[Warhammer 40K] - Sons of Dorn

by Chris Roberson - (ebook by Undead)

  “Primarch-progenitor,” Taelos whispered beneath his breath while raising the point of his powerblade towards the enemy, “guide my blade.”

  * * *

  Scout Zatori had bolstered his bolt pistol, and now wielded his combat blade in a two-handed grip, after the fashion of the warrior-elites of his native Sipang. In the years that he had lived onboard the Phalanx, gradually transformed into a superhuman Astartes, Zatori had studied the Imperial Fists’ Rites of Battle and committed to memory the forms and movements set down in The Book of Five Spheres.

  He had set his foot on the path that would lead to mastery of the Imperial Fists way of the blade, his way guided by Rhetoricus’ catechism of the sword. But finding himself in close combat for the first time, Zatori could not help but hear the voice of his first master, Father Nei, echoing in his memory. And despite the fact that Veteran-Sergeant Hilts and the other instructors had forced Zatori to unlearn some of that early instruction with the blade when it was deemed incompatible with Imperial Fists philosophy, there was much that Zatori had learned from Father Nei that could be incorporated without difficulty into the teachings of Rhetoricus, and in Zatori’s mind the two philosophies had a tendency to blend into one, with the warrior philosophy of his earliest days supplementing and augmenting the rigorous beliefs of his Chapter.

  There were three Roaring Blades racing towards Zatori’s position, the one in the middle of them a bull of a man who wielded a pair of wickedly curved sabres, one in either hand.

  His jaw set and his mouth drawn into a thin line, Scout Zatori slid his right foot forwards, his left foot planted behind him in an aggressive posture, with his sword’s hilt in a two-handed grip by his right hip, the blade up at an angle defensively across his line of approach. As Rhetoricus taught, he was adopting an aggressive attitude with his body while maintaining a passive attitude with the blade, to draw his opponent into making the first move.

  By inducing the enemy to take the initiative, Zatori would have the advantage of responding accordingly; ironically in such contests it was often the combatant who moved first who surrendered the advantage, and the combatant who remained reactive and passive who prevailed. The warrior-elites of Sipang had employed a similar tactic, which Father Nei had called “swordlessness”. It was not always necessary to be the first or fastest to move, so Zatori’s late master had said, and in fact the unexpected action was often the correct one—such as throwing down one’s sword to confuse the enemy.

  Zatori found it as difficult now as an Imperial Fist Scout as he had as a young Sipangish squire to accept the idea of discarding one’s weapon as a tactic in battle, but he did not question the value of the unexpected. And he had come to accept the maxim that he who moved last often gained the upper hand.

  Of course, it did not appear that he would have much difficulty in drawing the Roaring Blade into taking the initiative and moving first.

  Little more than a heartbeat had passed since Zatori had slid his foot forwards, his sense of time seeming to slow as the moment of first contact arrived. Though the bull of a Roaring Blade was the largest, he was not the swiftest, and the traitors on either side reached Zatori’s position first.

  The two Roaring Blades scarcely had time to address an attack when Zatori had cut them down, his combat blade slicing the legs out from under one and taking an arm off the other. They went tumbling to the ground, their blood seeping out onto the grey stones underfoot.

  But there was still the largest of the three to contend with, and he promised to be more of a challenge than his fellows. Bellowing like an enraged grox, the Roaring Blade spun his two sabres like the teeth of gears swinging ever towards each other but never colliding. Zatori could feel the wind of the blades’ movement just as he could scent the sour stench of the Roaring Blade’s breath as the bull bellowed on.

  Zatori stood with his weight balanced over both his feet, his sword still held across the line of his body. But as the Roaring Blade closed the distance to him, scissoring the two sabres together at the Scout’s head, Zatori suddenly slid his front foot forwards without moving his back foot from its position. His torso dropped lower as his feet spread wider apart, and the two sabres of the Roaring Blade whistled harmlessly over Zatori’s head. In that same moment, Zatori swung the tip of his combat blade from left to right with all his strength, pulling the blade’s edge across the Roaring Blade’s forearms in a powerful cutting stroke.

