by Nick Kyme
Jadrekk was the first of his followers to reach him.
‘Dark Apostle…’ he began, but shrank back at the sight of Elias’s wounds.
His arm was completely burned, all the way from his shoulder to his fingertips. The bones had fused, a crooked and malformed limb in place of what was there before.
‘My armour,’ snapped Elias, standing up unaided, snarling at any attempts at assistance. ‘Bring me my armour.’
Jadrekk obeyed and hurried off into the camp.
Elias didn’t notice. Instead, he glared at the spearhead still embedded in the rock. His gaze went from it to the legionaries, then his flock of cultists and finally the remaining citizens of Ranos.
‘Round them all up,’ he said to his warriors, burning with shame and fury. ‘I want them executed. No knives, no rituals, just kill them.’
Elias turned away, his ruined limb clutched close to his chest as the pronouncement was met first with stunned silence, then fear, as the mortals realised what they were fated for. Shouts and grunts for order competed with wailing protestation and begging.
Elias sneered at the sound. It disgusted him, as did the fact he would now have to go to Erebus and plead for his life.
‘And someone bring me that spear,’ he said, almost as an afterthought, before staggering back to his tent.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The face in the blood
When he blinked, a thin crust of dried blood parted and flaked away off his eyelid.
His back hurt from an hour spent lying in the cold and on this slab. Vaguely aware of remembered pain down his side, he reached over to explore the injury but found only reknit skin and bone.
‘Not again…’ groaned Grammaticus, and heaved himself up.
He was sitting on a makeshift operating table in some kind of infirmary. So they had moved him then. At least that boded well, he supposed. The lights were out, but a glow was coming through a portal window in the door from a much larger room beyond the infirmary. Despite the gloom, Grammaticus could see that there was blood everywhere. The reek of it was heady and unpleasant. In particular it spattered a grimy-looking side bar where a selection of rough tools and ripped bandages lay discarded. Not a surgeon’s work, then. He found no stitches, but he was still badly bruised despite his new sleeve of flesh.
Slau Dha, you wretched alien bastard…
A metal bowl close to hand, filled with his blood and draped with the half-cut leavings of the butcher’s bandages, caught Grammaticus’s attention. The liquid was perfectly still and unusually reflective. As it shimmered, he realised what was happening and fought the urge to kick over the bowl and upend its contents onto the floor. It wouldn’t help. If he didn’t flect they would just find another way to make contact. It would go badly for him if he refused.
So instead he leaned over and waited for the face to appear.
He’d been expecting Gahet, as before, but instead the haughty yet severe features of the autarch started to resolve instead. For a fleeting moment, Grammaticus thought Slau Dha had somehow ‘heard’ his earlier remarks. But he was mistaken, as he also was about the identity of the face in the blood.
‘You are not Slau Dha,’ he said to the eldar regarding him from across time and space.
‘An astute observation, John Grammaticus.’
‘Humour? You surprise me. I didn’t think your kind possessed it.’
‘My kind? Are you really so jaded, John Grammaticus?’
‘I am the herald of destruction for my entire race,’ answered Grammaticus. ‘Jaded doesn’t even begin to cover it.’
The eldar didn’t respond to his sarcasm. He was male, dark hair scraped back over his forehead to reveal an inked rune on the skin. Only his face and shoulders were visible and described in red monochrome, the rest lost beyond the edges of the bowl.
‘Seems you know my name,’ said Grammaticus. ‘What’s yours? Are you another agent of the Cabal?’
‘Your association is how we have come to be in communion, John Grammaticus. And my name is unimportant.’
‘Not to me it isn’t. I like to know who my handlers are before they jerk my strings.’
The eldar pursed his lips. ‘Hmm. I detect some bitterness in your tone.’
‘How astute of you,’ Grammaticus mocked. ‘Now, what do you want?’
‘The question is, John, what do you want?’
‘Who are you?’
‘I am not with the Cabal, and I know that you wish to extricate yourself from their “strings”, yes?’
