by Nick Kyme
‘How do I look?’ Onagar slurred to his avenging brother, bone visible through his ruined and bloody cheek. It was a miracle he could still speak.
‘Ugly,’ replied Kaladin.
Onagar laughed, a reedy, guzzling sound. ‘I was always ugly.’
For every warrior slain, another two took his place along with an entourage of cultists that came on in deranged hordes. Zetok hewed at them with a butcher’s grace, cleaving limbs from torsos and severing necks with a drake-fanged axe. On Nocturne it was a called a ‘burning blade’ because the edge glowed hotter than a furnace and fire licked its savage teeth.
One cultist violently combusted as the axe touched him, the fire of his immolation spreading to his confederates. Only the Traitor Space Marines, girded by their power armour, weathered the blaze and were able to engage.
In seconds, Zetok was hard pressed and on the defensive. Beyond the edge of his storm shield, which was being hammered by mauls and chain-teeth, he saw a Havoc in black war-plate stand to and steady a missile launcher.
‘Brace!’ Zetok roared, throwing back his attackers so he could thrust forwards with his shield and meet the threat.
Elysius was ahead of him, in both reaction and commitment.
The incendiary streaked from the launcher tube, flying scarcely ten metres before it struck a shimmering barrier of force generated by the Chaplain’s rosarius. It dissipated in a firestorm, throwing hot orange tendrils around Elysius’s protective dome and scattering metal shrapnel from the casing that struck the field and bounced off harmlessly.
In three strides, Drakgaard reached the Havoc and struck him down before he could reload or draw a weapon.
The Serpentia quickly reformed but had to wade deep into the enemy’s ranks to do so.
Somewhere amidst the carnage, Kaladin went down. Elysius missed whatever it was that had killed him. Only the stark evidence of an indent-rune turning crimson in his tactical display told the Chaplain they had lost another.
With so much black armour surrounding the chosen of Drakgaard’s warriors, the deaths came swiftly after that.
Zetok, his shield arm severed at the wrist. He parried the first thrust, blood spitting from his wounded stump, but the second took him in the side and chewed up his body. A third cut parted his gorget and took his head. The three traitors who had killed him then hacked apart his body.
Onagar died by immolation, his promethium tank struck by a tragically unlucky ricochet. He went up in a flare of magnesium-white before collapsing in a bone-charred and fire-blackened heap. The explosion blew the heart out of the Serpentia, smashing the defensive circle and scattering them. Mercifully, it also threw back their enemies.
Elysius felt his body lifted by the pressure wave, the heat and impact force registering in violent warning spikes on his armour’s integrity display. It was breached in several places but ultimately it had saved his life.
Drakgaard was nearby, sprawled onto his front but rising heavily onto his hands and knees. With a trembling hand he ripped off the faceplate to his battered helmet and spat up a thick gobbet of blood. Elysius saw his face through the smoke and heat haze. It was pained, Drakgaard’s old scars and permanently snarling mouth contorted in a rictus of agony.
The Chaplain was about to call out to him when something lumbering and swathed in feverish heat loomed though the grey fog. It moved silently, despite its bulk, and Elysius realised he had been temporarily deafened by the blast.
‘Ur’zan!’ he cried, but felt like he was shouting into the void. He stumbled, weak in his left knee, and saw the greave was split, the kneecap reduced to a broken crevice thick with partially clotted blood.
Drakgaard was still on his knees, but had dragged off his ruined helm. The scalp beneath was also scarred, and scraps of badly healed flesh colonised his skull. A trickle of dark fluid ran from his left ear.
‘Ur’zan!’ Elysius was on his feet, staggering as if in slow motion towards his captain. He couldn’t see Her’us. He caught Vervius in his peripheral vision, reaching for the fallen banner that was streaked with mud and gore.
Up ahead, beyond Drakgaard but closing, was a monstrous form. It was part flesh, part machine, bone plate scabbing over metal, sinew and exposed viscera entwined around pistons and cables. A single black ivory horn sprouted from its back, arcing between two fluted exhaust pipes. Insane and screaming, the warrior slaved to the diabolical engine glared out from an aperture just above the torso that glistened wetly and was studded with sharp teeth.
