by Guy Haley
‘Form up!’ bellowed Raldoron. He looked to the siege tower. Another few seconds and it would lower its bridge. Armoured loophole covers rattled up, and banks of melta-cutters extended, angled down.
‘Stand clear!’ he said. ‘Two lines! Two facing lines!’
Sergeants ordered squads over the gap between the groups of Blood Angels, bolstering Raldoron’s depleted units. They jogged over an uneven ground of power-armoured corpses, Night Lords, World Eaters and Blood Angels intermingled, their rounded armour slippery with blood and treacherous underfoot.
‘Stand ready!’ Raldoron called. ‘Stand ready!’
The siege tower moved forwards slower than he expected. It shuddered under fire and adjusted its course. A blaze of bolt-rounds hammered from its roof, forcing the Blood Angels to duck down behind the crenellations, their return fire ineffectual owing to the angle.
Raldoron took stock of his men. Three hundred left from two companies waited for the riders of the tower. A terrible stink came off the siege engine, of sickness and putrid wounds, that he smelled even though his armour was void-sealed.
More reinforcements were coming. Thane’s men were running down from the gatehouse, more arriving from the north, and a sixth company of Blood Angels speeding along the road behind the defences. This was the risk. This siege tower. If they threw back this assault, the Helios section of the Daylight Wall would hold.
We will triumph, he told himself. We are worthy.
The trumpet chorus of the gate’s war-horns snatched his attention from the siege tower. For the first time in centuries he experienced dread. Not even the daemonic horrors of Signus Prime had unnerved him; what he saw at the Helios Gate did.
The gates were opening.
They swung wide, pouring the pure lumen light of the city onto the field of battle. His hearts pounded. If the gates were open, they were lost.
‘Thane! Thane!’ he voxed. ‘The gates are opening! Angron is outside! Thane! On whose authority do the gates open? Are we betrayed?’
There was a rush of air behind him, and the thump of boots upon the stone. He turned to see Sanguinius alight on the wall, sword drawn in his left hand, the Spear of Telesto in his right, his golden armour running with the bloody downpour.
‘The gates open by my authority, captain.’
Sanguinius strode to Raldoron’s side.
‘My lord, why?’ For one terrible moment, Raldoron doubted his genefather’s loyalty, and feared he had turned against the Imperium at the last. If that were so, the Death Guard were in ignorance, for they turned all their attention on the Great Angel. His armour sparked with bolt impacts, but he stood in contempt of their efforts, even his bare wings untouched, and spoke.
‘My brother, the Khan, reminded me that we must not forget our ultimate duty. The Emperor works for mankind, but while I live I will not forget the individual men and women who make up that whole.’ He swept his spear out over the ramparts. Tiny figures pursued by all the horrors of Horus’ mutant legions were running for the gate, while Angron rampaged through friend and foe alike. ‘I will not abandon the human troopers to this vile death while some might be saved. In them, I see bravery, I see loyalty, but above all, I see faith in my father’s vision. I shall not let them die while there is blood in my body and strength in my limbs. Fear not, my son, the Imperial Fists hold the arch, and even now allies come to their aid. Now, prepare. The enemy comes against us, and we must look to our own task.’
The fire from the roof of the siege tower cut into the ranks of the Blood Angels. The melta arrays upon the front discharged, their beams agitating atoms to the point of destruction. A swathe of the downpour evaporated into meaty steam. The crenellations glowed red, then orange, then white, and collapsed into slag. Where the beams cut across the bodies of the fallen, flesh exploded. Ceramite resisted the arrays for mere seconds before collapsing into powder.
The Blood Angels waited either side of the beams’ tracks, now separated by a trench of molten rockcrete.
Sanguinius stood unafraid in the storm of bolt impacts, unharmed while his sons were felled.
‘We shall repel them!’ he said.
‘My lord, I suppose my telling you to get off the wall will do no good,’ said Raldoron. ‘But I am honour bound to say you should. We cannot lose you.’
