Blood and Fire

by Aaron Dembski-Bowden

  ‘Break off the descent,’ I voxed to him. ‘Get back into orbit. Be ready to compensate for the bay doors opening in ten seconds.’

  Cut off from our brothers in the void, we were ready for any eventuality. The shuttle’s confines were a testament to the fact it had been built to ferry a dozen humans in restraint thrones – not two warriors of the Adeptus Astartes in full battle armour. Our jump packs threatened to clang against the walls each time we moved, and we would have to abandon the additional ammunition crates at our boots, but no matter.

  Cyneric struck the bay release plate with a fist, admitting the roaring wind. We stepped out to meet it, falling through the sky.

  As far as I am aware, I do not dream. If I do, perhaps I simply never recall what takes place in the theatre of my subconscious, but the result is the same. Many medical records cite humans referring to nightmares of falling, ending abruptly the moment before impact. I have always found that curious. Humanity is such a fragile condition, fearing every imaginable loss of control. Nightmares of falling makes even gravity a psychological enemy to them.

  Fear. The rancid piss-stink of it. I cannot envision a more disgusting emotion.

  High altitude insertions are no rarity among the Adeptus Astartes, even without drop pods. We leaned forward, diving hard, plunging through the gold spit of tracer fire that had no hope of ever hitting us. Cyneric fired his back-mounted boosters once, to veer clear of an Imperial Guard hulk rising from the fortress.

  Altitude runes chimed and flared as the ground rose. My engines whined into life a moment later, slowing the descent enough that it wouldn’t be terminal. We landed with twin thuds, denting the landing platform and spreading a cobweb of cracks from each of our boots. The sky above us was alight with the whirring, revolving anti-air turrets automatically and harmlessly tracking the inbound gunships and troop landers.

  With portentous timing, a communication rune chimed on my retinal display the same moment my boots ground into the deck.

  ‘Reclusiarch? My lord… I demand an explanation for this.’

  ‘So ungrateful, Ekene.’ I found myself laughing for the first time since the cathedral came down upon me. ‘We thought you might appreciate the extra bodies.’

  That day marked the first time I have ever been embraced by a human. Less than an hour after we landed, Cyneric and I walked outside the fortress walls, surveying the gathering battalions. Vulture gunships rattled overhead. The very air breathed with engine smoke from the idling tanks. Entire regiments of Steel Legion soldiers were packing munitions, and themselves, into Chimera transports and six-wheeled Shedu-class overlanders.

  The man to embrace me was not, as one might have guessed, Captain Andrej of the Steel Legion. It was General Kurov – an otherwise distinguished and greying gentleman officer, who greeted me with a sabre at his hip and tears in his eyes.

  ‘Reclusiarch,’ he said by way of greeting. The embrace was swift, and surprising enough that I had no reaction to it. His head scarcely reached the heraldry on my chest before he stepped back, looking up at me. ‘The Hero of Helsreach calls, and his city answers.’

  My skin still crawled in the aftermath of his nearness. His affection made sense, in that he was born, raised and trained in Helsreach; the War for Armageddon represented a bitter homecoming for him, and he held me in a paragon’s regard. Amazing, however, the difference in this meeting, and our very first. The levels of warmth in the latter, and coldness in the former, were difficult to align.

  ‘It is good you are here, general,’ I replied, trusting he would not be offended by my absolute neutrality.

  Cyneric, sensing my unease, stepped to my side. ‘I am Cyneric,’ he greeted the general, looking down at the man, and I heard my brother’s dark little chuckle at the way Kurov performed the crusader’s cross rather than the Imperial aquila.

  ‘Such an effect you had on these men, sire,’ he voxed to me.

  The war council that day was a blunt and brutal thing, as our plans were ordained before a battalion of revving tanks. Guard officers crowded around Cyneric and myself, several of them touching my armour for good fortune in the coming fight. These I ignored, as I had ignored the embrace. Let them keep their strange superstitions if it would work to the betterment of morale.

