[Grey Knights 01] - Grey Knights by Ben Counter

Author:Ben Counter
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2012-01-22T03:23:19.016215+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 Technology. But there was some truth to the saying - history was literally etched into the rock of Titan, faces of forgotten 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 catacombs 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

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