Praetorian of Dorn

by John French

  How much longer they could hold in the valley was uncertain, but Archamus had no intention of making it his only line of defence. When the orks tried to cross the pass over the mountains they would find it barred.

  ‘We will stand,’ he said, and turned away from the sight of the gathering horde. ‘We will stand.’

  IV

  The bubble of energy struck the earth rampart beneath Archamus and burst. Waves of pressure ripped out. Splinters of shattered stone rang on his armour. The ground shook and then crumbled. He jumped aside as a section of palisade slumped down the slope. Hard rounds smacked into the gap. Chips from the collapsed blocks pinged into the air. Archamus pushed himself up to the parapet. He was on the lowest of the five palisades they had built across the slopes beneath the pass.

  A vista of destruction opened before him as he looked down. The orks were surging up the hill, scrambling over the debris and the dead. Behind them the foothills were a rising sea of bodies and machines. Some of the orks were huge, towering slab creatures bloated by war. They clanked as they moved. Limbs sheathed in battered iron, faces covered by tusked and horned helms. The very biggest were twice the height of a Space Marine, their bodies daubed in blood and dusted in rust. Some carried guns that crackled and spat arcs of oily energy. The air itched with static around them. The sound was shocking, a continual beating river of noise flowing up from the guns and mouths of the orks.

  The rock of the parapet beneath Archamus was singing with ricocheting rounds. Even as he looked, one of the orks’ machine-mounted guns opened up. A fork of green lightning spat up the hill and struck the palisade on his left. A patch of rock exploded into molten spray. The orks surged for the damaged section of the palisade.

  ‘Fire,’ he said into the vox. From the tiered palisades above him, thirty of his brothers and three hundred auxiliaries opened fire. Las-fire and bolt-rounds sheeted downwards. The surge of orks vanished in a blaze of impacts. The volleys began a beat, switching between each of the palisades in turn. Archamus could almost see his brothers locking fresh hoppers to the sides of heavy bolters and rotor cannons, the humans pulling smoking charge packs from laslocks.

  The orks replied in kind. Fire gushed up the slope. Beams, spheres and cones of energy smacked into the palisades. Plasteel and rock shattered, melted and blew into the air in fountains of white-hot liquid. In his helm Archamus saw the life markers of three of his brothers blink out.

  The ork tide surged towards the defences. One of them made the half-collapsed breach in the lowest palisade. Blocks of armour covered its front, and it dragged a spike-headed mace in each fist. Las-bolts splashed off its armour as it made the wall and leapt up the slope of rubble.

  Behind the parapet Archamus remained still. A squad of five of his brothers waited with him. Everything now was timing. The design and disposition of the defences was a simple fact, as solid and immovable as the earth itself. He could not remake the ground he had to fight on. All that remained was to choose when to deliver his blows.

  More orks scrambled up the rubble after the first. The fire from the higher palisades intensified. Archamus heard the scream of a charging melta weapon, and one ork vanished as a white-hot beam struck it in the chest. Another took its place, and the rest were suddenly through the breach. They poured into the space beyond.

  It took a second for one of the orks to notice the Space Marines crouched on the inside of the firing step. Archamus watched the creature’s head turn. The red of its eyes glimmered from inside the slot holes in its faceplate.

  ‘Detonate now,’ he said, and shot the ork through the eye.

  The ground outside the first palisade exploded. A wall of dust and fire shot into the air. The orks fighting to reach the breach were torn apart. The shock wave from the explosion spilled down the slope, ripping orks from their feet and tossing them down the mountainside.

  ‘Close the breach,’ Archamus shouted, and leapt down onto the rubble slope. His brothers came with him. All had tower shields. They spread into two lines across the breach, one facing outwards, one inwards. Archamus felt Katafalque’s shoulder and shield thump into his own. They were a line strung across the gap in the wall between the orks who had breached the palisade and the green tide flowing up the mountain.