The warrior’s skull was shrunken and emaciated, his vitality surrendered to fuel the machine. It was no noble Dreadnought, no venerable Space Marine clad for all time in an armoured war-casket. Those in service to the Omnissiah called it abomination. Elysius knew it by it a different name.
‘Helbrute!’ Sound returned in a cacophony of pain, the warning shout and the battlefield noise rushing back to the Chaplain in a flood.
Still dazed, hurt and bleeding, Drakgaard turned and saw the danger. He rose, scrabbling up his sword from the dirt and brandishing it at the monster.
Elysius cast around for Her’us, even as he staggered to Drakgaard’s side. He found the Champion surrounded by a growing circle of corpses, whirling around his thunder hammer in reaping arcs. Vervius stood beside him, holding up the banner. Defiance like that, so Elysius believed, was uniquely Nocturnean.
Elysius couldn’t help either of them now, so he stayed with Drakgaard.
‘You might get your wish,’ said the Chaplain, bitterly. ‘Death before surrender.’
Drakgaard raised his sword, saluting to the mindless Helbrute as it crossed the last few metres to them.
‘Would you have it any other way, brother?’
Elysius could not suppress a fatalistic grin. His power fist might crack the abominable war machine’s armour but he and the captain were running on reserves of strength.
‘I would not, brother.’
They were not, and would likely never be, friends but the war on Heletine had made them better allies. Elysius was glad they would face the Helbrute as such. It was something traitors would never truly understand.
Before they could engage the monster, a pair of hellfire missiles streaked out of the gloom on burning contrails. They struck the Helbrute’s centre mass simultaneously and tore the wretched machine apart in a spray of gore and metal. Only its smoking feet, severed at the shins, remained. The rest was scattered across the battlefield.
Elysius craned his neck as the roar of stabiliser jets overhead broke through the clamour of the battle. He looked up to see the descending shadow of a gunship, its embarkation hatch lowered and warriors standing upon the ramp.
Drakgaard collapsed alongside him, finally succumbing to his wounds.
‘Death from above…’ he rasped, flat on his back. As Elysius rushed to his side, Drakgaard laughed at the Wyverns taking flight.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Heletine, Canticus, inside the ravine
Iaptus was first onto the Thunderhawk’s ramp, his thunder hammer gripped firmly as the turbine engines of his jump pack started to ignite. His weapon’s crackling energies illuminated the mouth of the troop hold, casting the eight warriors waiting to disembark in a cerulean glow.
Smoke shrouded, littered with bodies and the burning wrecks of tanks, the ravine would seem a daunting prospect to many soldiers. It was meat and drink to the Wyverns.
‘We are outnumbered and cannot be everywhere,’ Iaptus shouted to his warriors above battlefield noise that had intensified with the dropping of the ramp. He took a further step upon it. ‘Defend Brother-Captain Drakgaard and Brother-Chaplain Elysius. We have orders to effect their egress from this chaos.’
‘We are retreating?’ Arrok ventured, foolishly.
Va’lin exchanged a look with Dersius who rested a hefty gauntlet on Arrok’s shoulder.
‘No, brother. But we need to regroup. We can’t do that if our commander is knee-deep in enemy dead, swallowed in that mess below.’
‘We are the ones that are going to be swallowed, Arrok,’ said Naeb with ironic cheer.
Va’lin exchanged another glance with him, but Naeb shrugged unapologetically.
‘Wyverns…’ Iaptus declared, ‘on breath of fire!’
He lifted his hammer and was about to make the leap when the gunship’s left side exploded. It pitched immediately, throwing Iaptus and the rest of the Wyverns against the right-hand side of the hold. Through a ragged gap in the fuselage, Va’lin could see the left wing had been sheared off and the engine was trailing smoke. Fire lapped at the edges of the tear, guttering with the passage of air as Brother Orcas piloted them through it at speed, whilst trying to keep them aloft.
Iaptus got on the vox. ‘Orcas!’
