Perturabo: Hammer of Olympia

by Guy Haley

  ‘You will kill one in every ten of us?’ said Dematea.

  ‘You will do it yourselves,’ replied Perturabo.

  ‘You will never succeed in convincing our people to turn on each other,’ she said.

  ‘I do not expect to,’ said Perturabo. His neck was stiff. He rolled his head, and the input cables burrowed into his scalp rattled. ‘Those that comply will be spared, those that do not will be exterminated or enslaved. If you will not serve this Legion and the Emperor as free men, then you shall serve me in chains. As many worlds have learnt, such is the cost of non-compliance.’

  Iron Warriors trooped around the group, encircling them in gleaming ceramite. Ash clouds spreading from the ruins of Kardis had turned the day dark and cold.

  ‘Eirene! We came here under the flag of Eirene!’ shouted Didimus.

  ‘Your customs mean nothing to me They never have Here begins the lesson that Olympia must learn. Loyalty is the only virtue I value If you have no loyalty, you are worthless.’

  He raised his hand.

  ‘We are loyal,’ said Dematea in a rising panic ‘We do not wish to leave the Imperium. You misunderstand!’

  ‘I understand perfectly. You wish to change your relationship to it. The Imperium is the will of the Emperor. His will is hard as iron. It is not amenable to alteration unless heated and beaten upon. Your limp requests have no appeal. You are all traitors. The question is of absolutes, not degree. Your men will die. You shall die. Your cities shall die Kardis is but the first, and before I am done all Olympia will throw itself to its knees and beg for forgiveness.’

  He turned from his captives to his warriors.

  ‘Kill them all,’ he ordered. ‘Leave none alive but do not spoil the heads. Send those back to their cities. These creatures have one last message to deliver.’

  The emissaries tried to run. Perturabo watched as they were shot down and their blood soaked into the sand blowing away from the mountain.

  Perturabo had the Cavea Ferrum installed beneath the smoking ruins of Kardis, his labyrinthine lair of iron halls and subtle energy fields that could misdirect any intruder. From there, he directed the devastation of his adopted home No quarter was given. After Kardis, none was expected. The depleted armies of Olympia tried everything against their estranged sons, from outright assault to full surrender. None of them were successful. They were cut down where they stood.

  Brutalised by decades of inglorious war, feeling abandoned and undervalued, the treachery of their own people was one burden too much for the Iron Warriors to bear. Without mercy or conscience, the Legion slaughtered its way across the planet. There were exceptions - individual legionaries or small formations who refused to enact the primarch’s will. They were treated as harshly as the civilian populace.

  Phoros, Iskia, Vren and Achos fell in quick succession on the first two days. Each city was cast down. At first Perturabo took them slowly, letting the fear of his vengeance build across the planet. As his campaign progressed, the pace of conquest accelerated. Several cities fell every day as Perturabo split his Legion, sending individual grand companies to every quarter of the world. Contests were made of the speed and ingenuity with which each city could be overthrown. It became a grim celebration of the martial arts among the Lord of Iron’s sons. First a city’s walls were shattered by massive bombardment, then the breaches stormed by Iron Warriors, and so it was repeated again and again.

  Perturabo had fashioned the defences of the principal cities. These proved the greatest challenges and individual warsmiths fought over the honour of their reduction. The rest, ringed with antiquated stone walls dating from the days of the tyrants, were taken in a matter of hours. As he promised, Perturabo gave the option to cities to execute a tenth of their populations. Few acquiesced to begin with, not until they heard the Iron Warriors were exterminating more than half of the people and enslaving any who survived.

  Hesitantly, parts of Olympia responded, sacrificing one tenth of its people to the Lord of Iron.

  Funeral pyres hundreds of metres high were erected outside each ruined city, the mounded bodies set afire with plasma bombs. They burned for days. Wailing chains of slaves were herded into mass-transit lifters and hauled into orbit.

  There were holdouts. The eyes of those Olympians who did not surrender turned skywards nervously to the fleet, but the iron stars Perturabo had set over their world kept their silence Perturabo had determined to reduce each city in the time honoured way; by blood, metal and stone.

  He saved Lochos for last.

