There had not been enough of Forrix to bring back and while stripping down the siege works, a party of slaves had found a rotting corpse in Kroeger's dugout. It was clearly that of an Iron Warrior, but if the body was Kroeger's, who had led the assault on the eastern bastion?
It was a mystery that Honsou guessed he would never know the answer to, though in that, he was very wrong.
Honsou watched the tankers as they made the slow journey through the blasted landscape of the plain before the citadel. The satisfaction of victory was tempered with a hollow emptiness from knowing that the foe was defeated and there were no more battles to be fought here.
When the Warsmith had ascended to daemonhood, Honsou had prostrated himself before the daemon prince, prayers of devotion spilling from his lips.
'Stand, Honsou,' commanded the daemon.
Hurriedly Honsou obeyed as the daemon continued, 'You have pleased me mightily these last centuries, my son. I have groomed your hatred well and you have the seed of greatness within you.'
'I live only to serve, my master,' stammered Honsou.
'I know you do. But I know of your hunger to lead, to tread the path I have taken. It is clear to me now the course the future must take.'
The daemon Warsmith drifted towards Honsou, its massive form towering above the Iron Warrior.
'You shall be my successor, Honsou. Only you hold true to the vision of Chaos, of the final destruction of the false Imperium. Forrix had lost that vision of our ultimate destiny and Kroeger, well, he cast it aside long ago. I shall not name you captain, I shall name you Warsmith.'
Before Honsou could answer, the Warsmith folded his midnight wings around his body, his form a sliver of impenetrable darkness.
'The power of the warp calls me, Honsou, and it is a call I cannot refuse. Where I go, you cannot follow… yet.'
The Warsmith's outline shimmered as he faded from the material realm into places beyond Honsou's understanding.
He still couldn't believe it. Honsou the half-breed. Now Honsou the Warsmith.
He turned from the wreckage of the citadel and made his way back towards the ridge that led down to the spaceport, passing a wretched column of blue-coated prisoners marching towards the prison hulks and a life of slavery. Honsou caught sight of a prisoner in a bronze breastplate with the shoulder boards of a lieutenant colonel, his battered features cast down in crushed resignation, and laughed.
He quickly outpaced the prisoners, marching through the masterful contravallations Forrix had constructed around the spaceport, past the heavy, transport shuttles that were returning the surviving tanks and artillery pieces to the cargo hulks.
The landing platforms were awash with men and machines preparing to depart Hydra Cordatus.
He crossed the runways towards a shuttle idling on a far landing platform.
An honour guard of Iron Warriors stood before the cavernous entrance to the vessel.
'Your shuttle is ready, Warsmith,' said a bowing Iron Warrior.
Honsou smiled and stepped aboard the shuttle without a backward glance.
EPILOGUE
THE ADEPTUS MECHANICUS vessel Mordekai's Light drifted in geo-stationary orbit above Hydra Cordatus, its smooth black surfaces dull and non-reflective. Its kilometre-long hull was sleek and quite unlike the ungainly vessels of the Imperial Navy.
This vessel was designed for speed and stealth.
Dark robed adepts of the Machine God ghosted through the incense-scented air of the command bridge, reverently tending to the arcane technologies of the massive starship.
Standing behind the command altar at the end of a wide, veneered nave, High Magos Kuzela Matrada stared at the smouldering ruin of the citadel projected on the forward viewing bay. The great fortress was no more, its mighty bastions cast down, its walls reduced to rubble and, more importantly, its precious gene-seed stolen.
The scale of this disaster did not bear thinking about and the repercussions would reach to the very highest and mightiest on Mars and Terra.
A light flashed on the pict-tablet before him and he swept his bronze hand across the runes beside it. An interference filled image swam into focus on the tablet, the hooded face of Magos Sarfian, staring up at him from the surface of the planet below.
'Well?' demanded Matrada.
'You were correct, high magos. The laboratorium is empty and the gene-seed gone.'
'All of it?'
'All of it,' confirmed Sarfian.
'Have you found any survivors?'
'No, my lord, only corpses. From the wreckage and sheer level of destruction we have discovered, it is evident that the battle was fierce indeed.'