  ‘Did you bring what I left in Helsreach?’ I asked Kurov, during a pause in proceedings.

  He nodded in the affirmative, smiling to himself.

  The plan was simple. We would march into the Mannheim Gap, and we would destroy anything that moved or breathed.

  ‘I like this plan.’ Andrej was sitting on the dozer blade of a gunmetal grey Chimera, thumping his ankles on the hazard-striped metal. His opinion was met with nods and murmurs of agreement from the gathered Legion officers, who stood at ease in their trenchcoats, helmets and gasmasks not yet fixed in place.

  Ekene stood with me at the heart of the impromptu conclave, silent all the while. His anger was a palpable thing, an aura he bled in my direction. Only at the end did he speak, as if almost a hundred human officers were not nearby, and as if they had not just dedicated their lives to aiding his last charge.

  ‘You overstep your authority,’ he said to me. His helm’s vox speaker made the words a growl, though I suspected they needed little assistance in that regard.

  ‘I do as my duty bids. Nothing more, nothing less.’

  He aimed a chainsword to the horizon, where the mountains rose and his brothers’ bodies rotted.

  ‘This is our fight.’

  I could have struck him, knocking him to the ground for addressing me in such a tone. The temptation was there, and I certainly had the authority to do so. I refrained partly because I did not wish the Guardsmen to witness division in the ranks of the Adeptus Astartes, and partly because I understood Ekene’s rage; even sympathised with it. It simply needed redirecting. Now was a time for me to be cold-blooded, not hot. He needed guiding, not beating and shaming.

  ‘It is still your fight,’ I told him. I doubted he had missed the way many of the Guard officers had clutches rifles tighter or rested their hands on their holstered pistols, when Ekene had addressed me with such aggression. ‘The difference is, cousin, now it is a fight you can win.’

  He turned – ever so subtly – to regard the crozius maul I had over one shoulder. I perceived the true nature of his complaint in that moment. It was not that I had summoned thousands of Guardsmen to aid his assault. The humans had nothing to do with it.

  It was me. I was the source of his unease.

  ‘If we face the warlord…’ Ekene began, and I silenced him with a gentle gesture.

  ‘Vengeance will be yours, Lion. My duty is to get you to your prey. Honour demands you kill him yourself.’

  ‘That is all I ask, Reclusiarch. He must die to a Lion’s blade.’

  ‘Then see that he does.’

  I turned back to the Guard officers, tasting the charcoal and promethium stink of so many idling engines, seeing the ochre-on-grey tide of their trenchcoats and battle tanks.

  ‘Speech!’ Andrej called. Laughter followed this demand. I waited until it subsided.

  ‘Not this time. This time, we go to war for honour and revenge, over survival. Such virtues need no speeches to enhance them, for they are inherently righteous. But I will say this.’

  I hefted my war maul, sweeping it in a slow arc across the front line, encompassing every soldier, every vehicle, every supply crate.

  ‘You have all heard that almost five hundred Space Marines died in the canyon I have asked you to conquer today. The number is staggering, it defies belief. Why then do I request that you spend your blood and sweat in a battle that has already cost so many of my cousins their lives?

  ‘The answer, warriors of Helsreach, is not because I value your souls less than those of the Adeptus Astartes. It is not that I would waste your blood like coins of copper in a futile
gamble. It is because you taught me the tenacious strength of the human spirit when my brothers bled for your city, and I can trust no other men and women to stand with us now. We answered you in your hour of need, and you have answered us in ours. For that, I thank you. We all thank you, Lion and Knight alike.

  ‘As for whether you will live to fight another day, I will speak the words of a much wiser man. My gene-sire, the Lord Rogal Dorn, primarch and son of the Emperor, said these words: Give me a hundred Space Marines. Or failing that, give me a thousand other troops.’

  I paused to take in the sight of the gathered masses again. This was a poor portion of Helsreach’s full garrison, but given the complexities of orbital redeployment and transcontinental passage, it was a blessing to see so much flesh and iron under aquila banners.

