The Iron Warriors could afford to suffer such horrendous loss of life without fear, but Leonid could not.
Even if the Jourans could keep up such an impressive kill-ratio, the Iron Warriors would inevitably wear them down. Leonid knew he could not allow this battle to become one of attrition.
Under cover of darkness, he and Eshara descended from the walls, leaving the citadel through the Destiny Gate's postern and making their way to the Primus ravelin. Here they found Major Anders, his face blood and sweat stained, sitting with his men drinking a mug of caffeine.
'You've done well, men,' called Leonid. 'Damn well.'
The soldiers beamed with pride at their commander's words.
'But tomorrow will be just as hard, and I'll need your very best.'
'We won't let you down, sir,' said a soldier from the ramparts above.
Leonid raised his voice and said, 'I know you won't, son. You're doing fine here, and I'm damn proud of you. You've shown these curs what it means to take on the 383rd!'
The soldiers cheered as Leonid turned to Piet Anders and shook his hand.
'Nice work, Piet, but watch your left flank,' he cautioned. 'With the breach on that side, we can't bring enough guns to bear and more of the enemy are getting around it.'
Anders saluted. 'Aye, sir, I'll keep an eye out.'
Leonid nodded, confident in his officer's ability to hold the ravelin. He returned Anders' salute before he and Eshara returned to the citadel.
They visited Vincare bastion, the curtain wall, the breach and Mori bastion, heaping praise on the soldiers and exhorting them with tales of valour from the other sections of the citadel. Each body of men vowed to outdo the others, and by the time Leonid returned to his temporary billet in the gate towers he was exhausted and a little light headed from the amount of amasec his men had forced upon him.
He lay down on his simple pallet bed and fell into a dreamless sleep.
TWO
JHAREK KELMAUR CLIMBED the blasted mountain of Tor Christo, picking his way confidently across the rubble, despite the darkness. His head scanned from side to side, as though searching for something, while a red-robed figure followed behind him, hands clasped beneath its robes and head bowed. The robed figure's physique was swollen and disproportionate, with broad shoulders, grossly misshapen arms and a barrel chest.
The sorcerer crested a ridge of jagged rock and scanned the ground before him. His tattooed skull bobbed as he hunted for something within the wreckage of the mountain. Something that, for now, eluded him.
'It should be here,' he muttered to himself, withdrawing a tattered scroll, its gold lettering faded and almost illegible. His frustration was growing and he knew he did not have much time left. His vision had promised him a hidden chamber beneath the rock of Tor Christo, so where was it? He descended into a huge crater of loose stone and scarred rock, his footing sure even through the black night and rough ground.
His silent companion dutifully followed him, its footsteps surprisingly heavy for a being of such mass.
The moonlight pooled around the curious pair, bathing them in vermilion light. Kelmaur circled the crater with increasing desperation. Behind him, the robed figure stopped abruptly and lifted its head to stare directly towards a huge slab of rock, toppled from the mountain and lying flush with the blasted rockface.
Without any word to Kelmaur, the figure strode across the crater towards the rock, halting ten metres from the slab.
Jharek Kelmaur smiled.
'You sense it, don't you?' he whispered and watched as the figure unclasped its arms and extended them towards the slab. The fabric of its robe rippled, as though some monstrous motion disturbed it, and something black and glossy extended from the ends of the sleeves.
The crater was suddenly bathed in light as twin beams of incandescent fire shot from the figure's arms and the rock exploded into fragments. As the dust dissipated, Kelmaur rejoiced at the sight of an ancient, verdigris-stained bronze gate. Again the searing beams stabbed out and the gate exploded into molten chunks, revealing a darkened passageway that led deep into the mountain.
Kelmaur felt his heart race in excitement. Here, he would walk passages that had not known the tread of man for ten thousand years. The robed figure clasped its arms once more and set off towards the revealed passage. Kelmaur followed and the pair made their way through the remains of the gate and into the mountain.
Neither Kelmaur nor his fellow traveller required light to see. The sorcerer marvelled at the precise, geomantic precision of the tunnel as it descended for hundreds of metres into the rock of Tor Christo.
