JAGHATAI KHAN WARHAWK OF CHOGORIS

by Chris Wraight

‘You share in the honour of this night, captain,’ Hasik said, earnestly. ‘We will make the muster at the Bloodmaw, and I shall tell the Khan of your deeds, who will tell your primarch. But even Borghal did not know if his art would work in this. If it had not, you would not have been drawn into shame. Only us.’

  Rheor didn’t look placated. ‘Always shame, with you. Oaths and shame. You people are a strange breed.’

  ‘But you see the power of weather-magic now? You tell your Librarian of this?’

  Rheor drew closer. ‘Once unlocked, these things cannot be put back. You jest, but there are better ways.’

  ‘We’d still be fighting now, out there. More dead before the end. Maybe we never make it at all.’

  ‘You should have told me.’

  ‘Would you have agreed?’

  Rheor held his gaze for a while longer. His dark eyes glittered under the lines of fatigue. All of them had been fighting for a very long time.

  Eventually, he sighed, and gestured for his retinue to move off. ‘A strange breed,’ he muttered, turning and making for where the defence towers were being hoisted into position.

  ‘You fought well!’ called Hasik after him emphatically. ‘These things will be known.’

  Rheor turned, and a half smile, almost exasperated, flickered over his hard features. ‘Do not shout too hard about your magicians. Not all ears are as friendly as mine.’

  Then he was gone, marching off into the gathering murk to order what remained of his forces.

  Hasik turned to Goghal, as ever standing by his side.

  ‘He had a point,’ Goghal observed. ‘That was a risk.’

  ‘So it was.’ Hasik didn’t look sorry. ‘One we were bred to make. The Khagan would have done the same.’

  ‘They say he’s closing on the Bloodmaw now.’

  ‘Then we had better lose no more time. I want us there in three days.’

  Goghal smiled. ‘Is that achievable, noyan-khan?’

  ‘It is essential,’ said Hasik, wiping the blood from his brow and turning away from the dying sunset. ‘He gave me an order. I intend to keep it.’

  Immediate onward movement from the Saddleback was impossible. Even an army as self-contained and resilient as the Legiones Astartes needed time to recover after a major engagement – armour had to be replaced and repaired, vehicles had to be overhauled, ammo replenished and supplies restored. Airdrops from cleared areas in the far south were the main route for this; atmospheric transporters were sent lurching over the crystal fields, escorted by wings of protective fighters. Even passing over regions nominally scoured of xenos was a dangerous business. Ork gangs remained in the wilds, fragments of the once-mighty war hordes armed with rocket launchers and erratic missile batteries, so the Imperial high command was wary of sending more convoys than it had to. Not until the last of the greenskin remnants, persisting between the old trench lines and the Saddleback, had been annihilated did the request for immediate resupply receive its answer, and the convoys of cumbersome lifters steadily take off and pull north.

  The seized redoubt itself had been heavily fortified by the time the first of them arrived, and fully laden transports touched down on hastily levelled dropsites. Both the Auxilia’s engineering corps and the Legion’s own Techmarines were adept at raising battlefield structures in extremely rapid time frames. Less than twelve hours after the Legion’s front ranks had gained the Saddleback, the summit of the peak was crowned with over twenty fixed air defence towers, more than a kilometre of razor wire and staggered bluffs of tank defences. Earthworks ringed the high places, thrown up quickly by Auxilia mechanised teams and subsequently reinforced by dug-in squads of defenders.

  During the long night, patrol squads roved back across the conquered terrain, trawling for the living wounded as well as hunting for any residual enemy presence. The most assiduous of these were the Apothecaries of the two Legions, who passed through the still-hot earth searching for Space Marine fallen in order to extract priceless progenoid glands and mark the bodies and their armour for honourable recovery.

  Dawn illuminated a drear landscape of fractured crystal and slowly rotting corpses. Gar-Ban-Gar’s sun was hot, accelerating the decay of the thousands of broken bodies, human and xenos alike. Once the Legion squad captains had given the all-clear, incinerator teams from Marshal Mothe’s reserve descended to the plain level, their flamethrower-armed dozers grimly shovelling up the slain for the pyres to come.

