by Guy Haley
‘Father! I have come for you!’
The words shook the world. Terror and fury swamped Katsuhiro’s mind, leaving him fighting with himself. When the World Eaters came loping from the fire with their chainswords and set about their grisly work, cutting down men and hacking skulls from the dead and living alike, he ran harder. One saw him, and came springing after him, the mass of the legionary’s armour making the ground tremble even through the bombardment. Skulls bounced on chains from battleplate whose white-and-blue livery was all but obscured by a thick coating of gore. In his warsuit, the Space Marine was far faster than Katsuhiro could ever hope to be, and ran at him, joints grinding, his chainaxe gunning.
‘Blood!’ the legionary shouted, so thickly he hardly spoke words. ‘Skulls!’
Katsuhiro tripped, sprawling on the ground. He rolled over to see the monster leap at him, weapon lifted to sever his head from his spine.
He threw up his hand. A loud bang and a blast wave of superheated air thumped the wind from him.
No axe fell. He looked up to see he was alone. Only when he scrambled to his feet did he find the Space Marine scattered in bubbling pieces across the ground.
No time to think. No time to see. More World Eaters were bounding through the fires and the explosions. Brazen horns blew. Drop pods slammed into the ground and released squads of legionaries. The siege towers ground on, and behind were the mortal hordes. All would kill him just as well, no matter their method. From the walls death was flung indiscriminately. Away to the south one of the great siege towers’ shields failed. It caught fire and detonated, going up like a resin torch thrust into a fire. Seconds later, metal from its destruction rang down around him, missing him, but there were more towers, and there were more deaths for him.
The red giant ran through the flames between the towers, his sword sweeping before him, slaughtering all he encountered. Guns rained every form of technological destruction down on him, but he was unharmed in the main, and what damage was inflicted was smoothed away, as if the wounds were washed off by the bloody rain.
‘Blood and skulls!’ the giant howled. ‘Blood for the Blood God!’
He ran with lowered head towards a trio of tanks that had somehow survived the destruction. His horns connected with one, rocking it on its tracks. The giant pushed a hand beneath its treads and heaved it over. A point-blank shot from the main armament of its squadron mate made the giant reel and roar, but he seemed only enraged by the blow. The sword sang through the air. Katsuhiro gaped as it sliced cleanly through the hull, setting the metal alight with black fire.
When the giant turned on the third tank, striding through a storm of bolts to ram his blade into its engine block, Katsuhiro ran again.
Somehow, he avoided the myriad forms of extinction that sliced, blasted and bludgeoned over the ruined outworks. Finally he crested the ridge of broken ground the first line had become, the roaring of the winged giant echoing behind him. Through the tempests of fire he beheld the grand portal of the Helios Gate. Little trace remained of the outwork fortifications there.
The gate was only a few hundred metres away, but firmly closed. He stumbled towards it, all strength spent, not sure what he would do. If he approached, he would die under the enemy bombardment, and there was no way through in any case. Not far from the gate one of the great siege towers was making its final approach to the wall. Between them there was no hope.
One more minute to breathe, he thought. One more moment to hear the pounding of his heart, that was all he could ask for.
There were other soldiers converging on the Helios Gate from all quarters, scattered survivors, a small proportion of the conscripts sent out to fight, but numerous in terms of absolute numbers.
Then a miracle occurred. Multi-throated horns sang orchestral warning cries. The great locking plates along the hinges of the gates clunked open, withdrew and lifted back. Grinding debris to powder, the gates swung open – slowly at first, but then, as their enormous mass was bullied into moving, with surprising speed.
Light flooded out from the open gate. Enemy weapons fire that had slammed into the portal was caught by a void shield spread over the arch. Figures, small as ants, formed up behind the sparkling aegis into firing lines. All were transhumans, their yellow armour golden in the city’s light. Tanks and Dreadnoughts supported them against the foe making for the gate.
‘Loyal men and women of the Imperium,’ a greatly amplified voice boomed from the gates. ‘Look now to your salvation. Make your way into the Emperor’s protection.
‘You have three minutes.’
A cry of anguish went up from the fleeing soldiers. Exhausted as they were, they redoubled their efforts, and fled through the field of death in hope of life.
