The Lord of the Unfleshed stood immobile at the edge of the pit, and Uriel had no idea what to do next. He watched as the Unfleshed took hold of the remains of the warrior band, dragging Pasanius, Vaanes, Leonid and the other Space Marines to the edge of the pit.
'No!' he shouted, risking standing upright and leaning on the swaying statue's giant helm. 'No!'
Then the miracle happened.
Whether it was some long-dormant mechanism within the battered machine forming the statue's helmet - given a brief resurgence of life by Uriel's movement - or the power of the Emperor himself, Uriel would never know, but at that moment, a radiant light burst from the crudely-formed visor.
A bass hum, like a charging generator, built from beneath the helmet and the Unfleshed drew back in terror from the great effigy as the glow intensified. Uriel felt the metal of the helmet grow hot to the touch and though he had no idea as to what was happening, was not about to let such a chance go by.
He shouted over to the Lord of the Unfleshed. 'See! The Emperor wants you to help us! Together we can destroy the flesh mothers and the iron men!'
The great beast dropped to its knees, its wide jaws open in rapture as a terrible moaning and wailing built from the throats of the Unfleshed gathered around the pit.
Hot sparks leapt from the metal of the helmet and Uriel realised he was going to have get off the statue soon or risk being electrocuted by whatever was doing this. He edged along the Emperor's shoulder guards, begging the Master of Mankind's forgiveness for such base treatment of his image as he worked his way over to the nearest of the supporting chains.
No sooner had he clambered onto the chain, lying across its thick links and pulling himself away from the helmet - which now shone with a fierce, blinding glow j7 when a great thunderclap boomed and it exploded in an arcing shower of blue lightning.
The Unfleshed wailed in fear as the statue of the Emperor plummeted into the darkness of the pit, the chains supporting it flopping with a great clang against its sheer sides. Uriel swung on the chain, bracing his legs for impact against the side of the pit and feeling the ceramite plates of his armour buckle with the force of it.
Uriel spun crazily above the depthless chasm, knuckles white as he held onto the flaking links of the chain.
He hung there until he had got his breath back and carefully began the long climb to the top.
As he climbed he suddenly felt the chain being pulled from above. Able to do nothing else, Uriel awaited whatever fate had in store for him. He looked up in time to see the massive, raw hand of the Lord of the Unfleshed reach down and lift him from the chain.
He was lifted up and deposited roughly on the earthen ground beside Pasanius and Ardaric Vaanes, both of whom looked at him with expressions of fearful awe. Uriel shrugged, too breathless to speak.
The Lord of the Unfleshed knelt beside him and said, 'Emperor loves you.'
'I think that maybe he does…' gasped Uriel.
The Lord of the Unfleshed nodded and pointed to the pit. 'Yes. You still alive.'
'Yes,' gasped Uriel. 'You are right, the Emperor does love me. Just as he loves you.'
The creature nodded slowly. 'Will help you kill iron men. Flesh mothers too. Should not be more of us.'
'Thank you…' hissed Uriel.
'Emperor loves us, but we hate us,' said the Lord of the Unfleshed, painfully. 'We did nothing, did not deserve this. Want to kill iron men, but not know how to get into mountain. Cannot fight over high walls!'
Uriel pulled himself breathlessly to his feet and, despite his brush with death, smiled at the Lord of the Unfleshed as a portion of their journey into Khalan-Ghol returned to him with a clarity that was surely more than mere memory.
'That doesn't matter,' said Uriel. 'I know another way in.'
Khalan-Ghol shook with the fury of the renewed bombardment, shells exploding like fiery tempests against its ancient walls. Armies of heavy tanks and entire corps of soldiers mustered at the base of the gigantic ramp that led to the mountainous plateau which was all that remained of the fortress's outer defences and the spire of the inner keep.
Temporary, yet incredibly robust, revetments and redoubts had protected the workers and machinery constructing the ramp and now that it was complete, Berossus began his final assault.