Eventually, the tunnel emerged into a wide, domed chamber, lit by a diffuse glow that radiated from the walls. The floor was a broad disc of solid bronze, almost thirty metres in diameter, with an intricately designed pattern etched onto it. It was familiar to Kelmaur, but he could not remember why. Reluctantly, he tore his senses away from its beguiling pattern.
His wordless companion moved to the chamber's centre, reaching up with glistening, black hands that seemed just a little too large, and pulled back the hood of its robes.
Beneath was a face that had once been human, but was now disfigured beyond all recognition. Adept Etolph Cycerin's face was alive with crawling bio-organic circuitry. Even the augmentations grafted on by the Adeptus Mechanicus had transformed, their mechanical structure hideously altered by the techno-virus. Cycerin turned expectantly to face Kelmaur and raised his other arm, the flesh of the limb running, liquefying and transforming from the shape of a weapon into a hand. The hand pointed at Kelmaur and the sorcerer frowned at such impatience.
Had the transformation obliterated any sense of awe or reverence Cycerin once had?
Kelmaur removed the tattered scroll once more and unravelled it, clearing his throat before chanting a series of guttural and clicking harmonics in a language that had not been spoken in ten millennia. The chant consisted of syllables no human mouth was ever meant to give voice to, sliding between the air, pulling its fragile structure further and further apart.
Whipcord arcs of purple lightning flickered around the circumference of the bronze disc, growing in brightness as Kelmaur's chant continued. The air in the chamber grew dense, like the heavy overpressure before a thunderstorm, and the actinic tang of ozone set his teeth on edge.
The chant neared its end, the lightning arcs whipping upwards and joining in a tensing web of magenta that spun faster and faster around the disc's perimeter.
As the last syllable passed Kelmaur's lips, crackling, whirling lightning exploded, flaring outwards with a powerful coronal discharge. The sorcerer was hurled from his feet and slammed into the cavern wall, slumping to the floor in a bruised pile.
Dazed and in great pain, Kelmaur raised his head and smiled.
The creature he had created from Adept Cycerin had vanished.
A BLAZE OF light flared in the centre of the glowing disc, a dancing crackle of energy swirling around the chamber as the pulsing afterimages slowly faded. Adept Cycerin turned his head left and right, orientating himself with the location he had been transported to. The scent of Jouran incense filled the air, and his altered eyes precisely mapped out the exact trigonometric properties of the chamber he found himself in.
He wondered if he had set foot here in his previous life, but could not remember. He could only remember the imperatives that thundered in his brain, firing along strange, new inorganic dendrites infesting his skull.
The chamber stretched high above him, black and studded with reliquaries. He stood on a floor of bronze, on a disc identical to the one he had just left. Two tonsured priests hurried towards him, their faces lined with frantic worry.
The priests stopped at the edge of the disc and shouted at him, the words were unintelligible; part of his previous existence. He could only converse in the machine language of the techno-virus now and the priests' banal, limited form of verbal communication was utterly inimical to him.
He raised his arms,
the black surface of his limbs writhing as the virus within him moulded his machine-flesh into a new form. Metallic barrels and hissing muzzles formed from the engorged substance of his arms and Cycerin opened fire with his biomechanical weaponry, blasting the two priests from their feet in a storm of shells.
Dozens of urns in the lower levels of the Ossuary shattered, spreading the bones of former castellans across the floor. Skulls grinned up at Cycerin as he passed, making his way to the Sepulchre's exit.
At the door to the outer chambers, he stopped, lowered his arms and waited.
JHAREK KELMAUR PICKED his way painfully down the rocky slopes, pleased that he had answered the potential of his vision. He did not know what part Adept Cycerin had yet to play in the unfolding drama on Hydra Cordatus, but was satisfied that he had been instrumental in its fulfilment.
