Wrath of Iron

by Chris Wraight

  The Codicier was torn in two, his torso rent cleanly apart in a bloody flail of gore and broken ceramite. The pieces crashed to the ground, followed by a rain of wet slaps as his eviscerated entrails followed him down.

  The daemon swung around, doused in blood and buffeted by the roaring, spitting streams of silver fire from the remaining three Librarians. It threw its tortured head back and uttered a gargling cry of triumph, soaking up the furious volleys of warp matter as they exploded against its flanks.

  ‘Magnificent!’ it bellowed, revelling in the carnage it had caused even as it suffered under the torrents of forking energy. Blood ran down its scarred chin, and its long tongue lapped it up. ‘Give me more, Gorgon-spawn! Give me more!’

  Malik and Djeze each withdrew steadily, maintaining the lines of blistering force from their staffs, unwilling to be caught within strike-range of the creature’s claws.

  Telach felt a cold dread pass through him. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see the rift pulsing. The empty space between the ring of witchfire had distorted further, as if it were bulging outwards. The daemon-creature’s presence in the world was drawing the others towards it. For the first time, he saw shapes on the other side – writhing shapes, pressing up against the thinning walls of matter.

  Do not withdraw!+ he ordered the Codiciers, feeding more energy to his crackling staff and breaking into a run towards the towering daemon. +It can endure this fire. Move in – get closer.+

  As he ran, the last bolts of warp energy crashed into their target. Telach withdrew his power to the staff itself, coating it in a sheen of magnesium-white. The length of it blazed with sudden brilliance, transforming into a force-weapon of concentrated luminescence.

  ‘For Manus!’ he roared, breaking into a rare battle-cry as he lumbered heavily into range.

  The daemon lurched towards him in turn, swaying and giggling even as its cloak of flayed flesh crisped away in the deluge.

  ‘Manus?’ it laughed, frothing at the mouth with insane glee, bringing its talons into position and clanging them together. ‘I was there when he died, Iron Hand.’

  Then it broke into a shambling, rocking charge, thrashing its arms as it came in a whirl of blades and blood.

  ‘We killed him,’ it mocked, bursting through the sheets of aether-flame. ‘We will kill you.’

  Chapter Twenty-One

  The Mechanicus crawler made its way slowly across the Gorgas, rocking and swaying as it crunched through the remnants of civilisation. Ahead of it, vast and magnificent even in ruin, reared the burning spires of Shardenus Prime. Lightning flickered across the heights, leaping down from swirling bands of cloud. The pinnacles of the spires blazed furiously, shining like blood-red beacons across the landscape of desolation.

  Ys looked at it impassively. Her throne was hoisted on suspensors and remained reasonably level during the passage, but even the slightest jolts annoyed her.

  She was ashamed, and she was still angry. Progress was too slow, and the chances of achieving what she needed to achieve diminished as every minute passed.

  She glanced at the signals from her skitarii escorts. Some of her tracked units had pushed ahead, looking for a faster way through the wreckage.

  They wouldn’t find one; her cogitators had plotted the most efficient route on the basis of detailed schematics. She would have to be patient. She would have to sit, immobile, locked inside the huge metal shell of her mobile fortress, and wait for the kilometres to pass.

  I will kill him for this, she determined, gripping the sides of her throne with metal fingers. The judgement is just; Mars will understand.

  She sat on the throne, watching through the noosphere projections as the spires drew slowly nearer, marking where the Iron Hands had broken in and gauging where their fighting must have taken them.

  Her resolve hardened; it couldn’t come quickly enough.

  I will kill him.

  Telach leapt into the air, using his servo-powered legs to catapult him upwards. As he hurtled towards the daemon he swung his staff round, lashing out at its unholy flesh.

  He had to move quickly. For all its shambolic appearance, the creature was the fastest enemy he had ever faced. Its blades whirled around him in a flickering, wavering dance, sometimes seeming to shift in and out of existence entirely. The gaudy array of grotesquerie was a distraction, masking a terrifying level of power within. Its muscles, bursting out from behind cracked armour plate, were a terrible mix of genhanced, warp-wound strength.

