Taking advantage of the brief distraction, Reda hit the ork as hard as she could across the back. She felt something yield to her blow and crack. The ork squealed, turning savagely, saliva flying and a curse spitting from its mouth. Reda didn’t see the kick. It was fast and caught her so unawares that she sprawled back across the mud, tumbling like a drunken clown, the maul flying from her grasp.
She saw light, sparks of magnesium flashing at the corners of her eyes, and tasted blood. Someone had set fire to her ribs. Either that or everything was burning. Lurching onto her front, she regarded the blurred silhouette of the hulking figure lumbering towards her. It took its time, still sniffing and lapping at the air like an animal. It was an animal, acting on instinct, on its desire to kill and eat. She tried to look past it, to see Vanko. To let that be the last thing she saw, but he was gone, lost to the darkness crowding at the edge of her sight, so she closed her eyes and tried to picture him instead.
The other orks had emerged from the low keep, spilling out in the daylight, eager for killing. She could hear them even over the heavy breathing of the one that was going to murder her, a cacophony of bestial grunting. And she could smell them, the sourness of stale sweat, the overpowering reek of dung.
Strong fingers grabbed a clump of her hair, so roughly they cut her scalp, and yanked hard. She thought of Vanko, gladdened by what they shared however brief it turned out to be.
I’m sorry, my love.
Its hot breath dampened her cheek, so foul it made her eyes water. Reda gave a shout, a last scream of the promised vengeance she hoped would come in her wake, the final act of her defiance.
‘We are Macragge!’
Heart thumping, lungs heaving, skin tingling, bracing for the last pain she would ever feel. So afraid, so very, very afraid, at the thought of that thing tearing into her, that Vanko would see her spilled out red and ragged into the dirt.
The fingers tightened, then their grip eased and something splashed against her face and hair. The hand fell loose, it actually just fell, limpid and dead. Reda opened her eyes and saw the ork’s hand shorn clear of its wrist, twitching in its final nerve spasms like a dead spider. Its owner twitched too, the spear lodged in its heart making it difficult for it to do much of anything else.
A shove and the beast toppled backwards, the stump of its missing hand still fountaining crimson, its blank eyes rolling back in its head.
‘Get behind me.’ Pillium’s gruff voice possessed an irresistible command that Reda had no choice but to heed. Groaning with the pain, fear slowly bleeding away to reveal the well of hope she had kept deep at the base of her emotions, hope becoming relief and then fear again as she saw the horde they faced alone, Reda crawled backwards. Her hand found Vanko’s and she held it, so tight she thought she would stop the flow of blood.
Cwen and Yabor had gone, fled into the night.
Good for them. Someone should live through this.
There was nothing left to do but watch. And pray.
He stood before them, spear held across his body, a bloody sword in his other hand. Only his legs were armoured, the rest of his body half-covered by a layer of dark mesh and wrapped in bloodstained bandages. He placed a boot on the neck of the ork he had just gutted, his spear still slick with its vital fluids. It writhed, dying.
‘This is your fate,’ he told them.
REMOVE THE HEAD
The orks were coming. Their footfalls thumped loudly against the earth, shaking smaller rocks loose from either side of the gorge. From a lope, their momentum gathered and then they were running, hurtling towards the Ultramarines.
Daceus cried out. ‘Sicarius!’
He called again and again, and the others joined him with only the captain staying silent.
‘Sicarius!’
‘Sicarius!’
The greenskins clamoured for the defile, shoving and pushing each other to be first to reach the enemy. As they came to within twenty feet, boiling into the narrow neck of the gorge like a tidal swell of heat and green flesh, Vorolanus and Vandius stepped back. They unclipped grenades from their belts, Vandius having planted the banner anew, and hurled them into the high reaches of the gorge.
A chain of explosions ripped into the shadows, throwing off light and fire. The orks stumbled and slowed almost to a halt, suddenly afraid, cowering at the voice of destruction that was louder than their gods. Then there came a crack, a deep sundering of the earth, as huge chunks of stone and clods of earth rained down on them.