Sanguinius laughed, a musical, pure sound in the blood rain and the slaughter. ‘You are right, my son. I would not leave you if I were sure it would be my end,’ he said. Then he spoke the awful words Raldoron had heard so much of late. ‘But I know I do not die today.’
The gargantuan chains rattled. The siege tower’s drawbridge fell forwards, rusty teeth in the underside biting into the softened fabric of the wall. The boltgun fire from the top roared on.
From within, a throng of Death Guard ran out, rasping their praise of Mortarion and their new-found god, and poured onto the battlement.
‘For the Emperor!’ called Sanguinius, and led his sons into the fray.
The Imperial Fists shot with incredible discipline, killing traitor humans and monsters alike, yet avoiding the majority of the fleeing soldiery.
The conscripts ran between their saviours, staggering into the safety of the city. Those that collapsed were lifted up and carried away. Katsuhiro fled towards the yellow line, not daring to look back. He heard the shouting of the enemy behind him, and the bellowing of the red, winged giant. To his utter disbelief, he made it through the whistling bolts to the line of Imperial Fists, was grabbed and dragged through. Guns all around the arch fired down. The Imperial Fists swept the field clear. He dared not think himself safe, and looked back, immediately regretting it.
Through the legs of the legionaries, he saw that the giant was nearly upon them. He had abandoned his rampage and was making right for the open city gate. Tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands perhaps, of bolts impacted on him, blasting divots from his flesh, obscuring the greater part of him with the gathered flashes of small explosions. Las-beams punched smoking holes deep into his body. Plasma streams scorched muscle from bone. He would not fall, but he was slowing, encountering some obstacle invisible to Katsuhiro, leaning into it like a man battling against a hurricane. The giant roared in frustration. Flesh boiled off him from an attack that had little to do with legionary weapons. Fire ran over his body. Katsuhiro’s teeth ached. He tasted metal.
‘Father!’ roared the giant. ‘I will destroy you!’
But the giant went no further. Something was holding him back.
A frantic stalemate was reached. The enemy died in droves at the threshold. Their daemonic leader could make no more headway.
More giants were required to tip the scales.
The ground shook to steady beats, and Katsuhiro turned to look into the Palace. To his amazement a group of Titans were advancing down the main road to the Helios Gate, green and red and white. They blew their war-horns in outraged cries, lined up in the gate, steadied themselves on splayed feet, and powered their weapons. Katsuhiro was hustled beneath them, enduring the soul-wrenching shock of passing through their void aegis. They sang their war songs once again, and the largest spoke.
‘The Emperor Protects.’
It opened fire.
Twinned cannons blasted volcano heat. Las weaponry of a scale that dumbfounded Katsuhiro cast double spears of hard light at the enemy horde. They both hit the raging giant, who was caught upon the cusp of entering the city, throwing him back, and vaporised the greater part of his charging Legion. The other Titans opened up, war-horns still howling, blazing fury across the sky. The enemy streaming for the open gate were annihilated, the survivors retreating in disarray.
War-horns blared again. Legs straightened, and the last of the Legio Solaria strode out of the Imperial Palace, weapons still firing.
Sanguinius slew the Death Guard with such speed and power. All that came against him died. With blasts fr
om his spear and the sweep of his great sword he ended their treachery once and for all. He leapt from wall to drawbridge, knocking as many foes from the edge as he slaughtered directly; then having cleared a space he leapt from the bridge, beat his wings and flew up and round, landing upon the siege tower roof, and there lay about himself with his blade, bringing to an end the hail of fire that so troubled his sons. At the lip of the wall the Blood Angels fought in a line against their fallen cousins, no quarter asked and none given. An equilibrium held there, the Blood Angels’ fury matched by the Death Guard’s tenacity. The XIV Legion were far more durable than Sanguinius’ sons, taking blows and bolts that would have incapacitated other legionaries, but they were slow, bloated by sickness, disabled by infirmities. The Blood Angels moved with a grace that their counterparts could not match and found hard to counter. Just as much stinking blood was spilled as pure, legionary vitae, and the line held. Pushed at by the mass of warriors at their backs, Mortarion’s diseased progeny fell from the sides of their ramp, but the thin barrier of red would not give.