  Even as he fought for his life, conscious that the rift was growing with every second, desperate thoughts raced through Telach’s mind. He had been party to lore forbidden to most; he knew the names of ancient traitors from the old Legions. He knew much of the history of his Chapter, even fragments of those forgotten days, millennia distant, when primarchs had walked among mortal men.

  He did not know enough. The lore was incomplete. He did not know the name of the creature he faced.

  Telach’s power staff crashed against the daemon’s claws, hurling fresh gouts of warp fire in all directions. Its talons swept back towards him and Telach veered away, smashing its forearms aside with his staff.

  The creature’s hide ruptured, exposing a flickering skein of kaleidoscopic sinew. Fresh purple blood burst out, popping and cascading over the glowing matter beneath.

  By then Djeze and Malik had closed in again, wielding their lightning-crowned staffs and hammering them into the daemon’s body. Their skill was prodigious, their bravery absolute, their commitment total. They fought as all the Emperor’s Angels did – brutal, fast, deadly. Their bionics made them stronger again, bolstering the momentum of every blow and speeding up their reactions by precious nanoseconds. The power of the aether rushed to their aid, enveloping them in curtains of consuming fire, flaring out with each staff-strike and raging against the unholy aegis surrounding the daemon.

  It wasn’t enough. For all their speed, the creature of Chaos was faster. For all their strength, it was stronger. For all their warp-mastery, it was far, far more steeped in the sorcery of the immaterium.

  It punched out with its taloned fist, rocking Telach back on his heels and denting his breastplate. As he tumbled away, he saw talons whistle round, cracking into Djeze’s helm. The acolyte went reeling, stumbling backwards across the tilted, broken landscape.

  Then the daemon switched direction again, swivelling effortlessly. For all its demented, carefree laughter, every move it made was judged with deceptive precision. Malik charged in, bringing the tip of his staff down and releasing another torrent of spitting argent fire.

  The barrage sprayed across the daemon’s leading leg, sending a stream of purple blood splattering across metal and ceramite, but the move had been foreseen. Before Telach could close in again, before Djeze could regain his feet, the daemon opened up its gauntlet.

  The movement was perfect. Lilac energy exploded on impact, ripping through the ash and sending a resounding snap across the plateau. Malik was hurled through the air, careering wildly away from the explosion, his staff broken and his armour smoking. Even as he was cast aside, the daemon opened up its other fist, hurling a flaming ball of purple warp matter sailing after him. The second explosion was greater than the first – a monumental boom that engulfed the stricken Iron Hand in a welter of raging, consuming destruction.

  His armour broke open, exposing the flesh within to the pure power of the warp. Telach heard Malik scream briefly before the Codicier landed heavily, colliding with the charred girders of the plateau. The sound was cut off by a sickening snap, and Malik’s limbs fell limp. A length of adamantium rod the width of a man’s forearm protruded from his cracked chest, impaling him to the summit of the spire.

  By then Telach was moving again, wielding his force-staff two-handed. He rammed it down on the daemon’s tattered thigh, plunging the tip through the sorcerous muscle and burning it up
with crackling warp fire. It reacted instantly, sweeping its claws around to knock him clear. Telach ducked, feeling the killing edges sweep above him by a finger’s width, before thrusting the staff upwards, aiming at the monster’s heart.

  A little faster, and he would have done it. The daemon parried the blow just in time, bringing its gauntlet across to lock against the staff. It grasped the metal, squeezing it tightly and forcing it away. Telach pushed back, feeling his arms burn under the enormous pressure. He felt blood and sweat run down his temples.

  The daemon leered over him, drooling from cracked lips.

  ‘Excellent,’ it crooned, piling on more weight. ‘I shall relish bleeding you last of all.’

