The Space Marines of the warrior band were making their way along the running boards to the ladders at the sides and rear of the bulk-hauler, climbing up towards concealment within the empty trailer.
Satisfied they could actually get close without significant risk of discovery, Uriel clambered back into the driver's cab and dragged out the dead bodies of the mutant drivers. He hurled them from the cab, those slaves chained nearest to where the bodies fell tearing them apart with wanton abandon.
'It's not actually that difficult.' said Vaanes as Uriel closed the door behind him.
'No?'
'No, a Rhino's harder to control than this. It's just a little bigger.'
'Just a little.' agreed Uriel.
He left Vaanes to wrestle with the controls and stared through the dirty windscreen at the siegeworks beyond, the scale of the battle taking his breath away.
They passed great artillery pits, enormous guns, bigger by many times than the heaviest artillery pieces of the Imperial Guard, hurling tank-sized shells towards the fortress. Tall towers hung with bodies and spiked bunkers were spread throughout the camp and a sprawling infrastructure had arisen to support the massive effort of taking Honsou's fortress. Dark wonders and monstrous sights greeted them at every turn, the myriad horrors of a daemon world at war.
The bulk-haulers drove along corpse-hung roads, skull-paved plazas where naked madmen capered around tall idols hung with entrails and pillars of iron that crackled with powerful energy. They watched mutants hurl crippled slaves into bubbling pools of molten metal, laughing as they did so, and Uriel turned away. He could not save them all, so he would save none of them. It scarred his soul to let such atrocities go unpunished, but he was coming to believe that Vaanes was right - better to let them die than to be killed trying and failing to save them.
As the bulk-hauler swallowed up the distance between the outskirts of the camp and the siege lines, they drove over great bridges of iron that crossed deep trenches, through kilometres of razorwire and around deep pits containing screaming mechanical monsters. Shadows of great, clawed limbs swayed in the firelight and Uriel felt a shiver of dread at the thought of even laying eyes on such daemon engines.
The heat in the cab was oppressive, but he didn't dare open the door for fear of discovery. So far they had been able to continue following the bulk-haulers ahead of them, but as soon as the lead hauler turned away from the fortress, it would only be a matter of time before their ruse was discovered.
The bulk-haulers rolled onwards through the Iron Warriors' camp, driving through great shanty towns of red-garbed soldiers and blazing drumfires. Soldiers chanted in praise of their masters and fired off shots into the air as they danced around the flames.
'These are the warriors of Lord Berossus.' said Vaanes, pointing to a gold and black standard raised high at the edge of the camp.
'And who is he? A rival of Honsou's?'
'So it would seem. He is the leader of a grand company of the Iron Warriors, a vassal of Lord Toramino, one of their most powerful warlords.'
'How do you know all this?' asked Uriel.
'We have sometimes taken prisoners.' replied Vaanes, 'and did not shirk from their interrogation. If Berossus is here, then so too is Toramino. Whatever the reason they lay siege to Honsou's fortress, it must be powerful indeed.'
'Perhaps they know what Honsou brought back from Hydra Cordatus and desire a share in his spoils of victory.'
'Gene-seed? Yes, that would probably do it.'
'We can't let that happen.'
Vaanes laughed. 'We are but thirty warriors and you would have us topple this world.'
'Why not?' said Uriel. 'We are Space Marines of the Emperor. There is nothing we cannot do.'
'I don't know why, since you are probably going to get me killed, but I like you, Uriel Ventris. You have an absurd sense for attempting the impossible that appeals to me.'
Uriel returned his gaze to the siegeworks outside, pleased at the compliment, as the lead truck reached a wide crossroads and began making a wide turn towards a huge spoil heap.
'Damn it, they're turning.' cursed Vaanes as he saw the same thing.
'We are too far away to make it on foot.' said Uriel. 'There are whole regiments ahead of us.'
'What do you think?'
'Push it!' said Uriel. 'Head straight for the fortress and we will kill anyone that gets in our way. We'll drive over them or shoot them, just get us as close to that fortress as you can.'