  ‘Look at your own numbers. By the war poetry of the Emperor’s own blood-son, you are worth three times the number of Lions that fell at Mannheim. Cling to courage, no matter what madness awaits us in that canyon. You are here because I intend to win. And you are here because you should be here – you deserve, more than any others, to be on the battlefield the first time these relics go to war.’

  General Kurov signalled to a Valkyrie gunship waiting nearby. The rear gangramp lowered on squealing hydraulics thirsting for oil, and three servitors lurched forward, bearing the relics of the Temple of the Emperor Ascendant in their cyborged grip. The first bore the great aquila statue on his shoulders, heaving it like a man condemned to carry his own crucifix. The second bore the tattered scraps of the city’s founding charter high, the way a herald brings forth a war banner. The last carried a bronze globe of the fallen temple’s blessed holy water. Mindless they marched, slaved to my will. How glad I was that I had left them in Helsreach rather than sending them up to the Eternal Crusader.

  The humans cheered loud and long, raising rifles and bayonets to the cloudy sky. I was almost – almost – transported back on the city walls, as the green tide surged towards the city. Our city. Our world. Our city. Our world.

  Grimaldus. Grimaldus. Grimaldus.

  Cyneric’s voice broke through the uproar of several thousand men and women chanting my name.

  ‘I thought you said you would give no speech.’

  ‘You have a great deal to learn about being a Chaplain,’ I replied, ‘if you consider that a speech.’

  IX

  Mannheim

  Any parsing of the archives on the Eternal Crusader will offer no shortage of detail on the events of the Second Mannheim Siege. It is fair to say, with the result so easily accessible, what matters most in this personal archive are the moments of heroism and humanity that led to the endgame. They are what I was asked to record, and I will endeavour to do so as my chronicle moves towards its conclusion.

  What then, is thus far not recorded in the archives? All reports indicate the vast force and the exact regimental strength we hurled into that lethal ravine. Similarly, every report cites the immense force we encountered upon laying siege. Every hope we had possessed that Mannheim would be near devoid of enemy Titans was crushed before the first Steel Legion soldier had set foot on the loose rock slopes leading down into the canyon. Each prayer that the orks’ infesting numbers would be culled by battles elsewhere were likewise shown to be wasted breath.

  The enemy was present, and present in grotesque force. Great sockets in the rigging and stanchions along the canyon walls marked the absence of several Gargants, but many more were undergoing repair or reawakening after fighting in recent battles. The ravine was choked by living aliens going about their work, and thousands of mouldering corpses piled up into a sea of decaying organic matter. What foulness inspired them to leave their dead unburied? Was there no end to their pestilential influence?

  Gold armour, darkened and soiled by waste, showed among the barricades of the looted dead. The dead Lions had been heaped in undignified repose with their xenos murderers, and their ceramite plate – useless to the junkyard heresy that constituted greenskin technology – was left to encase the rotting warriors amidst their flesh cairns.

  We advanced over this sea of the disrespected dead. Tearing the barricades down was not an option, leaving us to climb and wade and ride on the hulls of our tanks. Grey Warrior was the first to reach the mounds of the slain, its treads hauling its immense bulk up the corpse piles and grinding them into compacted meat beneath its weight. Lesser vehicles struggled manfully; others blasted holes in the dead-wall with their turret weapons; still others followed Grey Warrior and the super-heavies that led the way.

  Above the advance rode the gunship fleet – Valkyries, Vultures and Vendettas, all flanking the four remaining Thunderhawks in the Lions’ arsenal. The moment they streaked through the ravine’s trench, cannonfire began to bring them down in tumbling fireballs.

  Official chronometers cite the joining of battle with the first shot fired in anger at exactly five hours, thirty-one minutes and twelve seconds after dawn. That shot was a blast from the main armament of General Kurov’s own Grey Warrior. From the Thunderhawk above, I saw that shot impact against the distended belly armour of an enemy Gargant, showering the nearby alien technicians with blazing wreckage.

