The appearance of the slaves was drastically altered by the foul masks; they looked more like devotees of the dark gods than Imperial citizens, and Varnus realised that he too must resemble one of the hated ones.
The work on the tower was never-ending and the slaves were worked at a brutal pace, the overseers viciously punishing those that failed to meet their exacting demands. It was as if the whole operation had gone into overdrive, that there was a looming deadline fast approaching and the tower had to be completed. There must have been around two hundred thousand slaves working atop the walls alone, he estimated, and many more hundreds of thousands working down in the sink-hole that disappeared inside the shaft of the tower, burrowing ever deeper into Tanakreg's crust, down into the depths of the planet. All told, he estimated that there must have been a million slave workers toiling over the construction at any one time. More crane engines had been constructed, and along with thousands of slaves, they were strengthening the base of the tower, making it thicker with additional layers of bricks even as the tower soared up towards the heavens. In addition, they began work on a massive spiralling walkway, wide enough for a battle tank, that coiled its way around the exterior of the tower. It was a mammoth undertaking, but one that progressed at an astonishing pace.
There must have been dire sorceries involved, for the tower had already surpassed the height of the greatest construction that he had ever heard of, and logic dictated that it simply could not rise higher without toppling, or collapsing beneath its own weight. But rise higher it did, defying the laws of the material universe.
Although he loathed the monstrous tower as he hated his overseers and captors, he could not help but have strange paternal feelings over the mass of rock and blood mortar. It was a repulsive moment of self-awareness, but the actions of the other slaves, particularly the ex-bodyguard and manservant, Pierlo, who he was chained alongside, had alerted him to it.
There had been an incident two work shifts earlier. Was that two days past? Two hours past?
The man Pierlo, Varnus had ascertained, was barely holding a grip on his sanity. He had overheard the man whispering to himself, having one side of a conversation that only he could hear. The living, black module that was attached to his face strangely distorted his voice, making it guttural, thick and oddly muted. In fact, it sounded uncannily like the voices of the cruel overseers. Varnus knew that his voice had undergone a similar change.
As he talked quietly to himself, Varnus had noticed that the man was tenderly stroking the stone beneath him, as if he were petting a beloved family salt hound. It was unnerving, but since he heard voices constantly through the blaring cacophony of the Discords, he thought little of it. At least he had so far resisted the desire to talk back to those voices.
As Pierlo stroked the harsh stone, Varnus had heard a wailing cry and had swung around to see the commotion. A block of stone, one of the millions that made up the growing tower, was being lowered into position, but through some mishap, it had not been positioned correctly. It had crushed the legs of three slave workers and was teetering on the brink of tipping off the high wall. One of the spider-limbed cranes strained as it tried to reposition the stone, but it was clear that it would fall. Pierlo and several other slaves had risen to their feet, crying out in horror, and Varnus felt a pang of anguish and terror.
The stone slipped in the claws of the crane and dropped over the outside edge of the wall, spinning and smashing against the stones below. A hundred tonnes of rock, it tumbled end over end, down and down, before disappearing in the low hanging smog clouds. The men whose legs had been shattered wailed, but not in pain. They clawed their way to the edge of the wall, their legs twisted horrifically beneath them, as they watched the descent of the block, eyes already brimming with tears of loss.
Pierlo had fallen to his knees, crying out to the heavens. Varnus's stomach churned, and he felt such a hollow loss within his chest that he thought he would weep. He shook his head as he realised what he was thinking, but the pain remained. All around the tower, slaves cried out in anguish.
He also knew that this was no doubt some further degradation of his sanity, for how else could he imagine that a construction like this had self-awareness? But of that he was convinced. The tower had been distraught when the stone had fallen and the slaves that had tended it had picked up that emotion. It was the kind of feeling a parent has when its child is in pain but cannot be helped.
He hated the tower, but when the time for the shift change came, he found it difficult to leave. The ride down the rickety, grilled elevator that climbed down the narrow steps of the tower on mechanical spider legs was hard, and the pain of separation was strong, even though it repulsed him. Other slaves cried out and wept openly, pushing their hands out through the grill to touch the stone of the tower, often losing a finger in the process.