Grammaticus didn’t answer.
‘Why are you here, John Grammaticus?’ the eldar went on. ‘What is your purpose?’
‘You seem knowledgeable, more so than me at least. Why don’t you tell me?’
‘Very well. You are seeking a fragment of power, weaponised in the form of a fulgurite spear. Your mission also concerns the primarch, Vulkan. I too am concerned with him as well as the matter of earth. I came to you because I need your help, and you are in a unique position to give it.’
‘And what makes you think I would be willing to exchange one puppeteer for another?’
‘You want to be released. I can give that to you, or at least show you how to release yourself. You are… long-lived, are you not?’
‘I suspect you already know the answer to that, too. Although, I think you’ve got me confused with a friend of mine. I would say I have had many lives rather than one that is especially long.’
‘Yes, of course. You perpetuals are all different, and not all human in the strictest sense either.’
‘You are referring to the Emperor?’
‘You met him once, didn’t you?’
‘Yes, briefly.’ Grammaticus did not know who this being was, but whatever his other claims, he was certainly powerful to be able to contact him in this way and knew a great deal of the greater stakes at play in the war. Long ago, during the Unification Wars when he had been part of the Caucasian Levies, Grammaticus had learned to be wary of those who possessed more knowledge than himself. When in such circumstances, he found it best to say little and listen intently.
The eldar went on. ‘Many years ago, wasn’t it? Several lifetimes, in fact.’
Grammaticus nodded.
‘No,’ said the eldar flatly. ‘I do not mean him, I refer to Vulkan. He also cannot die as such, but you already knew that, didn’t you? As you and I speak, he is in terrible danger. I need your help to save him, if you are willing?’
‘If I am willing?’ Grammaticus scoffed. ‘Do you even know why I am here, what I’ve been charged to do? So you are giving me a choice then, assuming I believe all I have been told?’
‘I am certain you know I speak with veracity, just as I am certain you will take up this cause.’
‘Then why ask, if it’s predetermined?’
‘Politeness, illusion of free will. Invent whatever rationale you choose, it does not matter.’
‘You say choice, but it still feels like manipulation. For argument’s sake though, tell me what you want me to do.’
‘Place your hands against the conduit,’ the eldar instructed.
Grammaticus was about to ask him what he meant by ‘the conduit’ when he guessed it was the bowl, so did as asked.
‘Now prepare yourself,’ said the eldar, not needing to be told that Grammaticus had done as requested.
‘Why?’
‘Because this will hurt.’
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Dropsite
‘When the traitor’s hand strikes, it strikes with the strength of a Legion.’
– Warmaster Horus,
after the Isstvan V massacre
Isstvan V
Clouds roiled across the sky, presaging a storm to come. They were a mix of deep red and umber, turned that way by the planetary bombardment unleashed
from warships at anchor in the upper atmosphere, and so thick they clung to the vessels ploughing through them at speed in billowing streamers.
Thrusters blazing, the combined loyalist force led by Ferrus Manus surged through the fog, bent on retribution. The Gorgon’s drop-pod joined thousands of others, just as Vulkan’s Stormbird flew at the spear-tip of a vast flock of vessels.
Seconds after the first drop-ship pierced the cloud layer, batteries of emplaced guns erupted across metres of earthworks dug along the Urgall Depression. Flak fire filled the sky like upwards-pouring rain, chewing through wing and fuselage, detonating arrow-headed cocoons of metal and spilling their lethal payloads into the air.
It barely dented the assault, and when the Imperial loyalists finally made planetfall, over forty thousand legionaries tramped out upon the scorched earth.
Numeon sat mag-harnessed in the Stormbird, trying to track the unfolding carnage. His battle-helm was firmly clamped and he cycled through the various force commanders in his retinal display as the ship bucked and shuddered with its evasive actions.
A close impact prompted a rapid course correction, and he felt the sudden exertion of gravity as they pitched. Unperturbed, the captain of the Pyre Guard kept working through the Salamanders officers, committing their positions and statuses to his eidetic memory.
