by Nick Kyme
Pillium sagged, his face awash with blood as he first regarded the terrified medicus and then Reda.
‘Can you fight?’ he asked her, provoking a weary but warm smile.
The sound of splintering wood prompted them both to look up. A few seconds later, the ceiling came crashing in and a second greenskin with it.
They met Scarfel in the city square. He looked tired as he took off his helm to greet the Ultramarines, and his face had blood on it.
‘Bone-swine are tough,’ he said with a rueful grin.
‘We call them orks in the south,’ said Daceus, offering a respectful nod which Scarfel accepted and returned.
‘Orks, bone-swine, they’re a damnable plague all the same.’
‘That we can agree on,’ said Sicarius.
The square was scattered with bodies, mostly Farrodum’s dead but also a decent amount of greenskins. They were big, this breed of ork, but without the meagre technologies of even feral tribes. They had regressed to a base state, something large and primordial. A primeval ork.
Scarfel had around fifty or sixty warriors with him, mostly young footmen and a handful of his ageing horsemen. He had dismounted to approach Sicarius and the others, leaving his snorting destrier with a squire.
‘I thank you,’ said the old campaigner, ‘for fighting for us.’
‘I hope your liege lord sees it the same way,’ Sicarius replied. The Ultramarines had fought their way to the square with relative ease, despatching stragglers and small groups. They had met Farrodum’s warriors only a handful of times and thankfully they had either fled or realised the knights of Macragge were allies and briefly thrown in with them. ‘Tell me,’ added Sicarius as he looked out deeper into the city, ‘what’s left for us to do?’
Scarfel had beckoned for his horse and was mounting up again as he replied, ‘A horde has begun to gather at the north edge of the city.’ He pointed, though Sicarius knew exactly where he meant. ‘They’ve never attacked so boldly and in such large numbers before,’ Scarfel went on, pulling on the reins to bring his beast to heel. ‘A few of the scouts report some kind of wooden obelisk. That it’s whipping the bone-swine into a frenzy.’
‘Your lord,’ said Daceus shrewdly, ‘does he take the field to the north end of the city? Is that why he’s not with you?’
‘Baron Athelnar seldom takes to the field,’ said Scarfel, his face carefully impassive. ‘As castellan, it’s my duty to lead the army.’
‘Then lead us,’ said Sicarius, gesturing to his warriors. ‘We have four ready swords.’
A few of the Farrodum warriors looked nervous at this proclamation, but Scarfel smiled as he turned his steed about to face northwards. ‘You honour us, Sicarius.’ He arched his neck over his shoulder so he could face Sicarius as he talked. ‘Why is it then that I reckon you’ve commanded armies far larger and more impressive than this one?’
‘It doesn’t matter how large or impressive,’ Sicarius replied, ‘only that it fights and fights well. We have a code, we knights of Macragge. It exemplifies who we are and what matters to us the most as warriors. Courage and honour.’
Scarfel nodded, trying out the words. ‘Courage and honour. I like that,’ he said, his steed turning in a circle before facing northwards again. ‘We will fight. We must. Our very existence depends upon it. I only hope that you are as tough as you look.’
‘Oh,’ said Daceus, a feral glint in his eye, ‘you don’t need to worry about that. There’s a saying in our country about knights of Macragge. It’s a little long and overblown as sayings often are, but one thing about it holds true. If you ever manage to kill one of us, you had best make sure we are dead.’
THE OBELISK
Pillium threw himself at the ork. Debris still rained from the hole in the roof as he tackled it around the neck and it fell, driven by his momentum, crashing through the shattered door arch and down the stairs beyond. Pillium went with it, hanging on through every collision against the steps, every bruising crash against the walls. The beast roared, spraying hot and rancid spittle against his face, but Pillium clung on.
They landed hard, stone cracking audibly beneath them, the ork on its back, Pillium on top with his hand around its thickly corded neck. It fought back, swiping at his shoulder guard and ripping it off completely. The ceramite rang like a tolling bell as it hit the ground. Pillium got his other hand over the ork’s face, digging in under its upper jaw with his fingers. It champed at him, its sharp teeth gnawing at the metal of his gauntlet, but he managed to grab the lower jaw with his other hand. Then he pulled.
