by John French
Tough, thought Ekaddon. Tougher than I would have imagined.
‘Cthonia does not breed those that die easily, does it?’ Maloghurst rasped, as though replying to Ekaddon’s thoughts.
‘Shut up and move,’ said Ekaddon. He began to make towards the hoist doors. Red smeared and dribbled in Maloghurst’s wake.
Light flashed behind them, and Ekaddon glanced back. He saw the fist ripped free of the Dreadnought’s sarcophagus. Amnion and blood sprayed out. The machine’s limbs spasmed, pistons locking and firing in time with the last impulses of a dying mind. The Luperci were amongst the Blood Angels now, lit by muzzle flash, talons and teeth dragging smoke as they descended.
Tormageddon pivoted towards them from above the carcass of the Dreadnought.
‘Go,’ it said. ‘We shall follow.’
‘I should have…’ hissed Maloghurst, the words stretching and slurring as the pain pulled them apart.
Ekaddon pulled them onto the hoist platform. Four of his squad came with him, firing back into the whirl of fire and blood in the corridor. Kobarak was one of the four, Ekaddon noticed.
‘On Cthonia… I should have left you and your brother in the dark…’ slurred Maloghurst. The blood on his lips was a clotted froth. ‘When you tried to take my eye… A gutter discharge with a knife. I should have broken your neck.’
‘Then you would have no one to drag your carcass across this ship,’ snarled Ekaddon and slammed the hoist into motion.
Layak
‘He is a blessed creature now,’ Lorgar had said. ‘He is one with the Prince of Chaos, his essence intertwined with the divine.’
Layak listened, and felt the implications unfold in his mind. They almost took his breath away. ‘You mean to learn his true name…’ he said. ‘You mean to know the name by which Fulgrim can be bound.’
‘He is what the unenlightened would call a daemon. His being is now part of the geometry of the divine. The Prince of Pleasure has made him an angel of the highest dominion. Such power is beyond all but the mightiest of the Neverborn, but with that power comes all the laws that govern the creatures of the gods.’
‘To learn his name though…’
‘That I have already,’ Lorgar said, and behind him the doors to Layak’s sanctuary opened. Thirty-six slaves shuffled into the chamber, chains of silver and cold iron clinking from ankles, wrists and necks. Stigmata covered their flesh, curving in sinuous patterns. They giggled and wept as they moved. ‘It is here, broken into pieces, held in the thoughts of these blessed souls.’
‘But to hold the complete name… Such a name has power. It will hollow out the soul of those who speak it. And if a being knowing his name were to come close to Fulgrim, he would sense it. He would know it.’
‘That is why it must be you, my son.’
Fulgrim came forwards. Wings unfolded from the air behind his shoulders. He grew as he moved, a blur of colour and edges. Behind him N’kari began to rear off the dais, flesh rippling, its face a mask of delighted rage.
They would not survive long. Even without the transcendent power of Fulgrim, they were facing a city, a world. They would die here, and their souls would be taken and spun on looms of agony for eternity. The only way for them to survive was for him to speak the name that was tearing its way out of his mind. Lorgar had known that, he realised. That is why he had only brought a small force. He had lulled Fulgrim into vulnerability. He had misdirected his daemon brother’s attention by hiding his true weapon behind the shield of Layak’s mask, and in the void within his soul. And it had worked, but there was still time for the sword bearer to die before the blow fell.
Gunfire spat from the Word Bearers. Explosions tore into Fulgrim’s flesh. Blood scattered into the air, burning to indigo smoke. Telekinetic force whipped out, plucked three Word Bearers from their feet and crushed them like overripe fruit. The invisible force lashed into the next warrior and met a dome of golden light. A blinding flash stripped the air of colour. Lorgar stepped forwards, his sceptre at his side, his hand raised. Fulgrim leapt into the air with a snap of his coils, psychic force shrieking around him, curved swords a blurred halo as they swept down to strike. Lorgar raised his sceptre, and shadows unfolded from him, spreading his shape across the ground and air. Fulgrim’s swords swept down, and the shadows rose to meet them.
Layak’s sight went black as more segments of the true name clawed into the air. He was sweating blood. Shivering. Screaming with a choking throat.