  It took until mid-morning before Borghal was able to rise from his medicae slab and survey the scene. His entire body hummed with pain, mostly concentrated behind his eyes and in the palms of his hands. Usage of the arcane path left its wounds, all the more acute at the points where aether-matter left the body. The fighting following Hasik’s relief of the Stormseers’ position had still been vicious – the orks may have lost their overarching psychic aegis, but they were still creatures of savage instincts, still capable of immense feats of physical strength and born without conventional notions of fear. Many legionaries had died in the combat that followed, and the cadre of Stormseers under Borghal’s command had shrunk down to four.

  Despite that, the gamble had been worth taking. A flaw had been detected in the xenos’ use of psychic power, one that could be exploited again in coming battles. The orks operated, it seemed, entirely blind to the subtleties of the hidden realm, summoning up breathtaking power when gathered in vast numbers but not displaying any profound understanding of what they were doing. It was as if they were attuned to the energies beyond the veil in a purely instinctual sense, tapping into it like an animal might, either ignorant or uncaring of the deeper metaphysics at play.

  Perhaps there was indeed a kind of strength in that. All zadyin arga knew of the temptations of the other place – the urge to keep delving deeper, uncovering more with each encounter, until it became an addiction that risked addling your mind. No greenskin would have been prone to that. That was something to reflect on, given the widely held view that these xenos were not an entirely natural product of galactic evolution. No doubt Yesugei would have had something to say about it, had he been there, but no one knew where he was save the Khan himself.

  ‘Stormseer.’

  Borghal looked up, placing a hand on the nearest crystal outcrop to steady himself. The Luna Wolves Librarian Jereth walked towards him, emerging through the crowds of V Legion apothecarion staff as they hurried from one medi-station to the next. He seemed to have been outfitted with replacement pauldrons, but otherwise his armour displayed the ubiquitous marks of combat. His exposed face was lean, his hair long and dark. Like all the Cthonians, he displayed a mix of aspects – a certain raw brutality, combined with an undeniable dignity of poise. They were born warriors, the Luna Wolves, but of a markedly different, less straightforward heritage than the sons of Chogoris.

  ‘Librarian,’ Borghal said in greeting, working to keep the exhaustion from showing in his voice.

  Jereth stood before him. ‘That was a powerful thing you did. I’ve never seen the like. We should talk more of it, you and I, when you are recovered.’

  ‘I did not think you… approved.’

  ‘I neither approve nor disapprove. I study. We’re all learning.’

  Borghal looked at him carefully, then nodded slowly. ‘You have the gift, then,’ he said.

  Jereth didn’t answer at once. He walked past Borghal to the edge of the crystal outcrop where the view of the battlefield was more complete. Another airdrop was coming in, its engines trailing long lines of grey.

  ‘There’s plenty I don’t understand about how this Crusade is constructed,’ Jereth said. ‘I don’t understand why so much has been left unsaid that should have been made plain. Maybe you don’t care about such things. Your people do not seem to be the anxious kind.’

  ‘Do not be sure of that,’ Borghal said, remaining where he was. ‘There have been disagreements.’

  ‘I fought once on Morfeda,’ Jereth said. ‘Heard of it?’

  Borgh
al shook his head.

  ‘A human world. A lost human world. They failed to heed the call to join the Imperium, and so it was a forced compliance. Messy. I do not like killing our own kind. But we were not alone, and in that there were some interesting experiences. We fought alongside the Thousand Sons of Prospero, although their primarch did not lead them. Have you ever served with the Thousand Sons?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘A fascinating Legion. There was a rumour that they use mind-weapons like other Legions use bolters. I heard stories – a captain, or whatever rank it was, dissolving an entire wall with his outstretched fist. I heard reports of others levitating in order to reach vantages, or creating translucent shields to ward their battle-brothers as they advanced. Such things. In this time, such things.’

  ‘I have heard similar stories.’

