Iulus noticed other Adeptus Astartes in the throng, company spokesmen and the aides of captains. Daceus was there. The veteran-sergeant looked strange with a stump of arm instead of his power fist. It was rare to see the Lion without his battle gear. He looked as enthralled as Iulus felt. So too was Helios from the First. His demeanour appeared keener but no less exhausted at the endless procrastination.
Politics was not Iulus’s strong suit. He believed in what he could touch and fashion towards war, but the Chapter needed solidity too and so its future was given to the politicians to argue over. Not that their opinions really mattered. It was the illusion of diplomacy. Only one man could end the debate with any real authority and finality, and his throne in the auditorium was empty. He wasn’t wasting his time listening to this.
Deciding Praxor was too involved to disturb, Iulus headed for the battle-cages alone.
He met Scipio, waiting for him in training fatigues and wielding a blunted rudius.
‘I saw Praxor at the senate council again,’ he said as he began stripping off his armour. A pair of serfs came to attend him, but Iulus waved them away. ‘I am capable of donning my own training garb.’ He glowered and sent the serfs scurrying.
Scipio was sketching test swings with his rudius. ‘Why do you terrify them, brother?’
The corner of Iulus’s mouth twitched as he set down his cuirass. ‘Because it’s enjoyable.’
Shrugging, Scipio made two arcs, switching from one hand to the other, before ending on a low thrust.
‘Serious, eh?’ joked Iulus. His armour was stowed and he picked up a rudius himself, gauging the weight and heft.
‘I have to be when sparring with you, ox.’
Iulus snorted, mimicking the beast Scipio had likened him to.
Then he swung.
Scipio blocked expertly, moving aside and allowing the blunted blade to roll down and off his own. His riposte was a sharp jab that Iulus swatted down before he backed away and said, ‘We have not spoken of it since it happened.’
Scipio leapt and swung an overhead blow that staggered Iulus at first but the sergeant got his footing quickly and rammed his shoulder against his opponent, denying him the room for a follow-up. Scipio grimaced as he tried and failed to match his friend’s superior strength. ‘Spoken of what?’
Iulus felt Scipio move, turning his momentum against him. He checked his stance, bracing his legs wider, and pivoted on one foot to parry the reverse swipe aimed at his shoulder blade. The rudii clacked loudly around the cage.
‘Orad.’
A hail of blows rebounded against Iulus’s blade and he was hard-pressed to defend against them. He had to back away, fending off each fresh attack, his options for a reply diminishing with every blow. It bordered on frenzied.
Like a pugilist against the ropes, he went in close, seizing Scipio’s torso in a wrestling move and heaving him back to reassert some distance. Scipio came back undaunted and swinging. He carved elaborate approach swings in the air and Iulus had to use his full concentration to anticipate his opponent’s strike pattern. He blocked and feinted, but could find no counter.
Scipio was relentless. And silent, until saying, ‘What is there to speak about? He is dead. That is the likely fate of us all in the end.’
He aimed a punch, which Iulus deflected easily with his meaty forearm. He could sense his battle-brother tiring. Anger, when misused during battle, was as much an enemy as a friend. He asked, ‘When did you become so fatalistic, Scipio?’
Their blades locked, one pressing against the other. Scipio’s face was a mask of aggression.
‘I am merely being realistic.’
He took a two-handed grip. It forced Iulus onto the back foot, but he then rolled on his heel and allowed Scipio to lunge forward into mid-air. Using the flat of his blade, he smacked Scipio hard on the back of his neck.
‘I don’t think you’re angry at me, brother.’
Stung, Scipio turned with murderous eyes and flung his rudius like a throwing dagger. The move almost fooled Iulus, who was forced into a desperate block that sent the weapon spinning loose. It was a hair’s breadth from his neck and causing serious injury.
Iulus threw down his rudius a second later and punched Scipio hard in the jaw. He recoiled but didn’t retaliate. Shame supplanted anger as he realised he’d broken a sacred trust.
Iulus was breathing hard; they both were. ‘You want to fight for real, bring armour and chainblades next time, but don’t expect to walk out of this cage.’ He moved in close, his voice deep and full of menace. ‘You’ll need to be carried out.’