You wanted the power of gods, said a spiteful voice in his mind. Now taste its truth.
No, came another voice, rising from the void where the true name had coiled in his soul. I never wanted anything of false gods. I–
He felt his knees fold and the staff fall from his fingers. He could hear the roar of voices and the howling of reality.
His sight blinked back into focus. Fulgrim was spinning around and above Lorgar, sliding between air and ground, mocking gravity as he cut and cut. Lorgar was moving backwards. His sceptre was a blur around him. Thunderbolts flashed where the weapons met, but even with Lorgar’s posthuman speed, he would have been overwhelmed if it had been a matter of arms alone. The air between them writhed with shadows and shrieking light. Sword blows vanished into folds of light. Splinters of psychic ice fell from bursts of fire.
N’kari was oozing forwards now, its psychic bow-wake pulling the surrounding throng with it in a howling rush. Layak saw a clutch of silk-wound humans come too close to the storm around Fulgrim and Lorgar. Their souls ripped from their bodies and spun howling into the air, trailing crimson light. Their corpses dropped and became pulp under the hooves and feet of those behind them. Towering bull-headed creatures with oiled muscle bellowed as they braced cannons with fluted barrels. Cones of deafening noise roared from the cannons as rounds ripped from their barrels. Two Word Bearers fell, ceramite tearing under the screaming deluge.
‘I will not end here,’ shouted Actaea. She was standing tall now, face raised and defiant. Her psychic presence suddenly flared, burning, incandescent. Layak’s sight dimmed at the brightness. Figures fell in the oncoming throng, their eyes boiling in their skulls. ‘It is not written,’ she was calling. ‘I will not end here.’
Another link in the infernal chain of Fulgrim’s daemonic name snapped into sound.
Fulgrim flinched as he twisted and reared. Lorgar struck. Perfumed blood and pearlescent scales tore away as the spiked sceptre smashed through armour.
Layak’s sight was dimming, his will to keep speaking a fraying rope that he could not hold on to.
Spring-legged men bounded forwards sweeping bladed limbs, grinning with flayed faces. One of them punched a scythe-tipped arm through the neck of a warrior as it flipped past the thinning cordon of Word Bearers. It landed a pace from Layak. He was still kneeling, still frozen as the unholy name regurgitated from his mind. A spring-legged man looked down at him with indigo-and-green eyes. Its arms swept back. It raised a foot to take a pace forwards and snapped its razor-limbs down.
A scream of shearing metal.
A blur, shadow and movement congealing into form.
A second scream. Flesh dissolving into ashes.
Kulnar stood above him. The blade slave had drawn his sword. Pulled with its twin from the desiccated corpse of an alien on a world of thirst and desolation, the sword laughed as it scattered blood from its edge. Kulnar’s armour cracked as he grew. Red embers and grey ashes poured from the glowing splits. His sword hand had fused with the weapon’s pommel. Charred flesh burst through the armour of his arm. The sword was growing, grinning with black iron teeth, sucking in light as it twisted. Hebek stepped next to his brother. Spines punched through ceramite. Soot scattered from him as he moved. The marble cracked under his tread.
Even driven by the will of N’kari, the throng faltered before the pair. Then the wave broke. Kulnar and Hebek met the charge. Bodies tor
e apart, meat charring as it fell. A bull-headed giant bellowed and struck Hebek with a hooked axe. Hebek took the blow on his shoulder, the hook biting into flesh and broken armour. The bull-headed creature bellowed in triumph and yanked back with all its weight. Hebek buried his blade in the beast’s chest, and its bellow of triumph became a cry of terror. Layak had seen it happen before. The first thing he had learned about the cursed swords was that they were thirsty. The beastman crumpled, muscle and flesh sucked inwards, crumbling and withering. Hebek lifted the creature off its feet, still impaled, as the blade ate its life.
Cries sliced through the surrounding horde. Even over the roar of the true name filling his mind and ears, Layak could hear them and understand them.
‘Anakatis!’ came the cry, echoing in the warp and reality alike. ‘Anakatis! Anakatis!’ The hunger, the promise of the pit. Even here, in the heart of the Eye of Terror, they remembered the swords and what they had killed.