  The force of the stroke after sliding into the splits forced Zatori off-balance, as he had anticipated, and he controlled his fall so that he dropped back down on his hindquarters onto the flinty ground. But even as Zatori was scrambling back to his feet, the two sabres of the Roaring Blade clattered to the shale, along with a pair of severed hands. Zatori looked up into the face of the bull, and saw that the Roaring Blade was awash in ecstasy as the pain of his injuries was transformed by his rerouted nerves into pleasure.

  As the Roaring Blade swooned in half-lidded ecstasy, Zatori swung his own sword in a wide arc, bringing the edge of his combat blade biting deep into the bull’s thick neck.

  It would have taken two cuts for a normal blade to sever the Roaring Blade’s head from his shoulder, perhaps three; but like the combat blades wielded by his brothers, Zatori’s sword possessed a monomolecular edge, and sliced easily through the enemy’s neck in a single stroke.

  As the still-smiling head rolled to Zatori’s feet, he raised his sword to meet the charge of the next Roaring Blade in line. Perhaps Zatori had not thrown his sword to the ground, but he’d allowed himself to fall in order to win, and he believed that the spirit of Father Nei would be pleased with his mastery of “swordlessness”.

  The Roaring Blades were a motley mix of sizes and types, men and women of all imaginable skin colours and facial features, as though they had been selected at random from a hundred different inhabited worlds. And for all that Veteran-Sergeant Hilts knew, that was precisely how they had been assembled. In his experience Chaos cults were insidious, creeping their way into the hearts of civilisations like worms boring their way through the flesh of a fruit, seeking the dark core where they could breed and spread, eventually infecting the whole from the inside out. He had seen it on countless worlds in his centuries of service to the Chapter, as the Imperial Fists had time and again been involved in the attempt to scour the taint of heresy from one world or another.

  The clothing, skin and hair of the Roaring Blades were coated with a fine powder of grey dust, the same shade as the flint and shale underfoot. But even through this patina of grey one could glimpse the hues of purple and gold that their ragged uniforms once had been, now dingy and tattered. Most of the Roaring Blades had their bodies and heads completely shorn of any hair, many of them with piercings and elaborate tattoos marking across their soiled flesh, and their wide eyes had the same black stare as Hilts had seen looking out from the faces of Emperor’s Children, pupils so large that no iris could be seen, eyes that had seen and experienced too much and could now never look away again.

  Veteran-Sergeant Hilts dropped one of the Roaring Blades with a single shot from his bolter, and then cleaved another from shoulder to waist with a single downward stroke of his own sword. He wrenched his blade free, and as the enemy fell to the rocky ground, screaming in ecstasy, Hilts put a bolt-round between the Roaring Blade’s eyes.

  Another Roaring Blade leapt over the fallen body, either not noticing or not caring that he was landing in a widening pool of his fellow cultist’s blood, thrusting a long scimitar at Hilts’ midsection. The veteran-sergeant danced back, turning his own blade in a tight arc around the Roaring Blade’s scimitar, turning the point away, and then lunged forwards a thrust of his own. His sword skewered the renegade through the shoulder, but the enemy only smiled, luxuriating in the sensation of the cut, and swung his scimitar one-handed at Hilts’ side.

  Using the sword which was still stuck deep in the Roaring Blade’s shoulder as a fulcrum, Hilts levered him to the side, causing the Roaring Blad
e’s swing to go wide. Then, as the Roaring Blade toppled off balance and fell sprawling onto his side, Hilts yanked the blade of his sword out of the enemy’s chest, then speared downwards with his sword, driving the point deep into the Roaring Blade’s head from ear to ear.

  Hilts planted a booted foot on the Roaring Blade’s face, bracing the enemy’s head while he yanked his sword free once more. Then he turned to face the next enemy to rush towards him.

  These Roaring Blades might once have been as human as any of the inhabitants of the Imperium that the Imperial Fists were sworn to protect, but Hilts did not recognise any kinship with the creatures who lay dead at his feet. These wretches had long ago surrendered their humanity in exchange for the favour of the Dark Gods of Chaos, and they would get no mercy from Veteran-Sergeant Hilts, nor from any under his command.

