Dematris launched himself into the fight. He swung his crozius into the back of a daemon’s skull, and the thing’s head exploded in a shower of slime.
Even as its bubbling body dissolved into smoke, he was already firing his heavy-gauge bolt pistol, every round finding its mark in another rotting body.
Explosions sprayed filth across his armour. Hellspawn staggered and groaned.
They were tough. For every one of the creatures he sent howling back to the warp, another would withstand his attacks, stumbling then rallying back to stab at him with its blade. Flies whirled around Dematris in a storm, blinding him as they tried frantically to find any chink in his armour.
‘Foul spawn!’ he roared. ‘Filth incarnate! Unclean parodies! In the Emperor’s name, I hurl you back into the abyss!’
Dematris kept swinging and firing, ignoring the rotted claws and rusted blades that raked across his power armour. He hewed a path to Sergeant Marcus’ side.
‘Tough bastards,’ grunted Marcus, sawing his blade through a daemon’s throat and kicking its dissolving body away from him. ‘Fearless, too. Stun grenades do nothing.’
‘Faith will do everything you need,’ replied Dematris, and his tone brooked no argument. The mass of daemons pressed in from all sides, mumbling their endless, droning count as they fought. Thunder roared as the fortress’ wall guns poured shots into the melee, bursting the daemons of Nurgle like sacks of wet offal. Reiver blades and bolt carbines felled more of the creatures.
Still they pressed in, and Dematris began to think he would be overwhelmed before the very gates he had vowed to secure.
Then came the blaring machine-voice of Brother Indomator, bellowing his war cry as he led the charge into the daemons’ ranks. The Redemptor
Dreadnought fired his macro plasma incinerator point-blank, and rotted horrors vanished in a flare of light. His massive power fist swept through them like a wrecking ball, hurling melting corpses high into the air. At Indomator’s side fought the Aggressors of Squad Temeter, along with the bounding Inceptors of squads Polandrus and Thaddean.
Dematris shouted in triumph as the daemons were torn apart. Groaning voices turned thin and echoing, before fading altogether as the pack of daemons discorporated into sludge and smoke.
The Ultramarines were left panting with exertion, standing over the rusted and riven bodies of their dead. Yet the gate was theirs. Dematris opened a vox-channel to let the lieutenant know, but emerald lightning leapt again, and jaundiced smoke billowed up between Dematris’ force and Cassian’s. From within came the rumble and crackle of blazing furnaces, and the rusted creak of mechanical joints. Huge shapes moved amidst the murk.
‘Back!’ he cried. ‘Secure the gates. Whatever comes, do not let it through, brothers. We cannot let the fortress fall.’
Gurgling roars shook the air, and from within the fume came tank-sized monsters, bloated things of leprous flesh and blazing eyes that trampled forwards on mechanical legs. The daemon engines flexed piston-driven claws and clutched foetid blades as tall as battle-brothers, and as they came they loosed a hail of shots from cannons sutured into their shoulder flesh.
‘Hold!’ roared Dematris as fire rained around him. ‘Whatever the cost!
Hold!’
Fifty yards down the processional, Cassian watched the Death Guard emerge from the ruins. The heretics’ forces had been mauled, yet they still outnumbered his own warriors two to one at least. Foul champions led their advance: rot-cowled sorcerers and lumbering freaks that tolled monstrous bells or wielded filthy surgical instruments. Bloat-drones flew above them on smoke-belching turbines, their foul cannons pointed straight at the Ultramarines’ lines.
Against this horde, he had his surviving Intercessors and Hellblasters dug in amongst the ruins, supported by the Dreadnought Brother Marius and the two battle-damaged Repulsors.
‘There,’ said Keritraeus. ‘Their leader.’
Cassian followed the Librarian’s gaze and saw a hulking warrior with a
cracked, horned helm. With him marched several twisted Terminators.
‘So much misery laid at that one’s feet,’ said Cassian. ‘Whatever else happens here today, he will not walk away alive.’
‘We need only hold them until Dematris secures the gate,’ said Keritraeus.
‘ If Dematris secures the gate,’ said Cassian, glancing doubtfully at the yellowed fog banks that lay thick across the processional.