The orks panicked. Some ran for the mouth of the gorge, slamming other greenskins bloodily into the rock face, and died to Ultramarian swords. Those that tried to scurry backwards became entangled with the ones behind them and got no further. The larger orks roared at the avalanche, defying its fury, but were crushed all the same. It was deafening, and huge plumes of dust rose skywards, obscuring the horde behind a cascade of rock and mud.
A handful of orks emerged from the pall of dust choking and near-blind, some missing limbs or terribly maimed. Daceus and Vorolanus despatched them as they staggered within reach of their blades. Hundreds had been killed or incapacitated by the rockfall but many had survived, caked in filth and badly bleeding. The chieftain stood amongst them, on the other side of a hillock of rocks and greenskin corpses.
‘Take the high ground!’ shouted Sicarius and led the others up the side of the mound.
They reached the summit just as the orks had begun to scramble up the foot of the hillock on the other side.
‘Hold this vantage for as long as we can,’ said Sicarius as the others joined him.
The orks hit them in a dense slab of hard muscle and aggression. Daceus kicked an ork back down the mound, taking several other greenskins barrelling in its wake. He felt an impact across his arm and shoulder as he parried a heavy blow, throwing out a punch with his free hand to distract another ork before slitting its throat. He hacked into the meaty shoulder of a third, taking a stab to his side with a stone knife before he wrenched out his blade and slammed it down onto the ork’s skull. Bone snapped, cracking like an eggshell with red gory yoke. Shoving the beast aside with his shoulder, he met two more and was almost pitched off his feet. He held his ground, barely. One of the greenskins had a hand around his face, claws trying to dig furrows in his cheek, his forearm lodged in its champing mouth. The second ork died to the gladius lodged in its gut. As Daceus fended off the first greenskin, he began to saw his blade free from the other. It was like cutting boiled leather, thick, messy and noisome. The gladius came free in a welter of blood and bone slivers. Daceus sheathed it in the right ear of the ork trying to chew off his arm and tear up his face. The claws dragged free as it died, and he stifled a cry of pain as a deep cut opened up his left cheek. Blood soiled his face. He tasted it in his mouth like old copper pipes. An elbow strike dazed another greenskin, its head snapping back before Daceus thrust his blade through its neck and kicked off the body to see it tumble back.
It was frenzied, his movements swift and economic as he drew on every ounce of his training and experience. He cut and slashed and cleaved until his armour had more red than blue. Dozens of minor chips, dents and gouges marred it further, but as of yet none had penetrated. After almost twenty-three minutes, he was tiring. To fight constantly without respite, no mortal could achieve such a feat. Against an enemy as physically intimidating as feral greenskins, it went beyond taxing. Daceus felt his muscles burn, his every sinew straining, his secondary heart pumping like an engine, fuelling every blow.
He estimated he had overcome nearly twenty greenskins, almost one every minute, and dealing not merely wounds but actual deathblows. The stink of it, the death and the blood, the sweat of bodies and excrement. It made him want to vomit.
The banner was torn, ripped by an axe or an ork claw; Daceus hadn’t seen it happen, so he didn’t know. Vandius still held the spear haft, letting the greenskins come to him, letting them enter a savage rending arc. He cut fingers, hacked off hands and feet. A few he ki
lled but he could not commit fully with the banner and so he wounded instead.
Vorolanus and Fennion stood to one side of the banner, shoulders almost together, and striking out with twinned blades. Fennion sliced off an ork’s ear, Vorolanus gutted it. He opened up a torso, Fennion speared it through its open mouth. They worked methodically, and as a unit.
All of this Daceus perceived in a heartbeat.
If the others were dogged and unyielding, Sicarius was a brutal artisan. His sword leapt across the ork ranks, whip cracks of lightning following its arcing, deadly path. He cut through bone armour and flesh, he severed the hafts of spears and crude shields as if they were parchment. He killed with every stroke, a ruthless, deadly force. Some warriors might have allowed the battle lust to overtake them but not Sicarius. He jabbed and turned, he thrust and decapitated with cold lethality. If he had to step out to administer a kill, he stepped back in, always maintaining coherency, always holding the line. He led by example, an almost peerless standard of military discipline and strategic invention, and his men loved him for it. They would gladly lay down their lives for Cato Sicarius, who showed no weakness, only resolve and a fierce determination to win.