  FOURTEEN

  THE FALL OF LOCHOS

  000.M31

  LOCHOS, OLYMPIA

  Lochos was unassailable from three sides. Only to the north east, where the mountain the city dominated was joined to its sister peaks by a long, humpbacked stretch of bare rock, was it vulnerable, and then only just. This was the Kephalon Ridge.

  The ascension road to the south of the city had been blown. Fresh cliffs of pale bedrock scarred the mountain there. Never in Lochos’ history had so drastic an action been undertaken. To repair the ascension road might prove an impossible task; it would certainly be ruinously expensive In destroying its link to the outside world, Lochos had all but admitted it was doomed.

  The triarchs stood some way away from the Lord of Iron. His mood had become blacker as the reconquest progressed, and he brooked no company but his own. Awaiting his orders, but commanded away from his presence, the triarchs were stranded in the space between action and inaction. Behind them loomed the giant guns of the Stor-Bezashk. To the fore was the ruined valley of Arcandia; on the other side, the city and its last remaining approach of the Kephalon Ridge.

  ‘They are dead, and they know it,’ said Golg. His superior smile had become fixed onto his face in recent days, as if burned into his skin.

  ‘Their defiance is admirable,’ said Harkor, ‘but meaningless.’

  ‘What would you do in their position?’ asked Forrix. ‘Murder your own children?’

  Harkor smirked and turned to the other triarch. ‘Golg, I do not think Forrix has yet come to terms with this war.’

  Forrix left the barb unanswered. ‘They have a strong position. They do not need to give up.’

  ‘They cannot win,’ said Harkor.

  ‘They will make us bleed for our victory,’ said Forrix. ‘They know it, we know it.’

  ‘That will not stop the assault,’ said Harkor.

  Forrix’s gaze drifted across the long, deadly ground of the ridge. It resembled the sloping back of a monstrous saurian. At either end, the ridge swelled outwards in a series of rounded bluffs separated by nearly vertical short valleys. At these points, the way to Lochos was several hundred metres across, although to either side the slope quickly became difficult, with bare, treacherous rock dropping suddenly into precipices.

  In the middle, the ridge was a knife edge a dozen metres across. A narrow road ran along the ridge full length. In ancient times, it had broken into a series of drover’s tracks that led onto the mountain slopes, for the ridge away from Lochos had ended in a glen walled by high cliff’s that went nowhere A tunnel had been carved through almost five kilometres of mountain under Perturabo’s supervision after his wars were done, leading out towards the Delepon valley and the way there to Kardis.

  The ridge had been phenomenally fortified even before Perturabo had set his artful mind to its improvement. Since the days of the Hammer of Olympia, gatehouses of sloping seamless metal had guarded each end - howdahs on the back of the saurian. The rock either side of the road had been smoothed to minor finish, giving no purchase to the feet of would-be attackers. The middle of the ridge had been broken through, creating an artificial chasm one hundred and fifty metres deep. It was crossable only by a drawbridge, and that had been cast down by the defenders of Lochos and lay bent sue hundred metres beneath the foundations of the towers.

  Golg began pacing back and forth. Forrix drifted forward towards the edge of the cliff, wishing to be away from Ha
rkor. Legend had it that it was close to their current position that Perturabo had been found and granted his first sight of Lochos. What a different view he must have had then. The mountain had been mutilated: the fertile valley of Arcandia smouldered, the hamlets and the small towns along its length smoking still, and the dams were all broken. Where their waters had been were the only clean spaces in the valley. Everything else was black and ruined. Corpse smoke fouled the air.

  Perturabo stood some way off from his triarchs, framed by the tendrils of smoke rising from all over Olympia. By their position, Forrix knew the cities, but his brain was numbed by the slaughter, and when he tried to recall their names they swam away from his mind, like fish evading capture.

  There used to be fish in the mountain streams near his home, he suddenly remembered. He had not thought of that for over a century. The clarity of the memory took him aback: small blue fish in the clear water.

  Perturabo spoke loudly, bringing him back to the present with a start.

  ‘Toramino, bring it down,’ said Perturabo into his vox pick-up.

