The Lost and the Damned

by Guy Haley

  ‘Atramentar!’ Skraivok called, his panic rising. ‘To me!’

  If they heard, they could do nothing; they fought the Blood Angels Dreadnought still, their number reduced to three.

  ‘Night Lords! Help me!’ His power pack scraped on rockcrete. He had his back to the outer crenellations, and could retreat no further.

  Raldoron faced him. His sword energy field buzzed in the downpour.

  ‘Listen to you,’ Raldoron said. ‘The masters of fear. You are cowards, like all cruel men.’

  Raldoron’s power sword slashed across Skraivok’s chest, breaking open the ceramite and severing his power cabling. The Painted Count staggered, unbalanced by the sudden loss of energy to his war-plate’s systems. Raldoron lunged forwards, stunning Skraivok further with a blow to the face from the punch guard of his sword. Cracks crazed over Skraivok’s eye-lenses. His faceplate systems fizzed and broke down into a display of meaningless blocks. He feebly attempted to parry, but Raldoron smashed it aside and turned the blade downwards, his own sword cutting deep into Skraivok’s greave, cleaving through ceramite, undersuit and flesh, and sliding into the bone.

  Skraivok staggered to the side, slipped and fell backwards into the chute of a crenel. A wedge-shaped gap between merlons, the crenel sloped down and narrowed towards the edge. Skraivok scrabbled at the smooth, polished plascrete of the surface, and succeeded only in making himself slide towards the killing drop.

  A red boot on his wounded leg pinned him in place.

  Skraivok cried out in pain.

  Raldoron leaned forwards to address him.

  ‘You are and always were an evil Legion. You took the Emperor’s mission and twisted it. Selfish. Monstrous. Tormentors of the weak,’ snarled Raldoron. ‘If Horus had not turned, I would have gladly led the hunt for your kind myself. I thank you from my heart that you came to my sword and saved me the trouble of looking.’ He shifted the weight of his foot, bringing another cry from Skraivok.

  ‘Wait!’ the Painted Count said. ‘I give you my surrender. You beat me. I am your prisoner!’

  ‘There can be no prisoners in this war,’ said Raldoron. ‘How much mercy have you shown to all those that you harmed? I have as much mercy for you as you had for them. Now get off my wall.’

  He shoved hard with his foot, sending Skraivok skidding towards the drop. The Night Lord dropped the daemon sword to grip at the polished rockcrete with both of his hands, but there was no purchase on the blood-slick surface. He managed to brace himself on the merlon’s rounded corners with his elbows, and for a moment he thought he might save himself. He looked up to see the Blood Angel still staring at him.

  ‘You are a pompous man,’ Skraivok said.

  Raldoron raised his bolt pistol.

  Screaming in defiance, Skraivok shoved himself over the edge, whence he plummeted, reaching terminal velocity long before he hit the ground and the stone broke him.

  The Night Lords were retreating. More than half their number had fallen. Three Terminators fought Ancient Axiel, but they would not last long. All those near Raldoron were dead. Thane’s men continued to shoot down onto the enemy, while his own warriors were reforming their squads to better discipline their firing at the retreating foe. A report from Captain Galliard of Raldoron’s Chapter crackled in his ear, informing him the Night Lords rearguard was falling back. Their gunships were powering up. True to their nature, some were taking off without their passengers, the pilots seizing the opportunity to save their own skins.

  But the battle was far from over.

  Siege towers lumbered on towards the wall, the nearest now approaching the cratered zone where the third outwork line had been. Enemy artillery pounded at the wall directly. Overhead the failing aegis held out the bombardment, but would not for much longer, while in the sky lines of fire marked the approach of hundreds of drop pods.

  ‘Thane,’ voxed Raldoron. ‘Imminent drop strike. What is the status of our reinforcements?’

  ‘Incoming,’ said Thane. ‘Requested Ninth and Seventh Legion reinforce­ments estimated arrival within fifteen minutes. Bhab has commanded four Imperial Army regiments to be redeployed from the inner districts as reserves to our section of the wall.’

  ‘I would prefer more legionaries.’

  More drop pods were hurtling through the clouds.

