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Pilgrims of Fire – Extract

A Black Library Publication

eBook license

i

War was already raging on the Obscurus Front the year the pilgrim fleet set off from Ophelia VII. They were to retrace the route of Saint Katherine’s first War of Faith, their ramshackle ships chained together in a Gordian knot of piety and hope.

The fate of one would be the fate of all, the pilgrim-chiefs declared, the believers suffering together the travails and privations of their holy expedition.

They were plagued by all the dangers of the galaxy. Millions were lost to sickness and starvation. Attacks by xenos, renegades and pirates took countless others, while those of brittle faith fell by the wayside to lives of penance and prayer.

Empty warp ships were cut free and abandoned to the void. But after a decade, a billion souls yet remained, joined firmly by a tightening bond of belief. Their last ordeal was the desperate crossing, through the Fey Straits to Holy Cion.

This journey had twice repelled Saint Katherine. They all understood the danger, and gave themselves over to days of prayers and sacrifice and self-flagellation. There was an air of mourning as the fleet moved towards the Mandeville point.

The augurs were not good, and the warp was in a state of ecstatic tumult. When, at last, the pilgrim fleet broke into realspace, the tethered craft hung together, too weary and broken and stunned to do anything but offer prayers of gratitude to the God-Emperor, after years of travails, for their safe arrival.

The paean of thanks was heard by the astropaths on the shrine world of Holy Cion. Their tower was set in the upper reaches of the Abbey of Eternal Watch, which sat atop the vast stone outcrop known as the Bolt. A great cylinder of black granite which loomed over the surrounding Pilgrim Plains, the Bolt looked as though it had been fired into the planet’s crust from some titanic orbital cannon.

Upon its peak, the Sisters of Our Martyred Lady maintained their guard. A cherub brought the news to the high chamber of Canoness Ysolt, where the venerable warrior was at prayer.

The messenger entered the chamber on fluttering white wings, anti-grav generators humming, the iron skull-face speaking in deep, resonant tones.

‘Canoness. Tidings have come. The pilgrim fleet has arrived.’

Cion’s output of prayer and faith and devotion was as integral to the Imperium of Mankind as the production of any forge world. But the canoness’ mind was concerned with disturbing portents. Shadows seen at night, mad laughter coming from empty rooms, reports of ghosts of sobbing women. And now the population of Cion were approaching a state of starvation. A pilgrim fleet was the last thing they needed, a doubting voice said. But, she reminded herself, faith was like a blade. It was there to be used. The Emperor would provide.

Ysolt steepled her fingers. Her voice was strained. She said a brief prayer of thanks and addressed her cherub. ‘Sound the Bell of Ancestral Transgressions,’ she said. ‘I will take the augurs. The Feast of Landing must take place. We must welcome the faithful upon our holy soil.’

There were five hundred Battle Sisters within the Abbey of Eternal Watch. They exerted a gravity upon the population of Cion like celestial bodies. In better times the festival had been a moment of due solemnity. But the better times were now a distant memory for the serving women who worked in the bowels of the abbey.

The years of gathering privations had ground the working young girls down to a state of hunger and exhaustion, and none were hungrier that evening than Branwen, a maid-of-all-work, scrubbing the abbey stairs. She had scoured all the way from the lower gallery to the Sisters’ refectory, and now her knees were sore, her shoulders ached and her stomach was as empty as an ogryn’s brain.

‘Hurry, girl!’ one of the serving women said, as she carried a bundle of dirty sheets down towards the laundry. ‘They’re serving repast downstairs.’

Branwen nodded, but she saw with horror that the woman had left dirty footprints across the wet floor, and she said a prayer of contrition as she wiped them clean again. The trail led her right across the vaulted space. She paused at the refectory door and looked up. The gothic arch soared into darkness, statues of Sisters towering over her. The heavy oak doors were closed.

‘You, girl!’ a voice said.

Branwen jumped.

‘Come away from there! What are you doing? Are you listening in?’

‘No, ma’am!’ Branwen said, but she looked as guilty as the hanged.

Tula, the Mistress of Chores, caught her by the ear and slapped her across the scalp. ‘Shame on you! Soiling the sanctity of this place with your presence. You’re just a bastard foundling. Away from that door!’