  The guns of the Stor-Bezashk boomed in rippled sequence. A thousand shells hurtled skywards, arcing over the blackened valley of Arcandia to the walls of Lochos. Brilliant flashes preceded rolling clouds of fire. Pillars of stone dust erupted from the base of the walls, clouding the air. Only then did the noise of the impact roll out across the valley.

  Again the guns fired, then again, hurling thousands of tonnes of high explosive ordnance at the city walls.

  Harkor came up behind Forrix. The first captain felt he would never be free of him.

  ‘The walls are holding well,’ said Forrix emotionlessly. He was speaking only because he felt something should be said.

  ‘Of course. These walls were built by our lord himself,’ said Harkor. ‘It is an interesting exercise seeing our craft of destruction set against our craft of fortification. No fortress can stand forever, but it shall be a lesson to see how long before the walls collapse.’ Forrix glanced at their master. Perturabo said nothing.

  The primarch watched his former home suffer the bombardment. The walls burst outwards, rumbling down the sides of the mountain in avalanches of shattered blocks. Weaponry exploded inside the bastions housing them. Rarely had Forrix seen such a display, but it left him feeling empty inside. Soon the city was afire, and the walls crumbled. Only the Kephalon Ridge was left untouched.

  Already, the grand battalions tasked with the ridge’s assault were assembling in the corrie.

  Unthinkingly, Forrix spoke his innermost thoughts aloud. ‘Such a waste of men, tearing down the city by hand. We should level it from space.’

  Harkor chuckled and rested a hand on Forrix’s pauldron. Forrix tensed in his armour. ‘The Lord of Iron makes a point. What he raises up, he can bring down.’

  Forrix gave Harkor a thin-eyed stare.

  ‘It is a lesson you should remember, brother,’ said Harkor.

  To a signal neither of them heard, the assault force on the far side of the valley surged forwards. Their battle cries were diminished by distance, becoming pathetic sounding. Sunlight winked from polished armour. Seconds later, explosions followed.

  Forrix shrugged Harkor off and strode towards Perturabo purposefully. He’d be damned if he was going to stand around while Lochos fell. He was desperate to shake away his melancholy with action.

  The day was going to be long whatever happened, and the night that followed never-ending.

  Fire and screams and smoke.

  Those were the constants in the equation of Fortreidon’s life, and their sum was death.

  Lochos was ablaze. Civilians ran madly from their rampaging sons. The Iron Warriors slaughtered everyone they came across. People flung themselves down, begging for life. They sought mercy, trusting to the bonds of kith and kin to stay the avenging hand of the Legiones Astartes. They found none. Even though Lochos was a city of old men, the genetically unsuitable, children and women, the Iron Warriors treated them all with the same ruthlessness.

  People were selected at random, lined up against walls and blown to pieces by volleys of mass-reactive fire. Homes were torched while their inhabitants cowered inside. Fortreidon hesitated before every shot, and was relieved when his target scrambled out of sight or was slain by another warrior. Shamefully, he stopped shooting, waiting for Zankator or Fan to finish the deed for him.

  They worked their way into a square, away from the richer environs of the inner city, where the houses were small but well built. No matter their relative wealth or construction, they burned just as well.

  They reached the first house.

  ‘Fortreidon, Kellephon. Torch this one, move on,’ said Sergeant Zhalsk.

  Fortreidon shattered the door with one blow from his armoured boot. Kellephon moved forwards briskly, his training kicking in, even though he fought defenceless townsfolk rather than deadly xenos. At the threshold he raised his flamer, then lowered it and looked within.

  ‘Get on with it!’ said Zhalsk.

  Fortreidon went to Kellephon’s side to cover the modest room with his bolter. Possessions were scattered around the single room of the ground floor. It looked like breakfast preparations had begun when the attack started, and the inhabitants had fled. There, in three pieces, was a clay psomi board, the flour to make the bread spilt over the floor. A doll lay face down on the rush matting. For all the vaunted promises of the Imperium, the lives of these people had not improved much.

  Seeing nothing inside, Fortreidon asked, ‘Why do you hesitate, brother?’

  ‘I grew up in a place like this,’ said Kellephon quietly.

  The pilot light of Kellephon’s flamer hissed. A savage twist snuffed it out, and he lowered his weapon’s barrel to the floor.

  ‘I will not do it,’ he said.