Heka’tan, 14th Company Fire-born…
Gravius, Fifth Company Fire-born…
K’gosi, 21st Company Pyroclasts…
Usabius, 33rd Company Fire-born…
Krysan, 40th Company Infernus…
Nemetor, 15th Company Reconnaissance …
Ral’stan, First Company Firedrakes…
Gaur’ach, Fourth Cohort Contemptors…
Chapter Masters, lieutenant commanders, company captains.
It went on.
More than a hundred names and faces scrolled across Numeon’s vision as he sought to follow the ever-shifting engagement. Thus far, they had only lost a dozen ships and eight drop-pods. In his mind’s eye, formations adapted, battle plans subtly altered, all to accommodate the violent landscape that was steadily unfolding above and below.
The Stormbird they rode in was a Warhawk IV. It could carry up to sixty legionaries and also had some capacity for transporting armour. During the apex of the Great Crusade, the Stormbird had been as ubiquitous as the stars in the night sky but its favour was fading. This one was an antique, having been usurped by the smaller and more agile Thunderhawk. Numeon liked the solidity of the Warhawk IV, just as he liked the fact he was harboured alongside fifty Pyroclasts, led by Lieutenant Vort’an. With chain face-masks that hung below the eye slits of their battle-helms and long surcoats of drake scale, they cut a stern figure in the hold. Unlike assault troopers of the line, Pyroclasts each wore a pair of flame gauntlets, slaved to a reservoir of promethium contained in canisters attached to their armour’s generator. Few warriors were as unyielding, as vengeful. In the old Gothic, their name literally meant ‘break with fire’. On the Isstvan killing fields, that was exactly what they would do.
Numeon could feel their hunger; the flame troopers were eager for battle.
In contrast, the Pyre Guard were still and calm like their lord. Vulkan’s eyes were closed, the retinal lenses of his helmet extinguished, as he meditated on what was to come. Numeon was reminded of their conversation aboard the Fireforge just moments before they had gone to the muster deck and the primarch had addressed his warriors. His words were brief but poignant. They spoke of brotherhood and loyalty, they also referenced betrayal and a fight the Legion had not seen the equal of since the earliest days of its formation. They would be entering a caldera in the midst of violent eruption, and none amongst them would emerge from that unscathed.
Alert sirens screamed into activity, strobing the inside of the dingy hold in amber light.
‘One minute to planetfall,’ the pilot’s voice issued through the vox.
Of their initial complement, only fifteen ships and eleven drop-pods would not make the surface intact. Nigh-on full Legion strength would be levelled against Horus and his rebels.
The Salamanders would hit along the left flank, the Raven Guard the right and Ferrus Manus with his Morlocks dead centre.
In Numeon’s retinal display, the roll call of Salamanders officers was replaced by a data-feed from the other two Legions which he relayed at once to Vulkan.
‘Nineteenth and Tenth confirm assault vectors and imminent planetfall,’ Numeon said.
‘Any word from the other four Legions?’ asked the primarch.
He referred to the Word Bearers, Iron Warriors, Alpha Legion and Night Lords. Since Kharaatan, relations with the VIII had been strained, but Numeon would rather have them fighting with, and not against, them.
These Legions, led by their primarchs, would form a second wave to relieve those making first planetfall. According to their last communications, which were well before the commencement of planetary bombardment, the other Legion fleets were inbound. Without them, the scales were evenly balanced between Horus and the loyalists. With them, it would be a massacre for the errant Warmaster and his rebels.
‘None, my lord.’
Any response to that from Vulkan was cut off as a second alert sounded, higher pitched than the first.
Thirty seconds.
‘Prepare yourselves,’ the primarch growled, opening his eyes at last.
Across the hold, power weapons energised, bolter slides were racked and igniters at the mouths of flame gauntlets lit up in whoosh-ing unison.
Screaming retro-thrusters kicked in, jolting the Stormbird hard. Mag-harnesses disengaged but the legionaries stayed steady, locked to the floor with their boots.