'I'll try!' shouted Vaanes, pushing the hauler into high gear and slamming his foot to the floor. 'We won't get far before we ran into trouble, so get ready to give me some covering fire.'
Uriel nodded and left the driver's cab, calling to the other Space Marines in their band and alerting them to their plight. Acknowledgements flickered on his visor and Uriel readied his sword and bolter as the bulk-hauler rumbled towards the crossroads. The main route travelled by the bulk-haulers was clearly visible, curving off to the left, but instead of slowing to take the turn, their transport increased speed and roared straight ahead, bucking madly on surfaces not designed for such a heavy vehicle.
Screams and shouts of alarm rose in their wake as tents, stores and prefabricated huts were flattened beneath their tracks. Red-liveried soldiers, slaves and mutants scattered before them, those not quick enough crushed to death by their wild charge.
Shots ricocheted from the sides of the bulk-hauler, but they were sporadic, hastily aimed and Uriel knew that they need not be concerned about such small-arms fire. It would be when word was passed on ahead that they would need to worry.
Sure enough, he could see fire teams ahead of them, swinging round static weapon platforms that would tear their vehicle to shreds.
'Warriors, engage!' he shouted over the vox.
Space Marines who had been waiting for his command rose from behind the shelter of the trailer's sides and opened fire, bolter shells raking the gunners of the weapon teams and ripping their guns to pieces. The bulk-hauler crashed into the trench lines, ploughing a huge furrow in its wake as it slowed going across the softer ground.
Yelling soldiers leapt into their trenches, but there was no refuge to be found there, as the massive weight of the hauler collapsed their trenches and buried scores of men beneath tonnes of earth and rubble. Uriel watched without compassion, relishing the destruction they were causing. He fired his weapon into the soldiers, yelling encouragement to the other Space Marines of their warrior band as they killed the enemy.
He looked up in time to see a brilliant flash of light and ducked as a huge explosion hammered the ground beside them. The bulk-hauler swayed, and for a moment Uriel felt sure it would tip over.
But the Emperor was with them and the hauler righted itself, slamming back to the ground with teeth-loosening force. Uriel pulled himself upright and saw several artillery pieces aiming for them with their gun barrels lowered. Another explosion burst next to them, showering the hauler with debris and earth and smoke. The gunners were finding their range, heedless of however many of their own men they killed to get it, and Uriel knew that they had seconds at best before one of the guns got lucky and blew them to atoms.
'Everybody off!' he shouted. 'Now!'
After two such close calls, none of the Space Marines needed any encouragement. They clambered over the sides of the bulk-hauler and leapt from the vehicle. Uriel saw Pasanius hit the ground and roll, and hauled open the driver's cab.
'Vaanes! Come on, let's go!' he shouted over the din of gunfire and explosions.
'Go!' he shouted. 'I'm right behind you!'
Uriel nodded and vaulted from the platform outside the cab. He hit the ground hard and rolled, smashing a dozen soldiers aside as he landed. In a heartbeat he was on his feet, slashing with his sword and running for the mountain. Shots kicked up dust around him and ricocheted from his armour as he ran.
He saw Ardaric Vaanes leap from the driver's cab as a shell from one of the guns finally struck the bulk-hauler. T
he engine section vanished in a sheet of flame and the wreckage ploughed onwards for another few seconds before slamming through a razorwire fence and exploding with the force of a cluster of demolition charges. Secondary explosions quickly followed as fuel bladders and siege shells cooked off in the huge blast. Uriel realised Vaanes must have used those last few seconds to guide the hauler towards a valuable target before escaping the cab.
The earth shook as shells arced through the air and burning sheets of fuel sprayed in all directions. Enemy soldiers ducked and ran for cover in the maelstrom of exploding shells and blazing plumes of scorching fires, but Uriel and the Space Marines kept running.
Ahead, he saw the lower reaches of the mountain, where Berossus's engineers had constructed vast funicular rails onto the rock that climbed towards the higher peaks of the mountains. A giant, angled car, bounded by iron railings, ascended the rails, bearing hundreds of the Iron Warriors' soldiers towards the battle high above.