A marvel of engineering, it climbed thousands of metres up the side of the mountain, beginning many kilometres back from the rocky uplands of its base. Paved with segmented sheets of iron, rumbling tanks climbed in the wake of a pair of monstrous Titans, their armour stained red with the blood of uncounted thousands of sacrifices, the thick plates still dripping and wet. Equipped with massive siege hammers, pneumatic piston drills and mighty cannon, these colossal land battleships also carried the very best warriors from Berossus's grand company. These warriors would lead the assault through the walls of the fortress and tear it down, stone by stone.
A gargantuan-mouthed tunnel led into the bedrock of the ramp, huge rails disappearing into the darkness and running to the very base of the mountain itself. Great mining machines had travelled through the tunnel and even now prepared to breach the underside of the fortress, burrowing into the very heart of Honsou's lair. Tens of thousands of soldiers waited in the sweating darkness of the tunnel to invade the fortress from below. The traitor, Obax Zakayo, had provided precise information regarding the best place to break into Khalan-Ghol and together with the frontal assault, Honsou's life could now be measured in hours.
Confident that this was to be the last battle, Berossus himself led the attack at the head of a pack of nearly a hundred blood-maddened dreadnoughts.
The final battle for Khalan-Ghol was about to begin.
'We cannot stop this attack,' said Onyx, watching as the Titans of Berossus began their inexorable advance up the ramp to the fortress. Though still many kilometres away from the top, the scale of their daemonic majesty was magnificent. 'Berossus will sweep us away in a storm of iron and blood.'
Honsou said nothing, the ghost of a smile twitching at the corner of his mouth. He too watched the huge force coming to destroy them. Hundreds of screeching daemonic warriors spun and looped in the sky above phalanxes of weapon-morphing monsters whose flesh seethed and bubbled with mechaorganic circuitry. Scores of howling, spider-limbed daemon engines clanked and churned their way up the ramp, jetting noxious exhaust fumes, the hellish entities bound to their iron bodies eager for slaughter now that they were free of their cages.
Clad in his dented and battered power armour, with a reckless look of battle-hunger creasing his pale features, and sporting a gleaming silver bionic arm in place of the one his former master had gifted him with, Honsou seemed unfazed by their approaching doom.
Onyx was puzzled by this, but had long since realised that the inner workings of Khalan-Ghol's newest master were a mystery to him - the half-breed did not resemble or behave like any of the warsmiths he had served in his aeons of servitude to the masters of this fortress.
'You do not seem overly concerned,' continued Onyx.
'I'm not,' replied Honsou, turning from the cracked ramparts of the topmost bastions of the spire. A hot wind was blowing, tasting of ash and metal. Honsou took a deep breath, at last turning to face his champion.
'Berossus hasn't let me down this far,' said Honsou, staring out at the great tunnel that led into the ramp and, no doubt, beneath his fortress. 'And I hope he won't now. Not at the last.'
'I don't understand.'
'Don't worry, Onyx, I know your concern is for your own essence, not my life, but you don't need to understand. All you need to do is obey me.'
'I am yours to command.'
'Then trust me on this,' grinned Honsou, and looked down to the level below, where smoke and crackling lightning conspired to obscure his own Titans and the masterful works he had prepared for Berossus. He stared up into the featureless white sky and the sun that burned like a black hole above him. 'I have fought the Long War almost as long as Berossus and Toramino and have
stratagems of my own.'
'For your sake, I hope so,' said Onyx. 'Even if we manage to stop this attack, there is still the matter of Lord Toramino. His army is yet to be blooded.'
Honsou glanced to the glow of fires and forges beyond those of Berossus's encampments, where Toramino waited, unseen and unknown. Here, at last, Onyx caught a flash of unease.
'He waits for Berossus to grind us and his own warriors to dust before marching in to take Khalan-Ghol and become lord of its ruins.'
'And how will we stop him?'
Honsou laughed. 'One problem at a time, Onyx, one problem at a time.'
The hateful sound of massed artillery fire was muted and distant, though Uriel knew it must be perilously close to be heard this far beneath the mountains. Dust drifted in lazy clouds from the tunnel roof, and fine pebbles skittered and danced upon the floor. The darkness was absolute, even his enhanced vision had difficulty piercing the gloom.