'Have you removed all evidence of our blessed order?'
Sarfian nodded. 'The cavern has been purified with fire and melta charges set.'
'Very well, return to the ship and we will cleanse the entire site from orbit.'
'Yes, my lord,' said Sarfian.
Matrada shut off the link and opened a channel to his ordnance officer. Yes, this was a disaster, but he would ensure that no one would ever find out about it.
'Lock in co-ordinates and prepare to fire on my order.'
GUARDSMAN HAWKE STUMBLED down the rocky slopes of the mountains, dehydrated, malnourished and suffering from second-degree burns. He'd watched as the enemy had seized the citadel, butchering the last remnants of his regiment, helpless as the battle raged in the darkness. With the citadel's fall, the enemy had pulled back from the valley and left Hydra Cordatus with the same speed and efficiency with which they had arrived.
Never in his whole life had Hawke felt quite so alone. With the departure of the enemy forces, the silence was unnerving. The constant rumble of artillery and explosions was gone, as was the distant screaming of men in battle. Only now, with it absent did Hawke realise how omnipresent it had been.
Not a soul moved on the plain below and he decided that enough was enough. He scavenged a few unspoiled ration packs from the torpedo facility's crew quarters as well as some hydration tablets and, thankfully, some detox pills.
With the battle over, he began the long trek to the valley floor, a skinny shambling wreck, covered in dust and blood. Quite what he intended to do when he got there, he didn't know, but knew that it sure beat staying in the mountains.
It was on his third day's travel, as he rested in the shadow of a tall boulder, that he saw the ship. It roared low along the valley before vanishing to land beyond the smashed walls of the citadel.
Though he knew he was too far away to be heard, he shouted himself hoarse, scrambling downhill at a furious rate. The fact that he was almost a day's journey from the citadel didn't occur to him, and soon he was breathless and exhausted, his head pounding in pain.
When he recovered, he set off once more, filled with fresh determination. He travelled for another five hours across the treacherous terrain of the mountains, when he heard the whine of the ship's engines once more.
Hawke watched the ponderous craft rise up from the distant citadel and angle itself towards the crimson sky.
'Oh, no,' he moaned. 'No, no, no… come back! Come back you bastards! Come back!'
But the crew of the ship ignored his pleading and the craft shot upwards on a burning tail plume. Hawke dropped to his knees as the craft vanished from sight, weeping and cursing its crew.
He was scanning the sky, desperately hoping the ship would return, when the first orbital lance strike lit up the sky with unbearable brightness and streaked through the atmosphere to impact on the citadel.
He sat bolt upright as a massive explosion mushroomed from the citadel, scrambling backwards as a cascade of light fell from the sky, enveloping the citadel in blinding explosions.
Hawke watched, horrified as the barrage continued for another three hours. By the time it was complete, there was nothing left to indicate that the citadel had existed at all.
He slumped onto his side, closing his eyes as the weight of the last few weeks crashed down upon him and he r
ealised he was trapped on Hydra Cordatus. He squeezed shut his eyes and rolled onto his back as exhaustion finally claimed him.
ROUGH HANDS SHOOK him awake and he grunted in pain as he felt himself being dragged to his feet. He tried to open his eyes, but they were gummed with dust. All he could make out were blurred, yellow forms and shouted questions. Shapes either side of him held him upright as an insistent voice nagged at him.
'What…?' he slurred.
'What is your name?' repeated the voice.
'Hawke,' he managed, 'Guardsman Hawke, serial number 25031971, who the hell are you?'
'Sergeant Vermaas of the Imperial Fists strike cruiser Justitia Fides,' said a voice in front of him.
He felt hands lifting his dog-tags from beneath his uniform jacket.
Hawke blinked his eyes and turned his head, seeing two giants in yellow power armour either side of him, a third standing before him without his helmet. Even in his exhausted state, Hawke recognised Space Marines and wept in relief when he saw the boxy shape of a Thunderhawk gun-ship sitting on the plain behind them.
'Where is Captain Eshara?' demanded Vermaas.
'Who?'
'Brother-Captain Alaric Eshara, commander of the Imperial Fists Third Company.'