  A second after the shield-wall formed, an ork was on him, swinging a buzz-saw tipped mace. He took the blow. His bionic arm vibrated as the force shook through it. Sparks fountained from the shield face as the ork struck again and again.

  Timing. It was always timing.

  ‘Fire to clear,’ he said into his vox, and pulled the trigger of his bolter. His squad and the troops on the tier directly above fired at the same moment. Their volleys tore the orks caught between the palisades apart. One managed to reach the shield-wall and cannoned into it.

  Archamus staggered as it hit. His shield tipped back, and suddenly the ork was in front of him, streaming blood, faceplate shining with bullet gouges. Archamus rammed his weight forwards. His bionics shrieked, and he felt muscles tear down his back. The ork stumbled.

  It was enough. Archamus brought his shield up, felt it touch those to either side, and fired the rest of his clip as the ork lunged at him. It fell, and he saw that the space beyond was a mass of steaming corpses, torn meat and blood-slicked armour. The sky was pulsing with light as the palisades above sent torrents of fire down into the orks and received a reply in kind.

  ‘We cannot hold this indefinitely, sergeant,’ said Katafalque over the vox.

  ‘Agreed,’ replied Archamus. ‘Pull back to the second wall.’ The shield-wall began to move as the words left his lips. The orks battered against it, and tried to lap around its edges. They found no weakness. The squad changed formation as it moved, shields and warriors locking into a triangle. They fired without pause. Cables dropped over the parapet of the next palisade when they reached it. Archamus was the last to climb up. He fired his last round and pulled himself over, as the orks poured in and over the palisade that he had been standing on minutes before. He could hear the victory in their cries.

  Timing, he thought.

  ‘Promethium?’ asked Katafalque from beside him, as he dropped onto the parapet.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. Behind and beneath them, in the space inside the foot of the palisade, a platoon of auxiliaries in breath masks spun the wheel valves on pipes that plunged down into the ground and out under the palisade wall. The pipes thumped with pressure, and then the reek of promethium was swallowing the smell of gunfire as it sprayed from the nozzles buried in the ground between the first and second palisades. Katafalque stood and fired a burst of bolt-rounds into the orks pressed into the fuel-soaked space.

  Flames ripped across the ground and climbed into the air. Heat blasted across Archamus. His armour chimed a warning. The orks were screaming, bellowing as they cooked. The gunfire seemed to fade as the world became orange heat and black smoke.

  After ten seconds, Archamus gestured and the auxiliaries cut the flow. The flames drained to nothing. Black mounds of flesh lay on the ground beneath the wall, cooked meat hissing and popping. Beyond the pall of smoke the orks had retreated down the slope.

  ‘That worked,’ said Katafalque.

  Archamus nodded. ‘Yes, but how much promethium do we have left now?’

  ‘Tanks are two-thirds depleted.’

  Archamus nodded to the carpet of bodies flowing towards the pass.

  ‘We will not be able to play that hand again,’ he said. ‘Get the mining teams out. The approaches need to be reseeded before the next assault.’

  ‘By your will,’ said Katafalque, and he began to turn to issue the orders. But then he stopped and his head jerked up, his face turning to the sky. ‘What was that?’

  Archamus looked up, and frowned as his eye caught something swift and bright in the sky behind the mountain peaks above them. Clouds of smoke hazed the sky above. Lights flashed beyond the
grey layer.

  ‘The orks are dropping into the river valley,’ said Katafalque. ‘We should alert the bastion to be ready for a surge.’

  Archamus said nothing. There was something about the flash of light in the atmosphere. He scanned the sky looking for the shadow of the ork’s hulk, but could not find it. If they were dropping from orbit then they must be...

  The trio of strike fighters came over the mountain peaks with a roar of engines. Archamus caught the flash of yellow-and-black wings as the sonic boom echoed down the slope. Katafalque stared and then gave a bark of joy. Cheers rose from the palisades as the three aircraft swept down the slopes.