Tongue lolling, throat warbling in half-choked rage, the ork raked at Pillium’s side, tearing open the shrapnel wound and making a mess of his meshweave. Though durable, it wasn’t crafted to repel blades or bullets and came apart against the onslaught. Blood instantly dampened his legs and abdomen but Pillium held on, slowly prising apart the ork’s jaws until they broke. The beast screamed, a porcine shriek that had Pillium clamping his own jaw shut, such was its intensity. But he kept going. When the lower jaw came apart, wrenched off in his bloody hand, he seized the upper jaw and rammed the ork’s head against the ground over and over until it was nothing but gory pulp.
He sagged then, flat against the ork’s body as the last of its air wheezed from its lungs like a deflating bladder. He heard the medicus from above, her voice getting closer as she descended the stairs. Belatedly, he realised the outer door to the infirmary had been ripped open. The street yawned from it. The night looked blacker than he thought it would, like a funerary veil had been drawn across it and he was looking through its gauzy material. Two figures loped through that blackness, patches of hard oil shimmering with sweat. One dropped something. It landed wetly and Pillium realised it was a part-chewed human arm.
He struggled to his feet, his hot blood turning cold – or perhaps that was just him. He had no weapon. His bones were cracked in several places and he was bleeding from wounds to his back and sides. He could feel his transhuman physiology working to repair him but even Martian genetic science had its limits.
‘I just need a moment…’ he rasped to the orks.
The beasts snarled to one another in some crude approximation of language. They looked hungry through the funerary veil, a deeper darkness brought on by Pillium’s injuries.
If he died now, Cwen died, and Reda and Gerrant too. He barely knew the armsmen and had only just met the medicus but he could not allow that. If he did, he would have failed them, he would have failed his Chapter. So he forced himself to stand straight and look his killers in their piggish, red eyes.
‘Courage and honour…’ he whispered bitterly, knowing his end would be an ignominious one but hoping it would give the mortals enough time to slip away. He’d had such hopes of glory.
It had begun to rain, slow at first but growing to a fierce downpour. Ork skin glistened in the weak light.
Rivulets of water ran down Pillium’s face, washing off some of the blood. It gathered in pinkish puddles at his feet. He felt it dampen his beard and it plinked loudly off the sheath of his armour, a drumbeat to match his twin hearts. He did not need a weapon. He was the weapon.
‘Come, then!’ he roared, summoning up his strength, the furnace of his defiance burning hot. ‘Come and face a knight of Macragge!’
And they did.
The first ork had dropped to all fours, and had kicked into a loping stride when an armoured blur struck it in the side and smashed it onto its back. The second came up short, confronted by a warrior in blue war-plate, a shining sword in his hand.
Vorolanus drew a second blade, a combat knife which he held in a reverse grip as the ork charged. He turned as it lunged, dipping his shoulder so the beast flew right past him. It slid, scrabbling uncertainly and wondering how half of its entrails had unfurled behind it. A deep slit in the ork’s belly provided the answer, and it looked down dumbly at the savage wound, Vorolanus’ gladius slick with its vitae. It stumbled forwards, still intent on the warrior’s
murder before it collapsed, entangled in its own steaming offal. Pillium stomped on its neck to end it.
The first ork had recovered, grunting as it shook off its disorientation.
Vorolanus flung his knife. A silver flash lit the dark as a hilt appeared in the ork’s skull, the blade already buried all the way. The ork rocked on its heels, nerveless fingers scratching dumbly at the hilt before it crashed back and stayed dead.
‘Well met, Vorolanus,’ said Pillium, and smelled copper in his icy breath. He had one hand against the door frame holding himself up.
‘You look in need of an Apothecary, brother.’
‘I am mending. Besides, I already have one,’ he said, as the medicus appeared behind him with Reda. ‘Is that the last of them?’
