'Then join me!' bellowed Honsou, gripping Grendel's shoulder guards. 'Join me and avenge this betrayal!'
Months of bitterness at the deaths of his men rose to the surface on Grendel's face and he nodded. 'Aye. Toramino will pay for this. My warriors and I are yours to command!'
Honsou turned and with Cadaras Grendel beside him roared, 'Iron within!'
'Iron without!' came the answering bellow from every Iron Warrior, shouted over and over again.
And Honsou knew he had them.
Uriel watched the two Titans collapse and, amazingly, heard the sounds of battle fade away. Had Khalan-Ghol fallen or had Honsou defeated the escalade? It was impossible to tell, and they would only know when they reached the top.
Their ascent up the cliff-face had been heart-poundingly fraught, as the Unfleshed had carried them swiftly up slopes Uriel would have sworn were unclimbable. Their strength was prodigious and their endurance phenomenal.
In the sudden silence, Uriel could hear the crackling flames from the burning vehicles at the foot of the mountain and the occasional explosion from a shell as it detonated in the heat. The infrastructure of Berossus's army burned and as the quietness stretched on, Uriel guessed that die attack had failed to take the fortress. Warriors who had fought their way through a breach were so fuelled on adrenaline and rage that looting and slaughter usually followed in the wake of a successful storming.
But silence... that was new to Uriel.
The Lord of the Unfleshed clambered over an overhanging splinter of rock, swinging his massive body up and over the lip of the plateau and Uriel had his first look at the bloody ruin of the final assault.
'Emperor preserve us!' breathed Pasanius as he joined Uriel.
'Even the storm of the citadel was nothing compared to this...' added Leonid as the fused twins deposited him next to the Space Marines.
The wreckage of a destroyed army lay strewn before the shattered remains of the spire's defensive wall, itself no more than jagged stumps of black stone jutting from the ground like rotten teeth in a diseased gum. Blazing tanks and bodies were strewn about the plateau: some crushed flat, others hollowed out by explosions. Pyres of ammunition sparked and blew, and the remains of the Titans burned with a bright glare of plasma.
Gun barrels the size of cooling towers lay cracked and useless amid the debris and even had anyone been keeping watch on the battlefield, the smoke and flames would conceal them from detection.
'Who won?' asked Leonid.
'I'm not sure...' said Pasanius, following Uriel through the corpse-choked rubble.
He bent to retrieve a fallen bolter with his remaining hand and checked its load before saying, 'Find yourself a weapon, colonel, and scavenge as much ammunition as you can carry.'
Leonid nodded and scooped up a battered, but serviceable lasgun, some charged clips and a bandolier of grenades. As he did so, his chest hiked in pain and he was bent double by a coughing fit. He wiped his hand across his mouth, seeing brackish, matter-flecked blood coat his palm before wiping it clear on what remained of his dusty, sky-blue uniform jacket.
The Unfleshed capered across the battlefield, stooping to feed amid the cadavers, tearing limbs from bodies and devouring the still-warm meat straight from the bone. The Lord of the Unfleshed lifted the limbless corpse of an Iron Warrior and tore off its breastplate, biting into the chest and tearing off a great mouthful of flesh.
Even though it was the body of an enemy, Uriel was appalled and said, 'No, do not eat this meat.'
The Lord of the Unfleshed turned, his face alight with horrid appetite and savage glee at this chance to feast on an Iron Warrior. 'Is meat. Fresh.'
'No!' said Uriel, more forcefully.
'No?' replied the Lord of the Unfleshed. 'Why?'
'It is corrupt.'
Seeing the creature's incomprehension, he said, 'It is bad.'
'No... is good.' said the Lord of the Unfleshed, holding out the opened corpse of the Iron Warrior. The ribcage had been bitten through and the warrior's internal organs were laid bare.
Uriel shook his head. 'If you love the Emperor, you will not eat this meat.'
'Love the Emperor!' bellowed the Lord of the Unfleshed and Uriel winced, thinking that the creature's voice could be heard even through the fury of a battle.
'Many iron men dead.' growled the Lord of the Unfleshed, angrily. 'Much meat.'
'Yes, but we are not here for meat.' said Uriel. 'We are here to kill iron men and flesh mothers, yes?'