Sleep was still no respite for Varnus, as every time he closed his eyes he revisited the hellish landscape of skinned corpses. Only now, there were towering buildings made out of the corpses, huge edifices that reached to the roiling heavens. From these buildings came the tolling of bells and the sound of monotonous chanting. He awoke covered in sweat, and instantly the pain of separation struck him; he longed to be back atop the tower, working.
Discords blared and told him that the tower had a name. They told him that it was a Gehemehnet. He did not know the word, but it felt right.
It seemed to him that the Gehemehnet breathed, and that he could feel the pulse of its massive heart reverberating through the stone beneath his touch.
He prayed to the Emperor when he thought such things, but it was increasingly hard to remember the words of worship that had been drummed into him by the priests of the Ecclesiarchy.
He looked at Pierlo as the man worked, smearing the blood mortar across the stone face. The man's robes had fallen open and there was something underneath, a shape on the man's shoulder that even the lumps of congealed mortar could not hide.
'What's on your shoulder?' he hissed, his voice alien to him.
Pierlo looked up in irritation, as if rudely interrupted mid-conversation. He pulled at his tattered robe, covering up the mark, and continued with his work, head down.
Varnus risked a glance around and saw that there was no overseer anywhere nearby. His mind feverish and the din of the Discord blaring, kill him, Varnus scrambled over to the slave and grabbed at his robe. Pierlo clawed at his hands, trying to fend him off, but Varnus ripped the robe from the man's shoulder.
There was a symbol there on the meat of his shoulder, a symbol that he recognised, for he had seen it hundreds of times every day. It was embossed on the sides of the spider cranes and it was stamped into the foreheads of some of the head overseers. He had seen it on the shoulder plate of every cursed traitor Space Marine on the planet. It was a screaming daemon's face and he knew exactly what it proclaimed.
'You are one of them!' he hissed. Instantly the pieces fell together in his mind. He had seen the man leave the meeting room in the palace just moments before it had exploded. He was one of the traitor insurgents that had aided the forces of Chaos.
Pierlo's face twisted hatefully as the two scuffled. Dully, Varnus heard the yells of other slaves, but he paid them no heed. All he could hear was the pounding of blood in his head. This bastard was one of those who had opened the door to the invaders. Hatred swelled within him. His hand snapped out towards Pierlo's face, fingers spread like claws.
The man was no stranger to unarmed combat and he grabbed Varnus's hand as it came close, twisting his wrist painfully. Pierlo's other hand slammed into his solar plexus, fingers extended, and all the breath was driven from him. He sank to the stone. Where Pierlo was of high birth, and had clearly been trained in the arts of combat, Varnus had learnt how to brawl on the streets of Shinar, and he knew that fighting as an art form and fighting tooth and nail for daily survival were two very different things. Varnus had suffered countless beatings in his youth as a hab-ganger and had dished
out far more. Even when he had tried to go straight and had secured a job on the salt plains, he had fought in bare-knuckle brawls at night to supplement his meagre income. All that had changed when he had been recruited into the Shinar enforcers, but his skills had come in just as useful there.
Varnus surged up suddenly, landing a fierce blow to Pierlo's chin, quickly followed by a vicious swinging elbow that connected sharply with the man's head. He reeled backwards, about to fall off the wall and probably drag Varnus and half a dozen other slaves with him. Varnus grabbed the thick, spiked chain, yanking the man back onto the stone and straight into a knee that he slammed into Pierlo's groin.
As Pierlo bent forwards in pain, the ex-enforcer drove the point of his elbow down onto the back of his head, dropping him to the stone. Pierlo was motionless, but Varnus had not finished there. His hatred suffusing him, he made a loop with the spiked chain and hooked it around Pierlo's neck, placing a foot on the back of the man's neck. He crossed the chains in his hands and strained, pulling on the chain with all his strength. Though Pierlo wore the same blood-red metal collar as all the slaves, the chain bit deeply around his throat, cutting off his breathing as the spiked barbs sank into flesh. Blood ran from the man's throat, mixing with the mortar atop the stone.