Daylight Wall, Helios section, 15th of Quartus
Chain teeth growled past Raldoron’s face with a hair’s breadth to spare. He leaned back, and slashed down with his power sword, cutting the axe head from the World Eater’s weapon. It flew off, teeth still spinning. The Traitor legionary slammed a fist into Raldoron’s face, knocking his helmet into his cheek, and then grappled with him. Raldoron jammed his bolt pistol into the neck joint of his foe’s armour and pulled the trigger, emptying the ammunition clip and blasting the World Eater’s head from his body.
He heaved the warrior’s limp corpse away and moved on.
Several dozen World Eaters were on the wall. More drop pods were screaming down from the sky. The last of the siege towers was approaching, now only dozens of metres off the rampart. The uppermost storey was higher than the crenellations, its drawbridge held up on rusty chains the thickness of a Titan’s leg, and ready to drop. The size of it was ridiculous; it was so huge it should not be, and yet it was. From a castellated firing deck atop, Death Guard fired down onto the wall.
There was space within the tower for hundreds of legionaries. The difficulties the Blood Angels were experiencing would pale into insignificance if the siege tower made it all the way in.
Three had come out of the enemy camp. Two were now ablaze out from the wall, brought down by the Palace guns, but nothing, it seemed, could stop the third.
World Eaters reinforced the few Night Lords left on the rampart. They fought with astounding savagery, with no thought for tactics or self-preservation, but went berserk as soon as their Dreadclaws snagged themselves on the crenellations. The aegis had weakened to such an extent that drop pods were falling into the city now, slamming into hive spires and putting down in plazas. Not enough warriors made it through the air defences to take the Palace on their own, but they cut bloody slaughter through soldier and civilian alike before they were taken down, diverting the reserves coming up to hold the wall top against the main assault.
Mortis runes peeped for Raldoron’s attention as warriors of the First and Fourth Companies died around him. Thane’s weapons fire was diverted by the tower as his men engaged in a gun duel with the Death Guard riding it in.
The World Eaters expended their lives in savage explosions of violence, taking three of Raldoron’s men with them for every one slain.
‘Finish them!’ Raldoron voxed. ‘Get them off the wall!’
Behind him, another Dreadclaw hit the wall at a poor angle, ripping out several of the giant merlons and ricocheting off. It hit the tower on the way down, losing half its mass to the shields cocooning the construction, and cartwheeled uncontrollably end over end towards the ground.
The enemy surged around the tower base, certain it would reach its target: mutants, traitors, abominations, readying to flood up its steps and into the Palace after the Death Guard, their baying filtering up to Raldoron from all the way below. The ground was black with them, studded with fires from torches and burning effigies. Enfilading shots from the Helios Gate tore into them, slaughtering them by the dozen, but there were no big guns that could hit the tower itself, not at that range.
‘Get them off the wall!’ Raldoron repeated.
A World Eater came at him, his armour over
painted with gore. Chains bearing jawbones whipped around him. He was bareheaded, nothing but pure rage and hatred on his face, the tendrils of the Butcher’s Nails buried deep into the back of his scalp.
Raldoron shot him down, turning his skull into mist. The warrior dropped, blood pumping from his neck, fists beating at the rampart when his body hit the ground.
To the south, loyalist reinforcements finally arrived, bolstering the thinning ranks of the Blood Angels coming from the direction of the broken Dawn Tower. Howls and battle cries filled his vox. Making any strategic sense of the situation was impossible.
A lance strike punched through the aegis several kilometres away, cutting down into a small spire behind the fortifications. The weapon burned through, slicing the building diagonally. It collapsed with the screech of tortured metal, the top part falling on the wall, crumpling as it hit and blocking the wall walk.
Another World Eater came at him. Raldoron met his blow. Disruption lightning wreathed them both as his blade chopped off the legionary’s arm. The traitor barely seemed to notice the amputation, but launched himself head first at the captain. Raldoron stepped to the side, letting the warrior throw himself onto the paving of the rampart, and stabbed him through the back. The blow obliterated the World Eater’s power pack and the back-plate beneath, leaving his spine exposed to the air.
The first siege tower was mere metres away, and the rain was pouring down.