The Lord of the Unfleshed looked set to argue the point, but with an angry snarl dropped the half-eaten body and said, 'Kill iron men now?'
'Yes, kill iron men.' said Uriel as he heard the sound of approaching engines from within the fortress. 'But we need to get to the heart of the fortress first.'
Uriel turned as Pasanius and Leonid approached, bearing guns, ammunition and grenades. Pasanius unslung a bolter from his shoulder and handed it to Uriel together with several magazines of shells.
'It galls me that we must use the weapons of the Enemy.' said Uriel as he slammed a magazine home in the bolter.
'I suppose there's a certain poetic justice in using their own guns against them.' said Pasanius as he awkwardly loaded and cocked the weapon.
'What's that noise?' asked Leonid as he finally heard the rumbling engine sound drawing yet closer.
'It is our way in.' said Uriel, gesturing to the bodies surrounding them. 'I want you to conceal yourself amongst the dead Iron Warriors. We will lie close to one another, but must make sure we're amongst the dead.'
Uriel turned to face the Lord of the Unfleshed and hurriedly said, 'Have the tribe lie down with the dead iron men. You understand? Lie with the dead.'
'Lie down with meat?'
'Yes.' confirmed Uriel. 'Lie down with the iron men, and when we get up we will be where we need to be.'
The Lord of the Unfleshed nodded slowly and made his way through the tribe, grunting and pointing to piles of corpses.
As the Unfleshed began lying down amongst the dead Chaos Space Marines, Pasanius said, 'You know they'll feed on the bodies.'
'I know.' said Uriel, 'but there is little we can do about it.'
'Truly the Emperor does work in mysterious ways.' added Leonid.
Uriel tried to put aside the thought of the Unfleshed's cannibalistic tendencies as they located a group of shredded Iron Warriors arranged on the edges of a shell crater, and secreted themselves amongst their corpses.
Even as he dragged an Iron Warrior's body over his own he saw their way into the fortress emerge from the rolling banks of smoke that hugged the ground.
Huge bulldozers, red and hateful, with tall banner poles hung with eight-pointed stars and iron tenders hitched behind them came from the Halls of the Savage Morticians.
They came to gather up the dead for crushing and feeding to the daemonculaba.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Dead eyes in a skull with the top blown off stared at him, sightless and fixed in an expression of surprise. No matter where Uriel turned in the blood-filled container, he could not escape the staring eyes of the dead. Scooped up with the rest of the corpses by the daemonic bulldozers, he had been unceremoniously dumped in the tender by the growling machine as it performed its automated and graceless coroner's task.
Bodies piled upon bodies, blood and entrails spilling to the sloshing floor and Uriel fought to claw his way to the surface, lest he drown in the stagnant blood of the fallen. He coughed red as he pushed his way clear of the bodies, keeping his head below the level of the tender's railings for fear of discovery.
The hot stink of blood filled his nostrils and slippery bodies jostled him as the trailer bumped over the uneven ground. He rolled onto his back, craning his neck left and right to see as much as he could without raising his head too far. He saw the shattered remains of a high wall pass, its fabric riddled with shell impacts and looking as though it had been struck by an orbital bombardment. Smoke curled, fat and black, from
pyres and Uriel could hear chanting voices shouting from afar.
They had penetrated the walls of Khalan-Ghol and now just had to stay concealed until these bulldozers took them back to the nightmare Halls of the Savage Morticians and the daemonculaba.
A cadaver bobbed from beneath the blood and Uriel made to push it away when it blinked at him.
'Imperator! I thought you were a corpse!' exclaimed Uriel when he saw it was Pasanius.
'Not yet.' grinned Pasanius, spitting blood.
'Where is Leonid?'
'Here.' said a voice from the other side of the tender. 'By the High Lord's balls, this is almost worse than being flushed from the chambers below.'
Uriel raised an eyebrow and Leonid shrugged. 'Well, maybe not.'
'If I'm right, these will take us right where we want to go.' said Uriel. 'We just have to bear it for a little longer.'
'How long do you think it'll take to get there?' asked Leonid, almost afraid of the answer.