  The Imperial Fists made short work of the thousand Roaring Blades, but their victory was only temporary. As the Scouts regrouped, another wave of Traitor Guard came pouring over the surrounding hills, more than a thousand of them in all. Only this time the enemy did not simply hurl themselves against the Imperial Fists, but approached with more caution, targeting those areas where their fallen brethren had been able to inflict the most damage and disruption.

  At a signal from Captain Taelos the Scouts of the 10th Company formed into a triangular wedge, with Scout s’Tonan and the other members of Squad Pardus in the vanguard on either side of Veteran-Sergeant Hilts on point, with the veteran-sergeants of Squads Vulpes and Ursus making up the other two points of the triangle with their squads arrayed to either side. Captain Taelos moved up and down the line, temporarily filling positions as Scouts had to fall back to deal with injuries from las-fire or sword-thrusts, then repositioning the Scouts to either side of the gap to free him up to move down the line.

  Taloc reached for one of the frag grenades clipped to his belt. But before he’d grabbed one, he heard the voice of Veteran-Sergeant Hilts on a closed-channel vox direct to his micro-bead. “Remember your valley ambuscade defence tactics, Scout s’Tonan. Bolts and blades only until we put these wretches down.”

  Scout s’Tonan nodded, pulling his hand away. He remembered the tactics that the veteran-sergeant referenced, of course. They’d drilled endlessly on the various methods for defending any location or terrain from any potential attack, and Taloc could recite the doctrines of valley ambuscade defence chapter and verse, if asked. But in the heat of the moment, with the enemy bearing down on him, he’d acted purely on instinct, ready to grab the most broadly destructive weapon on hand and hurl it at the enemy without thinking.

  He was his father’s son, after all. Hadn’t Tonan always let his actions in battle be guided by his heart, and not his head? Even on the green fields of Eokaroe where he finally met his end, Taloc’s father had rushed in amongst the faithless combatants without any plan or strategy besides “Kill as many of the enemy as possible before they kill you.” Tonan might have waited for the opportune moment to attack, at least in some cases, but once the attack was launched he fought with whatever weapon was close to hand, striking at whichever enemy was within range.

  But Taloc wasn’t just a clansman of Eokaroe anymore. He was a neophyte, Scout s’Tonan of the Imperial Fists. Within five years one of his progenoid glands would be mature, followed in another five by the other. But if Taloc were to die before those initial five years had passed, the line of zygotes implanted within him would die as well, and the Chapter would be robbed not only of Taloc’s future service as a battle-brother, but of the service of all those who would have arisen from his gene-seed in future years.

  To Taloc’s left was a Scout of Squad Vulpes, who grappled with a sabre-wielding female Roaring Blade. The Vulpes Scout managed a flawless parry, spinning the heretic’s sword out of her hand, then driving his own combat blade down and to the left, severing her spinal column and leaving her flopping like a headless fish to the ground. Taloc could not help but pause for a moment and admire the artistry and craft of the Vulpes Scout’s blade-work. Then in the next instant a sizzling blast of las-fire lanced right through the Vulpes Scout’s right eye, punching out the back of his skull.

  Scout s’Tonan only had time to glance back in the direction from which the las-fire blast had come, and saw the enemy who knelt near the crest of the nearest hill with a lasrifle aimed and ready, when another Roaring Blade raced forwards. With a blood-curdling scream on his lips and a long curved cutlass in a two-handed grip, he was bearing down directly towards Taloc, with murder in his blank black eyes.

  Taloc had no choice but to ignore the sniper on the hill, forced instead to deal with the more immediate threat. Shifting his combat blade in his grip, Taloc sprang forwards one step out of line, thrusting as he did, so that his lunge drove the point of his sword into the soft flesh between the base of the neck and the top of the sternum. Panting in ecstasy but unable to breathe through a severed trachea, the Roaring Blade collapsed to the ground while Taloc yanked his combat blade free.

  When Scout s’Tonan looked back to the rise of the hill for the sniper, he could see that the Roaring Blade had shouldered his weapon and was now rushing down to join his fellow cultists in close combat with the Scouts. Most likely the lasrifle’s power cells had drained before the sniper had been able to take another shot.