Sanguinius was captivated by the sight of his brave sons holding back the tide of the traitors. Such pride stirred in him at their sacrifice, such sorrow that he would behold their valour only a few more times before the final act of his life played out.
Until that moment, he was safe. He could not die. He would not. That was his advantage.
Time was running against them. The hordes of the enemy were converging on the tower. They would keep coming, brave in their madness, and no matter how many Raldoron and his warriors slew, eventually they would overcome the defenders. The tower had to fall.
Aid was at hand. Five towering walkers were making their way out from the gate. Sanguinius looked upon them from the siege tower. Many times the height of the war engines, the tower’s very existence made a mockery of the laws of physics. No mortal engineer could build such a thing and expect it to hold up against gravity, but, he reminded himself, they fought the wars of gods now.
And yet the mortal realm still had might of its own.
‘Great Mother, I am pleased you heeded my call,’ he voxed. ‘I salute you for overlooking factional division in the name of the greater cause. We will stand together in victory.’
‘This war construct at the walls, you wish it gone?’ Esha Ani of the Legio Solaria responded.
‘Indeed,’ said Sanguinius. ‘The hour hangs on you.’
‘Then stand clear,’ she said.
In the command czella of Luxor Invictoria, Esha Ani Mohana Vi drew a bead upon her target. Her new augmetics troubled her, but they had certain advantages, bringing her closer to the roaring soul of the Warlord through the holy unity of steel with flesh.
Through his eyes she saw the rear of the daemon tower, where was mounted a gargantuan steam engine, meshed in fleshy sinew, and powered by a furnace of damned souls. From the engine great pistons led to the drive wheels of the tower. It idled, having done its purpose of bringing the tower to the wall, but she had another use for it.
‘Increase reactor to maximum output,’ she commanded. ‘Disengage fail-safes. Remove limiting protocols. Stand by for core venting.’
In ordinary wars, her orders would have been rigorously questioned by the Titan’s enginseers. Overpowering the plasma core of her god-engine carried a high chance of its destruction, but this was not an ordinary war.
‘Legio Solaria,’ she said, voxing the other Titans in her mongrel maniple. ‘We stand on the brink of annihilation once again. Let this not be the last action we undertake. Keep the enemy from me while I serve the Lord Sanguinius, and prepare for immediate retreat.’
Her mind meshed with that of her Titan. They had yet to know one another perfectly, she and Luxor Invictoria, but they held a common bond in their grief for Esha Ani’s lost mother, and that made them strong together. His systems gave her insight into the abominable engine they faced, and his bold spirit picked out two sites for her, one for each of the Titan’s volcano cannons, that would bring the damned thing low.
Toscins rang, klaxons grated at her hearing. The soft alarms of the Warlord’s servitor clades whispered in her mind, their voices still human, though they had but one thing to say.
‘Danger, danger, danger.’
Solaria were spotted. Punishing fire from the enemy contravallation zeroed in on them. Void indicators flickered with troubling portents of failure. She did not have much time. At Luxor Invictoria’s knees, Warhounds and Reavers burned back enemy infantry and armour with plasma, flame and bullet. The enemy were so many.
She could not fail.
The whine of the reactor climbed. The great god-engine trembled with barely contained power. More alarms pushed into her being, prodding at her soul through the manifold.
Gauges slid into the red. Target locks screamed at her. The machine-spirits of the volcano cannons begged for release. Still she did not fire. She waited for maximum power, the very acme of destruction.
Alarms shrilled. The moment came.
‘Legio Solaria, switch fire – all weapons to the siege tower, now.’
Immediately the god-machines obeyed, swinging their great limbs to bear, and opened fire. The shields of the tower, weakened during its advance on the walls, finally collapsed under the pounding of the Titans’ guns.
‘Loose,’ she said.