Pain jolted him as the needles of the overseers plunged into his flesh, but he didn't care. His muscles bulged as he hauled on the chains one final time before the searing pain the overseers delivered made him collapse, twitching and convulsing, to the stone alongside Pierlo.
In his mind's eye he saw the sky running red with blood. He knew that Gehemehnet was pleased.
He smiled as he looked into the dead eyes of the traitor.
The earth shook, and as Marduk ripped his chainsword from the guts of a Guardsman he raised his head to pierce the gloom. Rain still lashed the bloody battlefield, but he sensed, as much as he felt, something approaching, something huge.
Lightning flashed, silhouetting a shape that Marduk had initially mistaken for a mountain. This was no mountain though, for it moved inexorably forwards, and the earth shook as it took another laborious step.
With a curse on his lips, Marduk's gaze rose as the immense shape of the Titan was revealed.
It was like some ancient, primeval god from an antediluvian age that continued to stalk the lands long after its kin had passed into myth and legend.
Its metal hide was pitted and scored by wounds that it had suffered during the battles it had waged over its ten thousand year lifetime. It's leering, dull metal face was fire scorched and scarred, though its eyes still burned with red light. Within that metallic cranium sat the Princeps and his Moderati, psychically linked to the Titan. They felt its pain as their own and experienced savage joy as the behemoth laid waste to everything before it.
Advancing through the press of soldiers and tanks, it dwarfed everything in its path. A multi-towered bastion the size of a walled stronghold sat atop its massive, armoured carapace shell. Siege ordnance and battle cannons, of such size that a small tank could drive through the barrels, were housed within this massive structure, and the pennants and banners that adorned it whipped around in the gale. Scores of symbols were emblazoned on the ancient kill banners that hung from the pair of monstrous main guns that the Imperator Titan wielded in place of arms, marking the enemy Titans and super-heavy vehicles that it had destroyed throughout its long history. The air around the giant war machine shimmered with the power of its void shields.
The siege cannons upon the hulking shoulders of the Imperator thumped as they launched their first salvo, and the air was filled with screaming shells that erupted amongst the Word Bearers. Warrior-brothers were thrown through the air and tanks smashed asunder beneath the barrage, but that was as nothing compared to the awesome destruction that was to come. Super-heated plasma fed into the annihilator cannon on the beast's right arm, filling the air with potent hissing that hurt the unprotected ears of the Guardsmen, and the massive barrels of the deadly hellstorm cannon began to rotate, the wind beating fiercely as it picked up speed.
The hellstorm cannon let loose with a torrent of fire from the spinning barrels that tore along the line of Word Bearers, cutting from one side of the valley to the other, ripping through warriors and vehicles alike. The plasma annihilator cannon flared with the power of a contained sun and a gout of white-hot energy roared from its barrel, engulfing a handful of tanks that were instantly returned to their molten base elements.
The destruction that the Imperator wrought was awe inspiring, and a roar rose from the ranks of Imperial Guardsmen as their god-machine unleashed the power of its weapon systems upon the hated foe.
Marduk bared his sharp teeth, hissing up at the monstrous, unstoppable beast. Stabbing beams of energy flashed from the mountainside as the lascannons of the havoc squads positioned there targeted the Imperator. The powerful blasts looked like little more than pin-pricks of light as they strobed towards the Titan. Scores of predator tanks, Land Raiders, Dreadnoughts and daemon engines added their fire to that of the havoc squads as they directed their heavy weapons fire towards the towering behemoth. Missiles, lascannon beams, heavy ordnance shells and streaming plasma speared towards the Titan. Its void shields flashed as they absorbed the incoming firepower, leaving the deadly machine unscathed, and it returned fire with dozens of battle cannons situated in the leg bastions.
