Amongst the press of bodies, the inquisitor found herself inside a sort of mobile shanty. It took days, weeks usually, for anyone wishing to enter the Cathedral itself to achieve this, and such was the demand that it then took another three days to process from the massive doors to the entrance of the inner basilica where the altar could be seen. Each pilgrim had roughly three seconds in the presence of the relics kept in stasis there before being moved on by armed Frateris. It seemed an awful lot of effort to see a couple of metal shards — supposedly from the Emperor’s armour — and a pile of ash that was once, so the Ministorum claimed, a fragment of Roboute Guilliman’s cloak.
People had tents, handwagons and portable cooking stoves, gathered as families, groups and even entire communities that had made the long and arduous journey to the heart of the Imperium. Most of them, even those that had been considered wealthy when departing, would have expended their every resource to chart passage. Some would have worked their way from system to system, haphazardly crossing the stars, edging ever closer to their destination.
There were clothes and fashions from thousands of different worlds. Underhive punks with extravagant gang hairstyles and tattoos who had been touched by the light of the Emperor queued meekly alongside labourers in heavy coveralls and hand-woven smocks. Various individuals of planetary nobilities moved serenely through the mass atop sedan chairs carried by augmented servants, or cut themselves off inside servitor-pulled wains covered with brilliantly embroidered panels and sheets. No powered vehicles, save for the patrol transports of the Adeptus Arbites, were allowed on the Avenue of Martyrs, nor animals, so all transportation was either on foot or man-powered in some fashion.
A middle-aged couple had procured quadcycles and were gently pedalling in fits and starts as the queue edged forwards, their teenage offspring riding on top of the trailers hitched behind. Wienand suspected that both parents and children had been a lot younger when their pilgrimage had begun.
Quite a few were recognisable as ex-military: Guardsmen and Naval personnel who had earned the right to pilgrimage by conquest or bravery. That right might bring them to Terra but it didn’t extend so far as jumping the queue. Conversely, the western edge of the roadway was reserved solely for members of the Ecclesiarchy. Preachers and missionaries with letters of reference from cardinals of recognised dioceses were granted access, alongside a few fortunate individuals of the Frateris who had earned similar reward for services rendered. Amongst the cassocks, uniforms and robes were ornately dressed members of higher-class families, whose dedication to the Adeptus Ministorum had perhaps been more financial than physical or spiritual.
There were growls of annoyance and accusing shouts as Wienand pushed herself through the mass, suspected of trying to jump her place. A few brave souls made grabs and lunges but were soon dissuaded from further action by a flash of her bolt pistol; the Inquisition sigil of the ring on her trigger finger was even more of a deterrent for many. Anyone who had spent more than five minutes on Terra learned to keep an eye out for the stylised ‘I’ with cross-bars, and to affect an air of total disinterest in anybody that possessed such a thing.
She continued to worm her way through the throng. It was hard to chart any kind of course. Not only was the press of people like a thicket, allowing passage in some places and obstinately blocking it in others, great incense burners hung from the ceiling above the Avenue of Martyrs. The smoke from these spilled down like a fog, obscuring visibility even further. Wienand was dimly aware of the tenements rising up on either side of the vast thoroughfare, storey after storey of small cell windows, broken by the occasional spray of stained glass where the way-chapels were situated.
Peddlers of all descriptions moved up and down between the columns of the pilgrimage queue. Their wares ranged from the mundane to the extraordinary. Many were selling food and clothes, others had small trinkets and keepsakes purportedly from the Cathedral itself. Quite a few were soilmen, with synth-leather bottles and buckets and brightly painted portable screens to allow the pilgrims to relieve themselves without losing their place; those that were prepared made their own arrangements or organised themselves into queuing shifts to avoid such expense. There were several touting out their services as place-holders. They would, for the right fee, happily queue in place of a pilgrim so that they might spend a day or two resting in one of the dorm cells or perhaps visit one of the lesser attractions of the Imperial Palace.