Scipio’s face was a hard, defiant line.
‘Bout over,’ he said, and left.
When Scipio was gone, Iulus sagged and wondered at how he had failed to see his friend’s degeneration and pain. He slammed his fist into the cage wall, stretching the metal into a perfect mould of his knuckles. Then he picked up the rudius and performed training rotas until he was sore and burning, and all the frustration had vented away.
The wise say, just before you die, that your life and all its achievements pass before you in a blur of enlightenment.
Iulus recalled the words of the ancient Macraggian philosophers he’d been forced to endure as part of his neophyte training. On his back in the dirt and bloody snow, he found issue with that belief. There was only an encroaching darkness and the dense thunder of pumping blood in his ears. There was no epiphany, no glorious moment when a golden halo beckoned or cherubim sang of his deeds in archaic verse.
It was copper-stink, it was hot fading breath and the futile knowledge that he had been found wanting in the face of his liege lords of old.
As the necron’s grip tightened, Iulus railed against his fate, too obstinate to accept it. He wanted to scream his defiance but even that was denied him. He’d pushed the chainblade as deep as it would go, dragged it around organs that were not organs, but still the necron endured.
Then the pressure lifted.
First his sight returned, like a fresh dawn after a moonless night. The blood stopped rushing quite so loudly and mortally after that, and was replaced by a hard insistent clank. Something that looked like a spear-tip jabbed out of the necron’s left eye socket. Then it happened again and again. Before it phased out, Iulus was dimly aware of a human clinging to the creature’s back and hacking for all his worth. The ice-spike’s final blow punctured the necron’s forehead, dead centre, and it flickered from existence.
The human, a conscript by the look of his uniform, landed heavily but on his feet.
He grinned at Iulus. Behind him, there were other conscripts hacking with blades, picks and axes. ‘I have saved an Angel,’ he said, and offered his hand.
Iulus got to his feet, ignoring the human’s aid because his weight would have toppled him and he didn’t want his saviour to suffer that indignity. ‘Who are you?’ he asked instead.
The necron elites were defeated. The entire war cell had phased out, removed tactically from the battlefield by their masters below and abroad.
‘Kolpeck,’ said the human. He sketched a salute, but it was awkward and rough. ‘Falka Kolpeck.’
Iulus liked him already.
History would not remember the deeds of the Damnos Ark Guard in the liberation of Kellenport. They would fail to record the courageous actions of the four hundred souls who ventured beyond the western gate from the Courtyard of Thor to certain death. Sicarius and his glorious Second would be the heroes and for them alone the laurels of the battle attributed.
But Iulus Fennion would always know the full truth of it.
He regarded the bedraggled remnants of the Ark Guard that had fought and died in the ‘wastes’ alongside the Ultramarines and felt… surprise.
Ever since Ghospora City back on Black Reach, over a century ago, he had known humans had mettle. To fight greenskins from behind barricades and fortified battlements was one thing; to charge headlong into hand-to-hand combat with necrons was something else. Perhaps th
ese hundred or so soldiers before him were suicidal.
They were mainly miners, he decided, Damnosian labourers pressed into service as a last act of a desperate world to shore up its decimated armies. They’d just returned from the Capitolis Administratum bastion with the acting lord governor. With the Deathwinds’ payload depleted, it was no longer safe and he was to be secured within Kellenport.
Word had come through Daceus from the front. Sicarius was pressing on into enemy-held territory, to Arcona City and the Zephyr Monastery. He’d requisitioned forces from the rearguard, both squads of Devastators and Brother Ultracius. Kellenport was won, but he wanted to keep it that way.
According to Tactica briefings, Commander Sonne had over fifty thousand Ark Guard at his disposal; a large part of the planet’s remaining population. Iulus was given the unenviable job of galvanising them and ensuring they held the line and the ground already won.
Agnathio could not make the long walk. The damage done to his motive functions had reduced the mighty warrior to an undignified shuffle and until a Techmarine could be tasked with conducting the correct rituals and rites to effect repairs, he would remain so. The Dreadnought joined Iulus’s command and the brother-sergeant was glad of his presence and his wisdom.