The ranks of the Imperial Guard renewed their attack, bolstered by the arrival of the Titan that unleashed the power of its plasma Annihilator once more, firing up into the darkness and blasting away a ridge top, causing salt rock, debris and daemon engines to crash down the sheer cliff in a mass avalanche. Its hellstorm cannons smoked as they spun, tearing along the ridge. Rain turned to steam as it lashed against the super-heated barrels of the mega-weapon. Barrages of ordnance continued to pound at the void shields atop the carapace of the Titan, and they flashed with a myriad of colours as they deflected the incoming fire.
Marduk swore again and fired into the press of bodies around him, feeling the shifting tide of the battle turn against his Legion. There was just not enough firepower to take down the Imperator's shields, let alone damage the Titan, not while they were already engaged with the Guard and Skitarii forces.
But to fail in their duty to hold the valley was to face a fate far worse than death. If it was necessary, every Word Bearers Space Marine would willingly give his life in this battle at his word. Though it was Kol Badar's place as Coryphaus and strategos to organise the complex, interwoven battle lines, the carefully planned advance, fire support and overlapping fields of fire, it was Marduk's place, in the absence of the Dark Apostle, to be responsible for the Host's spiritual leadership. If he gave the order to stay and fight to the death, for that was what the gods of Chaos wished, then his word would be obeyed without question. The warrior-brothers would sell their lives dearly but willingly, taking as many of the enemy with them as they could, before their own life essences were freed from their earthly forms.
But Marduk could not see how a noble sacrifice could be made against this ancient war god. No, there could be no proud last stand. There would be only death and destruction, swift and ignoble. They would not be able to buy the time that the Dark Apostle needed to complete the construction of the Gehemehnet, and that was paramount. If the building work was interrupted then the whole attack against the planet was rendered pointless, and the Council of Dark Apostles upon Sicarus would be most displeased. That was truly something to be feared, for even in death, the Council would reach into the abyss of the Immaterium and seek out the souls of those who had failed them. The endless torment that they would orchestrate was too horrific to even contemplate.
He felt anger build within him and hacked around in a fury, shattering bones and slicing through flesh as he fought in the rising water. Many of the enemy were wading almost to their stomachs through the fast moving flow, and the corpses of the slain floated face down, their blood leaking out like an oil slick. Another blast f
rom the Imperator obliterated a section of the battlefield with the power of its weaponry, and the whooshing sound of water instantly turning to steam was mixed with the roars of the dying and the detonations of the fuel lines and ammo-banks of vehicles.
'We must pull back, First Acolyte.' Kol Badar growled over the vox.
'The great war leader Kol Badar, ordering a retreat from Imperial Guard,' remarked Marduk. 'I can hear them laughing at us already.'
'Let them laugh. They won't have the chance to savour their victory for long.'
'For them to be able to savour any sort of victory against the Legion of Lorgar shames us all,' snarled Marduk.
'You wish to die here, whelp? I will joyfully oblige you if that is what you truly desire. And nobody will save you this time.'
Burias-Drak'shal cleaved his icon into the chest of a Guardsman, splattering blood across Marduk's helmet.
'The battle is good,' he growled, the thick daemon teeth within his shifting jaw making his speech awkward. He was not privy to the private vox transmissions passing between Kol Badar and Marduk. 'Is this the day to give our lives to Chaos?'
Marduk shook his head at the possessed Icon Bearer and snapped a barbed response to Kol Badar.
'The gods of Chaos would curse you if you dared try, warlord. Your failure mars us all.'
'And I will stand with my head held high before my lord and accept any punishment that he metes out. I would not try to wheedle out of it like you, whelp.'
'You admit your failures then, mighty Kol Badar.'
'I listen not to your spineless taunts, snake. As the gods are my witness, I will see that damned Imperator fall. I am still warlord of the Host, and you will do as I command.'
'I look forward to seeing you grovel and lick the ground at the Dark Apostle's feet as you beg for mercy,' snarled Marduk.
'Never going to happen, snake,' said Kol Badar. The vox-channel clicked as it was opened to the champions of the coteries.
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