Up ahead, already at the narrowest point of the pathway, barely wide enough for a Rhino to pass through, Gabriel could see his scouts. They had paused momentarily, and he could see them looking from side to side, scanning the rock faces for signs of trigger mechanisms or mines. So far, there had been nothing, and Gabriel was beginning to feel uneasy.
The makeshift road had been chewed up by the passage of a number of heavy vehicles. The scouts had noted the wide tracks of Rhinos and the bouncing intermittent marks of assault bikes in the dust. But the eldar seemed to have left no trail at all, if indeed they had even passed this way.
Corallis raised his arm, indicating that the pass was secure. The sergeant had insisted that he should lead the scouting party despite the loss of his arm. He was determined that no other Marine should suffer the fate of Mikaelus in his place, and Gabriel had not the heart to argue with him. Besides, Corallis was the best scout in the entire Third Company, and Gabriel was pleased to have his eyes to survey the pass.
With a sudden cutting motion, Corallis changed his signal, pulling his arm down in a swipe across his body and drawing his bolt pistol. The other scouts dived for cover at the edges of the path, rolling behind boulders and bracing their weapons against them. Gabriel could see the movement from his vantage point on top of the stationary command Rhino further back down the pathway, but it took a fraction of a second for the sound to reach him, echoing back and forth through the sheer crevice.
All at once, he could see flickers of green catching the last rays of sunlight, high in the cliff face; and there, through the eye of the narrowest point of the pass, he could see a group of sleek, green grav-tanks slide into place. So this was the trap, thought Gabriel calmly. This we can deal with.
“Corallis,” he hissed into his armour’s vox-unit. “Keep in the cover at the edges of the pass—the Typhoons are coming through. Tanthius—get the Terminators into the breach behind the Typhoons. And Matiel—see what you can do about those snipers up on the cliff face.”
As he finished talking, everything happened at once. The Typhoon land speeders roared into life, accelerating to attack speed almost instantaneously and flashing through the pass amidst a hail of fire, engaging the Falcon tanks on the other side. The jump packs of the Space Marines erupted, pushing the squadron into the air as they traced their bolter fire against the cliff faces, splintering the stone and sending avalanches of rock tumbling down into the pass.
Sergeant Tanthius broke into a loping run, waving his arm to the rest of the Terminators to follow him into the breach. As he passed the scouts, who were stabbing out rapid volleys of fire and then ducking back into cover, Tanthius saw that the pass opened up into a wider valley on the other side. There were three Falcon tanks arrayed across the space and at least two squads of wraithguard lying in wait. The Blood Ravens’ Typhoons were skidding and darting under heavy fire, trailing threads of smoke from their engines.
The Terminators fanned out into a firing line and braced their feet into the rocky ground. As one, they opened up with storm bolters and assault cannons, strafing a line of fire across the wraithguard squads as they started to run towards the Marines. Tanthius levelled a careful shot into the elongated headpiece of one of the alien warriors, cracking the helmet but not stopping its charge. Another three shots smashed into its head, shattering the strange carapace completely, but still it ran, as though its head had been mere ornamentation.
One of the Typhoons banked sharply to avoid overshooting the Falcon tanks, but as it turned it presented its thin undercarriage to the eldar line and they punished it with a volley of las-fire that blew it immediately into a tumbling fireball. A second Typhoon burst through the burning wreckage of the first, its heavy bolter sputtering, spitting a typhoon missile directly into the sloping prow of the offending tank. The missile skidded across the sleek armoured panels and slid off into the air, spiralling harmlessly into an explosion against the cliff face beyond.
The Typhoon flashed in between the tanks, clearing the eldar line and then banking into a tight turn to attack it again from the rear. Another missile jetted out of the land speeder. This time it punched into the thinner, oblique armour at the back of the tank, ripping through into the Falcon’s interior where it detonated ferociously. The tank bucked and spasmed before exploding outwards from within, scattering fragments of the chassis across the valley floor.