The reply was halting and marred by static.
‘Rocket hit… Attempting to correct, but we’ve sustained critical damage. Don’t think I can… bring her back, sergeant. Suggest emergency disembark.’
The vox went dead as the communications array failed. Klaxons were wailing inside the troop hold, which was washed in crimson emergency lighting.
‘Everyone out,’ roared Iaptus as the high-pitch whine of the engines told him they were descending fast and about to crash. ‘Now!’
The ramp had jerked back up a fraction when they were hit, so he kicked it back down with his boot and began to usher his warriors out.
Arrok went first – he and Xerus had been right behind Iaptus in formation. Then Dersius and Ky’dak jumped, the latter taking off from the ramp at a furious sprint. Va’lin quickly lost them to the smoke. He was next in line with Naeb and barrelled through the open hatch as flames from the burning engine washed across his sight.
Va’lin broke through and hit a bank of thick smoke that occluded optics so he switched to auto-senses. Naeb was gone, but he kept a track of him and the others on the tactical display flashing upon on his right retinal lens. Six were free of the gunship, in the wind. Two were still aboard, Vo’sha and Iaptus.
A missile burst through the cloud layer, an instinctive twist of his body saving Va’lin from its warhead and a short flight. He turned, head facing downwards towards the ground and looking back up. He had yet to ignite his pack in case the enemy had heat-seekers trained on the sky. The missile was still visible, arcing towards the stricken gunship with rocket-fuelled intensity. Va’lin saw the future and felt a cold ball of ice rise up into his gullet. He had one attempt to shoot the missile down. His flamer was no use. Preferring his sidearm, he ripped the bolt pistol from its holster and took aim. Buffeted by the wind and the force of acceleration as he reached terminal velocity, his hand was shaking. The missile was moving fast, closing on the gunship.
Va’lin fired off a three-round burst, hoping the spread would improve his chances.
Two shells missed, but a third hit the target. Va’lin’s triumph turned to anguish when he saw the bolt-shell detonate but only throw the missile slightly off course. It struck the gunship in the ramp instead of the underside, tearing off the hatch and throwing the two warriors who were about to leap out back into the hold. The gunship pinwheeled, plummeting now as it spun around prow to aft, trailing fire. Thick black smoke poured from its fuselage and engines, choking the hold and enveloping the gunship in a dirty pall. The glacis protecting the cockpit was shattered and exposed to the elements. As he fell, still yet to ignite his engines and watching in morbid fascination, Va’lin thought he saw Orcas on fire, wrestling with the controls.
The gunship disappeared from view, only to return a few moments later as it struck the slope and went up in a massive fireball.
Va’lin crushed down his guilt and tore his gaze away. Smoke and cloud parted, and the ground came rushing up to meet him. He fed all power to the jump pack’s turbines, barely arresting his descent in time with a huge burst of ignition.
He landed hard, buckling at the knees, and heard his powered joints protest at the rough treatment. Then he was moving, shooting at targets with his bolt pistol. A cultist’s head exploded. A renegade armoured in heliotrope purple went down with two shell holes in his torso.
Despite the frenetic chaos of the battle around him, Va’lin realised he had landed far from the intended drop zone. He couldn’t see his fellow Wyverns, let alone Drakgaard or Elysius. They were scattered, thrown apart as their Thunderhawk had pitched and yawed in its death throes. Though the smoke cover at ground level wasn’t as thick as it was in the sky, the ravine was massive and overrun with clashing warriors from both sides. He was alone, though not for long.
Having witnessed Va’lin’s descent and subsequent arrival, a swathe of heretics were converging on him led by a warrior of the Black Legion.
Two warbands, Va’lin realised, recalling the conflicting sigils he had seen during the Canticus street battle when the Wyverns had lost Sor’ad. An alliance explained the sheer numbers of troops the heretics had in reserve. They had been waiting here, under the earth, to attack. A rudimentary trap. It was sprung by a desire to end the war quickly and inspired by the erroneous belief that the heretics were all but defeated. Blind, without proper reconnaissance, the Salamanders had rushed into an unknown part of Canticus and denied all of their methodical instincts into the bargain.