Thousands of soldiers clustered at the base of the mountain, awaiting their turn to travel up the mountainside and join the assault. The sounds of explosions and gunfire were nothing new to them and they had not yet noticed the charging Space Marines behind them. Uriel saw Pasanius and Vaanes up ahead and called to them over the vox.
'The platform on the right!' he called. 'There's an empty car just coming down. We need to take it!'
'I see it.' replied Vaanes.
The Space Marines of the warrior band struck the milling soldiers like a freight train, cutting down scores in the first seconds of their attack. Grimly they forced their way onward, hacking, cutting and slaying their way forward in an orgy of bloodshed.
Caught unawares by the killers in their midst, the soldiers fought to get out of their way and Uriel soon found himself with a clear ran to the platform. Vaanes was there before him and had already killed them a path up to the approaching funicular car.
Uriel took the steps up to the platform two at a time, glancing over his shoulder to see the rest of their warriors right behind him, keeping low to avoid the worst of the gunfire directed at them. The car docked at the platform with a huge, ringing clang and barely had it done so before the Space Marines swarmed over it.
The car was empty save for a grey-fleshed servitor creature, fused with the mechanism of its controls, whose only function appeared to be pulling the levers that sent it up or down the mountain. Uriel and Pasanius, together with Kyama Shae, moved to the edge of the platform and fired into the approaching enemy soldiers whose courage now began to return.
'Ventris!' shouted Vaanes. 'Come on, the car's leaving!'
Uriel slung his bolter and slapped the shoulder guards of his two companions before running for the funicular car. Grinding cogs and wheezing engines lifted it from the platform, but it was slow to get moving and Uriel clambered aboard before it had climbed more than a metre. He turned to help Pasanius, gripping his silver arm and hauling him up, noticing with surprise that it was utterly pristine, without so much as a scratch on it. How could that be, when his own gauntlets were torn and battered to the point of uselessness?
Pasanius moved past him to take up a firing position at the railings and Uriel turned to help Kyama Shae aboard the moving car.
Small-arms fire spanged from the sides of the car and the railings, but as it rapidly picked up speed they were soon beyond the range of the soldiers' rifles.
Uriel glanced over at Pasanius before transferring his gaze to the mountain above. Black, smoky clouds wreathed the higher slopes, lightning and explosions flaring in the darkness from the battle above.
'Well, we're here.' said a breathless Vaanes.
Uriel turned to watch the swiftly diminishing ground as they rose into the clouds and darkness swallowed them.
'Getting here was the easy part.' said Uriel. 'Now we have to storm the fortress.'
CHAPTER TEN
'It would seem your attempt to antagonise Lord Berossus by shelling his pavilion was successful.' said Obax Zakayo needlessly, as another fluny of shells impacted against the walls. Plumes of flame and smoke soared skyward and Honsou laughed as he watched bodies rain down amid the rubble. Dust enveloped them, chunks of debris clattering down on the cobbled ramparts, and Honsou coughed as he swallowed a mouthful of ash. It was perhaps foolish to be this close to the front lines, but he was not so far removed from the sharp end of battle that he did not relish the cannon's roar in his ear.
'Yes, it does, doesn't it? He's so predictable it almost takes the fun out of crushing him.'
'But, my lord, he is within days of breaching the inner walls of Khalan-Ghol.' said Onyx, standing slightly behind Honsou. 'How can this be to our advantage?'
'Because he is dancing to my tone, Onyx, not his own. Get an enemy to react to your designs and he is as good as lost, I almost have him exactly where I want him. But Toramino... Toramino is not so easy. He is the one we need to be wary of. I don't know what he is doing.'
'Our scryers have seen nothing of note regarding Toramino.' said Obax Zakayo. 'It seems he waits, simply husbanding his warriors while Berossus grinds his men to dust against our walls.'
'I know, and that's what worries me.' snapped Honsou, waving his arms at the carnage taking place on the walls below him. 'Toramino is too clever to simply hurl his men at us like this. He knows that Berossus has no other stratagems and is waiting for his moment to strike. We must anticipate that and pre-empt him. Or else we are lost.'
