by Andy Clark
Her look said everything it needed to. He pulled her close, and they held each other for a moment, fiercely, possessively.
‘Idiot,’ she said into his shoulder. ‘Falling off the damn wall when there’s a war on.’
They laughed then, a moment of relief in place of the tears that threatened, and Danial saw militia glance their way with hollow curiosity. Laughter wasn’t something anyone in the Draconspire had heard in a long while. The thought sobered him. Suset saw it too and stepped back, looking him up and down.
‘Enough lying around,’ she said. ‘Time to be High King again. The men who saved you couldn’t find your bolter, but they recovered your crown and your draconblade.’
‘More than good enough, my lady,’ said Danial. ‘They’ll receive medals, all of them, when we get through this, and rewards to show my gratitude.’
‘There’s precious few of them left, my liege,’ said Suset. ‘The last few days haven’t been kind.’
‘Markos?’ asked Danial.
‘With Polluxis,’ said Suset.
‘What of the steeds?’ asked Danial. ‘Any technology, for that matter. The machine-spirits were stirring…?’
‘They still are,’ she said. ‘Most of the guns are working, barring some of the older plasma weapons. And there’s a band of Sacristans still labouring on the steeds in the armoriums. Polluxis has been supervising remotely. They have all the surviving Knights down there, ours included, and last we heard they’d roused a handful. It’s all that stopped the orks overrunning their position. The greenskins have been hitting the armoriums hard, but Nauman and Crimson Blade have been leading the defence.’
‘It’s a relief to know the steeds are reawakening,’ said Danial. ‘But it’s of limited use to us here, I suppose. Unless we could get to them or them to us.’
‘We could order them to break out across the north martialling yard,’ said Suset. They’d be able to loop out through Ottavio’s Arch then blast their way through the outer audience chambers and reach us that way. Don’t think I haven’t considered it.’
‘It’s too risky,’ said Danial, and Suset nodded.
‘There are too few steeds, and too many foes between us and them, with close quarters exacerbating the enemy’s advantage,’ she said. ‘The terrain between them and us is absolutely swarming with greenskins. That gunfire you hear? That’s the outer audience chambers. I’ve ordered the rearguard to hold for as long as they can, and they know we can’t open the throne room doors again. They’ll have to find sanctuary elsewhere.’
‘Then we need to be ready to fight,’ said Danial. ‘No matter what. We have to hold out as long as we possibly can.’
‘Luk?’ she asked.
‘Luk, Jennika – Throne, even Lauret and Kurt,’ said Danial. ‘I don’t believe they’d abandon us.’
‘Hah, Kurt?’ said Suset. ‘But if you believe it, then so do I. We shall keep fighting until help arrives.’
‘Luk gave me his word,’ said Danial. ‘That’s enough.’
He bent painfully, picking up his scabbard and locking it back in place on his armoured bodyglove. Suset set his crown on his head, mating its data-filigree with his neural jacks.
‘My king,’ she said, stepping back and giving him a warrior’s salute.
‘Lady Gatekeeper,’ he said, returning the gesture. ‘We fight until the fire burns out.’
‘Until the fire burns out,’ she echoed.
At that moment, the last stutters of gunfire from the outer audience chambers ceased, replaced by a shuddering war cry that the armoured doors did little to muffle.
WAAAGH!
Danial Tan Draconis stood in the gloom of his throne room. He gripped the hilt of his draconblade, willing strength back into his limbs. Every breath came with pain. His wounds gnawed at him. Fatigue threatened to force him to his knees.
His warriors pressed close with their weapons drawn. They were little more than shadows in the dark. Many were injured. Some wouldn’t see another dawn. Yet they stood resolute, and Danial drew strength from theirs. Militia crouched behind barricades all through the chamber, autoguns and heavy weapons aimed at the doors. Civilians huddled at the rear of the hall. Some brandished improvised weapons. Some merely crouched in terror; weeping, shaking, and shielding their loved ones with their bodies.
‘Feel the draconsfire within you,’ said Danial, his voice firm amidst the rasp of his warriors’ breathing and the scuff of their feet on the flagstones. ‘Even if it is only embers. Find it. Stoke it. We’re all that remains now. Draconis’ last hope. The Emperor expects.’