  Then Djeze roared back into combat, his gauntlets streaming with psychic energy. The Codicier leapt high, vaulting over a ridge of smouldering masonry and jabbing down with his staff. The blazing tip of it hit hard, driving deep into the daemon’s armoured shoulder. Opalescent fire surged out, crashing across all of them in a glittering, torrential deluge.

  The daemon released the pressure on Telach’s staff and was beaten back, laughing all the while. Strips of skin from its sutured face were ripped away, revealing bloody muscle tissue underneath. More armour fragments were blasted clear. It roared with pleasure from every bloody wound it received, revelling in every impact and fresh bite of warp flame.

  Freed to move again, Telach swung his staff around, building momentum. He unleashed a fresh torrent of crashing, roaring destruction, adding his fire to Djeze’s in a brutal, spitting conflagration. Under the twin assaults, the daemon withdrew further, limping awkwardly, thrashing its limbs wildly amid the deluge as if swimming through it.

  Telach pursued, sending bolts crashing into its retreating torso. Both Librarians unleashed all they had left, emptying themselves against the daemon. The air itself seemed to carve open, riven apart by the elemental forces loosed through it. Stabs of lightning intensified, drawn by the enormous clash of energies, crackling and snapping around them like solar flares.

  Even that was not enough. The daemon slowly regained its balance, and its demented laughter morphed into something more sinister, more purposeful. It pushed back against the veils of silver fire with bleeding hands. It lowered its broken pauldrons and strode forwards, step by step, back towards the two Iron Hands.

  It had been badly hurt – a long gash ran down its disintegrating face, making its jaw sag horribly. A smoking hole had been torn in its midriff just below the shattered aquila, exposing blackened, pulsing organs within. Its tongue flickered back and forth, snaking across exposed bone and metal plate.

  ‘This has been exquisite,’ it gurgled.

  Then it lunged, bursting through the crackling arcs of warp lightning, sweeping towards Telach like an avenging angel. Djeze intervened, and was blasted aside, thrown down with a contemptuous swipe of a bleeding gauntlet.

  Telach planted himself, holding his staff before him and feeding it all the power he could muster. A glimmering shield formed in front of him, and he felt his armour servos stiffen against the coming impact.

  The daemon thundered into him, wrapped in a glowing nimbus of purple flame, its claws sweeping back and forth in a blur of blinding movement.

  Telach parried furiously, though the force of the blows nearly shattered his forearms. He was driven back, stumbling as the massive creature hammered at his defences. The shield before him buckled, ripped, and then splintered. He felt a fist thud heavily into his flank, cracking his armour and breaking the bionics beneath. He spun away, only for talons to rake down his helm. His right eye-lens cracked, and a rapier-thin claw gouged into his eye-socket.

  Telach tried desperately to summon up psychic power, but his staff was ripped away from him. He punched out, clenching his gauntlet and going for the daemon’s chest. The daemon’s right claw shot down, taking his left arm off at the elbow. Its blades sliced cleanly through the metal workings of Telach’s armour, breaking the pistons and gears in a cloud of electric discharge.

  Telach fell heavily, crashing on to his back. He felt his consciousness waver, and blood ran down the inside of his helm like oil. He struck out blindly with his right hand, and missed. He felt huge, warm fingers grip his throat, pressed against the armour of his gorget and pushing inwards.

  Telach’s left eye blinked blood away, and his vision briefly cleared. The daemon’s face hung over him.

  Its skin was hanging from its bones, suspended by stray lines of surgical wire. Blood ran freely down across its hide, pooling and bubbling in the folds of flayed flesh and shattered armour pieces. Jewels clanged on their twisted chains, each of them lit from within by twisting flames. Some of them were round and smooth, with the sheen of xenos artifice on their surfaces.

  The daemonic face swung lower, and fluid dripped from the exposed flesh onto Telach’s helm. Its breath stank of incense and musk.

  ‘You have forgotten so much,’ it said.

  Telach looked into its rheumy eyes, knowing the end had come. He was pinned. His hearts thudded in unison, going into overdrive just to keep him alive.