  ‘No doubt,’ replied Jereth. ‘But then I myself saw something else, and it stayed with me for a long time. I saw one of them, right in the thick of the fighting, and he was slaying like I have never seen, before or since. Even my troops were captivated by it. But then something went wrong. He stopped. We heard screaming, and I will swear to you it was not like any human scream I have ever heard. I saw his hands reach up to his helm, and then his own kind took him up, hiding him from view, and they withdrew from the engagement and pulled back to their own support positions.’

  Borghal listened warily. There was something in Jereth’s tone that gave away a deep and long-nourished antipathy.

  ‘After the fighting I raised the matter with my captain. Rheor took it up with the Fifteenth Legion command. We made our feelings clear. You can understand why – we were jointly assaulting a position, and for our allies to withdraw without reason or warning risked the success of the entire operation. We heard nothing. We were given no explanation. The next day, the Thousand Sons left. It was not a large detachment, but the loss of it was hard to make up at short notice. It led to significant bad feeling, which I understand went all the way to the primarchs. Even now it is talked of.’

  ‘I imagine so.’

  Jereth turned back to face Borghal. ‘What do you make of it?’

  ‘I know not. I was not there.’

  ‘He was a sorcerer, they said. Something happened.’

  ‘Any warrior may be lost in combat.’

  Jereth smiled thinly. ‘If one of my warriors dies, we do not withdraw the entire squad. You would not do it either. Unless, that is, you had something to conceal from your allies.’

  ‘I was not there,’ Borghal said again.

  ‘No. But you were here.’ Jereth lost his smile. ‘Your commander did a dangerous thing. Rheor has equable humours, but does not enjoy being deceived. These things do seem to go together – mind-weapons and deception.’

  Borghal began to lose patience. ‘Say what you came to say.’

  Jereth spread his hands. ‘I only make the comparison. You cannot expect trust to be maintained like this.’

  Borghal’s eyes narrowed. ‘It was done to hasten victory. We were already too slow.’

  ‘This obsession again.’

  ‘We did nothing different to what we had been doing for months. Only its direction was changed. There is no ban in the Legions on the use of these weapons.’

  ‘Yet.’

  Borghal stopped dead.

  ‘I jest,’ Jereth went on, smiling briefly again. ‘But I mean what I say about clarity. These things should be made plainer.’

  ‘It is plain to us.’ Borghal pushed clear of the crystal column, standing unsteadily.

  ‘Is it? Or do you just ignore them, hoping wiser souls will do the work of looking into it for you? Do you hope that your example alone will somehow make you less hated?’

  Borghal’s heart rate picked up a fraction, the first and faintest preparation for battle. He felt his fist unconsciously and habitually reach for his staff, even though it had been destroyed and he would have to wait a long time for a newly fashioned one.

  Then Jereth turned away. ‘Not the best time, perhaps. You’re wounded. Like I say, when you’re recovered, we should talk more.’

  Borghal took a step towards him, feeling his blood pump strongly around his body. He was angry now, and that accelerated the healing process.

  ‘There is nothing to talk about,’ he said, voice low. ‘If you turn your back on a weapon, do not be surprised if it cuts you. I care not about Prospero’s witches. I care not about your studies. I care what the Khagan orders. If he tells us to stop, we stop. If he tells us to continue, we continue. That is all.’

  ‘And the Imperium?’ asked Jereth. ‘What of that?’

  Borghal looked him direct in the eye. ‘As you say – neither approve nor disapprove.’

  Jereth laughed, seemingly with genuine amusement. ‘Very good. Your Gothic’s getting better.’

  Out on the plains, the first pyres of the slain lit up with gouts of promethium, and acrid palls began to spread over what had once been pristine crystal fields. The air shimmered even further into a deep red glow.

  ‘Be careful, though,’ Jereth said. ‘Much as you might wish to be, you are not alone. You’ll never be alone again. There is more to this than the lord of the plains.’

  The smoke rolled upwards, boiling from the heaps of flesh like sacrificial offerings. Borghal smelled the stench but did not look at its source. He remembered the clean air of Quan Zhou, and the blue skies that stretched into eternity, and the clean kills, and the laughter.

  ‘For you, maybe,’ he said. ‘For us, there will never be anything else.’

