Armour of Faith (Space Marine Battles Book 3) by Graeme Lyon

Author:Graeme Lyon [Lyon, Graeme]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Black Library
Published: 2014-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

Six

Alia stood with her back to the wall, shivering, and watched the pyre, the flickering flames dancing and sending sparks into the night sky. Keevan and another man were throwing the last of the bodies onto the fire. The job done, Keevan came and stood next to her. They were silent for a long time.

‘It was the right thing to do,’ Keevan said at last. ‘We couldn’t risk more of them coming back.’

‘I know,’ she said. ‘Doesn’t make it any easier though.’

‘Nope. It doesn’t. But life doesn’t always give you a choice. And when we do something that goes against our beliefs, all we can do is make our peace with the God-Emperor and carry on.’

Alia considered that. ‘Do you think this place, this fortress, has a shrine?’

‘It might. I don’t think these Space Marines worship the Emperor like we do, though.’

She looked beyond the fire, up to the walls where the Ultramarines Chaplain stood, staring down at the fire. ‘No. I’ll take a look anyway.’

She turned and entered the keep, passing through the huge, forbidding archway. A long passage stretched before her, more huge doors at regular intervals marked with stencilled script. They led to arming chambers, barracks, storage rooms. No shrine.

Alia heard a sound, like soft shoes on a hard floor. From the corner of her eye, she saw something move, disappearing round a corner.

‘Hello?’ she called, turning. ‘Is somebody there?’

There was no response, just the sound again, and something else, like the laughter of a child. ‘Hello?’ she said again. Maybe it was the little girl she had lifted to the roof back in the village, Janae. Dimly, she wondered what had become of her stuffed grox. She rounded the corner and saw a small figure running away from her. It wasn’t Janae.

It was a child, a boy with shock of dirty blond hair. His clothes looked oddly familiar, and in his hand he carried a wooden horse.

‘Felip…’ breathed Alia. ‘Oh, Emperor, no. Felip?’

She broke into a run, following the impossible form of her brother as he delved deeper into the fort.

Chaplain Sentina stood on the walls and watched as the old priest, Andronicus, passed amongst the civilians. Many of the humans stood sentinel around the immense fire, watching as their fellow Orathians burned. Despite himself, Sentina felt some sympathy for them. Going against their beliefs could not be easy, as necessary as it was. Andronicus was offering words of comfort, blessings and other such things. It was the same thing the Chaplain himself did in the quiet moments before battle began. That had always been where Sentina was at his best – one on one, giving a battle-brother some inspirational words. Until…

He made his way down to the courtyard and passed by the fire. Where he walked, humans shied away. Whether they were scared of his size and the visage of death that he wore as a badge of office, or simply angry with him for making them work against their primitive beliefs, Sentina neither knew nor cared.

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