'Never heard of him,' said Hawke.
Vermaas nodded to the Imperial Fists either side of him and Hawke was marched roughly towards the gunship as the Space Marines boarded ahead of him.
'Where are you taking me?' he asked.
'We're taking you home, soldier,' said Sergeant Vermaas.
Hawke smiled and stepped aboard the Thunderhawk.
THE ENEMY OF MY ENEMY
The man was too weak to scream as Obax Zakayo picked him up by the ankle and tossed him into the wide fanged jaws of the furnace. None of the other slaves looked up at this fresh atrocity. None dared to. The wrath of Obax Zakayo was a capricious thing; unpredictable and random and no-one in this sweltering hell could be counted safe from his spite.
The murderous giant took a lumbering step through the orange-lit nightmare of the forge temple, bellowed commands laced with grating static booming from the vox-amp built into his burnished iron shoulder guard. Yellow and black chevrons edged the plates of his power armour and hissing pipes wheezed from every joint, leaking stinking black fluids and venting puffs of steam with every step. He carried a screaming axe, its edge toothed and brutal, and a crackling energy whip writhed on the end of a mechanised claw attached to his back.
Billowing clouds of steam and exhaust gasses filled the forge, shot through with streaks of bright flames. Fat orange sparks flew from vast grinding machines and rivers of lava-hot metal streamed from colossal cauldrons – each larger than a titan’s head – into grooved weapon moulds. Monstrous, debased creatures in vulcanised rubber masks with rounded glass eye sockets and ribbed piping running into tanks carried on their backs cracked barbed whips. They lurched with a twisted, mutated gait and gurgled monotone commands to the hundreds of slaves that filled the screaming forge.
That such malnourished, wretched specimens of humanity could still live and work in such a terrible place was testament to the indomitable spirit that had sustained them in the time since their capture. None amongst them knew how long it had been since they had been dragged in chains from the proud defence of an Imperial citadel to this nightmare world. A world where a black sun beat down from a sky that burned a retina-searing white and from which smoky black threads poured into a cyclopean city of such insane proportions that men had been driven mad just by gazing upon its impossible geometries for too long.
Some three thousand men had been brought to this world, called Medrengard by its inhabitants, though less than a quarter of that number still lived. Whipped, beaten and fed barely enough to survive, their incarceration was little more than a slowly enacted death sentence. The grinning face at the end of the forge’s nave roared and seethed, filling the air with a screeching howl of fury. Here, an incarcerated daemon’s immaterial energies drove the ceaseless hammering of giant pistons while its anger heated the furnaces with the power of a star. Golden wards carved into the floor bound the daemon to its fate, and its red eyes blazed above the forge, driving men to madness and murder.
But such was a small price, and gladly paid by the masters of the forge. A hundred slaves or more died every day, but the Iron Warriors cared not.
Where a hundred died, a thousand more would be brought to work until death claimed them as well.
A trio of tracked bulldozer engines hauled themselves into the forge, dragging rusted troughs behind them through the knee-deep ash. More of the rubber-masked mutants drove the dozers and, even before they stopped, slaves clustered around them, leaning over the edges of the troughs to scoop up handfuls of the thin, greyish gruel that slopped around their bases. Men who had once called each other brother and had fought the dark powers shoulder to shoulder, punched and kicked each other bloody as they fought for the meagre scraps their captors allowed them.
Sergeant Ellard carefully made his way through the press of bodies to where a slumped figure sat exhausted, his head drooping between his knees. Unkempt, filth-encrusted hair that had once been blonde, but was now dull and grey covered most of the figure’s ash-smeared face.
‘Sir,’ said Ellard, ‘some food.’
The figure looked up, red-rimmed and bloodshot eyes stared at the sergeant through the lank rats’ tails of his hair, but said nothing.
‘Sir, you have to eat,’
‘Why?’
‘Because you’ll get sick if you don’t eat.’
‘We’re already dying, Ellard, remember? The Adeptus Mechanicus made sure of that with their damned cancers, so what’s the point in postponing death?’
Ellard squatted on his haunches, still holding out his dripping hands, coolly regarding his commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel Mikhail Leonid.