  Missiles launched from their wings, and fresh fire washed through the press of orks. The fighters banked hard, flicking up into the air as bursts of energy and flurries of rockets rose from the ork horde. Archamus saw the clenched fist insignia on the aircraft’s tails, and the black eagle feathers painted on their wings. The cheering rose louder behind him, but he was silent, his mind turning over.

  The Accipitridae, he thought, the Huscarl squadron, escorts to the Lord Primarch, but...

  Three more aircraft came over the mountains, their hulls almost scraping the summits. They were gunships, two Storm Eagles, their hulls yellow, guns tracking the ground. And between them, black and golden hulled, was a sight that halted the breath in his throat.

  The Aetos Dios banked above them, thrusters roaring as it halted in the air and began to drop towards the ground. Its assault ramps opened when it was three metres above the earth. Yellow-armoured figures dropped to the ground and spread out. Above them the two Storm Eagles had opened up. Rockets and heavy bolters punched into orks advancing back up the hill, holding them back. The strike fighters wheeled and circled in the smoke-stained sky above.

  Rogal Dorn dropped from the gunship and landed beside his Huscarls. The downwash of the thrusters caught his cloak and spilled it behind him as he rose to look down the slope at the ebbing tide of orks. The Storm Eagles swooped low and more warriors dropped onto the scorched ground.

  And then all the gunships were rising, and Dorn was striding up to the walls of Archamus’ ragged fortress. The dimming light caught his armour and blazed from the burnished plates. Archamus had not seen his lord since he had given Dorn his oath. Nearly three decades of war had passed since then, but while Archamus knew that he himself had changed, time seemed to have left Dorn untouched. Control and strength flowed and echoed from every glance and movement. His features were those Archamus had looked at through the flames, as he had gripped Dorn’s hand all those years ago: harsh as iron, as set as carven stone.

  The Huscarls ringed their lord until he was at the intact second wall, but the orks did not advance up the hill. Whether it was the strikes from the aircraft, or some other, subtle instinct that kept them at bay, Archamus could not tell.

  Dorn reached the palisade and vaulted over the parapet. The warriors on the wall began to kneel, but Dorn gestured and they froze.

  ‘Attend to your guns,’ he said. A strange quiet had stolen over the fortress. The sounds of the orks seemed distant, and Archamus was aware of the beat of blood in his veins, and the hiss of wind pulling smoke from the charred ork bodies. Dorn looked up at the tiered palisades, eyes passing over them for a second before turning to Archamus, who knelt, despite Dorn’s command. The sound of his bionics seemed loud in the sudden quiet.

  ‘Ten hours construction,’ said Dorn, nodding at the palisades above them. ‘Given time and materials, near perfect.’

  ‘Yes, my lord,’ Archamus said, and he saw Dorn’s mouth twitch.

  ‘Calev’s design?’

  ‘Calev is dead, lord.’

  Dorn’s gaze hardened for a second.

  ‘Your work then.’

  ‘Yes, lord.’

  Dorn looked around. The Huscarls were moving up through the hold, taking position amongst the garrison at the points where it was thinnest. They moved with silent precision, merging with Archamus’ forces seamlessly and without word. Archamus felt a flare of admiration; many marked the Templars of the First Company as the greatest warriors of their Legion, but the Huscarls were something else. Trusted and disciplined beyond the point that most would think possible.

  Dorn gave a final glance at the dead orks cooling in the killing ground beneath the palisade.

  ‘Well done, sergeant,’ said the primarch.

  ‘I am Archamus, lord,’ he said, before he was sure why.

  Dorn gave him a long look, eyes seeming black in the unmoving mask of his face.

  ‘I remember who you are,’ he said.

  V

  Archamus followed his primarch into the tunnels behind the stronghold. The walls were smooth and glassy from the touch of the melta-torches that had cut the passages into the cliffs only a day before. Supplies stood stacked in side chambers that were enlarged natural caves. Heavy curtains of blast fabric hung across the doorways to other side chambers where ammunition crates sat like reservoirs waiting for the thirsty to drink. Some of the civilians from the valley were here too, attending to simple set tasks with nervous focus. If there had been more time, Archamus would have liked to have extended the tunnels back and down to concealed entrances on the flanks of the mountain, from which his forces could have sallied out. There had not been time, though, so the small network sunk into the rocks either side of the pass had had to suffice.