Meanwhile, Gabriel had ducked down into the roof-hatch and his Rhino was rolling through the narrow point of the pass with its storm bolters stripping a constant line of fire. It came to a halt in the midst of the line of Terminators, emptying the command squad onto the deck behind it. Gabriel drew his chainsword into his right hand and his bolt pistol into his left and called out to his men. “For the Great Father and the Emperor!”
A great chorus of voices echoed back through the narrow crevice. “For the Great Father and the Emperor!” And the small Blood Ravens’ strike force was now fully deployed, as gouts of flame, bolter fire and coruscating blue energy lanced out of the command squad towards the advancing wraithguard.
Above the fray, hovering on bursts of flame from their jump packs, Matiel’s Marines were spraying bolter shells against the rock faces as the eldar snipers leaped and danced from ledge to ledge, evading the lethal barrage but unable to return fire.
“FARSEER,” SAID FLAETRIU, hastening into a bow. “Jaerielle requests support. He fears that the Chaos Marines will soon overrun his position and occupy the site of the menhir.”
Macha nodded slowly. She knew that this would happen, and she was prepared for it. “Send a squad of Warp Spiders to assist Jaerielle. Instruct them to rig the menhir for detonation. If the defences fail, the forces of Chaos cannot be permitted to possess the knowledge hidden in that marker.”
The ranger nodded quickly. Warp Spiders carried warp jump generators in their armoured carapaces, enabling them to slip in and out of even the most secure locations, flitting in and out of the warp at will. A squadron could jump through the webway straight to the site of the menhir without having to penetrate the line of Chaos Marines assaulting it. But there were not many of them, and certainly not enough to turn the tide of the battle on the summit of Mount Korath.
“The Blood Ravens are being held down at the Pass of Korath, farseer, but the conflict is a bloody one on both sides. You were right that it would be hard to ambush these mon-keigh,” reported Flaetriu, as Macha turned her gaze away from the flashes of fire just visible up at the summit, and he stared down the mountain side where an explosion had just mushroomed into the air. The Biel-Tan were engaged on two fronts, and they could not win them both.
“Our priority must be the menhir, ranger. Withdraw the wraithguard through the webway portals and tell the Falcons to blow the pass. We need only delay the Blood Ravens long enough to ensure that the Chaos Marines cannot triumph,” ordered the farseer. “Our battle with the soldiers in red can wait for another time.”
LORD BALE SWEPT his scythe in a powerful arc, but Skrekrea was faster than the Chaos Marine. She leapt clear of the swing, spinning into a pirouette as she kicked out at the ugly, misshapen face of the Chaos Lord. The kick made firm contact with his jaw, turning his head in a fountain of blood from his mouth. But he did not even stagger under the blow. Instead, he brought the scythe back round in a rapid back-swing as he yelled in fury. The butt of the scythe struck Skrekrea in the side of the head just as she landed, knocking her off her feet, and Bale roared with rage.
As the scythe fell for the death blow, Bale let out a scream. A bright flash flared next to him and a rush of warp power poured out onto the mountain side. A heavily armoured eldar warrior leapt out of the warp-tear with a rotary death-spinner churning out lethal micro-filament threads that rattled and whipped into Bale’s armour. The Chaos Lord stepped back under the onslaught, swinging his blade wildly in the direction of the Warp Spider, Skrekrea momentarily forgotten.
Sindri was at his shoulder, stabbing out with a spike of purple energy from h
is force staff. The blast sizzled and cracked against the eldar’s armour, which was warded against the forces of the warp to permit travel through it. Nonetheless, the Warp Spider was thrown back by the energy, flying off his feet and crashing to the ground in front of the menhir.
The Chaos Marines were pressing in now, closing their grip around the dwindling forces of the eldar defenders, and Sindri could taste the power of the menhir in the air as he spun and stabbed with his staff. Bale was a roaring monster of fury, scything and slicing with his man-reaper, defining a frenetic sphere of death around him as he strode forward. The air around him was thick with bolter shells, clouds of shuriken, and flashes of las-fire, but he ignored it, focussed exclusively on his blade and the menhir. It was almost in reach now.