  ‘What?’ said Zhalsk, his voice grating and powerful through his vox grille.

  ‘This is not right,’ said Kellephon. ‘These people are not our enemies.’

  ‘Get on with it,’ said Zhalsk grimly. ‘Our orders are to kill everyone, no survivors. An example is to be made.’

  ‘I will not,’ said Kellephon. ‘We have made enough of an example This has to stop. Now.’

  ‘Get a move on, brother!’ ordered Zhalsk.

  ‘No,’ repeated Kellephon. Slowly, so that none could mistake his actions as impulsive he cast his weapon aside.

  The squad hesitated. Brother looked to brother.

  ‘He is right. This is wrong,’ said Bardan.

  ‘You think so?’ said Zankator. He was tense spoiling for a fight.

  He put down his bolter and drew his knife, his murderous instincts coming to the fore at the last. Zankator did not like easy deaths.

  ‘What are you doing?’ said Zhalsk. Something like panic was in his voice.

  ‘I agree with Kellephon,’ said Dentrophor. He went to stand with his brother.

  ‘Do you think for a moment that the primarch, having ordered the destruction of his own city, will thank you? You doom us all!’ said Zhalsk.

  ‘This never was his home,’ said Kellephon. ‘We all pretended it was, even though he said again and again that it was not. But it was my home. The Legion has changed. This is not the way we are. Where is our mercy? Look to Fortreidon. Do we want him to grow into his iron, thinking this is what we are - callous monsters? From honour cometh iron!’ Kellephon held up his hand and swept it around him. Screaming citizens came to the entry of the street, saw the Iron Warriors and fled. ‘Where is the honour in this?’

  ‘The primarch has ordered it, so let it be done,’ said Zhalsk. ‘His word is our command. Obey, or die.’

  But the sergeant did not bring his bolter to bear.

  ‘I hear the hesitation in you, Zhalsk,’ said Kellephon. ‘Where are you from? Irex? Do you know what the Twenty-Eighth Grand Battalion did to Irex?’

  ‘It does not matter!’ said Zankator. ‘None of it matters! This isn’t about Olympia or the Emperor. It is about honour. By turnin
g its back on us, Olympia shames us. The people of our world must be punished. If we do not it, where will our honour be? Where our strength? We will be a laughing stock.’

  ‘Better that than monsters,’ replied Kellephon. ‘What are we, Curze’s murderers?’

  ‘Listen to Zankator,’ said Zhalsk. ‘Move on. Forget this ever happened. We have orders. Perturabo will rebuild here Olympia will live.’

  ‘How can you say that when the black smoke of corpse pyres smother the sun?’ said Kellephon.

  Fortreidon looked around. Like Udermais, he was undecided, unattached from either of the two inimical groups taking shape in the squad.

  ‘It is reasonable to have doubts, brother,’ said Zhalsk. ‘But that is all this is.’

  ‘I think it has gone beyond that,’ said Zankator with relish. ‘Our flame-handed warrior here has crossed a line. He has become a traitor to our lord.’

  The word ‘traitor’ seemed to still the turbulent air of the city, drowning out the chaos of the sacking.

  ‘He is as much of a traitor as the people of this city,’ continued Zankator, moving forwards, knife ready.

  ‘What are you doing?’ said Zhalsk.

  ‘What needs to be done,’ said Zankator. With those words, he charged, crashing into Kellephon as he was drawing his bolt pistol ‘Stop!’ shouted Zhalsk. ‘I order it!’

  ‘You are not fit to give orders.’ Dentrophor opened fire, felling Zhalsk before he could react. Fan shot back, riddling Dentrophor’s breastplate with smoking holes. He danced spastically as the mass-reactive bolts destroyed his body inside his armour, dousing them all in sprays of his blood. Bardan was on Fan then, smashing his bolter out of his hands and stabbing hard with his combat knife.

  Fan twisted aside. Metal scraped on metal as the knife gouged a long scratch in his ceramite armour.

  ‘Stop! Stop!’ shouted Udermais in despair. He backed away as his brothers hacked each other down. He made a grab of Bardan to pull him back, dien Fan, but they were half-hearted attempts, slowed by the knowledge that to arrest one was to take sides and doom the other.