With a glottal roar, the Death Guard began their attack. Hails of bolt shells tore into the ruins, blasting away rubble and striking sparks from blue power armour. Sprays of filth jetted into the Ultramarines’ lines as the bloat-drones bombarded them.
‘Fire!’ roared Cassian.
Around him, his warriors let fly. The guns of the Repulsor tanks screamed as they hosed shots into the advancing traitors. Brother Marius joined his fire to theirs, while the plasma incinerators of the Hellblasters spat glowing blasts that reduced heretics to ash.
The punishing firestorm intensified as the two battle-lines closed, and Cassian gripped the hilt of Duty tight. This was it – either the Death Guard would break them here, before the fortress walls, or they would hold out long enough to pull back through the gates and slam them in their enemies’ faces.
It was to be a battle of attrition.
Cassian’s eyes widened at the realisation. ‘Don’t give them the fight they desire. Keritraeus! Squad Gallen! On me! They are expecting us to dig in and try to outlast them, but you don’t survive a disease simply by enduring. You cut out the canker at its source!’
‘Their lord?’ asked Keritraeus.
‘Their lord,’ echoed Cassian. ‘Let us carve out the enemy’s cancerous heart and see if they can survive without it.’
He surged from cover, bolt rifle roaring.
Gurloch saw his enemy coming. It was enough to return the smile to his rotten features.
‘Ah! Some spirit after all!’ he growled. ‘Come to me, you hale lapdogs – let me dirty you with Nurgle’s munificence.’
He revved the cutting teeth of his plaguereaper, and planted his feet in a fighting stance. Around him, the surviving Witherlings opened fire. The roar of their combi-bolters was deafening, and Gurloch chortled as he felt it
shudder through his leprous bones.
One of the Ultramarines went down as a bolt-round punched through his faceplate. Another stumbled, then took a blight-shell straight to the chest. His body collapsed on itself in seconds, turning to blackened rot and rust.
The rest of the Space Marines dropped into firing crouches and let fly, their guns screaming with the distinctive fury of overcharge. Glowing bolts of energy slammed into the Witherlings: Gulgoth lost a leg at the knee and crashed over with a roar; Slurgh the Fatted took a shot to the gut, his armour dissolving and his straining belly bursting like an overripe blister; Nolghul Everlife was killed, his lifeless body toppling back like a felled statue.
One of the Ultramarines vanished in a plume of plasma and fire as his gun’s machine-spirit rebelled, but it was small comfort to Gurloch.
At the same time, the two Space Marine leaders kept coming. A Librarian, and an officer or champion of a rank Gurloch didn’t recognise.
‘Come to me!’ he bellowed. ‘I am Gurloch of the Death Guard, and I will carve the names of my fallen into your rotting corpses!’
The loyalist champion came at him, firing his bolt rifle at Gurloch’s face.
The Lord of Contagion took the shots on his helm without flinching, then swung up his axe to block a swift blade stab. Power sword met plaguereaper in a shower of sparks, and the loyalist staggered back. Gurloch followed up, stomping forwards and swinging his weapon in a mighty arc that the Ultramarine only just dodged.
‘Swarm him,’ snarled Gurloch, and a droning mass of flies whirled down upon the Ultramarine like a storm.
Blue lightning leapt, and Gurloch’s flies fell from the air in fistfuls, crisped and dead. The rest dispersed with a frantic buzzing,
revealing the Librarian with his staff still crackling.
Molghus, the last of the Witherlings, rushed the Librarian, firing as he went.
His shots rebounded from a shield of force. The psyker’s eyes blazed, and Molghus bellowed as white fire burst from the joints in his armour, blazing like plasma. Still he lunged at the Librarian, managing to slam his power mace into the psyker’s chest-plate. The Librarian was thrown from his feet, before Molghus collapsed in a blackened heap.
Gurloch roared his anger – a terrible, bubbling sound.
‘Unworthy!’ he bellowed. ‘You are unworthy of those you slay!’
He stormed towards the psyker, but staggered as another volley of bolt shots
hit him in the side. The rounds blasted craters in his armour and sent splatters of flesh and slime across the ferrocrete. Gurloch turned angrily, just in time to catch the downswing of the Ultramarine officer’s blade. It crackled blue as it struck his plaguereaper and mangled one of its buzz-saw blades.
