by Nick Kyme
None did.
And none looked down to their feet anymore, either. Every Seraphim aboard the vessel had raised their eyes, blazing with holy fury.
Betrayers no longer, they would be avengers and honour their oaths to the Salamanders.
‘Canticus…’ Stephina snarled through clenched teeth. ‘Blood and fire await us!’
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Heletine, Canticus, inside the ravine
The Serpentia moved through the ravine as one, fighting all quarters and surrounding Drakgaard as they went. Elysius was amongst them, roving between warriors and shouting canticles of retribution against the traitor. In the tight scrum of bodies slowly filling the ravine, resolve was everything. The Chaplain used his gifts to strengthen that resolve with hate. If vitriol was a blade, his would have cut through power armour.
The earth had collapsed beneath them, demolished by charges set against fragile foundations by the heretics. The explosives had exposed the weakened surface of Canticus, upon which were built its temples, shrines and domiciles, dropping the majority of the Salamanders into the catacombs below.
This subterranean world was vast, only hinted at in maps and impossible to accurately chart through geological survey and sensorium probes from low orbit. Tunnels threaded the catacombs like arterial veins, leading to vast chambers and antechambers where the bulk of the heretic forces had mustered and lain in wait. Goaded like fools, the Imperial army had been drawn into the trap based on the belief that the enemy was defeated. It had merely been saving its killer blow for that moment.
Recalled dimly through the smoke and dust, Elysius saw an immense sinkhole open up. As they were at the vanguard of the army, the fire-born fell first, dragged down against their will as the dirt and rock piled on. Then came the tanks, an entire company of Cadian heavy armour raining down on the heads of the fragile infantry like a vehicular landslide.
After the first blow, the enemy made itself known. Cultists swarmed from the ridge, weapon emplacements were established. Solid shot, las and shells descended in a storm.
Most of the Kasrkin were dead, and those that had survived were getting picked off as they tried to haul their severely wounded captain back up the slope. Half the Cadian tanks were lying broken and on fire at the bottom of the ravine in a slurry of unrecognisable machine parts.
The fire-born held their ground. No Salamander would ever retreat, unless in extremis. Even then they would solemnly lay down their lives if it meant denying victory to the enemy, self-sacrificial to the end. It was a bitter, self-destructive creed but it had hardened them well.
Few remained though – Devastators, some remnants from Tactical. There was no sign of Kor’ad or his brother Dreadnoughts. Zantho and the armour was cut off from the main army.
Escorted by the Serpentia, Elysius surveyed Drakgaard’s operational assets and knew they were vastly outmatched. They had got so much wrong, made so many mistakes it might not be possible to rectify.
It wasn’t the fall that had killed the fire-born, it was what was waiting for them inside the ravine that opened up beneath them. This was the third blow.
Not only Black Legion, but a massive host of sworn Renegade Astartes. A veritable army of deserters and civilians turned cultist served as cannon fodder, weak but armed and numerous. One man alone with a stubber was barely worthy of notice. A mob armed with cudgels and blades could similarly be dismissed, but a horde of thousands arrayed with rocket tubes and heavy cannon… Such an enemy posed a genuine threat, even to Adeptus Astartes.
It was the fanatic masses that attacked first, a second host spilling from the tunnels to join up with those scrambling down the slopes of the ravine. Only once the dregs had been engaged, the fire-born committed to what they had seen as a desperate but still costly ambush, had Black Legion emerged from the tunnels.
Then the real killing began.
The attack was well-crafted despite its savagery, intended to split the Salamanders up and destroy them piecemeal.
So far, it was working but not without resistance.
Elysius caved in a renegade’s skull with his mace, splitting it apart in a shower of crumpled armour plate and bone. He barely paused to register the stink of hyper-cauterising blood caused by the energy surge from the powered crozius, instead turning to see Tul’vek die.
A chainsword was lodged in the warrior’s throat. Dismayed, Elysius reached out for him but the churning blade had chewed through enough flesh and sinew to nearly remove the Serpentia’s head. As Tul’vek fell, gouting blood, Elysius snatched his banner so it wouldn’t touch the ground.
Kaladin slew Tul’vek’s killer, coring the Black Legion warrior through the torso with his melta. The dragon mouth of the weapon roared as he fired, given voice by Kaladin’s anguish.
‘Brother Her’us…’ Elysius called above the battle din, causing the Champion to pause in his hammer swings and look up.
Elysius gestured to the gap in their defensive circle left by Tul’vek.
Her’us nodded and took the dead banner bearer’s place to close it.
Apothecary Sepelius had already departed with the injured Sergeant Bar’dak. At least, Elysius considered bitterly, there would be someone left to harvest the Chapter’s due. So, without Tul’vek, Drakgaard’s command squad numbered six warriors.
They fought like sixty.