Between the north and south forces of the Blood Angels, only three World Eaters remained, then none, gunned down rapidly by the two lines of loyal legionaries meeting. Another drop pod speared towards the wall, retro thrusters burning to line it up for a perfect landing on the rampart, but as it was poised to cut out its jets and drop, guns within the Palace blasted it to scrap, dropping its wreckage on the wall.
‘Form up!’ bellowed Raldoron. He looked to the siege tower. Another few seconds and it would lower its bridge. Armoured loophole covers rattled up, and banks of melta-cutters extended, angled down.
‘Stand clear!’ he said. ‘Two lines! Two facing lines!’
Sergeants ordered squads over the gap between the groups of Blood Angels, bolstering Raldoron’s depleted units. They jogged over an uneven ground of power-armoured corpses, Night Lords, World Eaters and Blood Angels intermingled, their rounded armour slippery with blood and treacherous underfoot.
‘Stand ready!’ Raldoron called. ‘Stand ready!’
The siege tower moved forwards slower than he expected. It shuddered under fire and adjusted its course. A blaze of bolt-rounds hammered from its roof, forcing the Blood Angels to duck down behind the crenellations, their return fire ineffectual owing to the angle.
Raldoron took stock of his men. Three hundred left from two companies waited for the riders of the tower. A terrible stink came off the siege engine, of sickness and putrid wounds, that he smelled even though his armour was void-sealed.
More reinforcements were coming. Thane’s men were running down from the gatehouse, more arriving from the north, and a sixth company of Blood Angels speeding along the road behind the defences. This was the risk. This siege tower. If they threw back this assault, the Helios section of the Daylight Wall would hold.
We will triumph, he told himself. We are worthy.
The trumpet chorus of the gate’s war-horns snatched his attention from the siege tower. For the first time in centuries he experienced dread. Not even the daemonic horrors of Signus Prime had unnerved him; what he saw at the Helios Gate did.
The gates were opening.
They swung wide, pouring the pure lumen light of the city onto the field of battle. His hearts pounded. If the gates were open, they were lost.
‘Thane! Thane!’ he voxed. ‘The gates are opening! Angron is outside! Thane! On whose authority do the gates open? Are we betrayed?’
There was a rush of air behind him, and the thump of boots upon the stone. He turned to see Sanguinius alight on the wall, sword drawn in his left hand, the Spear of Telesto in his right, his golden armour running with the bloody downpour.
‘The gates open by my authority, captain.’
Sanguinius strode to Raldoron’s side.
‘My lord, why?’ For one terrible moment, Raldoron doubted his genefather’s loyalty, and feared he had turned against the Imperium at the last. If that were so, the Death Guard were in ignorance, for they turned all their attention on the Great Angel. His armour sparked with bolt impacts, but he stood in contempt of their efforts, even his bare wings untouched, and spoke.
‘My brother, the Khan, reminded me that we must not forget our ultimate duty. The Emperor works for mankind, but while I live I will not forget the individual men and women who make up that whole.’ He swept his spear out over the ramparts. Tiny figures pursued by all the horrors of Horus’ mutant legions were running for the gate, while Angron rampaged through friend and foe alike. ‘I will not abandon the human troopers to this vile death while some might be saved. In them, I see bravery, I see loyalty, but above all, I see faith in my father’s vision. I shall not let them die while there is blood in my body and strength in my limbs. Fear not, my son, the Imperial Fists hold the arch, and even now allies come to their aid. Now, prepare. The enemy comes against us, and we must look to our own task.’
The fire from the roof of the siege tower cut into the ranks of the Blood Angels. The melta arrays upon the front discharged, their beams agitating atoms to the point of destruction. A swathe of the downpour evaporated into meaty steam. The crenellations glowed red, then orange, then white, and collapsed into slag. Where the beams cut across the bodies of the fallen, flesh exploded. Ceramite resisted the arrays for mere seconds before collapsing into powder.
The Blood Angels waited either side of the beams’ tracks, now separated by a trench of molten rockcrete.
Sanguinius stood unafraid in the storm of bolt impacts, unharmed while his sons were felled.
‘We shall repel them!’ he said.
‘My lord, I suppose my telling you to get off the wall will do no good,’ said Raldoron. ‘But I am honour bound to say you should. We cannot lose you.’