Uriel shook his head. 'I do not know for sure, but I do not believe these machines will be confounded by the magicks protecting this place, so not long would be my guess.'
Leonid nodded resignedly and shut his eyes, trying to block out the dreadful smell of the dead bodies.
As it transpired, the bulldozers' journey through the twisting interior of Khalan-Ghol took perhaps another hour, travelling along grisly thoroughfares of sacrificial altars, winding between dark-armoured bunkers and through the maze of manufactorum that the warrior band had become so lost in.
The vast shadow of the gate of the tower of iron at the centre of the fortress passed over them, and once again they were deep in the heart of Honsou's lair. Distant hammer blows and the grinding clanking of nearby machines filled the gloom, and Uriel heard the clicking footsteps of unseen creatures as they filed past the growling bulldozers. Sickly yellow light came and went as they passed along wide, rockcrete tunnels lit by flickering lumo-strips.
Eventually, Uriel heard the thudding beat of a monstrous heart growing louder and shared an uneasy glance with his companions. The booming bass note was all too familiar.
'The Heart of Blood.' said Pasanius.
Uriel nodded, his muscles tensing as he heard clicking and wheezing mechanical footsteps approaching. The bulldozer ground to a halt with a juddering lurch. A tall silhouette loomed over the edge of the tender and Uriel snapped his eyes shut, recognising the dead skin features of one of the Savage Morticians.
He remained utterly immobile as he felt metal pincers jab into the tender. Hissing claws turned bodies within the pooled and now sticky blood. Corpses rolled and flopped in the tender as the Savage Mortician inspected the dead for some unknown purpose.
He fought back a gasp of revulsion as he felt a claw close on his leg and turn him over, fighting to remain still as his flesh was jabbed and probed.
The Savage Mortician clicked and whistled in its incomprehensible language, presumably to another of its fell, surgical kin, before releasing his limb and clanking off on some other errand. Uriel kept his eyes shut and his breathing shallow until the bulldozer set off once again and they had put some distance between them and the hellish surgeons.
'Holy Throne.' he whispered, sickened by the Savage Mortician's touch.
Their nightmarish journey continued into the chamber of screams, the terrible beat of the daemonic Heart of Blood dulling his senses once more. Even over the heavy thuds of the Heart of Blood, Uriel heard the rumbling whine of heavy machinery as well as the grinding crack of bones and wet squelch of pulverised flesh.
'Be ready!' he hissed. 'I think we have arrived!'
Pasanius and Leonid nodded as Uriel slid himself over the carpet of bodies and raised his head slowly over the edge of the tender.
Sure enough, they were close to the great crushing machine that ground up the dead Chaos Space Marines and transformed them into genetic matter for the daemonculaba to feast upon.
But as before, his gaze was drawn upwards to the centre of the chamber, to the massive form of the Heart of Blood, the daemonic creature that hung suspended above the lake of blood on a trio of great chains.
He tore his eyes from the imprisoned daemon and saw that they were part of a great, curving procession of red bulldozers parked next to the iron ramp that led up to the gantry of the great, daemonic wombs. Their hellish conveyance was but one of perhaps a dozen or more of the bulldozers, lurching in fits and starts towards the blood-smeared conveyor that led to the sticky crushers and rollers. A pulsing forest of pipes pumped a pinkish, gristly matter from the machine to the cages of the daemonculaba and Uriel felt his gorge rise at such a blasphemy against what had once been the sacred flesh of the Emperor's body.
Vacuum-suited servitor mutants on a raised platform stabbed wide hooks attached to lengths of chain into the dead flesh in the tenders then wound the chains through heavy pulley mechanisms. They worked quickly and efficiently, loading the corpses onto the conveyor in a manner that spoke of many years of repetition.
Beside the conveyor, Uriel saw a cruciform frame holding what looked like a rack of meat, positioned close enough to be spattered by blood spraying from the grinding rollers. Uriel paid it no mind as he searched for any of the dark-robed monsters that were macabre lords of this place.
Seeing none, he eased his body up and over the edge of the tender, dropping lightly to the wet, churned ground.
He tapped the tender and said, 'Come on.'
Pasanius clambered to join him, cleaning blood from the action of his weapon and wedging the bolter between his knees to rack the slide. Leonid followed suit, wiping blood from his eyes and scouring the vent-breech of his lasgun.