  ‘You have re-established contact with the Bhab Bastion?’

  ‘Hardline only.’

  ‘What occurs elsewhere?’

  ‘The same as here. Direct assault on the walls. No breaches reported.’

  Raldoron looked down the wall after his men. Close at hand, the final Atramentar went down to a piledriver blow from the Dreadnought. The fighting had drawn away from his position. The Night Lords were boxed in on both sides. The last ship was lifting off under fire it could not survive.

  ‘The threat here is contained,’ Raldoron said. ‘Concentrate all fire on the siege towers. If we can weather their assault, and that of the drop pods, then we may yet–’

  A squeal of feedback cut off the line between Thane and Raldoron.

  ‘Thane?’ he said. ‘Thane?’

  He scrolled through other channels. The vox was silent, then half deafened him with a cacophony of screams, like a million people dying at once. He shut it off.

  Flame burned in the sky. Lightning spread out in a ring around the fire. Thunder rolled.

  A fireball fell from the churning heavens towards the land before the Helios Gate; too big to be a drop pod, too controlled to be debris from the fleet, too slow to be a shell or mass round.

  Raldoron followed the fireball down, the blood running over his helm blurring its outline.

  It hit the ground, sending out a billow of flame that raced over traitor and loyalist alike.

  The vox burst back into life.

  ‘What was that?’ said Thane.

  Raldoron increased the magnification of his helm lenses, revealing a smoking figure crouched in the glowing, eight-pointed emblem of the enemy stamped into the ground by its arrival. Bat wings wrapped around the figure protectively. Its head was bowed, a giant, black sword placed point down into the earth, both hands resting on the hilt. Fissures raced away from the sword point, and fires glowed within. The fissures widened, becoming chasms, and from them leapt sheets of flame.

  The figure at the centre of the octed rose, spread its wings, and lifted its sword to show the world it had arrived. Raldoron didn’t recognise it at first. The being was vast, a daemon-beast of a size that exceeded those he had battled on Signus. But something in the way it moved made him suddenly sure of its identity.

  ‘Angron. It is Angron,’ said Raldoron quietly. ‘By the Emperor, what has happened to him?’

  Even from so far away, the primarch’s fury touched Raldoron, stirring something hot and vile in the Blood Angel’s being.

  Angron howled. Horus’ mortal armies surged forwards over the carpet of dead fronting the outworks and the walls. The first drop pods hit the ground among them, hatches blowing wide, bringing more Space Marines into the attack. Dreadclaw pods angled down at the walls. The dying aegis destroyed some; others hit the fortifications and glanced off. More extended their claws at the right moment, catching the crenellations and holding fast. Two landed close together, between Raldoron and his men engaging the remnants of the Night Lords. World Eaters leapt from inside into the downpour of blood.

  ‘Father!’ roared the giant; his furious, brazen voice was empowered by the violence, thundering louder than any cannonade and audible over all the racket of battle. ‘I have come for you!’

  The breaking of the line

  The gates open

  The Great Mother

  Palace outworks, Daylight Wall section 16, 15th of Quartus

  Katsuhiro was running from the tunnel when Bastion 16 exploded. Flaming chunks of rockcrete rained down over that section
of the battlefield, as deadly as any weapon. The outer lines were deserted, and with the bastion gone there was nothing to hold back the enemy. They poured over the shattered ground. Worse things were joining them, emerging from the smoke and fire to kill. Surrounded by flames, Katsuhiro did not see Angron fall from the sky, but he heard his call, and he saw the things the fallen primarch summoned.

  ‘Father! I have come for you!’

  The words shook the world. Terror and fury swamped Katsuhiro’s mind, leaving him fighting with himself. When the World Eaters came loping from the fire with their chainswords and set about their grisly work, cutting down men and hacking skulls from the dead and living alike, he ran harder. One saw him, and came springing after him, the mass of the legionary’s armour making the ground tremble even through the bombardment. Skulls bounced on chains from battleplate whose white-and-blue livery was all but obscured by a thick coating of gore. In his warsuit, the Space Marine was far faster than Katsuhiro could ever hope to be, and ran at him, joints grinding, his chainaxe gunning.