A boom echoed through the throne room. The dracon-inscribed doors shuddered from a ferocious impact.
‘They’re right outside,’ hissed a voice. Danial couldn’t place whose.
A second crash rolled like thunder, causing the men and women around him to flinch.
‘Emperor preserve us,’ came another voice.
‘House Draconis, hold your nerve,’ commanded Danial.
The doors bowed inward. From beyond them came monstrous roars.
At another impact, the doors groaned as their hinges and locks strained. A multitude of feral roars rose beyond them.
‘Warriors of Adrastapol,’ cried Danial. ‘Lords and Ladies of the Draconspire. Ignite!’
Danial thumbed the rune on his blade’s pommel. As one, his Knights followed suit. With a whooshing snarl their draconblades lit up, fuel reserves burning hot to wreath their swords in fire.
A last, titanic impact smashed the doors from their hinges, and the monsters came for them. The doors of the throne room crashed down and orks spilled through the breach. They resembled a single, monstrous beast, all blood red eyes and jagged tusks and roaring war cries.
‘Fire!’ bellowed Danial, and the defenders of the throne room let fly. Bullets and bolts tore into the massed orks and swept dozens from their feet. Blood sprayed.
More greenskins surged over their fallen, trampling the wounded and the dead alike. They crashed into the outer line of barricades and began trying to clamber over. Some hurled crude stick bombs that detonated amongst the militia. Others opened fire with hissing flamethrowers and chattering cannons.
Bodies hit the floor, mangled corpses in the raiment of the House Draconis militia.
Amidst the greenskin masses, hulking leaders exhorted their warriors in their crude tongue. The message was clear. Fight harder. Kill them all.
Finish it.
‘Knights!’ barked Danial. ‘With me, drive them back!’
Ignoring his pain, he pushed himself into a charge. Danial dashed across the throne room where he had sat in state so many times. His draconblade burned hot in his hands, and the shield of his archeotech bodyglove flickered as shots rebounded from it.
He vaulted a barricade and hit an ork feet-first in the chest, driving it to the floor. He hacked down another greenskin then drove his blade through the eye socket of the first.
All around him, the Knightly charge cut deep into the greenskin lines, and the ork attack faltered.
‘In Excelsium Furore!’ roared Danial. ‘For the Emperor!’
Outside the Draconspire walls, battle raged. A force of almost two hundred Knights stormed into Gorgrok’s horde, splitting into two spearheads as they came. One, led by the Exiles, drove straight for a breach in the stronghold’s outer wall. They hit the greenskins from behind, blasting ork artillery batteries and scattering mobs of gretchin as they came. Above them soared the aircraft of the Pegasson armada. In their wake came a spearhead of Sacristan Crawlers and ironlegs, escorted by Gesmund’s Vesserines. Guns blazing, shields glowing under the return fire of panicked orks, Luk’s force swept aside the trailing elements of the horde and forced passage through the Draconspire’s outer wall.
As they went, so Lauret Tan Pegasson and Kurt Tan Minotos launched their own attack. To them fe
ll the task of recapturing a different fortress.
‘Northrise Battery four thousand yards and closing,’ reported Sire Wilhorm Dar Minotos. ‘Heavily fortified, my lord. Reading massive concentration of greenskin lifesigns.’
‘Understood, Wilhorm,’ replied Kurt, riding the pounding sway of his steed, Gustev’s Revenge. The Knight was a modified Gallant, mounting a twinned melta cannon on its carapace, a huge adamantium shield on one arm and a vastly oversized Minotane hammer on the other. Kurt couldn’t wait to bring his weapons to bear against the xenos that had despoiled his lands.
‘The enemy know we’re here,’ said Kurt over the open channel. ‘Nesbaen’s third aria of Vengeance I think, gentlemen.’
Kurt marched at the head of half the surviving Minotos Knights, and all of them now engaged their vox speakers. Bombastic martial music rolled across the Valatane to announce their coming.
‘Be prepared for anything,’ voxed Lauret, from where she led her own force of Knights off to his right. ‘The xenos have deployed heretical weapons of every sort. We shall need all our faith to prevail here.’