  Dorn glanced around occasionally as they passed deeper into the warren, but did not speak. Archamus followed behind, flanked by Katafalque and followed by two of the Huscarls. The primarch moved as though he knew the tunnels’ layout as well as he did the command deck of the Phalanx.

  Finally they came to one of the last chambers. The two Huscarls took position to either side of the door as Dorn pushed the curtain aside and stepped in. The light of the glow-globes showed a wide chamber with irregular walls. A table stood at its centre. Neat scrolls of parchment lay on the table. Drafting and drawing instruments sat beside them on squares of soft, black fabric.

  On the far side of the room, squatting on the floor, with a loose sheaf of parchment spread on his lap and a brass quill in one hand, was Solomon Voss. The emissary was rubbing his eyes with ink-stained fingers when they entered. He looked up, blinked, and then a smile split his face.

  ‘Rogal!’ he cried, and stood up, dumping the parchment on the central table. Archamus flinched at the familiarity of the greeting, but Rogal Dorn was stepping forwards, the stone of his face cracking into a smile.

  ‘I see that you are alive,’ said Dorn.

  ‘Barely,’ said Voss, still smiling. ‘But that is the point, isn’t it? To look at the truth of things so closely that you can feel its breath?’

  ‘Too close for someone whose greatest weapon is his words.’

  ‘The Great Crusade must have a memory, my friend. The past defines the future. Without knowing the past, how can we shape what is to come?’

  Dorn laughed, the sound like a gunshot in the confined space.

  ‘An argument for another time.’

  Voss shrugged.

  ‘An argument I know I have already won, at least with you – or else of all the battlefields of all the Legions, why would I have been allowed to come here?’

  ‘Perhaps to keep you where the great lords of the Imperium will not be able to hear you?’

  Voss snorted and then picked up his parchments.

  ‘One day there will be many of us, Rogal. A legion of memory.’

  ‘Then I will have more than one inconvenient civilian to worry about. But at least there is the hope that it would be a burden borne equally by my brothers.’

  ‘Is that why you are here, to get this inconvenient human out of the way of your war?’

  ‘Hardly,’ said Dorn.

  ‘Another matter then?’ asked Voss, raising an eyebrow above a sharp eye. ‘A strategic mat
ter?’

  ‘That is the matter I must now discuss with my officers,’ said Dorn.

  ‘Of course,’ said Voss, and he made for the doorway. ‘We will talk again, though?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Dorn, ‘when there is time.’

  Voss moved to the door and lifted the curtain to leave. He stopped and looked back.

  ‘I have learned much from your son,’ he said to Dorn, and nodded in Archamus’ direction. ‘He has your soul.’

  Dorn gave a brief nod. The blast curtain fell back into place after Voss. Archamus blinked, not certain what to make of the conversation he had just witnessed. He flicked a glance at Katafalque, who was still standing to rigid attention at the side of the room.

  ‘Go with Voss,’ he said. Katafalque saluted and followed the human out.

  Dorn turned back to Archamus.

  ‘Voss is a curious man,’ he said, as though answering the question that Archamus could not frame.

  ‘I had wondered why he was here, lord. He is an emissary, but he is not a warrior, a diplomat or specialist.’

  ‘He is a genius, though,’ said Dorn, moving to the table. He picked up Voss’ untidy stack of parchment, his eyes scanning a few of the scrawled lines. ‘He is a wordsmith, a distiller of ideas and images into a language which makes what he thinks and sees live in the minds of those who have never seen or dreamed of anything beyond their own lives.’ He placed the papers down. ‘But that is not the true core of his quality. He sees a future of truth and illumination, and reaches to create it with his every deed. The Imperium we are fighting to create will be held together by the words and ideas of people like Solomon Voss.’