  ‘Blood!’ the legionary shouted, so thickly he hardly spoke words. ‘Skulls!’

  Katsuhiro tripped, sprawling on the ground. He rolled over to see the monster leap at him, weapon lifted to sever his head from his spine.

  He threw up his hand. A loud bang and a blast wave of superheated air thumped the wind from him.

  No axe fell. He looked up to see he was alone. Only when he scrambled to his feet did he find the Space Marine scattered in bubbling pieces across the ground.

  No time to think. No time to see. More World Eaters were bounding through the fires and the explosions. Brazen horns blew. Drop pods slammed into the ground and released squads of legionaries. The siege towers ground on, and behind were the mortal hordes. All would kill him just as well, no matter their method. From the walls death was flung indiscriminately. Away to the south one of the great siege towers’ shields failed. It caught fire and detonated, going up like a resin torch thrust into a fire. Seconds later, metal from its destruction rang down around him, missing him, but there were more towers, and there were more deaths for him.

  The red giant ran through the flames between the towers, his sword sweeping before him, slaughtering all he encountered. Guns rained every form of technological destruction down on him, but he was unharmed in the main, and what damage was inflicted was smoothed away, as if the wounds were washed off by the bloody rain.

  ‘Blood and skulls!’ the giant howled. ‘Blood for the Blood God!’

  He ran with lowered head towards a trio of tanks that had somehow survived the destruction. His horns connected with one, rocking it on its tracks. The giant pushed a hand beneath its treads and heaved it over. A point-blank shot from the main armament of its squadron mate made the giant reel and roar, but he seemed only enraged by the blow. The sword sang through the air. Katsuhiro gaped as it sliced cleanly through the hull, setting the metal alight with black fire.

  When the giant turned on the third tank, striding through a storm of bolts to ram his blade into its engine block, Katsuhiro ran again.

  Somehow, he avoided the myriad forms of extinction that sliced, blasted and bludgeoned over the ruined outworks. Finally he crested the ridge of broken ground the first line had become, the roaring of the winged giant echoing behind him. Through the tempests of fire he beheld the grand portal of the Helios Gate. Little trace remained of the outwork fortifications there.

  The gate was only a few hundred metres away, but firmly closed. He stumbled towards it, all strength spent, not sure what he would do. If he approached, he would die under the enemy bombardment, and there was no way through in any case. Not far from the gate one of the great siege towers was making its final approach to the wall. Between them there was no hope.

  One more minute to breathe, he thought. One more moment to hear the pounding of his heart, that was all he could ask for.

  There were other soldiers converging on the Helios Gate from all quarters, scattered survivors, a small proportion of the conscripts sent out to fight, but numerous in terms of absolute numbers.

  Then a miracle occurred. Multi-throated horns sang orchestral warning cries. The great locking plates along the hinges of the gates clunked open, withdrew and lifted back. Grinding debris to powder, the gates swung open – slowly at first, but then, as their enormous mass was bullied into moving, with surprising speed.

  Light flooded out from the open gate. Enemy weapons fire that had slammed into the portal was caught by a void shield spread over the arch. Figures, small as ants, formed up behind the sparkling aegis into firing lines. All were transhumans, their yellow armour golden in the city’s light. Tanks and Dreadnoughts supported them against the foe making for the gate.

  ‘Loyal men and women of the Imperium,’ a greatly amplified voice boomed from the gates. ‘Look now to your salvation. Make your way into the Emperor’s protection.

  ‘You have three minutes.’

  A cry of anguish went up from the fleeing soldiers. Exhausted as they were, they redoubled their efforts, and fled through the field of death in hope of life.

  Daylight Wall, Helios section, 15th of Quartus

  Chain teeth growled past Raldoron’s face with a hair’s breadth to spare. He leaned back, and slashed down with his power sword, cutting the axe head from the World Eater’s weapon. It flew off, teeth still spinning. The Traitor legionary slammed a fist into Raldoron’s face, knocking his helmet into his cheek, and then grappled with him. Raldoron jammed his bolt pistol into the neck joint of his foe’s armour and pulled the trigger, emptying the ammunition clip and blasting the World Eater’s head from his body.