Drakgaard led them, hacking and cutting with his kaskara. There was a certain savagery to the captain’s blows, a wild abandon brought about through desperation. In spite of everything, he wanted this victory, believing solely through force of will and aggression he could still obtain it. Whatever injuries blighted his once strong body were forgotten during the ferocity of close combat. Though not skilled beyond any expected level for a ranking fire-born, Drakgaard was tenacious and hard to kill. His wound-ravaged flesh was testament to that.
He took blows that would finish lesser men, shrugging them off and gutting his surprised opponents with typical brutality. A kaskara was a noble weapon, a blade forged by artisans. Drakgaard had afforded it every flourish but wielded it like a slaughter-man’s cleaver, and to great effect.
‘We are dying in this grind,’ Elysius voxed to the captain during a brief respite.
From its initial sprawling melee, the battle had broken up into smaller but still brutal skirmishes. Occasionally, two or more would merge and a larger fight would erupt only to break apart again when warriors were slain or routed.
At the nadir the ravine smoke and settling dust from the earth collapse reduced visibility, and with enemies in such close proximity to one another, combat was dominated by short-range firefights and hand-to-hand engagements. Farther out, where rubble and the shells of tanks littered the slopes, artillery from both sides was being employed to even the odds. Shell impacts from the heavy guns sent plumes of earth and bodies skyward, adding to the horrendous carnage.
‘Let the screw turn,’ Drakgaard replied, forging onward through the chaos, ‘let it gnaw our bones, Chaplain. I won’t yield until I am dead!’
‘Ur’zan, listen to–’
Drakgaard cut the feed, his violent threshing of the enemy unabated.
Elysius could respect a death wish – it spoke to the Promethean Creed – but not one that could lose a war and kill dozens of fire-born into the bargain. He briefly clutched Her’us’s shoulder guard. The Chaplain was close enough to speak to the Company Champion without the aid of comms.
‘Stay close to him. He dies and I’ll be the one who brings you to account.’
Her’us nodded. He parried a chainaxe with the haft of his hammer before throwing the renegade back and obliterating the right side of his torso. Blood flecked his draconic faceplate as the traitor’s flank crumpled, ruddying the inlaid ivory teeth of the helm.
‘On my honour, Chaplain,’ Her’us replied when he was clear of foes. ‘I die before he falls.’
A Company Champion’s place in battle was by the side of his captain. Her’us fought on Drakgaard’s le
ft, where their different fighting styles would complement each other. Zetok positioned on the captain’s right, shoulder to shoulder. Zetok was a pyre warden and protected Drakgaard’s off-hand with his storm shield. The three of them formed the Serpentia’s vanguard, cutting through the throng of heretics and supported by their brothers in formation behind them.
A bolt-round struck Zetok’s shield square on and would have staggered him if not for Vervius leaning in from behind with his shoulder to help set his brother back on his feet.
‘Hold as one,’ said Vervius, and shot a sustained burst from his plasma pistol. Crackling spheres of energy left an actinic smear in their wake, indiscriminately rupturing flesh and ceramite.
Having recovered his composure, Zetok drove forwards again, and the circle of Serpentia hit hard into the Black Legion ranks that were swelling with every second as more warriors poured from the tunnels with their cultist retinues.
Warriors of like-for-like skill and ferocity met and were bloodied.
Tseg’un broke apart a traitor’s breastplate with a power fist, crushing bone and organs, as another warrior lodged a chainblade in his clavicle. His cry of agony drew the attention of Her’us, who lashed out at Tseg’un’s attacker and split the warrior’s chainblade apart in a storm of broken teeth. Elysius finished the traitor with a crushing blow from his power glove.
‘Ave Imperator…’ he snarled breathlessly.
They had been fighting for several minutes already, but had barely begun. More were coming.
Tseg’un lived but was badly wounded. His part of the circle was now weakened.
Elysius moved alongside him to bolster Tseg’un’s strength and resolve as further enemies loomed out of the half darkness.
Drab, grey smoke choked the battlefield. If it was day above, no one within the ravine would have known it. The sun was utterly eclipsed. Fire illuminated the oily clouds, spat in sharp flashes from promethium-based weapons or rendered in dull smudges from slowly burning vehicles.
Onagar lit his own flame and it cast him and the other Serpentia in a feverish wash of amber. He was the squad’s pyroclast, an old term from the Heresy War, since fallen out of fashion but still remembered by some in the Chapter. Burns ravaged Onagar’s exposed skin, making it leathern and tough. He was gnarled like a petrified tree but scowled with an arsonist’s pleasure as he spewed hellfire from his Nocturne-forged flamer. Silhouettes, smears of dirty brown and grey, stumbled in the blaze. Onagar laughed as they seemed to shrink inside the fire. His dark humour was cut short when a bolt-round took apart half his cheek and battle-helm. Retribution was meted out by Kaladin who reduced the renegade to a noisome slurry with his melta.
‘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 lik
e 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.