Kurt pushed aside the urge to remind Lauret that his people had suffered worse than hers at the hands of the orks.
Master your temper, young Grandmarshal, whispered a voice from his throne. The Marchioness is simply sharing information. This attack is too important to leave anything to chance.
‘Thank you for the advice, my lady,’ he said. ‘Our auspex detects substantial alien life signs garrisoning the structure, and my onboard cogitators cannot categorise the weapon systems they have raised atop the fort’s battlements. I recommend a dispersed advance to lessen the impact of their ordnance, and concentration of fire upon those weapons.’
‘Agreed,’ said Lauret. ‘If your Knights suppress the wall guns, we will interdict the ork forces outside the walls.’
Even with much of Gorgrok’s horde inside the walls of the Draconspire, a mass of orks, lumbering tanks and ironclad walkers still swarmed around Northrise Battery. Now they raced out from the foot of the fortress to meet the attacking Knights.
Shots began to smack against Kurt’s ion shield. Rockets whistled around him.
‘There’s a Gargant class walker in their rear lines,’ voxed Eleanat Dar Pegasson, and locator runes flashed up on Kurt’s manifold. ‘It looks fire-damaged, but semi-operable. What in the Throne’s name is that enormous gun, though? It dominates half of its body! It’s a wonder it can walk!’
‘Let us not give the greenskins time to show us,’ said Lauret. ‘Remember, sisters and brothers, our role in this fight is vital. Northrise Battery possesses the last functioning extra-orbital vox array within a hundred miles.’
‘We hope,’ muttered Kurt to himself, thinking of the destruction that ork occupation would have wrought within the battery.
‘If we do not secure that array then Inquisitor Massata cannot rescind his order of Exterminatus,’ Lauret continued. ‘We all die, and worse, our deaths serve not the Emperor, but the foul minions of Chaos.’
The ork wall guns opened fire as they stormed closer, sending bubbles of energy and crackling blasts of lightning arcing down. Sire Mikal Dar Minotos’ steed lost an arm to a crushing force field. Lady Jessain Dar Pegasson gave a last scream as her Knight was set alight from head to toe with lurid green fire. Kurt saw ork witches capering atop the walls, ectoplasmic green energies haloing their heads.
‘Psykers,’ he spat the word in disgust. ‘The Marchioness is right, we do this or we die. Now, for Adrastapol, attack!’
The Knights of House Minotos and Pegasson opened fire. Racing fireballs exterminated orks in their dozens. Shells and energy blasts wrecked looted tanks. Lauret led a loping charge around one flank, making straight for the Gargant that was trying, ponderously, to shudder to life in the shadow of Northrise’s walls.
Kurt, arias booming from his speakers, melta cannons roaring, stormed into the middle of the greenskin horde and swung his hammer with a roar of hate. He sent a Battlewagon tumbling away like a broken toy, and pulped a dozen orks. Around him, his warriors strafed the wall-tops, wreathing them in a blizzard of fire.
‘Into them!’ he bellowed. ‘For Minotos! For Adrastapol!’
Luk walked his steed over blackened rubble and into the Blackpowder District of the Draconspire. His emotions were locked away, all the horror and anger pushed deep to the back of his mind. He couldn’t afford to let them control him now.
The stakes were too high.
A cratered market square stretched out before him, scattered with rubble and corpses from the tumbled wall. A band of orks was hard at work, ripping apart the carcass of a Draconis Knight with crude tools and ferrying the parts to a squadron of stolen Huntsmen.
‘They’re cannibalising parts to repair stolen tanks,’ said J’madus in disgust.
The xenos looked up in shock as Sword of Heroes stomped through the breach with an army of Knights at its back.
‘Scavengers,’ snarled Luk, annihilating half the orks with a blast from his thermal cannon. The Exiles opened fire around him, and swept away the remaining greenskins in a heartbeat.
‘Keep moving,’ voxed Jennika from Colonel Gesmund’s Taurox. ‘The real fight is deeper in.’