Sanguinius laughed, a musical, pure sound in the blood rain and the slaughter. ‘You are right, my son. I would not leave you if I were sure it would be my end,’ he said. Then he spoke the awful words Raldoron had heard so much of late. ‘But I know I do not die today.’
The gargantuan chains rattled. The siege tower’s drawbridge fell forwards, rusty teeth in the underside biting into the softened fabric of the wall. The boltgun fire from the top roared on.
From within, a throng of Death Guard ran out, rasping their praise of Mortarion and their new-found god, and poured onto the battlement.
‘For the Emperor!’ called Sanguinius, and led his sons into the fray.
The Imperial Fists shot with incredible discipline, killing traitor humans and monsters alike, yet avoiding the majority of the fleeing soldiery.
The conscripts ran between their saviours, staggering into the safety of the city. Those that collapsed were lifted up and carried away. Katsuhiro fled towards the yellow line, not daring to look back. He heard the shouting of the enemy behind him, and the bellowing of the red, winged giant. To his utter disbelief, he made it through the whistling bolts to the line of Imperial Fists, was grabbed and dragged through. Guns all around the arch fired down. The Imperial Fists swept the field clear. He dared not think himself safe, and looked back, immediately regretting it.
Through the legs of the legionaries, he saw that the giant was nearly upon them. He had abandoned his rampage and was making right for the open city gate. Tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands perhaps, of bolts impacted on him, blasting divots from his flesh, obscuring the greater part of him with the gathered flashes of small explosions. Las-beams punched smoking holes deep into his body. Plasma streams scorched muscle from bone. He would not fall, but he was slowing, encountering some obstacle invisible to Katsuhiro, leaning into it like a man battling against a hurrica
ne. The giant roared in frustration. Flesh boiled off him from an attack that had little to do with legionary weapons. Fire ran over his body. Katsuhiro’s teeth ached. He tasted metal.
‘Father!’ roared the giant. ‘I will destroy you!’
But the giant went no further. Something was holding him back.
A frantic stalemate was reached. The enemy died in droves at the threshold. Their daemonic leader could make no more headway.
More giants were required to tip the scales.
The ground shook to steady beats, and Katsuhiro turned to look into the Palace. To his amazement a group of Titans were advancing down the main road to the Helios Gate, green and red and white. They blew their war-horns in outraged cries, lined up in the gate, steadied themselves on splayed feet, and powered their weapons. Katsuhiro was hustled beneath them, enduring the soul-wrenching shock of passing through their void aegis. They sang their war songs once again, and the largest spoke.
‘The Emperor Protects.’
It opened fire.
Twinned cannons blasted volcano heat. Las weaponry of a scale that dumbfounded Katsuhiro cast double spears of hard light at the enemy horde. They both hit the raging giant, who was caught upon the cusp of entering the city, throwing him back, and vaporised the greater part of his charging Legion. The other Titans opened up, war-horns still howling, blazing fury across the sky. The enemy streaming for the open gate were annihilated, the survivors retreating in disarray.
War-horns blared again. Legs straightened, and the last of the Legio Solaria strode out of the Imperial Palace, weapons still firing.
Sanguinius slew the Death Guard with such speed and power. All that came against him died. With blasts from his spear and the sweep of his great sword he ended their treachery once and for all. He leapt from wall to drawbridge, knocking as many foes from the edge as he slaughtered directly; then having cleared a space he leapt from the bridge, beat his wings and flew up and round, landing upon the siege tower roof, and there lay about himself with his blade, bringing to an end the hail of fire that so troubled his sons. At the lip of the wall the Blood Angels fought in a line against their fallen cousins, no quarter asked and none given. An equilibrium held there, the Blood Angels’ fury matched by the Death Guard’s tenacity. The XIV Legion were far more durable than Sanguinius’ sons, taking blows and bolts that would have incapacitated other legionaries, but they were slow, bloated by sickness, disabled by infirmities. The Blood Angels moved with a grace that their counterparts could not match and found hard to counter. Just as much stinking blood was spilled as pure, legionary vitae, and the line held. Pushed at by the mass of warriors at their backs, Mortarion’s diseased progeny fell from the sides of their ramp, but the thin barrier of red would not give.