  He heaved the warrior’s limp corpse away and moved on.

  Several dozen World Eaters were on the wall. More drop pods were screaming down from the sky. The last of the siege towers was approaching, now only dozens of metres off the rampart. The uppermost storey was higher than the crenellations, its drawbridge held up on rusty chains the thickness of a Titan’s leg, and ready to drop. The size of it was ridiculous; it was so huge it should not be, and yet it was. From a castellated firing deck atop, Death Guard fired down onto the wall.

  There was space within the tower for hundreds of legionaries. The difficulties the Blood Angels were experiencing would pale into insignificance if the siege tower made it all the way in.

  Three had come out of the enemy camp. Two were now ablaze out from the wall, brought down by the Palace guns, but nothing, it seemed, could stop the third.

  World Eaters reinforced the few Night Lords left on the rampart. They fought with astounding savagery, with no thought for tactics or self-preservation, but went berserk as soon as their Dreadclaws snagged themselves on the crenellations. The aegis had weakened to such an extent that drop pods were falling into the city now, slamming into hive spires and putting down in plazas. Not enough warriors made it through the air defences to take the Palace on their own, but they cut bloody slaughter through soldier and civilian alike before they were taken down, diverting the reserves coming up to hold the wall top against the main assault.

  Mortis runes peeped for Raldoron’s attention as warriors of the First and Fourth Companies died around him. Thane’s weapons fire was diverted by the tower as his men engaged in a gun duel with the Death Guard riding it in.

  The World Eaters expended their lives in savage explosions of violence, taking three of Raldoron’s men with them for every one slain.

  ‘Finish them!’ Raldoron voxed. ‘Get them off the wall!’

  Behind him, another Dreadclaw hit the wall at a poor angle, ripping out several of the giant merlons and ricocheting off. It hit the tower on the way down, losing half its mass to the shields cocooning the construction, and cartwheeled uncontrollably end over end towards the ground.

  The enemy surged around the tower base, certain it would reach its target: mutants, traitors, abominations, readying to flood up
its steps and into the Palace after the Death Guard, their baying filtering up to Raldoron from all the way below. The ground was black with them, studded with fires from torches and burning effigies. Enfilading shots from the Helios Gate tore into them, slaughtering them by the dozen, but there were no big guns that could hit the tower itself, not at that range.

  ‘Get them off the wall!’ Raldoron repeated.

  A World Eater came at him, his armour overpainted with gore. Chains bearing jawbones whipped around him. He was bareheaded, nothing but pure rage and hatred on his face, the tendrils of the Butcher’s Nails buried deep into the back of his scalp.

  Raldoron shot him down, turning his skull into mist. The warrior dropped, blood pumping from his neck, fists beating at the rampart when his body hit the ground.

  To the south, loyalist reinforcements finally arrived, bolstering the thinning ranks of the Blood Angels coming from the direction of the broken Dawn Tower. Howls and battle cries filled his vox. Making any strategic sense of the situation was impossible.

  A lance strike punched through the aegis several kilometres away, cutting down into a small spire behind the fortifications. The weapon burned through, slicing the building diagonally. It collapsed with the screech of tortured metal, the top part falling on the wall, crumpling as it hit and blocking the wall walk.

  Another World Eater came at him. Raldoron met his blow. Disruption lightning wreathed them both as his blade chopped off the legionary’s arm. The traitor barely seemed to notice the amputation, but launched himself head first at the captain. Raldoron stepped to the side, letting the warrior throw himself onto the paving of the rampart, and stabbed him through the back. The blow obliterated the World Eater’s power pack and the back-plate beneath, leaving his spine exposed to the air.

  The first siege tower was mere metres away, and the rain was pouring down.

  Between the north and south forces of the Blood Angels, only three World Eaters remained, then none, gunned down rapidly by the two lines of loyal legionaries meeting. Another drop pod speared towards the wall, retro thrusters burning to line it up for a perfect landing on the rampart, but as it was poised to cut out its jets and drop, guns within the Palace blasted it to scrap, dropping its wreckage on the wall.