Presently, he had one ear to the recently restored long-range comm-feed.
‘Brother.’ The return was crackly and broken, but Iulus recognised the voice of Praxor. ‘I’m sorry that you’ve been left behind.’
‘It is no matter,’ Iulus replied. ‘My duty is to the captain and the Emperor whatever form it takes. How goes the battle farther out?’
‘Tough.’ It was rare for Praxor to be so upfront and honest about the severity of the fight ahead. He was usually possessed of the same vainglory as their captain.
Iulus wondered what had changed.
‘You lost battle-brothers?’
The voice that came back over the feed was quieter, almost hushed, ‘More than I’m comfortable with. The Shieldbearers are at barely half-strength.’
‘We always knew this war would be arduous. Galvia and Urnos were wounded but we are inviolable still.’ He was referring to the fact that ever since they’d been formed, the Immortals had yet to sustain a casualty. That feat might be put sorely to the test on Damnos.
‘I only wish you were fighting by my side, Iulus,’ said Praxor, his mood oddly candid. ‘I have need of your counsel and temperance.’
‘Guilliman willing, we will all survive this campaign to fight another in the primarch’s name.’
‘Or die in the prosecution of it.’
Iulus nodded without trace of regret or denial. ‘If that is his will, then yes.’
Praxor left a pause as if agreeing with his fellow sergeant then asked, ‘Any word from Scipio?’
The activation runes on the portable hololith projector were flashing. Iulus needed to cut this short. ‘None, but there is another comm shroud over the Thanatos Hills.’
‘May Guilliman watch over him.’
‘And all of us. Courage and honour, brother.’
‘Courage and honour.’
Iulus cut the feed. Troopers were filing in from the western gate, more Ark Guard. There were twenty thousand men with heavy cannon and servitors. The majority looked like the conscripts arrayed before Iulus in the reclaimed ‘wasteland’ in front of the first defensive wall.
The hololith unit flickered to life, a grainy blue three-dimensional image suspended in mid-air through a projector node, and Iulus looked away from the marching men.
‘Lord Fennion.’ It was Commander Sonne, from somewhere within the Kellenport city-bastion. He gave a crisp salute but his eyes appeared haggard, his face drawn and his uniform bedraggled.
‘I am a Space Marine sergeant,’ Iulus corrected him, nodding in recognition of the salute, ‘so you may refer to me as such. I am no one’s lord.’
‘Duly noted, sergeant. I want to convey my deepest appreciation for your efforts in liberating Kellenport. You have saved many lives with your actions and all of Damnos expresses its gratitude to you, our saviours.’
The words were there, but the belief was not. Sonne did not think his life or the lives of his people were saved, nor did he regard the Ultramarines as saviours. Iulus saw a broken man before him, one that was going through the motions and had all but given in to fatalism.
‘Further hard work is needed, commander. We have only stalled the necron advance, not stymied it completely.’
‘I am at your disposal, as are my men. I’ve already sent the twenty thousand requested to the wastes.’
‘You might want to reconsider naming that zone,’ Iulus advised.
Sonne nodded, mildly chastened. ‘Of course… Yes. It was the Courtyard of Chronus before the desolation. So it shall be again.’
‘Chronus it is,’ said Iulus. ‘Our tank commander will be pleased.’
Sonne didn’t understand the reference, but acknowledged the remark with another nod anyway.
Iulus went on. ‘Your thirty thousand will defend the city-bastion whilst the other twenty will be split evenly garrisoning the defensive walls. The third wall we mine and give up to the enemy.’
Sonne went to object but Iulus cut him off. ‘We’re already stretched and defending three walls will spread us too thinly. Our focus shall be on the first two walls, the first as a fall-back point for the second and then Kellenport city-bastion as our last redoubt.’
Sonne looked ashen at that last remark. If they lost Kellenport then it was over. For everyone.
‘You push on for the outer territories?’ he asked, a rare glimmer of hope in his tired eyes.
‘Captain Sicarius is driving the spearhead purposefully, yes.’