Luxor Invictoria sighed with machine pleasure as its cannons were unleashed. Alarms screamed. An overbearing wailing resounded through the entire machine, promising imminent destruction, but she did not shut the energy stream off until the last.
The giant las-beams slammed into the tower engine, itself bigger than the Warlord. They burned through warp-infused bronze, put out the hellish furnace.
The Titan’s reactor howled.
‘Dump all coolant. All Titans retreat to the Helios Gate.’
Clouds of superheated gas burst from the cannons’ thermal vents, shrouding the maniple in pure white steam. Alarms still shrieking, still under heavy fire, Luxor Invictoria turned about as the daemon tower’s engine exploded.
Scalding fluid blasted out in every direction. The tower shook, spilling the tiny figures of battling Space Marines from its broad ramp. Chained explosions raced up its many floors, blasting flames from its firing slits and windows. Magazines caught. Energy sources detonated.
Esha Ani did not see the tower’s final demise; she wrestled with her Titan’s desire to fight while her tech clade brought down its internal temperatures, until it arrived, still spraying scalding gas, back at the Helios Gate, and returned through the wall.
The cannons hit the tower, shaking it from top to bottom. Sanguinius staggered. The Death Guard coming up the main stairs to confront him fell back. Sanguinius used the distraction to jump at them, incinerating them with his spear’s energy cast, and took again to the air.
‘Retreat from the bridge, my sons!’ Sanguinius shouted. He blasted down with the Spear of Telesto directly into the melee, its strange energies leaving his own warriors unharmed, but turning the Death Guard into shattered husks of broken armour.
‘Fall back!’ Raldoron said, passing on Sanguinius’ order. ‘Fall back!’
The Blood Angels gave way, and the Death Guard spilled from the drawbridge onto the ramparts. For a moment the sons of Mortarion were triumphant. They fired as they advanced, killing many of the retreating Blood Angels, before the illusion shattered along with the tower.
The first explosion was so distant it was lost in the general roar of the battle, but as those that came after sped upwards, the noise grew to deafening thunder, shaking the whole structure so that warriors fell screaming to their deaths, until the top half was obliterated in a fountain of green fire, and a tempest of shrapnel burst over the rampart, slaying warriors on both sides. A pressure built in Raldoron’s head, and released again when a malevolent presence roared from the broken interior of the tower in a column
of black flies. Glowing eyes stared down from the swarm’s midst, then the flies dissipated across the night sky, and the eyes faded away with a howl that made men vomit.
Raldoron grabbed the standard from a dead banner bearer and waved it over his head. The tattered flag snapped beneath the winged blood-drop finial.
‘To me, sons of Sanguinius! To me!’
The Death Guard had taken the brunt of the explosion, but they were hardier than they had ever been, and some dozens of them were on the rampart. The Blood Angels rallied themselves for a hard fight, warriors again attacking from both sides and running up against a wall of rotting ceramite and iron will.
‘The battle is almost won! Do not falter!’ Raldoron shouted. ‘Cast them from the rampart! For the Emperor! For Sanguinius!’
Called down from on high by his name, Sanguinius, most perfect of all the primarchs, hurtled into the middle of the Death Guard. His landing killed three even before he set his spear and sword whirling through them, cutting them down with contemptuous ease.
‘To the primarch! To the primarch!’
Bolters and voices roaring, the two lines of Blood Angels crashed back onto the ruined section of the wall walk, slaughtering the traitors utterly, so that not one was left alive.
Sanguinius swept his gaze over the battered remnants of the Blood Angels.
He held aloft his spear.
‘It is done!’ shouted Sanguinius, and his sons cheered him.
‘My lord! Look out!’ Raldoron pulled at his genefather’s arm, but no Space Marine could move a primarch.
Angron was flying straight at them, wings beating, howling madly, black sword drawn back to strike. The Blood Angels opened fire. Bolts ricocheted from Angron’s armour and his flesh without effect.
But Sanguinius stood there, and lowered his weapons.
‘My lord!’ screamed Raldoron in anguish.