As soon as Cycerin had vanished, the pattern etched in the bronze disc in the floor had begun to fade along with the glow in the walls, until any hint that either had existed was gone. The scroll had crumbled to dust and, with it, any means of using the ancient device again. Kelmaur knew it didn't matter: Cycerin was where he needed to be and his involvement with him was over.
He groaned. The expenditure of so much power had left him drained and his bones hurt where Cycerin's explosive teleportation had thrown him against the chamber wall. His ''near-sense'' was weakened and he stumbled several times, losing his footing on the slippery rocks and loose rubble.
As he reached the bottom of the slope he straightened his cloak and set off towards his tent, his strides becoming more confident as he found himself among more familiar surroundings.
Acolytes bowed as he passed, but he ignored them, too intent on rest and recuperation. As he ducked below the low entrance to his abode, painful cramps seized his stomach. Immediately he sensed the Warsmith's presence.
'You were successful,' said the Warsmith. It was a statement, not a question.
Kelmaur bowed extravagantly.
'Yes, my lord. The servant of the machine with but one hand has gone. The secret chamber was below the mountain, just as I had foreseen.'
'Good,' hissed the Warsmith, raising himself up to tower over Kelmaur. The sorcerer turned his head away, unable to look directly at the roiling metamorphosis of the Warsmith's face. The lord of the Iron Warriors reached up and cupped Kelmaur's chin in one massive gauntlet.
Kelmaur gasped in pain at the Warsmith's searing touch, squirming against his grip as black discolouration spread from where his master held him. The tattoos on his skull danced as Kelmaur cried out, his face contorted in agony.
'Now, Jharek, is there anything you wish to tell me? Anything you have kept from your Warsmith?'
Kelmaur shook his head. 'No, my lord!' he wheezed. 'I swear I have told you true every vision I have had.'
'Is that true?' asked the Warsmith, his disbelief plain. No answer was forthcoming and he sighed in feigned regret.
The Warsmith said, 'You achieve nothing by lying to me, Jharek,' and reached out his hand, pressing a burning palm against the sorcerer's temple.
Kelmaur screamed in agony as his flesh hissed and melted, filling the tent with the sickening stench of burned meat.
'You have one chance to live, Jharek,' promised the Warsmith. 'Tell me anything else you have kept from me and I will not kill you.'
'Nothing!' gasped Kelmaur. 'I have kept nothing from you, my lord, I swear! I see nothing more than that which I have told you!'
The Warsmith said, 'Then you are of no more use to me,' and exhaled a foetid breath of dazzling orange and green.
Kelmaur, already hyperventilating in fear, took a huge breath of the Warsmith's corrupt substance and began convulsing.
Kelmaur burned with horrific change and his screams were music to the Warsmith's ears. Evolutionary anarchy ripped through the sorcerer's frame. Kelmaur's body spasmed, grotesque changes warping through his flesh in a tornado of mutation. Tentacles, pincers, wings and other more unnameable organs burst from every part of his rebellious anatomy, his body now unrecognisable as human in the soup of aberrant growths.
Within seconds, all that remained of the sorcerer was a seething pile of pulped meat and bone, too grossly misshapen to survive.
'I promised I would not kill you, did I not?' sneered the Warsmith, turning and leaving the hideously mutated body of Jharek Kelmaur hissing in mindless torpor on the floor of his tent.
Amongst the gibbering ruin of distorted flesh, a single unblinking human eye stared out in horror and incipient madness.
THREE
THE ATTACKS ON the walls continued for another three days, with thousands of men throwing themselves at the citadel and dying in droves. Casualties amongst the Jourans were lighter than on the first day, the weakest men having fallen in the early assaults.
On the third day, at the height of the attack, the embrasures were removed from the earthwork that ran the length of the third parallel and in a jet of exhaust fumes one hundred and thirteen Vindicator siege tanks moved into position and opened fire with an ear-splitting crack.
The walls of the citadel and bastions disappeared in a rolling bank of grey smoke and fire. Before the echoes had begun to fade, a second volley of shots battered the walls. Soldiers from both forces were pulverised in the massive barrage as shell after shell hammered the walls and breach.
