The Grey Knights Omnibus by Ben Counter

Author:Ben Counter [Counter, Ben]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: Science Fiction, Fantasy
ISBN: 9781844166961
Google: 6SwUngEACAAJ
Goodreads: 4084720
Publisher: BL Publishing
Published: 2009-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

THE VAULTS

They said you could feel the years on Titan, layers of history weighing you down. The truth was that Titan's

gravity was slightly heavier than Terran standard due to the superdense core that had been injected into the

moon some time during the lost Dark Age of Technol-ogy. But there was some truth to the saying - history

was literally etched into the rock of Titan, faces of for-gotten heroes, inscribed litanies of deeds once

famous, murals depicting terrible battles against the forces of Chaos. The whole surface of Titan was

inscribed as if by a huge chisel, forming a network of battlements and citadels, and it had been carved layer

upon layer since before the dawn of the Imperium. There was so much history there that it would overfill all

the libraries of the Inquisition, if only it could be unlocked.

Justicar Genhain wondered how much the Imperium could learn if its scholars could properly read all the

images and messages that covered the walls of Titan's vaults. Beneath the upper levels of Titan, where the

Grey Knights lived and prayed, were the cat-acombs where their dead were buried. Down here, there were

vaults and tunnels carved by artisans from before the Ordo Malleus had even been formed from the fires of

the Horns Heresy. As Genhain followed the procession down to the vault where his battle-brothers would

be buried, he saw faces of Grey Knights in archaic marks of power armour, locked in endless combat with

leering stone daemons. A column was wrought to represent an unnamed saint of the Imperium. The names

of battle-brothers covered the vaulted ceiling; Grey Knights who had died in action but whose bodies had

never been recovered for burial. Genhain walked behind Chaplain Durendin. In full black power armour, the

face of his helmet a skull of gunmetal grey, Durendin had walked these tunnels many times before. As a

chaplain, he was the guardian of the dead just as he guarded the spiritual health of the living brothers.

Behind Genhain, the battle-brothers of his squad carried the biers on which lay the body of Brother Krae,

the dead Grey Knight from Squad Tancred that Genhain had brought back to Titan on the Rubicon.

Brother Caanos had died on Sophano Secundus, too, but his body had been left on the planet. Genhain knew

that if the Grey Knights were to close in on Ghargatuloth, there would be many more to bury beneath Titan

before it was over.

Krae was covered in a white death caul, draped over the huge plates of his Terminator armour. The shape

of his Nemesis halberd was visible, placed on his chest with his gauntleted hands folded over the hilt.

Behind Krae's bier, several novices walked. They were young trainees who had only just begun the

transformation into Grey Knights - they carried the censers that filled the close air of the catacombs with

the dark, spicy smell of sacred incense. Genhain remembered the time, almost hidden in the fog of

psycho-doctrination and endless medical proce-dures, when he had walked behind the funeral procession of

a dead Grey Knight and wondered how long it would be until it was his body on the bier, draped in white.

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