A blue fireball exploded into the back of one of the Chaos Marines in front of Bale, opening up a hole in reality and punching the screaming Marine through it into the immaterium. He just vanished into the heart of the explosion.
Bale and Sindri turned together, tracing the path of the fireball. Behind them, advancing up the mountain side, just clearing the crest of the summit, was a line of eldar soldiers. They were different from the ones defending the menhir—taller and more mechanical-looking: wraithguard. Interspersed in the line were three warlocks, each with crackling staffs of power that flared and jousted with energy, firing strips of blue lightning into the rear of the Alpha Legion’s forces. In the centre of the line was a female figure, bathed in an aura of light that seemed to hold her hovering above the ground. Her arms were outstretched to the heavens, and great balls of blue energy kept forming in front of her, then searing through the air into the Legionaries, picking off a different Marine with each blast.
“The farseer!” gasped Sindri, his voice cold with surprise as Bale’s Marines struggled to reorganise their deployment, striving to fight front and rear actions simultaneously.
“I thought you had arranged for her to be tied up elsewhere, sorcerer,” hissed Bale as his blade swept through the legs of a charging eldar warrior, sending his two halves tumbling to the ground in twitching heaps. The Chaos Lord was in the thick of the close- range melee, and he was enjoying himself. The eldar were suitable opponents, and the ground was slick with the blood of his Marines and eldar both. Blood for the Blood God, he thought with satisfaction. But he had no intention of dying on this mountain, and he was not fool enough to believe that even he could survive the crossfire of these deadly aliens.
Sindri planted his staff into the rock and started to mutter indistinctly to himself, letting a field of energy build around him, shielding him from the blasts of the eldar warlocks. “It is of no consequence, Lord Bale. We should retire from this theatre and let the Blood Ravens deal with the eldar. They will lead us to our goal in the end, and in the meantime they will bleed in our place.”
“You’d better be right about this, sorcerer,” said Bale, shooting a hate-filled glance at Sindri, as a pulse of las-fire flashed past his shoulder, singeing the acid-green paint from his armour. “I grow tired of your faltering schemes. These are not orks, and they will not be so easily manipulated.”
Bale took another look around and realised that he had no choice. The eldar defending the menhir had received reinforcements from somewhere, and they were all fighting with renewed spirit now that the farseer had come into view. And the wraithguard were advancing relentlessly from the rear, rapidly closing down Bale’s scope for movement. If they were going to get out of here, they had to go now.
With a tremendous leap, Jaerielle vaulted over the head of a Chaos Marine, dragging his blade across his throat under the helmet seal and slicing the head free. He landed lightly, pulling his sword clear and spinning it in a low arc towards the feet of another. His blade was met by a great curved scythe that shattered his sword with one sweep. But as Jaerielle discarded his blade and rolled for his gun, the giant Marine turned his back on him and strode away, shuriken ricocheting off his massive armour. Looking around, Jaerielle could see that the other Chaos Marines were also disengaging—their remaining assault bikes were already streaking off down the other side of the mountain.
Jaerielle, you will not pursue these forces. It was the farseer, speaking directly into his mind. Let them go. We have more pressing objectives to achieve. Remember, Jaerielle, war is a means to an end, not an end in itself. Let them go.
In his soul Jaerielle could feel the fire of combat burning, and he longed to pursue the disgusting mon-keigh—to cleanse the galaxy of their vile presence. The Biel-Tan may hate the bestial orks more than anything else in the galaxy, but the mon-keigh were a close second.
As you wish, farseer, he replied, fighting to control his urges, realising for the first time that he was thoroughly ensnared by the Path of the Warrior, unable to suppress his desire for combat and riddled with desperation to shed blood for Khaine, the Bloody-Handed God.