In return, Gurloch stepped close, releasing his weapon’s haft with one hand and grabbing the Space Marine’s shoulder guard. His enemy tried to pull away as Gurloch’s sweat-slick grasp rusted his armour, but he was nowhere near strong enough. With a deranged grin, Gurloch headbutted his enemy as hard as he could, crumpling the Ultramarine’s faceplate and shattering the lenses of his helm.
Gurloch raised his axe to grind its whirring teeth into the loyalist’s face, only for a blast of psychic energy to hit him from behind. Gurloch staggered, dropping the dazed Ultramarine, and turned with a furious growl to face the Librarian again.
‘Enough!’ he roared, and lumbered towards his tormentor. Plasma blasts screamed around him, one striking his armour with enough force to sear a blackened crater in his ribs. The Librarian hurled lightning at Gurloch, causing agony to race through the Chaos lord’s body and his armour to smoulder, but still Gurloch forged on, Nurgle’s gifts pouring fresh vitality through his flesh even as it blackened and died.
He raised his plaguereaper high, then swung it down with killing force.
Cassian’s head cleared, and he hissed in pain as he tore his mangled helm free. His nose was shattered. One eye was blinded, and he winced as he pulled a shard of lens-glass from his bloody socket. The tainted rain dribbled into his wounds, making them burn and ache.
Yet his pain was forgotten in an instant as he saw Gurloch bearing down on Keritraeus.
‘No!’ he shouted, reaching for his blade, stumbling to his feet, knowing he was too late.
The axe fell.
Keritraeus’ staff sheared in two as he tried to block the blow. Churning blades swept through the Librarian’s gorget, then his neck, then out the back of his armour in a spray of blood and sparks. His head thumped to the ferrocrete, still attached to a mangled mass of flesh, bone and armour. His corpse fell next to it, bright Adeptus Astartes blood flooding into the oily
puddles.
Around Cassian, his battle-brothers were fighting as best they could, holding the enemy back despite the odds. One of their tanks was now a blazing wreck, and Brother Marius was limping on a ruined leg. The enemy pressed in from all sides.
He had led them to this.
He would not betray them by giving in now.
‘Dematris,’ he shouted over the vox. ‘Either the gate is secure or we are all dead men. One way or another, I’m ordering all battle-brothers to fall back on your position now!’
With his order given, Cassian shook the rain from his blade, spat a wad of blood and charged Lord Gurloch.
The hulking brute saw him coming and leered through a rent in his helm. He was bloated, enormous, reeking of power and filth. Yet he was wounded sorely; Cassian’s comrades had seen to that.
‘Emperor,’ bellowed Cassian, ‘lend strength to my arm!’
He came in hard, swinging his sword in a beheading arc. His enemy parried, far faster than his corpulent frame would suggest was possible, and their weapons clanged together again.
‘Your Emperor has no strength to give,’ laughed Gurloch. ‘He is weak.
Impotent. Just like you.’
The two warriors swung and parried amidst the driving rain. Thunder boomed overhead, the Dark Gods themselves urging the Death Guard on to victory.
In his peripheral vision, Cassian saw his surviving men falling back in good order, blitzing fire into the Death Guard as they followed his orders and left him behind. That was good, he thought. Victory demanded sacrifice.
There was another clashing exchange of blades, and Cassian was driven back again, with a bloody rent in his chest and another in his thigh. He had wounded his enemy again and again, but the Chaos lord didn’t seem to feel it.
‘Give up, lapdog,’ said Gurloch, his tone almost kindly. ‘With every heartbeat, the gifts of Grandfather Nurgle crawl through your bloodstream and bring you closer to death, even as they fortify my magnificent form with fresh might. I have opened myself to his generosity, but for you, I fear, the burden of his boons may prove too much. This is a fight you cannot win.’
Cassian shook his head, feeling the truth of his enemy’s words. His body
burned with fever heat and shuddered with sudden chills. His vision swam. A momentary glance at his wounds confirmed that they were festering and blackening by the moment.
‘Strike swift,’ he gasped to himself. ‘Strike true. Cut out… the canker.’