Onyx leaned over the parapet and cast his gleaming silver eyes to either side of where he, Honsou and Obax Zakayo stood. Iron Warriors were ready to defend the ramparts should the bastions below fall, which if the projected strength of the assault below was correct, was entirely likely.
'We are too close to the battle.' he said.
Honsou shook his head. 'No, I need to be here.'
'I can protect you from an assassin's blade or a killer's bullet.' said Onyx, 'but I cannot say the same for an artillery shell. An eternity of torment awaits my essence should I allow you to die while under my protection.'
'Why should I care about your eternal torment?'
'You wouldn't, you'd be dead.'
Honsou considered this for a second and said, 'You may have a point there, Onyx.'
The daemonic symbiote nodded respectfully as more screaming shells exploded against the walls below. Honsou turned, content that the bastion here was as secure as he could want. The warriors he had chosen to accompany him into the camp of Berossus commanded this section of the walls, and there were no better warriors in his grand company.
He had taken one step when a flash of dark prescience made him look up and he yelled, 'Down!'
Whether it was by sheer luck or great artifice, Honsou would never know, but a salvo of shells from the guns below impacted on the edge of the ramparts upon which he and his warriors stood, shearing the rock clean from its supports in a cataclysmic ham-merblow. Honsou picked himself up and desperately scrambled for the safety of the esplanade behind the ramparts, but it was already too late.
With a grinding crack of splintered stone, he and hundreds of his finest warriors were swept down the mountainside in a raining avalanche of rubble and blocks of sundered stone.
Emerging from the smoke was like being born into hell, thought Uriel. At first he had been frustrated not being able to see their ultimate destination, but upon passing through the dark clouds of the mountain and seeing it up close for the first time, he soon wished for the sight of it to be snatched away from him.
Stretching up to pierce the dead sky, the fortress of Honsou was a madman's conceit made real, stone laid upon stone so that each angle was subtly wrong and violated the senses on a deep, instinctual level. Its dark veined walls reared up in defiance of the laws of perspective, looming and huge with pierced garrets leaning from the wallhead and spiralling, lightning-sheathed spires. Blades and spikes stabbed from its glistening fabric, and black rain, like the very lifeblood of the fortress, spilled from where artillery shells had str
uck. Fast-flowing rivers of molten metal poured from glowing culverts and ran down the mountainside like streams of lava from an erupting volcano.
Guns fired from daemon-visaged portals and burning, daemonic blood spilled from vast iron cauldrons onto the screaming soldiers below. Flames danced on the ramparts and in the mass of struggling soldiers. Death and destruction stalked the battlefield this day, and they hunted well.
Tens of thousands of soldiers thronged the rubble-strewn reaches of the fortress, fighting their way up a rained screed slope that had once been a bastion. Explosions tossed corpses through the air as buried mines swept hundreds to their deaths and the monstrous forms of a pair of Titans straggled in the rubble, crushing men and machines beneath their great footsteps as they fought amid the flames.
Uriel and the Space Marines watched the terrifying battle rage above them, the car grinding as it approached the upper platform where it would deposit them and begin the journey back down the mountain.
'Emperor protect us.' breathed Vaanes. 'It's like nothing I've ever seen before.'
'I know...' agreed Uriel, drawing his sword as the car clanged home against the platform and the bronze gate in the railings squealed open.
'How can we hope to survive this?'
Uriel turned to Vaanes and said, 'Remember what I told you: death and honour. If one brings the other then it is a good death.'
'No...' hissed Vaanes. 'No death is a good one. Not like this.'
None of the Space Marines moved, too in awe at the terrible and magnificent spectacle of war on a scale few had ever experienced. Uriel realised he had to get them moving before the vastness of this battle and their impulse for survival overcame the newly-rekindled sense of honour and duty he had instilled in them.
He was saved when Pasanius shouted, 'Come on, get moving! Everybody off!'
Ingrained reflexes took over and the Space Marines swiftly debarked from the funicular car, chivvied all the way by a bellowing Pasanius. Only Uriel and Ardaric Vaanes remained on board.
Warhammer - Ultramarines 03 - Dead Sky, Black Sun (McNeill, Graham) Page 14