Heat filled the tunnel along with the hot, foetid stink of animals, though these were no animals. They were, or at least had once been, human.
Hundreds of the Unfleshed filed along the fearful passages beneath the mountains, their winding route taking them through echoing crystal chambers, disused manufactorum and up dizzyingly steep stone channels hacked into the rock. Their massive bodies filled the passageways as they led Uriel and the others back towards Khalan-Ghol.
They travelled through dark and secret ways under the mountains, forgotten by all save them, the hidden, abandoned culverts and the lost, forgotten passageways that led towards their fate.
Behind Uriel, Pasanius grunted with effort, his journey made all the harder by virtue of his limb's amputation, but wherever he had encountered difficulty, the Lord of the Unfleshed reached back and lifted him onwards.
The giant creature led the way through the darkness, his huge form easily filling the width of the passage, and were it not for his hunched shoulders and stooped head, he would surely have dashed his skull open on drooping stalactites.
The Lord of the Unfleshed marched with newfound purpose, his long, loping stride setting a fearsome pace through the secret mountain paths. Uriel winced with every step, his breath painful in his single functioning lung and the pain of his cracked collarbone and ribs stabbing into him without the balms of his armour's dispensers to dull them.
Further back, a twisted creature with a withered twin fused to its back carried Leonid, the stunted sibling clutching the grimacing colonel tightly in its embrace. And further back yet came Ardaric Vaanes and his two surviving Space Marine renegades.
When the rapture of the Emperor's coming to life before the Unfleshed had died down, the creatures had embraced Uriel's cause with all the zeal and fervour of a crusade, mustering those who could hunt and fight to join them. It had made Uriel want to weep at the holy joy that infused every one of them and made his deception of them even harder to bear.
As he had gained his feet before the Lord of the Unfleshed, it had beckoned to one of its tribe, and another of the beasts loped towards him. Uriel saw that it was the creature he had fought in the outflow pool, his sword still jammed in its belly.
'Take blade,' said the Lord of the Unfleshed and Uriel nodded, gingerly gripping the hilt of the weapon. He had pulled, muscles straining as he fought the suction of flesh, bracing his feet on the floor of the manufactorum to gain better purchase. The sword was wedged tightly in the beast's body and he was forced to twist the blade to allow it to move. At last, it slid grudgingly from its sheath of flesh, the creature remaining stolidly silent throughout. As it came free, the giant beast moved to join the remainder of its awed brethren.
'Thank you,' said Uriel.
The Unfleshed nodded respectfully and Uriel had felt a glowing ember of hope fan to life in his heart.
But his initial relief and elation at such a turn of events had soon turned sour when he had been reunited with his comrades and Ardaric Vaanes spoke to him.
'They will kill you when they discover you have lied to them,' said the renegade as the Unfleshed had girt themselves for war, gathering crude iron cudgels. Most needed no weapons however, their horrific mutations equipping them for killing without the need for such things.
'Have I?' Uriel had said, guardedly. 'I do the Emperor's work, and so now do they.'
'The Unfleshed?' said Vaanes, aghast. 'You think the Emperor would work through such beasts? Look at them, they're monsters. How can you think that such creatures are capable of being instruments of His will? They are evil!'
'They carry the flesh of the Emperor within them,' snapped Uriel. 'The blood of ancient heroes flows in their veins and I will not fail them.'
'Don't think you can fool me, Ventris,' sneered Vaanes. 'You are no messenger of the Emperor, and I can see in your eyes that you know you're not either.'
'It does not matter what I believe any more,' said Uriel. 'What do you believe?'
'I believe that I was right about you.'
'What does that mean?'
'That I knew you were trouble the moment I saw you,' shrugged Vaanes. 'It doesn't matter anyway. As soon as we get to the surface, myself and the others will leave you and your motley band.'
'You are really going to turn your back on us? After all that has happened, all the blood spilt, the death and the pain? Can you really do that?'