Vorolanus had walked over to the dead ork, and retrieved his knife with a savage pull. ‘A horde gathers at the northern edge of the city,’ he said, wiping the blade clean on his cloak. ‘Sicarius goes to meet it.’ He looked up at Pillium. ‘Can you fight?’
Pillium laughed loudly, ignoring Vorolanus’ evident confusion at his reaction.
‘Hand me a sword and we’ll see.’ He let go of the door frame and found he could stand unaided.
‘I don’t have a sword, brother,’ said Vorolanus, but pulled forth a spear that had been strapped to his back and tossed it over. ‘I do have this.’
Pillium caught the haft one-handed.
‘This will do,’ he said, appraising the weapon approvingly.
Cwen stepped forwards. ‘He cannot fight,’ she told Vorolanus. ‘He needs rest so he can heal.’
‘I have rested too long already,’ Pillium told her, though not unkindly. ‘I thank you, medicus. But I need you to bind these wounds one last time so that I can do my duty.’
Cwen looked about to protest but relented in the end, giving Pillium a shallow nod. He turned to tramp back up the stairs.
‘Where are you going?’ asked Cwen.
‘To retrieve my armour from where you left it, medicus.’
The northward wall had collapsed into rubble and a horde of greenskins swarmed through the breach, bellowing and hooting. They dragged a massive carved totem with them, the obelisk as Scarfel’s scout had dubbed it. Hewn from wood, it crudely depicted the faces of the brutish ork gods, one atop the other, each huge and leering. It tottered, ungainly but upright, rolled along on six ramshackle stone wheels that churned furrows of earth into the ground wherever it went.
An ork, its skin painted in gaudy colours, a plume of ragged feathers sprouting from a wooden crown upon its head and the stone torcs around its thick arms, stood at the summit of the totem. It carried a gnarled staff of wood in one clawed hand, the skulls of birds and vermin rattling against the haft as it shook with the ork’s frenzied capering. It teetered on the totem’s edge several times but never fell, always swinging back as if held by some invisible thread.
Eight burly orks, their skin even blacker than the others, heaved the totem forwards on thick ropes, and surrounding them was the horde itself.
‘Orruk! Orruk! Orruk!’ they bellowed, as the rain hammered down and lightning split the sky.
Standing on a parapet that overlooked the courtyard leading to the north wall, Daceus gauged around a hundred orks, but more were scrambling over the rubble all the time.
‘We have to stop them here,’ he said to Sicarius and the others, ‘or they’ll overrun the city. Digging them out then will be painful and arduous.’
Scarfel’s warriors had backed off, allowing the orks at their head to roam unchecked through the outer district. It had been abandoned already, the people moving further into the city and away from the horde as what was left of their army came to meet it.
Three towers looked out upon the square and archers garrisoned each one, but held their quarrels for now. And three gates led from the square, wide enough for ten men abreast to pass. Two had been sealed by portcullises and then braced to further reinforce them. A small guard protected each one, twelve men with spears and crossbows stationed behind the barrier. The third gate lay open, and it was here the remnants of the force that had been engaging the horde retreated to.
Sicarius looked down upon it now, standing right above it. The orks had stopped to celebrate their victory and eat the spoils of that triumph. Arrow shafts silenced the injured, a last mercy before the orks fell upon them with hungry tooth and claw. Somewhere in the distance a drum began to beat, a slow and dolorous rhythm that wove a thread of despair through Scarfel’s men.
‘That gate is all that stands between the city and the horde?’
Scarfel, a diminutive figure next to the knights of Macragge on the wall, nodded. ‘There are no other ways in. No tunnels or postern gates. This is it.’
‘That sport,’ offered Vandius, his lip curling in distaste, ‘will not occupy them for long.’
‘Agreed,’ said Sicarius, and turned to Scarfel. ‘I have a plan, if you would hear it?’
‘Of course. I am eager to learn how battles are won in the south.’
Sicarius raised a wry smile, and Daceus caught his stray glance.