‘Because we’re soldiers of the 383rd Jouran Dragoons,’ said Ellard. ‘We don’t give up until the last breath has been crushed from us.’
‘Just like Corde,’ said Leonid.
‘What?’
‘Never mind,’ said Leonid, holding out his hands and allowing Ellard to pour what passed for nourishment into his hands. He looked at the grey liquid, oily patches of Emperor only knew what floating like a frothy scum on its surface. He raised his hands to his mouth and drank the foul broth, feeling the gristly lumps of meat catch in his throat. He didn’t know what meat it was and didn’t want to think too hard about the strongest possibility of its identity.
He felt his stomach cramp and fought the familiar urge to vomit its contents onto the ground. The carcinogens he and his regiment had been infected with were making their presence felt and Leonid closed his eyes as a jagged spike of pain ripped through his gut.
But Ellard was right, they were soldiers of Jouran and the Emperor, and they did not give up, no matter that they were all dead men who refused to lie down. He forced down the last mouthful of the gruel and watched as the Iron Warrior bastard, Obax Zakayo, marched down the length of the forge, the loathsome claw on his back cracking the energy-wreathed whip into the huddled masses of slaves.
‘On your feet, scum!’ he bellowed. ‘There’s work to be done. I’ll grind your bones to powder and feed you to the daemon of the forge! Up! Up!’
How could it have come to this? Though it seemed he had spent a lifetime toiling in this nightmare existence, he knew it could not have been long. A few scant months since the citadel of Hydra Cordatus had fallen to the Iron Warriors and they had been dragged off in chains to the echoing prison hulks in orbit.
His last sight of the citadel had been of its walls being cast down, its once-proud buildings in flames and the desecrated corpses of Captain Eshara’s Imperial Fists scattered before the Valedictor Gate like offal. Herded like animals onto the darkened prison barges of the traitors, they had been kept chained and beaten until arriving at this terrifying place.
Leonid knew that the galaxy was a big plac
e, with many strange and incredible sights, but this was something else entirely. Hoary old veterans told tales of worlds located in a horrifying place known as the Eye of Terror, where mighty daemons and the followers of the Ruinous Powers ruled supreme. They spoke of insane worlds where gods whose name could never be spoken held sway over all before them and who shaped their worlds to their lunatic whims. Like others, he had laughed at these tales, though there had always been an edge of fear to the laughter. What if they were true?
Now he knew they were.
The shadow of Obax Zakayo swallowed him, the monster in dark iron armour thrown into silhouette by the fires of the furnace.
‘You. Slave. Stand up,’ ordered the Iron Warrior.
Leonid rose to his feet. To disobey Obax Zakayo was to die and, as wretched as their lot was, he was damned if he’d die at this bastard’s hands.
The Iron Warrior leaned down, the hot breath from his helmet’s rebreather making Leonid gag and the yellow light from his visor bathing him in a sickly glow.
‘Slaves bring you food. You are their leader?’
‘I was,’ nodded Leonid. ‘Not now.’
Obax Zakayo laughed, the noise a harsh grating that scraped along Leonid’s nerves like a rusty blade. He plucked at a tattered epaulette on Leonid’s shoulder, wiping away a film of grease and ash to reveal the faded gold shoulder boards of a lieutenant colonel.
‘You let yourself be captured,’ said Obax Zakayo. ‘The gods of battle will mock you for all eternity, slave.’
‘Better that than be damned for all eternity,’ snapped Leonid.
‘Damned?’ chuckled Obax Zakayo, as though hearing the word for the first time. ‘Perhaps, but I am immortal. Powerful. What are you?’
Leonid said nothing, feeling his hatred swell, but keeping a tight grip on its power. Hot pain suffused his limbs and though he was weary beyond measure, he stood firm in the face of the taunting Iron Warrior.
From the corner of his eye he caught a glimpse of furtive movement and heard a muffled cry over the heavy hammering of the forge and the roar of the imprisoned daemon. Obax Zakayo caught the motion and turned in time to catch a fleeting glimpse of a swinging iron bar before it hammered into his helmet.
Iron Warriors - The Omnibus Page 33