhawk Impunitas in the hellstorm. Kersh had ordered the remainder of his Scouts stationed about the perimeter with the other Excoriators, in small groups. At ease, the corpus-captain expected the sight of the Angels and aspirants to reinforce the nerves of the Guardsmen and cemetery world militia. In battle he expected them to remain loose and flexible – holding ground but clustering as the rapidly-changing circumstances of battle changed. Where the line was breached – and the Scourge was confident that it would be – he needed his Adeptus Astartes to swiftly move in, destroy the threat and repel the enemy advance.
Standing with him on the palisade was Squad Whip Ishmael and a member of Squad Castigir, Brother Kale. The Excoriators whip paced up and down, barking the impetuous orders of a tyrant down on the line. Under the eyes of the Adeptus Astartes the Certusians hurried to meet his booming expectations, but they little understood what the Excoriator was talking about. Kale looked on, his flamer resting in his grip, his eyes on the ominous bank of mist that hung in the night air like a curtain of dread. Beyond was the darkness and the graveyard expanse. There was something new out there in the burial grounds. Something weird and unnatural. They all knew this because they could hear strange noises rolling out of the still obscurity. Kersh listened to the enemy, the approach of the host. He could hear wet rasping, the chitinous clickety-click of movement, the horrible cracking of metamorphosis, chuntering, hissing, shrieking and what sounded like the song of some dying ocean behemoth layered over everything else. There were muffled voices, too, close yet distant, speaking to no one and everyone in a dark tongue that was neither human nor xenos but otherworldly and entrancing.