none by Faith & Fire

Author:Faith & Fire
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: none
Published: 2012-01-02T05:00:00+00:00

The defenders of Metis gave return fire but on came the women, a force of nature made manifest.

THE REPENTIA CARRIED Verity with them as a wave might have carried a piece of driftwood out to sea. Shewas beyond her own control, guided and pushed by the hands of the red hoods and their Mistress, insidebut isolated from their small band. The Hospitaller pulled her own robes around her, better to cover herface from the roaring madness of the battle. There was nowhere she could look that the bloody ruin ofwar was not laid out for her to see.

Here, the illustration from a medicae script made real, where the shattered glass egg of a servitor wasspread about the ferrocrete; there, a man cored like an apple, bones white in a red mass of singed meats. Verity had come across wounds as savage as these and more so, but those had always been at a distance. She had seen the dead and the dying once removed from the field of conflict, the thought of where thosewounds had originated some abstract, dislocated concept. Now, she watched the inflicting of thosedamages, she smelled the familiar burnt-copper aroma made new and horrible by those sights.

Verity staggered and the Mistress caught her arm and stopped her from falling. The Sisters Repentiastormed on before them, throwing themselves heedlessly over barbed wire bales and into the depths oftrenches behind. Lesions covering them across every centimetre of skin, the Repentia called down deathin banshee wails. Their heavy eviscer-ator chainswords made short work of the men, spinning razors ofteeth shredding flesh, bone and cloth on the down stroke, the blunt iron edge on the weapon's other facecaving in skulls and ribcages on the upswing.

The one called Iona, the woman that had invoked the Catechism of the Penitent after failing to save Lethefrom death, worked at the craft of killing with blank frenzy. Verity watched her drive her sword throughthe sternum of a screaming cavalry officer, and found the most terrible thing to behold was the empty,doll-like glaze in Iona'seyes. The Hospitaller felt the conflict of emotions returning, the same hurricane of anger, sorrow andregret that had taken her the day she arrived on Neva. Had Iona felt the same? Had she been so scarred by Lethe's brutal killing, that all she could do was throw herself to the mercy of a blood-spatteredredemption? Verity was troubled to realise that on some level, she could empathise with the pale woman. 'Advance!' screamed the Mistress. 'Take only sins, not prisoners. Leave only flesh, not corruption.Onward. Onward\'

Verity was taken with them, into the trenches and tunnels that led to the city.

LOCAL LEGENDS SAID that the West Gate of Metis had been forged from the hull metal of the first humancolony ship to arrive on Neva, back in the time of expansion when the stars were new to mankind's touch. They were, in their own way, relics of great import to the people of this planet, but the gate dared to barthe way of the God-Emperor's chosen agents.

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