To fight like this, with armour as heavy as lead and only bare blades, it took a toll.
Together, they could hold the defile. As a chain with all of its links connected, they were inviolable. Until the moment that they were not.
The mound of sundered earth and broken bodies made for poor footing. Orks slipped constantly on their dead or snagged ankles to jutting pieces of rock. They often died for it. When Vorolanus slipped, he almost pitched forwards, staggering into the savage bodies of his enemies. An axe blow cleaved into the place between his neck and his shoulder guard. It drew a thick arc of blood in the air as the blade was withdrawn, which is how Daceus knew it had gone deep. A spear thrust bit into his forearm and Vorolanus dropped his sword. He fought with his fists, but a tattooed beast of a greenskin was about to smash open his skull with a massive stone hammer when Fennion stepped in. He barged into the beast, leading with his useless shoulder, using it as a battering ram. It teetered, suddenly unbalanced by the ferocity of the attack and fell back, Fennion going with it.
He was quickly on his feet, lashing out with his gladius to open up an ork’s neck. He stabbed another through the chest, just as Vorolanus was stooping to retrieve his own blade. But Fennion had stepped out of the aegis of his fellow battle-brothers and was briefly surrounded.
Daceus called to Sicarius, and the captain turned mid-deathblow and saw the danger. As Sicarius cut his way to Fennion, Daceus stepped into the breach he had left but still saw what happened next.
Fennion had been turning to face his next assailant when the spear impaled him. It ran right through his lower back and out of his upper chest, spitting him like a boar. He writhed in agony, coughing up blood before crying out. His gauntleted fingers just about clung on to his sword.
Vorolanus cried out too, hacking down four orks before he could get to the spear-wielder. ‘Iulus!’
He cut this one apart as well, but by then a stone axe was embedded in Fennion’s stomach and blood leaked from half a dozen stab wounds. Vorolanus wrapped an arm around his stricken brother and hauled him backwards, Fennion’s legs kicking weakly as they dragged through the dirt.
Seeing weakness, the orks scrambled to make the kill but Sicarius was already amongst them. They recoiled from his lightning blade, too afraid to face him.
‘Lions!’ he roared, cutting a red swathe through the orks. ‘With me!’
He drove like a lance into the greenskins, no longer on the defensive but taking the fight to them. Daceus went with him. So did Vandius, who had planted the banner and drawn a second blade in his off-hand.
Unprepared for the sudden attack, the orks were cowed at first but then rallied, emboldened by violence. Their numbers had been severely culled but Daceus counted at least thirty or so left and these were amongst the largest, the ones with bone armour and painted in tattoos. They had metal weapons too, crudely wrought from pieces of salvage. Daceus turned a rough cleaver aside, the pig-iron rasping sparks as the blades collided. The blow jolted his shoulder, but he got the better of the exchange as he forced the ork’s arm wide and stabbed up into its gullet. The gladius punched through the crown of the ork’s skull but it kept on fighting. Daceus left the red-rimed weapon embedded, drawing a shorter combat blade from the back of his belt as the ork flailed at him. He went under its reach, getting in close and stabbing it repeatedly in the torso. As it collapsed like a felled tree, Daceus took a firm grip of his sword and let the ork’s momentum tear it loose.
He no longer had sight of Sicarius, the captain lost to the gloom and surrounded by orks, who sought to bring him down through sheer weight of numbers.
Vandius was just ahead of Daceus. His arms were like pistons, his speed of motion belying the fact of his cumbersome war-plate. He cut down two orks with two quick diagonal slashes of his sword, opening up a path to the chieftain. Vandius charged at him.
The beast met him with pure aggression, bulling through the ranks of the other greenskins like a train. It laughed as Vandius lashed out, catching the sword in its open hand. Dark blood ran vigorously down the blade, the contempt in the beast’s eyes reflected in the red mirror sheen.
The bone club struck Vandius across the chest and hurled him back. He staggered, a deep crack down his plastron, the gladius wrenched from his grip and thrown aside, but he came at the ork again. The beast roared, revelling in the fight, but stopped laughing when Vandius’ flung combat blade protruded from its neck. It gurgled, only just catching up to what had happened.