Marshalling the last of his strength, Cassian hurled his bolt rifle at Gurloch’s head. Surprised, the Chaos lord swatted the weapon away with the blade of his axe. In that moment, Cassian hurled himself at his enemy, swinging his sword down in a thunderous overarm blow that left him wide open to attack.
Gurloch brought his plaguereaper back around. Its churning blades slammed into Cassian’s midriff and bit deep. Yet even the Chaos lord’s prodigious might was not enough to stop Duty slamming down onto the crest of his helm. Ceramite and diseased flesh split open like an infected wound as the power sword carved down through Gurloch’s skull and into the diseased meat of his brain.
Cassian stumbled back, rent armour sparking, blood pouring from the massive wound in his stomach. He felt his legs going cold. Dimly, he saw the hilt of his power sword jutting out from just above Gurloch’s jaw. It had split the Chaos lord’s head clean in two.
Gurloch’s mouth worked, a drizzle of rancid gore and wriggling maggots spilling from it. He pawed one-handedly at the hilt of the blade that had killed him. Then, at last, even the gifts of his foul god could no longer keep him on his feet.
Lord Gurloch fell, crashing to the wet stone, and Cassian followed him down. Over the vox, he half heard the bellows of Chaplain Dematris. He deciphered the words gates secure and something about falling back within.
It was enough. Knowing that he had done all that he could for his primarch, Lieutenant Cassian let the darkness take him.
EPILOGUE
Cassian lay beneath a pall of shadows. There was no sound, no sensation. No pain. His sense of self drifted, and for a time he felt nothing but a strange kind of peace.
Something moved. A figure, tall and powerful. Cassian saw for a moment the grotesque mass of the Death Guard lord, and he felt a shudder of panic grip him. Yet the hand that drew back his shroud was gentle, and the face that looked down upon him was regal and beatific. A halo of light shimmered around it, and in his mind Cassian heard the distant voices of angelic choirs swell.
‘Lieutenant Cassian,’ said the figure, and his voice was as firm and reassuring as bedrock.
‘Em… per… or?’ asked Cassian, his voice little more than a croak.
The figure smiled.
‘Once, almost, for my sins. Lieutenant, is your duty done?’
Part of Cassian wanted to nod, to say yes, that he had given everything: his men, his comrades. His life.
Instead, he shook his head in a single, jerky motion. ‘Only in… death…
does duty… end…’
The figure’s smile vanished, replaced by some
thing sterner, tinged with sorrow and pride. Cassian hoped never to forget the power of that gaze.
‘Very well, lieutenant,’ said the figure. Slowly, he replaced the shroud over Cassian’s face, and as he did so, darkness closed in once more.
Cassian woke, and for a moment believed that he was truly dead. He hung in darkness, and could feel nothing at all.
Then he heard a voice, filtering to him as though through a vox.
‘Vitals online. Synaptic choristry aligning. Bio-auguries look good, all runes in the green. Full sensorium coming online… now.’
Cassian tried to blink as light flooded his vision, yet even his eyelids seemed numbed. The pain swiftly subsided as he adjusted to the sudden restoration of his sight, and he realised that he was in a shipboard apothecarion. Three Apothecaries whom he didn’t recognise crowded around him. To his surprise, there was a Techmarine with them.
Suddenly, data-feeds began scrolling down his peripheral vision. He could see power levels, reactor-stability readings, vox and auspex data. Realisation began to dawn as he tried to look down at himself, only to feel a jarring sense of dislocation.
‘I… cannot feel my body,’ he said, and his voice was a vox-generated rumble.
‘It is alright, brother,’ said one of the Apothecaries. ‘Your body was ravaged beyond our abilities to restore. We saved only those parts you would need.’
‘I… would need…?’ Cassian knew what they were saying, but even as the
conditioned part of his psyche processed the revelation, another part of his mind was screaming in panic and trying desperately to move limbs that weren’t there, flex muscles that didn’t exist and feel skin that he no longer possessed.
‘You made a great sacrifice, brother,’ said a familiar voice, and the others parted to reveal Fourth Company Captain Adrastean, clad in his shipboard robes and smiling a tight smile. ‘You gave up your body of flesh in the name of victory. These fine brothers have given you another, that you might continue to fight.’
Crusade & Other Stories - Dan Abnett Et Al. Page 10