‘Eye-to-eye!’ Vulkan shouted as the ship touched down, hard and hot.
‘Tooth-to-tooth,’ the Salamanders roared as one, as the embarkation ramp opened to admit them onto Isstvan.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Trench warfare
‘Say what you like about the Fourteenth Legion. They are mean, ugly bastards but tenacious. There’s no one else I’d rather have by my side in a war of attrition, and almost anyone else I’d rather have against me.’
– Ferrus Manus, after the compliance of
One-Five-Four Four
Isstvan V
Black sand cratered by ordnance made for uncertain footing. As the vast armies of the three loyal primarchs ran from the holds of ships or emerged through the dissipating pressure cloud of blooming drop-pods, several legionaries faltered and slipped.
Sustained bolter fire met them upon planetfall, and hundreds amongst the first landers were cut down before any kind of beachhead could be established. Fire was met with fire, the drumming staccato of thousands of weapons discharged in unison, their muzzle flashes merging into a vast and unending roar of flame. Dense spreads of missiles whined overhead to accompany the salvo, streaking white contrails from their rockets. Sections of earthworks erupted in bright explosions that threw plumes of dirt and armoured men into the air. Las bursts lit up the swiftly following darkness, spearing through tanks and Dreadnoughts that loomed behind the foremost ranks of enemy defenders, only for return fire to spit back in reply. Flamers choked the air with smoke and the stink of burning flesh, as yet more esoteric weapons pulsed and shrieked.
It was a cacophony of death, but the song had barely begun its first verse.
The right flank was swollen with warriors of the XVIII.
Salamanders teemed out of their transports, quickly coming into formation and advancing with purpose. The black sand underfoot was eclipsed from sight, as a green sea overwhelmed and overran it. Vexilliaries held aloft banners, attempting to impose some order on the emerging battalions.
Methodical, dogged, the XVIII Legion found its shape and swarmed across the dark dunes.
At the forefront of this avenging wave was Vulkan,
and to his flanks the Firedrakes. Lumbering from the metal spearheads of drop-pods, the Terminators amassed in two large battalions. They were dauntless, dominant, but not the most implacable warriors in the Salamanders’ arsenal.
Contemptors, striding through the smoke, laid claim to that honour. Great, towering war engines, the Dreadnoughts jerked with the savage recoil of graviton guns and autocannon. Not stopping to see the carnage wreaked, they slowly tramped after the rushing companies of legionaries in small cohorts, attack horns blaring. The discordant noise simulated the war cries of the deep drakes and was pumped through vox-emitters to boost its volume.
Disgorged by Thunderhawk transporters, Spartans, Predator-Infernus and Vindicators disembarked at combat speed, tracks rolling. The battle tanks rode at the back of the line with a steep ridge behind them, anchoring the dropsite with their armoured might.
Three spearheads were driven at the traitor’s heart, two black and one green, all determined to bring down the fortress squatting at the summit of the Urgall Hills that overlooked the expansive depression.
In seconds the shifting sand became as glass, vitrified by the heat of tens of thousands of weapons, and cracked underfoot.
The percussive thud of mortars sounded overhead. Moments later and a line of explosions stitched the right flank, green bodies borne aloft on clouds of dark earth and smoke. Answering it, the plosive exhalation of a tracked-mounted siege gun. Part of the embankment was ripped up by the massive cannon shell, the mortar battery destroyed with it.
On the opposite side, a spit of flame from an Infernus lashed across an enemy squad lurking in a clutch of foxholes with grenades primed. The small explosives cooked off before they could be thrown, their fury turned upon their wielders, who were blasted apart. From an upper echelon, a lonely missile streaked across the smoke-choked field and cracked against the Infernus’s hull. Its turret split, a second flame burst already building as its side sponsons chattered and its tracks clanked. The tank went up in a loud ball of flame, killing a swathe of legionaries advancing beside it and staggering a second vehicle in its squadron.