‘Orks, bone-swine, they are eager for the fight,’ said Sicarius. ‘So we give it to them. Have your men raise a clamour, have them beat hafts and hilts against shields. Draw them in and then stop them. The narrow aperture of the gate will keep them penned in, and Fennion,’ he gestured to Iulus, who gave Scarfel a casual salute, ‘will stand with you to galvanise your courage.’
‘I see,’ said Scarfel. His jaw twitched, signalling his mild consternation at the remark about courage. ‘And what will you do?’
Daceus answered, unable to keep the eagerness from his voice. ‘We shall enter the fray, my friend. There,’ he pointed to the obelisk, ‘is the object of our wrath. Break it and we break the will of the horde. Orks are cowards at heart.’ He smiled grimly. ‘And they do not like the taste of Macragge steel.’
‘Are we in agreement, Scarfel?’ asked Sicarius once Daceus was done posturing. ‘We have fought these bone-swine many times before. This is how we will beat them back and save your city.’
Scarfel regarded the orks as rain pounded and drumbeats bruised the air. There were signs they had almost finished their revelling, a restiveness that bordered on frenzy.
‘You are either brave or mad to want to run into that,’ he admitted. ‘Truly, I hope you do not die, Sicarius. I have found I rather like you and your kin, and think perhaps I should like to visit the south one day.’
Sicarius laughed, and there was a certain reckless abandon to his mood. ‘You would be an honoured guest, Scarfel. Let’s be at it, shall we? These orks won’t kill themselves.’
THE HORDE
The path to the obelisk had been bloody. As they neared the crudely carved edifice, its malign power increased. Daceus felt it in the heavy heat of the air, a quickening of breath and a sharp migraine pain at the back of his skull.
Close to the obelisk, the faces in the wood had begun to change and turned angry. Green smoke exuded from the grain, thin and wispy at first but quickly churning into a dense fog that swallowed everything for several feet around it.
Daceus and his brethren fought in this fog. A beast came screaming, a crude stone axe still gummed with human blood raised aloft. He swept below the cut, ramming his gladius up into the ork’s chin, pushing it all the way and out of the crown of its skull. Daceus yanked the blade loose with a jerk of his arm as a second beast roared for his blood, careening madly through the green mist. He cut off its weapon, a broad flint dagger, at the wrist before slashing open its throat. Hot, rancid blood painted his armour and face. Daceus embraced it as warpaint, emitting a bellow of his own. He killed a third ork, then a fourth, slashing and cutting freely now, laughing with every blow as the drums throbbed against his temples and he began to hear voices on the air. A deep, bestial refrain, the voice uttered words that had no meaning but drove deep into his primordial heart. Primitive urges bubbled to the fore, geysering up through Daceus’ throat u
ntil they came out in an animalistic roar.
The fog grew thicker, choking. He spluttered, finding it hard to see, to even breathe through the heady miasma and the red-rimed fury of his own rage. He took a blow to the shoulder. A second to his side. He had become reckless, swinging with neanderthal abandon. An ork fell nearby and the arterial spray struck his eye, blinding him. It stung like fire and Daceus cried out in pain, trying desperately to see through all the red. Something struck the side of his head and he fell, down to a knee. A blade, possibly a spear, stabbed down into the joint at his neck, but he twisted before his attacker could push it all the way through and impale him. The shaft shattered as Daceus moved, cracking apart and into splinters. He wiped at his eye, and managed to clear some of the blood. The scent of the greenskins loomed close, and intense enough to make him gag. On his knees, he looked up and the obelisk looked back, the ork gods peering down hungrily, mocking him for his weakness. The feathered shaman that rode the summit danced and cavorted and capered, hammering out a berserk tattoo against the wood with his staff. He had grown huge in Daceus’ eye, a colossus that eclipsed one of the Primaris Marines threefold. Bones rattled; green lightning began to gather above the battlefield, turning into a massive thunderhead. Even the rain stank of ork.
Daceus tried to rise as a savage punch spun his head and a veil of darkness descended. He shook it off, parrying the next blow, but he still couldn’t get to his feet. He fought on one knee, fending off one ork and then the next, stone spears and flint daggers breaking off against his armour. A few bit deep.