  Chronometers also cite that the engagement lasted a few minutes short of three hours. As one of the only Space Marines to survive the Second Mannheim Siege, I can confirm this is true: my helm’s auto-senses recorded the same figure.

  The Legion did not baulk at the sight of such a vast enemy horde. They ploughed into the enemy’s disarrayed ranks, slaughtering them to make room on fields of their bodies for the gunships to land.

  The first hours of that battle were remarkable only for their ferocity. There is nothing unique or worthy of remembrance in two armies grinding in a deadlock over their own dead. The Imperial Guard’s massed cannonades devastated the greenskin war machines. In reply, the aliens butchered the Guard at every point along the advance where it fell to men and women with bayonets to hold the line. As is so often the way with the Guard, they had the stronger steel, but the enemy had the stronger flesh.

  The orks fought for their mad religion and their madder joy at butchery. The Guard fought because this was their world, and because they believed it was a battle worth fighting.

  When human and ork blood runs together, the result is something as black and viscous as refined, thinned oil. By the third hour, each step through the canyon splashed in a river of mixed blood that had nowhere to run. The earth was too rocky to drink it, and the ravine itself was a natural basin. The land itself made a bowl for the blood we spilled in offering.

  I saw Andrej, black to the knees, bayonetting an ork in the throat with two of his Legionaries. The corpse of their slain foe drifted away once they pulled their blades from its body – taken by the liquid muck. The smell of it, the sheer reek of the mixed-blood lake we were wading through, penetrated even Guard rebreathers. Soldiers constantly fell back to throw up when they could, or vomit where they stood and fought.

  In such a grinding lock of armies, winning and losing is relative. We were pushing deep into the canyon, no different from a needle pushing into a boil and expelling the corruption within. But at what cost? Hundreds of men and women were falling face down into the dirt. Every second brought another crunching pop of a tank’s engine catching fire and bursting its hull apart.

  Andrej and his squad reached my side, using me as cover to reload their weapons. I killed the orks that reached for them, crushing the aliens’ fungal bones with swing after swing.

  My cenobyte servitors struggled at my side, too mindlocked to realise the efforts they were putting their muscles through. The artefacts of Helsreach were as filthy as its army, but time and again they rallied the Steel Legion to where I stood… whether I willed it or not. The orks seemed blind to the significance of my cyborged slaves, hunting only those of us who carried guns and blades.

  Ekene reached us in the same time,
and he turned his defence into a crude art of spinning and hacking with knife and chainsword, more like dancing than duelling. The Lion’s armour was black with ooze. Breathlessness savaged his voice as he spoke through his helm’s mouth grille.

  ‘Do you still feel fortunate, Deathspeaker?’

  ‘We still live, Ekene.’ The chain binding my weapon to my armour was severed by a greenskin’s axe, but I still held the maul in my hands. ‘There is your answer.’

  ‘And do you yet regret not sailing with your brothers?’

  I executed an alien at my boots, caving in its chest with my maul. ‘I am with my brothers,’ I told the Lion. My voice was as rasping as his.

  Andrej crouched in the slop, firing down the canyon at the aliens vaulting the next barricade.

  ‘The Reclusiarch is the luckiest man I know,’ he said with curious calm, not bothering to look away from the orks he was killing with beams of laser light from his hellgun. ‘A cathedral fell on him once, and still he is here, to ask me to run into a canyon full of monsters with him.’

  None of us could say more. We were separated again by the charging enemy tide. I saw Andrej sprint for a passing Chimera, hauling himself up the side. Then he was gone.

  War is psychology and momentum, more than fire and blood. The press of regiments and hordes against one another; the ebb and flow of advance and fall back. Every battle between mortal beings comes down to a fulcrum moment, when the balance threatens to shift irrevocably. It is the moment the warriors of one side see enough of the wider scheme to realise they are losing. Or, rather, that they believe they see enough – they bind themselves to the belief that their side will be defeated, or has achieved an unbreakable advantage.

  This can come at any moment, striking at any soul upon the battlefield. A moment of imbalance only occurs when the individual’s actions inspire and influence those nearby.