‘Of course, my lady,’ said Luk. He fed power to his motive impellers and strode across the burning square, making for a thoroughfare that led through the district. Knights followed him, splitting off by lance to advance down the main streets. On his strategic overlay, Luk watched more lances penetrating the walls through eight other breaches, spreading their assault along the outer western wall.
‘Push inward,’ he voxed. ‘Break through, don’t let them slow you or scale your steed. Take the breaches in the second wall at point one-oh-one and point one-oh-seven. Converge on the inner spire.’
A wing of Pegasson Lightnings streaked overhead, opening fire as they went. Deeper into the ruins, a fierce explosion rose skywards. Hidden guns fired back, chattering streams of flak turning one of the fighters into a tumbling fireball and perforating the wing of another.
‘This isn’t going to be easy,’ said Luk. ‘I wish you had Fire Defiant, Lady Jennika.’
‘Not as much as I do,’ she replied. ‘I know it’s locked down and guarded, but still…’
‘Ork tanks,’ voxed Maia. ‘Heavy armour and mobile artillery coming up the thoroughfare.’
‘Shields up,’ said Luk.
‘Win here, and we win this world,’ said Hw’ss, opening fire. His shots ploughed into the lead elements of the ork tank column, leaving several vehicles as blazing wrecks. As he did so, more runes flashed on Luk’s retinal display.
‘Ork infantry pushing up through the ruins,’ he said. ‘Serious numbers. Gesmund, keep our flanks clear.’
‘Understood, sire,’ said the Colonel. His Tauroxes split and flowed around the Exiles, powering down smaller side-streets with their guns blazing.
Rockets and hails of shot hammered Luk’s shield. A searing energy beam caused it to flare, the impact staggering Sword. He fired back, pushed forward. Ork tanks exploded in balls of flame. Stubber rounds chewed through the ruins, blasting puffs of brick dust and ork blood into the air. With Luk in the lead, the Exiles pounded their way deeper into the city.
‘Be alive, Danial,’ he muttered as shots pinged and clanged against his steed’s armour. ‘Just… be alive. You owe me that much.’
‘Draconis!’ bellowed Danial.
He hacked his blade through an ork’s neck. Its burning head bounced across the floor. A flurry of shots struck Danial’s shield. One punched through and ricocheted from his shoulder, sending a flare of pain through him.
The ork that had shot him died the next instant, autogun fire converging on it from three directions. But there were more behind it.
Always more.
They had hurled back the first greenskin charge. The
second had overrun the forward barricades, only to be shredded by gunfire. Leading the charge, Danial had reclaimed the ground the orks had taken. But now they were coming again.
‘It’s like fighting a flood!’ he yelled.
‘No flood may quench the fires of the Dracon,’ replied Percivane over the vox. Danial glanced to his left and saw the burly Knight hacking and stabbing in the gloom. He showed little sign of the pain he must be in, despite the servo-frame that pinned his limbs together.
‘Inspirational, Sire Percivane,’ said Suset, who fought somewhere off to Danial’s right. ‘Still I wish we could build another dam to stem it.’
All along the barricades, militia fought with gun butts and blades, firing point blank where they could, hacking and bludgeoning where they couldn’t. The Knights were scattered through their ranks, beacons of strength and determination whose burning blades did as much to inspire their soldiery as to slay the invaders. Sire Calluhm and Lady Kassendra fought back to back. Alyssa, Lorette and Luka Dar Draconis poured bolter fire into the foe.
For their part, the orks fought furiously, roaring guttural threats, hacking and shooting and bludgeoning with the strength of wild animals. Danial saw an armoured beast with a mechanised claw grab one man’s head and crush it like an egg, before Sire Percivane drove his sword through the beast’s temple. Three militiamen emptied shots into the ork as it jerked and twitched on Percivane’s blade.
A second greenskin lunged at Danial, and he parried the whirling chain-teeth of its choppa. He punched his hilt into the alien’s mouth, shattering its tusks, then grabbed the back of its head and smashed its face into the top of the barricade until it stopped twitching. He realised he was screaming in anger as he did so.
Another one came at him, managing to sink its axe into his shoulder deep enough to draw blood. He ran the xenos through, kicking it off his blade to fall burning amidst its comrades.