  ‘You do not know who I am,’ said the daemon-creature. Its voice was suddenly petulant. ‘You do not even know the names of your brothers I killed. Why have you forgotten so much? Why do you not remember?’

  Telach felt fresh blood wash hotly across his torso, and his vision briefly went dark again. He concentrated furiously, trying to stay conscious at the last, determined to meet his death with his eyes open.

  ‘I do not need to know your name,’ he rasped. ‘You are just another traitor.’

  The daemon roared with anger. It curled its claws into fists and slammed them into Telach’s body, denting his armour and beating the Librarian further down into the crushed and twisted terrain.

  ‘Santar knew!’ the daemon screamed. ‘He knew who I was! He knew that it was Julius Kaesoron, First of the Emperor’s Children, who had beaten him! You are shadows of what he was! You are sick! Where is the sport in fighting such diminished creatures?’ It drew its talons back higher, poised to attack, and fire ran along the length of the claws.

  ‘Ferrus would weep,’ it said, ‘to see what you have become.’

  Telach blearily watched the points plunge down at him. He saw his distorted reflection in the metal as the polished edges rushed towards his neck.

  The blade that saved him came out of nowhere, and crackled with a blue disruptor field. It locked with the daemon’s claw just above Telach’s helm, throwing glittering illumination across his battered armour and holding firm.

  ‘He never wept,’ came Rauth’s machine-growl.

  Then the clan commander threw the daemon’s claws back up from Telach’s neck, strode across his battered body and launched into combat.

  Nethata was slammed against the wall of the tank’s cockpit, and his head bounced painfully from a metal bulkhead.

  He pushed himself back into his seat, regretting having released the restraints only minutes earlier. He pulled the strapping back across his chest, and the tank’s tilting floor rocked back to something like horizontal.

  ‘What was that?’ he snapped.

  ‘Our escort,’ replied the tank’s commander. ‘They’re finding our range; I’m moving up.’

  The tank’s chassis swayed again as the engines coughed and growled. Nethata twisted around in his seat, squinting into his auspex and trying to make sense of the readings that flooded across the tiny screen.

  If he’d been in Malevolentia he’d have had a whole bank of pict readouts to look at. He’d have had dedicated comms units, and tactical overlays, and everything else a field commander needed to coordinate a massed armour advance.

  But Malevolentia was gone. It had taken a terrific amount of punishment before it had succumbed. Its armour was the best in the formation, and had absorbed a number of direct hits before the end.

  Heriat had j
ust kept advancing through all of it, even when the whole roof of his vehicle was on fire and the main cannon had been knocked out. Nethata had watched it all unfold on a tiny, grainy vid-feed all the while, powerless to intervene.

  He’d tried to open up a comm-link. He’d not wanted to try to persuade Heriat to withdraw – that would have been pointless. He’d not wanted to berate him, nor query his motives, nor demand control of his army back, all of which would have served no purpose either.

  To the extent that he’d had any plan at all, he’d wanted to say that he understood, and to assure him that the two of them needn’t die as enemies. He’d wanted to relive, just for a moment, some fragment of the shared memories they had accumulated over many long, difficult years.

  Perhaps Heriat wouldn’t have listened. In any case, the link hadn’t worked – either Malevolentia’s systems were damaged, or he was being blocked.

  So Nethata had watched, mute, as the final beams of light had shot out, piercing the super-heavy’s armour plate and striking at the engines within. The end had not been quick – more shots had been needed to ignite the fuel tanks that finally brought the machine to a flaming, shuddering stop.

  The tank’s heavy bolters had kept firing the whole time. The engines had stayed running, pushing it ever closer to the semi-ruined walls of the Capitolis. Before he eventually died, Heriat had done more damage to his targets than the next ten units combined. Nethata knew that if any annals of the campaign on Shardenus were ever compiled, Heriat would be recorded as a hero, just as he himself would be painted as a traitor.

  He couldn’t argue with that, even though it made a mockery of his decades of decorated service. Such was the price of giving in to pride, of forgetting what the place of individuals was within the boundless war machine of the Emperor.