The three warriors crouched in the shadow of the tender, breathing heavily and clearing their bodies of as much coagulated blood as they could.
'Well, we're in.' said Leonid. 'Now what?'
Uriel glanced around the edge of the tender. 'First we destroy that machine. If the Iron Warriors cannot feed the daemonculaba genetic material...'
'Honsou will not be able to create more Iron Warriors!' finished Leonid.
'And there will be no more of the Unfleshed.' added Pasanius.
Uriel nodded. 'And after that, well, we make for the ramp behind us and slay as many of the daemoncu-laba as we can before the Savage Morticians kill us.'
His companions were silent until eventually Leonid said, 'Good plan.'
Uriel grinned and said, 'Glad you approve.'
Pasanius put down his bolter and offered his left hand to Uriel, saying, 'No matter what happens, I regret nothing that has led us here, captain.'
Uriel took his friend's hand and shook it, touched by the simple affection of the sentiment, and said, 'Nor I, my friend. No matter what, we will have done some good here.'
'For what it's worth.' said Leonid. 'I wish I'd never even heard of this damn place, let alone been dragged here. But I am here, and that's the end of it, so what are we waiting for? Let's do this.'
Uriel racked the slide on his own bolter and nodded.
But before he could do anything more, he heard a great, bestial howl that was answered by a demented chorus of roars and bellows that echoed from the chamber's ceiling.
He rushed to the edge of the tender in time to see the Lord of the Unfleshed rear from hiding in a fountain of blood and limbs, and tear one of the mutant butchers in two with his bare hands.
The Unfleshed erupted from the blood-filled tenders in a thrashing mass of knotted, deformed limbs, ripping into the mutants feeding the crushing machine with the frenzy of predators who had held their anger and hunger in check for far too long.
Uriel watched as the Lord of the Unfleshed's massive jaws snapped shut on a screaming mutant, biting him in two at the waist and silencing his screams forever.
The beast Uriel had fought at the outflow pulled the arms from another foe before hurling its victim into the crushers of the grinding machine. The Unfleshed slaughtered a score of the servants of the Savage Morticians in
the blink of an eye, and Uriel was horrified and grateful at the same time for their savagery.
'Damn it.' cursed Uriel. 'There goes the element of surprise!'
'Now what?' asked Pasanius.
'It will only be a matter of time until the Savage Morticians come to investigate, so come on. We don't have long.'
Uriel and the others broke from cover, running over to the roaring machine that had a potent aura of malice and hunger to it, its dark purpose imbuing it with a loathsome evil. The sooner it was destroyed the better, knew Uriel, as he drew near and a clawing sickness built in his gut.
Leonid staggered as he approached and coughed a flood of gristly vomit, the daemon machine's vile presence too much for his cancer-ridden body to bear.
'Uriel!' he shouted, holding out the bandolier of grenades he had taken from the rain of Berossus's army on the mountainside.
Uriel snatched the grenades and ran towards the machine, passing the cruciform frame that held the dripping rack of meat, sparing it but a glance as he did so.
He pulled up short and turned to face it as he realised that it was hot a rack of meat at all.
It was Obax Zakayo.
Uriel felt nothing but revulsion at the sight of Obax Zakayo's ruined, mutilated body, but part of him wondered at the cruelty of creatures that could do this to another living soul. The Iron Warrior - or what was left of him - was pinned to the frame and drooled thick ropes of saliva from the corner of his twisted lips. Trailing clear tubes pumped life-sustaining chemicals into his ravaged frame.
'Guilliman's oath.' whispered Uriel as the Iron Warrior raised his beaten and bruised face towards him.
'Ventris...' he gasped, sudden hope filling his watering eyes. 'Kill me, I beg of you.'
Uriel ignored Obax Zakayo as Pasanius attempted to form the Unfleshed into some kind of defensive perimeter, and snapped grenade after grenade from the bandolier. The machine roared as he approached, filthy blue oilsmoke venting from corroded grilles and an angry bellow growling from its depths.
Warhammer - Ultramarines 03 - Dead Sky, Black Sun (McNeill, Graham) Page 27