As the heretics came for him, Va’lin brought to mind the words of Zen’de.
He who knows himself, knows truth. He who knows himself and acts to his own strengths shall deny all lies that might bring about weakness.
A pity they had not heeded their own natures, but it was too late now.
Va’lin stowed his sidearm and brought up his flamer. A long, fiery plume ignited on the air and struck the baying mob with enough force to knock down the heretics who burned horribly.
Not the Black Legionnaire, though. He emerged from the conflagration wreathed in fire and spitting curses to salve his obvious pain. Two dark eyes glared out from a pallid-looking face etched with the eight-pointed star of Chaos and promised pain and suffering for the Salamander.
Clenched in both gauntleted hands, the warrior hefted a flanged mace that exuded a strange, aetheric mist. Images formed and collapsed in that mist, the faces of the damned and the claws of their tormentors. He would need to be wary of the mace.
The flamer would be useless in close combat and didn’t look like it would stop the Black Legionnaire. Va’lin drew his sidearm and gladius, letting the flamer fall. That made the warrior smile, though his eyes shone with murderous intent, and he saluted the Salamander for his reckless bravura.
‘Vorshkar,’ uttered the traitor, nodding to Va’lin.
He had surged through the flame storm like a mad dog but now gave his name as part of some strange honour ritual. Va’lin had heard of the capricious nature of the warriors of the old Legions, those poor souls trapped out of time, their sanity gnawed away by daemons but had never experienced it before. Regardless, he answered the warrior with the same contempt he would any traitor.
‘Death to the slaves of Ruin,’ he spat, and adopted a fighting posture, leaning forwards in preparation for a small burst of ignition. A sudden attack might provide a sorely needed edge.
The warrior’s smile faded. His reply in Gothic was hard for him to form but he delivered it with certitude and malice.
‘Yours will be slow and lasting, Vulkan’s son.’
Va’lin gunned the throttle, boosting into an abrupt but rapid charge. His transhuman mind had already analysed the traitor’s defences and found his face and neck to be his weak points. The Salamander aimed for them, firing off a snap shot into the warrior’s torso to distract from the intended killing stroke with his gladius.
But where the blade should have cut through jugular and carotid artery, it only sheared through air. The warrior had evaded him, moving faster than the jump pa
ck’s propulsion capacity was able to move Va’lin.
A blow resounded against Va’lin’s shoulder, crumpling his guard and carrying on into his jump pack. The left jet turbine exploded, ripping apart much of the protective housing and spraying it over the side of Va’lin’s armoured face. Shrapnel from the sundered intake vent embedded in the side of his battle-helm crazing the visual feed from the left retinal lens and effectively ruining depth perception.
A second blow hammered against Va’lin’s ribs, denting the plastron and shearing the jump pack’s quick-release strap. Pain resounded through his body, felt in his shoulder and chest at once, so acute they vied for dominance on the scale of Va’lin’s agony.
He was sunk to one knee before he had even managed to raise his sword weakly in defence.
Vorshkar’s mace was invested with the sorcery of the warp but it did not just grant him deadly potency, it also imbued the warrior with preternatural speed. It was a boon that Va’lin had no power to counter. He reacted but it was as if he had been drawn into a well of extreme low gravity and every movement was slow and laboured.
A third blow shattered Va’lin’s standing knee, breaking his armoured pad apart and sending him crashing to the ground. He tried to look around and find his enemy but injury warnings were streaming across both retinal lenses – the right clean and grim with severity, the left a cracked and hazing mess.
In the end, Va’lin felt the traitor’s boot slammed atop his chest. He met Vorshkar’s gaze, the warrior looking down on his defeated opponent with amusement. Another smile twisted his ivory-pale face.
‘I lied about it being slow and lasting,’ he admitted, ‘at least in this realm of existence. I am about to end your flesh, Vulkan’s son, but your soul… well,’ he let out a long, malicious breath, ‘that is for the neverborn to decide.’
‘Never… born?’ Va’lin croaked, not understanding, as consciousness began to leave him.