“WHERE DID THEY go?” asked Matiel as he crunched to the ground at Gabriel’s side, his jump pack spluttering into silence. The snipers had all been killed, or had vanished, and the rest of the eldar force seemed to have fled. They had suddenly disengaged and turned tail, as though conceding defeat. But they had not been beaten, reflected Gabriel uneasily. “What were those portals?” asked Gabriel, turning to Isador. The fighting had simply ceased, and the Blood Ravens had been left unsure about how to proceed. Gabriel had ordered caution, and his Marines had taken up tactical positions but had held their fire. They had refrained from pursuing the eldar; Gabriel suspected that their real fight was not with these mysterious aliens. He was simply pleased to see them leave.
The Falcon tanks had turned their guns on the cliff walls of the pass itself, causing a huge avalanche that blocked the crevice completely sealing the Blood Ravens on one side and most of the eldar force on the other. The wraithguard that had been trapped with the Space Marines had charged into a series of circular, stone portals and vanished—the portals exploding into fragments behind them. It had all happened in an instant.
“They are webway portals—temporary doorways from one point in space to another,” answered Isador. They are a unique eldar technology, captain, and incredibly unstable. Stepping through throws you instantaneously into the warp and then drags you out again into another place, where another portal is open. An unshielded soul would go insane,” he added, shaking his head at the apparent recklessness of the aliens.
The sudden silence in the valley was eerie, as the chatter of falling rocks and the dull echoes of footfalls gradually ceased. Gabriel looked around carefully at the scattering of dead and wounded Marines on the valley floor, together with the remains of ruined equipment and the broken figures of wraithguard.
“Get a dreadnought up here to clear away this rock-fall,” said Gabriel as Corallis hastened to report to his captain. “In the meantime, this is a good location to establish a field base. Get hold of Brom and tell him to bring a detachment of Tartarans to defend this pass. And make sure that those web-portals have really been destroyed—it would not do to have our eldar friends popping up in the middle of our base.”
“What about Toth?” asked Isador carefully.
“What about him? I’m sure that he will make his own way here in good time, but I am equally sure that I am not going to help him interfere with our purpose here,” replied Gabriel gruffly.
“And what exactly is our purpose here, Gabriel?” asked Isador.
“You were correct, Isador,” said Gabriel wryly “The fact that the eldar laid a trap for us does suggest that we are on the right path. We will follow the aliens to the summit of this mountain, and we will discover what they are so keen to hide from us. There is a bigger picture here, Isador, although we cannot yet see what it is. There are still two days before the warp storm arrives, and before then we will find out why Tartarus is so important to these aliens, and to our old foes, the Alpha Legion. And we will do it with or without the blessing of Inquisitor Toth,” said Gabriel firmly. “Corallis. Where is Prathios? I must pray,�
�� he added, turning away from the Librarian.
A whisper of wind gusted through the mountain pass as the red sun finally set, and Isador breathed it in like a breath of fresh air.
CHAPTER SEVEN
AS THE FIRST rays of the dawn pierced the heavy shadows of the mountain pass, Brom walked away from the newly completed field-station. He kicked at the pebbles on the ground, frustrated and discontented. Before the arrival of the Blood Ravens he had been the ranking officer on Tartarus—a commissar in all but title. It was not that he was not thankful for the help of the Adeptus Astartes in the war against the orks, but he had not anticipated the way in which the Blood Ravens captain would take control of all the military affairs of the planet after their victory.
The arrival of the inquisitor had not improved matters. Toth and Angelos had been at loggerheads from the start, squabbling over their powers and jurisdictions. They had even had the gall to argue about who would have control over the Tartarans in front of him. Brom shook his head in disbelief, kicking a stone so hard that it shattered against the rock-face at the side of the crevice. Who did they think he was? Treating him like a grunt. He was a colonel in the Emperor’s own Imperial Guard, and he deserved some respect. He had stood his ground against the uprisings of cultists and the raids of ork pirates, fighting for the honour of the Emperor Himself, and for the safety of the people of his homeworld. What would Captain Angelos know about that, he scoffed, kicking another stone against the cliff face.
The colonel paused as he reached a large boulder. It had been rolled up against the edge of the pass after a Blood Ravens dreadnought had blasted its way through the avalanche in the middle of the night, splintering the rockslide into smaller boulders that the Space Marines had pushed aside like pebbles.
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