  Taloc stepped back to take up his place in the line again, shifting to the left to cover the gap left by the fallen Vulpes Scout.

  The Roaring Blades rushed into battle without any apparent thought, it seemed. Scout s’Tonan narrowed his eyes and readied to take on the next attacker. They fought so much like the warrior-clans of his youth. But he was an Imperial Fist now, a proud scion of a heritage of strategic planning and mastery of defence. He would not act without thinking, without planning, but would out-think and out-plan his enemy, like any proud son of Dorn.

  “Scouts!” Captain Taelos called over the tumult, bringing his power sword down in a wide arc and cleaving a Roaring Blade’s head and right shoulder from the rest of his body. “Every second Scout, sheathe blades, take up bolt pistols and target the enemy. Scouts on either side, use blades to cover the shooters from close attack.”

  It had been some time since Taelos had last had vox-contact with the other captains. If they had not been attacked by enemy elements as the 10th Company column had been, the other columns should have been approaching the mountain stronghold by now, if they hadn’t already reached it.

  The Scouts had lost three of their brothers in the action so far—one Scout down in Squad Vulpes and two lost from Squad Ursus—but Squad Pardus had not yet suffered any losses and the captain himself and the three veteran-sergeants were still on their feet and fighting.

  Despite their considerably greater numbers, and despite the loss of the three Scouts, the fact that the Roaring Blades were relying almost entirely on close-combat weapons meant that they were largely a nuisance rather than any kind of serious threat. Their resistance to pain, and their resilience after receiving wounds that would have put a normal unaugmented human down with the first shot, meant that it was taking more time to deal with the attack than it might otherwise have done, but now that the first wave of the attack had been fended off by the Scouts they had the luxury of using a ranged-weapon defence to thin out the attackers that remained. Put enough bolt-rounds in them and the wretches would go down, pleasure centres be damned.

  Perhaps more than half of the Roaring Blades had gone down so far, with some fifty or so still upright and attacking. But the growing piles of their own dead that littered the rocky ground around the 10th Company’s wedge were slowing down the attackers in the rear, so now it was just a matter of time before the rest were put down, as well.

  Then the 10th Company column would make best possible speed towards the mountain stronghold, and they would learn the disposition of the survivors, as well as whether the Imperial Fists of the 1st and 5th Companies had run into any more serious resistance.

  “For the primarch and the Emperor
!” Captain Taelos shouted, and then drove his power sword to the hilt in the chest of another Roaring Blade.

  Scout du Queste sheathed his blade with palpable reluctance. He had finally felt that he had got into the proper rhythms of thrust and parry, attack and block, and that the growing number of Roaring Blades who had fallen before him was a testament to that. He recalled the first time that he had found himself in a melee with a blade in hand, facing the swords of the Sipangish on the green fields of Eokaroe, and felt a swell of pride at his evident mastery not only of the blade itself, but of the shifting realities of the battlefield. He had come a long way from the streets of Caritaigne, and in more ways than one.

  Jean-Robur had received a wicked cut along his jaw-line from an enemy’s blade, but already the special cells pumped out by his Larraman implant had staunched the blood-flow and the healing process had begun. But that slight wound was the only mark on him, and there were four enemy combatants who had fallen to Jean-Robur’s blade. As he grappled with the fifth he heard Captain Taelos’ call for every other Scout in the line to sheath their blades and open fire, he realised with mounting disappointment that he was the second Scout in the line, as the Scouts one man down from him on the left and the right had already begun firing bolt-rounds into the enemy line.

  He was tempted to keep on fighting with his combat blade, to continue exulting in the dance that reminded him of his youthful days as a duellist in Caritaigne, that recalled to him the same thrill that he had felt overcoming opponents in the boulevards and salles d’armes alike. But he had been too well trained these last few years to be able to ignore the direct order of a superior, much less the captain of the company—and even if the long hours of indoctrination were insufficient to instil in him a respect for authority, which they most assuredly were not, then the countless hours in the pain-glove had impressed upon Jean-Robur the consequences of failing to follow orders.