Tula tutted to herself as she dragged Branwen away. ‘What do they say about cleanliness?’

‘It brings us closer to the God-Emperor,’ Branwen said.

‘Indeed,’ Tula said. ‘And it seems this corridor is a long way from Him, who sits in majesty upon His Golden Throne.’

Branwen had tears in her eyes as she sponged her way along the flagstone corridor, dunking her brush into the bucket of caustic soap and slapping it down onto the dirty steps.

It was true, of course. She was a foundling. Everyone knew the story. An unwanted babe, spat out of the city and left at the abbey gates with just a swaddling blanket wrapped about her and a few hours of life within her hungry frame.

She would have died but for the charity of maid-of-all-work Kolpitts, who had taken her in and raised her as her own. And Branwen had tried so many times to be worthy of the life of servitude and prayer. But it was so very hard… Especially when she was so hungry.

‘Careful!’ a voice said.

Branwen had not heard the Sister approach. And now she had splashed the Sister’s armoured boot with filthy water. She did not dare look up. ‘Forgive me, holy Sister!’

The Sister knelt beside her and put her hand out. Branwen flinched as the Sister’s hand touched her chin and lifted her face. Through her tears the maid-of-all-work found herself looking directly into the Sister’s eyes. Her suit of armour was black as night, with a curling tracery of interwoven stems, acid-etched into the ceramite. Her face was fine as marble, her gaze resolute. Branwen was mortified. It was not just any Sister, but Lizbet of the Sacred Sword, the most sublime of the Battle Sisters in the abbey. Stories filtered down to the scullery maids of her skill with bolt and blade. Of terrible foes cut down in their pride. Heretics purged. Vengeance made real.

‘Forgive me!’ Branwen whispered and tried to pull away, but Lizbet held the maid’s hands. They were scabbed and raw. Lizbet pressed them between her own and spoke a prayer of spiritual fortitude. At the end she said, ‘For your enemies are brought down and broken, and we are risen and victorious.’

Branwen stared like one smitten. Sister Lizbet rose with the gentle whine of servos, her black power armour gleaming with reflected candlelight.

The refectory door opened and Sister Lizbet passed inside. For a brief moment the sound of prayer spilt out. Branwen could not understand a word, but the sound transfixed her. So pure, so transcendent was the song of angels that a wave of raw emotion swelled within her, filled her heart with fierce joy. She could still feel the touch of Lizbet’s hands and as she looked at her own, she saw that the raw scabs were gone.

Tears of joy rose through her as she finished her scrubbing and hurried down to the abbey cellars, bucket in one hand, rag in the other. The edificium was a place of wide walkways, heavy with prayer, but the stairs wound down to the servant quarters. They were dark and narrow, the undressed stone marked with simple icons of faith.

Branwen rushed into the slop hall, tipped the dirty water away, hung her bucket onto its hook, dried her hands upon her skirts and hurried through the wide chambers to the scullery.

It was the only warm room, where the maids sat before the fire in the moments when they could draw breath. There was a long trestle table, with plain wooden benches along either side, and a cast iron candelabra hanging from the stone ceiling, the candle flames guttering in the draughty chamber.

Branwen saw the table was empty, the stacked wooden plates picked clean. The day’s single meal had been eaten.

Branwen would not cry, she told herself, not when others were out there on the Obscurus Front, dying in their millions. The God-Emperor suffered for all time upon the Golden Throne, and what was her hunger compared to that?

She lifted her face to the candle flames to stop the tears from falling, and one of the cooks breezed in with a damp cloth and wiped the trestle boards clean.

‘What’s wrong, girl?’ the cook called out. ‘Don’t you have work to do?’

‘Yes,’ Branwen said, ‘but I have not eaten since yesterday, and I came down and–’

‘Then don’t be late next time!’ the cook snapped.

‘But–’ Branwen started.

‘Throne above! The pilgrim fleet has arrived, girl. We don’t have time for your fussing.’

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A Black Library Publication

First published in Great Britain in 2023.
This eBook edition published in 2023 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Represented by: Games Workshop Limited – Irish branch, Unit 3, Lower Liffey Street, Dublin 1, D01 K199, Ireland.

Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.
Cover illustration by Darren Tan.

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ISBN: 978-1-80407-285-1

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For Percy – as you set out on your own adventures.
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