'I can and I will,' snarled Vaanes. 'And who would blame me? Look around you, look at these monsters. They are all going to be dead soon, and their blood will be on your hands. Think about it, you're going to try and storm a besieged fortress with a tribe of cannibalistic mutants, a dying Guard colonel and a sergeant with one arm. I am a warrior, Ventris, plain and simple, and there is nothing left to me except survival. To go back to Khalan-Ghol is madness, and attacking that fortress isn't my idea of courage, it's more like suicide.'
Vaanes gripped Uriel's shoulder and said, 'You don't have to die here. Why don't you and Pasanius come with me. You're pretty handy in a fight and I could use a warrior like you.'
Uriel shrugged off the renegade's arm and said, 'You are a fine warrior, Ardaric Vaanes, but I was wrong to have thought you might regain your honour. You have courage, but I am glad that I do not go into battle with you again.'
Hatred flared in the renegade's eyes and his expression became hard as stone.
Without another word, Vaanes stalked away.
Uriel put the renegade from his mind as he saw a patch of bright light coming from ahead and realised that the noise of battle was swelling in volume as well. With renewed vigour, he climbed after the Lord of the Unfleshed and emerged, blinking into the harsh while light of Medrengard.
The noise of the battles raging around Honsou's fortress was tremendous, and Uriel saw that the secret paths of the Unfleshed had brought them out into the rocky uplands near the base of Khalan-Ghol itself, the plains before the fortress hundreds of metres below them.
High above, the ramparts of the fortress were wreathed in the fires of battle, and Uriel saw that they were going to have to ascend into the very heart of the maelstrom raging above them.
Many kilometres away, the clang of picks and shovels echoed in the hot, lamp-lit confines of the mineworks beneath the great ramp. A wide gallery had been excavated, some nine hundred metres wide and with a gently sloping floor. A warrior in stained iron armour watched as hundreds of slaves and overseers hauled vast flatbed wagons bearing drums of explosives and fuel to be packed into the length of the excavations.
The long gallery was almost full, packed with enough explosives to level the mountain itself, knew Corias Keagh, Master of Ordnance to Lord Berossus himself. The tunnels to reach the underside of Khalan-Ghol would be his masterwork. It had been hard, slow work and cost the lives of thousands, but he had succeeded in getting the complex web of tunnels to exactly the right spot. It was almost a shame to blow such a perfect example of siege mining apart.
Thirty metres above him - if his calculations were correct, and he had no reason to doubt them, for Oba
x Zakayo had been very precise in his treachery - were the catacombs of the fortress, where the revenants of previous masters of Khalan-Ghol were said to haunt its depths. Keagh knew that such tales were probably nonsense, but in the Eye of Terror it never paid to scoff at such things too openly.
But word of these tales had filtered back to the thousands of human soldiers who had spent the last few months billeted in the garrison tunnels he had constructed within the body of the great ramp, and he had heard ill-favoured mutterings concerning this attack. He had ritually flayed these doomsayers, but a pervasive sense of dread had already taken hold.
Despite this, all the soldiers were armed and ready to begin the assault upon the opening of Khalan-Ghol's belly, and Keagh was eager to finally get to grips with the foe.
His armour thrummed in the heat, its internal systems struggling to keep his body temperature even.
The heat in the tunnels was fearsome - more than Keagh would have expected at such a depth - but he paid it no mind, too intent on the spectacle of destruction he was about to unleash.
The battlements were aflame, gunfire and steel scything through men and stone in devastating fusillades of heavy calibre shells. Mobile howitzers moving in the midst of the armoured column approaching the top of the ramp rained high explosive shells within the last line of bastions, filling the air with spinning fragments of red-hot metal.
Men died in their hundreds, ripped apart in the devastating volleys or flamed from the wall by incendiary shells fired from the upper bastions of the approaching Titans.
But Berossus was not going to take Khalan-Ghol without a fight and Honsou's Titans and revetted artillery positions had laid-in targeting information and punished the approaching column terribly. Tanks exploded as armour-penetrating shells slashed down from above and tore through their lighter upper armour. Such casualties were bulldozed aside without mercy, tumbling down the steep sides of the ramp to smash to pieces on the rocks below. But no matter how many Honsou's gunners killed, the column continued its relentless advance.
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