Anger. Speed. And now weapons fire. All of it wrong, and Toharan seethed with frustration at the stalled advance. The entrance to the pass was barely a kilometre to the north. He could see it, a jagged shadow in the mountain wall, its contours outlined in the red glow of the setting sun. Squad Pythios could punch through the corpse legions easily on its own. The problem was doing so with even a handful of survivors. And the problem was looking increasingly academic as the siege wore on.
The Guardsmen were collapsing. Their lines were thinning, pulling back, and then disintegrating. Squad Pythios did what it could to shore them up. Toharan and his brothers ran the interior perimeter once more, dividing the circle into eight between themselves. They were not a patrol: they were a revolving scythe, a perpetual charge, blasting clusters of dead with bolter fire, pushing into the thick of the attackers with chainsword and fist, leaving barriers of inert flesh in their wake. They were relentless. They slowed the hordes down.
They couldn’t stop them.
They might have, if the Mortisians were able to hold position with just a bit more characteristic resolve. These men were veterans, blooded and war-tempered by a hundred battles, but they were going down like the rawest trainees. Toharan was baffled yet again by what he was seeing. How could the infection spread so quickly? The change from loyal Guardsman to savage corpse took seconds. There was barely time for a man to die before he turned on his comrades. The virulence of the contagion was beyond unholy. And still, not one of the civilians had succumbed. They were shredded into strips of meat when they were caught, but they never changed.
The refugees howled their terror and despair. For a moment, Toharan’s frustration veered into contempt. The terrible losses of this pointless mission had been for the sake of these bleating sheep? Where was the sense in that? Then his eyes landed on Bethshea, always running to be near him, looking up at him now not as a monster, not as a giant, but as a god come to keep her safe, and there was his answer. There was the sense of the mission.
His vox-link came to life. ‘Pythios, this is Ormarr.’
‘Volos,’ Toharan said. Even through the distorting static of the transmission, the rumbling rasp of Squad Ormarr’s sergeant was unmistakable. ‘Tell me you have good news, brother-sergeant.’
‘Would our imminent arrival qualify?’
‘It would.’
‘What do you need?’
‘A way through to the pass so we can move the civilians.’
‘You’ll have it,’ Volos promised. ‘Fire and bone.’
‘Fire and bone,’ Toharan responded, returning the Dragons battle-cry, and swallowing, as he always did, the twinge of regret that the words would never hold the full meaning for him that they did for Volos. He mag-locked his bolter to his thigh, conserving rounds, and tore into grasping, surging dead with renewed purpose. The warp take the Mortisians if they weren’t up to the task. The Dragons would complete the mission themselves. His sword lopped off limbs and heads. The ground beneath his boots had become a mire of blood, and some of the defending Guardsmen were losing their footing in the slickness, but he didn’t lose a beat. He was an engine of precise destruction, and mowed the dead down, slicing and trampling them to their second, final end.
But still they didn’t attack him. Still, with hands and teeth, they lunged only for the unaugmented humans. And as the Guard succumbed, there were more and more corpses with weapons. Many simply used the rifles as clubs. But even though there was only a tiny percentage that actually fired the guns, and there was no accuracy worthy of the name, the numbers were enough, and they were growing. The air was filling with the lethal web of hostile las-fire.
The music of the war was an atonal cacophony of howling corpse, shrieking survivor, and crying wounded, the high timbre modulated only by the chud-chud-chud of bolter fire, growl of chainsword and punctuating crack of bone. The steady, rotating, murderous sweep of Squad Pythios carried what rhythm there was. But now came the glorious bass: the huge, deep-throated, vengeful roar of the Thunderhawk gunship Battle Pyre. Flying low, it emerged from the pass, a stub-winged fist of black armour that reflected crimson sunset as the ship turned and began its strafing run. Hellstrike missiles flashed from their pods. They slammed into the undead army with a blast of purifying fire. Tiny suns rose between Toharan and the pass, and the sky rained fragmented body parts. The sponson cannons opened fire, and the ground erupted with geysers of dirt and corpses. For a moment, the pressure from the north ebbed. The Guard pushed hard, and there was movement. The refugees, their cries turning to whimpers of hope, inched towards the north.
Figures in jump packs detached themselves from the Battle Pyre.
Bethshea pointed up. ‘Look!’ she squealed. ‘More giants!’
‘Yes,’ Toharan said. But as he watched the Dragon Claws arrive, what he thought, despite himself, and to his burning shame, was, No, not giants. The monsters have come.
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