  TWELVE

  A day later, and the army was ready to march again. As they had done after every advance over the previous months, a garrison was left at the Saddleback to keep the landing sites secure. In due course more troops would arrive, redeployed from the established southern bases to properly fortify the gained ground and prevent any counter-attack. Huge areas of Gar-Ban-Gar were now overlooked by these fortresses, a network so large that from orbit it could be used to trace the original attack trajectories. Over time each garrison had become a towering citadel of rockcrete and adamantium, their prefabricated walls landed from Imperial Army transports and their guns hoisted up to standard template parapets. The greater part of those garrisons was made up of the Auxilia regiments, though most had a skeleton Legion presence and access to rapid-response networks. As on all conquered worlds of the campaign, the vice of control had to be applied methodically and rigorously.

  For now, though, the bulk of Hasik’s army made its way north in a long-strung cavalcade of transports and grav-lifters. The brief pause had been only sufficient to do the minimum required to make the detachments battleworthy again. The Legiones Astartes forces were better off in this respect, designed as they were for almost continual conflict and immune from all but the worst effects of long-term fatigue, but the Auxilia were being tested hard. It was good, then, that the warzone they were headed to would be the last scheduled for this world. Hasik pushed them onwards not out of spite or hubris, but because they were needed for the final confrontation, the one at which all other major landed contingents were expected to play their part.

  Thus did the net close, steadily and grindingly, around the last xenos stronghold. It had been christened the Bloodmaw, partly as a dark jest, and partly in no-doubt mispronounced imitation of what the orks themselves called it. The Legion fleet’s attached Mechanicum terraforming adepts postulated that the complex was the extinct crater of some enormous volcano. It stretched more than fifty kilometres from side to side at ground level. Below that it plummeted rapidly, thickly clustered with crystal growths that became steadily redder the lower one went. So had the name Bloodmaw quickly gained currency, for that wound in the world’s crust resembled nothing so much as some colossal blood-soaked mouth, replete with its thousands of jagged teeth.

  The orks had colonised that place more intensely than any other site on the planet, using the remnants of the void-going craft that they had smashed into the planet’s s
urface to construct rudimentary fortifications, forges, food-processing chambers and whatever else their debased race required to survive. What vehicles they still retained – rickety attack bikes, half-trucks, looted Army tanks and barely operational junk fighters – had been pulled back under the shadow of the Bloodmaw’s inner curve walls. Their remaining strength resided in their still formidable infantry numbers, and the best armoured and most physically imposing orks gathered amid the incarnadine facets, many in heavy plate armour and bearing huge chained-ammunition projectile weapons.

  In the years or decades since the greenskins had first come to this world, they had built heavily within that enormous bowl, slowly accreting patched towers and sagging walkways and clawed-out galleries like some colossal swarm of insects. There was no grand design to that construction, just a slow and mindless build-up of straggling structures that had gradually filled and choked and silted up the entire depression, turning it into a honeycomb of iron, stone and strange luminous fungoid growths. As the war had turned against them, the orks had fortified every last inch of it still further, setting up cannons at the many mouths of the labyrinth within and stuffing the tunnels with gangs of grunting, jostling warriors. By the time the combined Legion and Imperial Army forces encircled it, the place was audibly swollen with life, bursting at its ragged seams, a spore-frothed cauldron of close-packed, stinking defiance.

  Four separate armies converged on the site, linking up in an encirclement planned months previously on the command bridges of distant starships. From the north came the main detachment of Luna Wolves troops, led by Hastur Sejanus of the Legion’s Fourth Company, accompanied by the 92nd and 15th cohorts of Solar Auxilia. From the east came forces recently landed from off-system, led by Giyahun and comprised almost exclusively of the battle-hardened White Scar brotherhoods that had been prosecuting the campaign on Gar-Ban-Gar’s subsidiary worlds. These columns linked up with the greatest of all the war hosts, that led by the Khan himself – a huge conglomeration of V Legion assets and subordinated Army regiments that had burned its way fastest of all from the initial landing sites far into the mountainous east. The final element to arrive was Hasik’s own, pushing hard to make the muster before the order to advance was given.