As Iulus understood it, the ‘spearhead’ was actually a series of daring raids. The necron vanguard had been beaten, a tiny respite bought for the Kellenport defenders, but the mechanoids would return as soon as they’d calibrated for fighting against the Ultramarines. Iulus nearly said as much to Sonne but chose to stay his tongue. Perhaps some of Scipio’s old empathy was rubbing off on him. But that had been a different version of his friend. Something, the death of Orad he suspected, had hollowed out that optimism and replaced it with a core of ice. He’d half heard of an altercation with Praxor in the past, something prior to Damnos, but had no wish to pry. The business of others was precisely that. Iulus knew his duty and how to do it to the best of his ability. He had gifts, the legacy of his Chapter brothers flowing in his veins, and he meant to honour that with each and every one of his actions.
Iulus only half watched Commander Sonne’s salute, his mind on other things as the hololith shrank back into the projector node.
‘Don’t let it consume you, Scipio,’ he said to the wind, shifting his gaze to the Thanatos Hills where the necron barrage continued unabated. ‘Don’t give in to reckless hate, brother.’
Aristaeus loomed behind him; Iulus could hear the warrior’s careful tread.
‘Break up the squad,’ said the sergeant, ‘and distribute it around the separate battalions.’ He regarded the one hundred survivors from the battle for the plaza, the renamed Courtyard of Chronus. Falka Kolpeck was standing in the middle, their de facto leader. ‘These ones are with me.’
It had been so long since he had hunted.
For a moment he was skin and bone again and it was blood, not oil and circuitry, that flowed through him. The wild lands of his birth stretched as far as he could see and the hooting of cattle and herd-beasts called into the umber evening. The sun was dipping and he felt its warmth fading on his cheek. The coarse grain of his antique phase-rifle was a reassuring presence in his hand. The wind, ghosting through the hills and across the plain, touched his exposed skin with chilling tendrils.
As quickly as they came, the sensations bled away again and left numbness and sorrow in their wake. The sun did not warm him, the wind was as dead as the bloodless arteries of his mechanised body. No rifle identified him as a noble plains hunter. Instead, a
pair of gruesome talons betrayed him for what he was – a monster.
Sahtah the Enfleshed groaned inwardly. Even as the tundra rushed by in a blur of greyish white, as his slaves followed his lead, he was not placated. Funnelling into a deep gorge, he paused before the carcass of a dead herd-animal. Its flesh steamed with recently exposed entrails. Sahtah plunged his talons inside, turning them incarnadine with the beast’s spilled viscera, hoping…
‘Why can’t I feel it?’
He rounded on his slaves in a sudden fury. ‘There is no heat from the blood, no kill-stench. Where is it?’
Powerless to answer his demands even if they wanted to, the flayed ones merely stared and waited. Their flesh-cowls were rank with putrefaction but stirred a pang of jealousy in their lord.
‘I want my robes!’ Sahtah raged. His synthetic voice could only simulate his anger. In a quieter voice, he added: ‘I want my body.’
His instincts told him the genebred humans were close.
‘Soon I will have it,’ he promised. ‘Soon I will be enfleshed again.’
Chapter Nine
Brakkius led Retiarii up the slope. Brothers Renatus and Herdantes kept low behind their squad leader, weapons up. As soon as they were spotted, a strobe of emerald gauss-fire lit up the snow and ice. It was answered by bolter fire that incapacitated one of the raiders but didn’t render it inoperative. Before Brakkius and his troops were retreating, the downed necron had already begun to self-repair.
Despite the lack of lasting damage, their attack provoked the reaction Scipio was hoping for. Three of the six raiders left the obelisk and went after Brakkius.
Two hard bangs from Ortus took one of the mechanoids in the side of the skull. It crumpled into a heap, shuddered and phased out. Another shot exploded a raider’s shoulder and left it unable to shoot.
The crossfire was working. It drew the other three necrons out. Scipio and Largo had already sneaked into position before Brakkius’s attack and were about to flank them when the sniper fire stopped. Scipio was about to give the attack order when he hesitated and looked over to Ortus’s vantage point, wondering why he’d stopped firing.
Space Marine Battles - the Novels Volume 1 Page 112