Whole swathes of unstable structure tore free from the breach, hundreds of tonnes of rubble crashing downwards, carrying scores of men to their deaths and burying yet more beneath the falling blocks.
The bombardment continued for two punishing hours, undoing the repair work undertaken by the Imperial Fists and the Jourans to the ramparts. Hundreds died before they were able to take shelter in the bombproof shelters and the screams of the wounded carried as far back as the statue-lined road that led towards the Sepulchre. The face of the Mori bastion crumbled under the onslaught, tonnes of shattered masonry crashing into the ditch and forming a steep, but practicable breach. But by this time, there was no one left alive in the ditch to exploit it.
Broken by the twin blows of the stubborn defence of the Jourans and the betrayal of their masters, the Iron Warriors' soldiery turned and fell back from the walls in disarray.
As the bloodied survivors of the attack stumbled away from the citadel, shell-shocked and insane with terror, they broke and swirled around a giant figure in iron-black armour. A clear space surrounded the giant, who stood as still as a statue amongst the fleeing soldiers of his army.
The Warsmith marched through the mob, the soldiers parting before the bow-wave of corruption that travelled before him. He carried an arrow-headed icon bearing the skull-masked symbol of the Iron Warriors, which he planted in the blood-soaked earth at the edge of the ditch.
Leonid lowered his bloody power sword and watched the giant figure with a terrible sense of foreboding. Who this warrior was, he had no idea, but, instinctively, he feared him.
He turned to Corwin. The Space Marine Librarian's armour was scored with dozens of lasblasts, and blood ran from a gash torn in his upper arm.
'He is their Warsmith, the leader of this army,' said Corwin.
The Warsmith was well within weapons range, yet not one amongst the garrison could raise his gun to open fire.
They watched as the Warsmith pointed to the icon and then towards the fortress. Then he lifted an enormous axe from a shoulder scabbard and, in a rasping voice that carried the weight of ages said, 'You have until tomorrow morning to satisfy your honour and fall upon your swords. After that, your souls belong to me and I promise I will send every man alive within these walls to hell.'
The enemy commander's voice should not have been able to carry across the walls, but every soldier of the Jourans felt the terror of the Warsmith's words lodge like a splinter in his heart.
Leonid watched the Chaos warlord turn and march back through the earthworks, the lingering nausea in his gut fading to a dull ache as the Warsmith vanished from sight.
NIGHT W
AS FALLING as the Warsmith's champions gathered beneath his intricate pavilion. They knelt before the master of the Iron Warriors, in awe at the changes rippling through his form. Honsou watched as a darkening shadow ghosted behind the Warsmith's body, rippling the air with its passing, like mighty wings beating the air, or at least the suggestion of wings. The roiling souls spinning within his armour were silent, their cries drowned out by the unheard crescendo of change writhing within the Warsmith.
'A time of great moment is upon us, my champions' began the Warsmith.
He turned his gaze towards the hazily lit silhouette of the citadel, barely visible over the lip of the earthwork. Flashes of artillery fire lit the sky as Imperial mortars dropped shells on the Iron Warriors' camp, but it was undirected; and the vehicles and troops were protected from all but direct hits in their reinforced bunkers.
'The future is becoming less tangled now, its paths unravelling and revealing their ultimate destinations to me. It is a wonderful thing to see and to know that Perturabo chose the right path. To see the enemy's palaces in ruins, to see his warriors hung, broken and defeated from stakes lining the roadways from here to the gates of Terra vindicates everything we have done. I have seen this and more, victories and slaughters magnificent in their scale. It is pleasing, and the poor fools we must destroy will not accept this. Like most mortals, the true majesty of Chaos turns them into frightened children. Such limited understanding and vision is to blame for what their Emperor has brought them to.'
Honsou felt his pulse rising in time with the cadence of the Warsmith's voice. Each word dripped with potential. The battle here was almost at an end and the Warsmith was promising them victory. The human soldiers had fulfilled their appointed task and now the honour of taking the citadel would fall to the Iron Warriors. It would be soon, the Warsmith would not, could not, wait any longer.
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