Vandius was still moving, but was now unarmed. He’d beat the chieftain to death if he had to.
‘Vandius!’ It was Vorolanus, stained with Fennion’s blood, returning to the battle. He drew a sword from his back and tossed it to the banner bearer, who caught the hilt in one hand. Using a dead ork to get a foot up, Vandius leapt at the chieftain wielding Praxor Manorian’s old sword…
The beast raised an arm to defend himself, still choking on the knife sticking out of his neck. The sword cleaved through the arm, severing it just below the elbow. The blade scraped against the chieftain’s armour, tearing through but snagging in the ork’s thick hide. Blood gushing from his arm stump, the chieftain lunged with the bone club. It punched through the crack in Vandius’ breastplate and came out through his back.
The banner bearer hung in mid-air, legs dangling limply and clawing at the bone club impaling him. The beast gave a hefty swing to shake Vandius loose and he hit the side of the gorge hard. He tried to rise, his teeth pinked with blood. Praxor’s old blade clattered to the ground, chiming like a funeral bell. He got up on one elbow, and struggled to reach for it.
Daceus was pinned, three against one, and could barely fend his opponents off. He saw Vorolanus in his peripheral vision, a gladius in his hand. He could find no sign of Sicarius and feared he might have been overwhelmed in the press of bodies.
Chuckling, seemingly ignorant or uncaring of his grievous injuries, the chieftain sidled up to Vandius’ crumpled form and pushed the bone club up under his chin. He wanted to look into the warrior’s eyes before he killed him. In a perverse way, the ork was showing him respect.
The chieftain snorted, deciding Vandius was not so impressive, and let his chin drop so he could raise the club for a killing blow. The weapon didn’t get higher than his shoulder. It stopped abruptly, the chieftain momentarily dumbstruck as the tip of a crackling sword poked out of his chest. He looked at it as if it were an apparition, a figment of his crude imagination. The blade thrust out further and then moved rapidly with the cutting inexorability of a disruption field, carving open the chieftain from hip to shoulder. The beast turned, stumbling on its swollen legs, and stared in impotent fury at Sicarius as its two halves parted, venting a slew of gory innards onto the ground.
It was over. The last of the orks fled or were killed by the
Adeptus Astartes as they ran. Above, the storm broke, and the first wan shafts of the sun pierced through.
After he was finished chasing down greenskins, Daceus returned to stand before the captain, and met his gaze.
‘Remove the head…’ he rasped, reprising something Sicarius had said years ago.
Sicarius arched his brow then gestured to Vorolanus. ‘See to Vandius.’
Incredibly, the chieftain still lived. He was holding his guts with one arm and breathing rapidly as Daceus and Sicarius stood over him. A deep, ugly sound issued from his throat, shaking the beast’s body.
‘Is it… laughing at us?’
An uneasy feeling entered Daceus’ gut as he followed the line of the ork’s feverish gaze. A large piece of ork graffiti had survived the rockslide. It took up a large part of the gorge wall, daubed in blood and foul greenskin spore. It depicted the two-headed ork god.
‘Two faces,’ said Sicarius. He looked down at the chieftain again, at the half-helm he wore, the jaw piece missing. ‘One bellicose and warlike…’
Daceus turned to his captain, as a stark realisation came to light. ‘The other cunning and deadly.’
Sicarius sheathed his sword. ‘Damn it. There are two of them.’
‘Where to, then?’
‘Where else? Back to Farrodum. They lured us here and the rest waited for us to be gone.’ He looked at the power source, jutting from the floor of the gorge, too heavy for them to carry, but not for a gunship. ‘We need Haephestus.’
‘So, do we go back? To the city, I mean?’ Daceus pointed at the power source. ‘That’s it, isn’t it? That’s what we need to restore the ship.’
‘That’s what we need,’ Sicarius replied.
‘What is it? A generator? Capacitor? Can we even use it?’
‘All good questions, Retius, that we shall need our Techmarine to answer. This is what Haephestus discovered on the augurs, I am sure of it.’
‘So we can’t leave it.’
‘We can’t. But we must,’ said Sicarius. He called out to Vorolanus, ‘Scipio…’
Knights of Macragge - Nick Kyme Page 28