Layak vomited a stream of sounds. Fulgrim fell back, shivering, shrinking, and Lorgar was pressing his attack, hammering his brother back and down. Layak could feel the last syllable of the name sitting in the depths of his soul like a red-hot coal. It was so close that he could taste it. It tasted of honey and raw meat. He could not do it, though.
Grey armour, he could see grey armour, and feel the heat of a pyre as the creeds of false gods poured into the night sky on tongues of flame.
We burn the past to make the future, said a thought. Pain spiralled in its wake. Echoes and images clung to his mind like a bruise.
He felt the last syllable rise to his mouth. The vision of battle snapped back into motion. Sheets of light were scything through the air, and the throng of bodies was a bloody wave rolling into the gunfire and blades of the last few at Lorgar’s side. Fulgrim reared from the ground, swords in hand, bloody wings a hood behind his head. Blood glossed the crimson of Lorgar’s armour. His eyes were sunken in his face. He turned, dragging the head of his mace behind him like a comet pulling its tail of flame through the night sky. Fulgrim met the blow with crossed swords, but the force of it cannoned him backwards. Blood, so dark that it was almost purple, streaked the ground.
N’kari bellowed. Until now Fulgrim’s consort had left the demigods to their fight, but now it came across the bloody ground in a blur. The exalted daemon had sloughed off its previous shape. Coils of thick flesh lay on the ground in folds. Its pudgy mockery of Fulgrim’s face was gone. Whipcord muscle and deathly white skin sheathed long limbs. Fleshy horns curled above a snarl of glass-shard teeth. Light bent and shattered around it, lashing at eyes that tried to look.
Lorgar straightened to meet the exalted daemon, hand raised as though in piecemeal greeting.
Fulgrim stirred at his feet, bloody, blades and wings rising.
Layak spoke the last syllable of the name.
Argonis
The slaughter tide was white-streaked red. Ashen water and blood scattered from the charging warriors as they ran up the slope of the hill. They came from every direction, screaming with battle joy, rattling with skulls and chains – not an army but a wave driven by shared hunger. Argonis could see other shapes amongst the World Eaters, spindle-limbed creatures that ghosted and steamed in the grey downpour, canine shapes that shook with gore-matted fur and brass scales. An ache filled his skull as he looked at them. Gunfire spat from the edge of the oncoming tide. Bolt-rounds exploded against palisades. Grenades lobbed through the air, bursting amongst the tiers of Iron Warriors. A spear of plasma burned above Argonis’ head and tore an arm from one of the Iron Circle in a flash of sun-bright light. It was nothing, though, a wild scattering of shots, unaided and undisciplined.
The Iron Warriors held their fire for an instant and then opened up as one. Rounds and energy blasts sawed through the air, first a handful and then a growing cascade to rival the falling rain. This was no volley fire. Each shot had been chosen and placed. Argonis watched as the shots tore at the creatures running beside the World Eaters. He saw a beast of brass and fire rear as a beam of plasma cored its skull and sent molten metal scattering into the rain. Some World Eaters fell. A lascannon blast reached for a jackal-headed daemon, but the creature jerked forwards an instant before it hit, and the arc of light bored through three warriors with a puff of atomised matter. Dying daemons dragged down warriors as they dissolved out of being. Stray rounds found unintended targets. But for the Iron Warriors this was not about killing; it was about stealing strength from the tide as it engulfed them. The first World Eaters were at the bottom of the rise. The Iron Warriors’ fire ceased.
‘Now!’ called Perturabo, and explosions stole the sound from the air. The earth between the World Eaters and the first line of Iron Warriors rose in a wall. It seemed to hang for a second, the sound going on as it loomed above. Then it crashed down again, pouring earth and ash back onto the ripped ground beneath. The nearest World Eaters vanished as the momentum of their charge carried them into the pit that had opened before them. Argonis could hear the roars of rage as they fought to rise under the falling debris. Others were caught at the edge of the blast and tumbled upwards, rag toys of meat and shards. The tide swept on, driven by fury, blind to anything but the song of the nails in their skulls and the promise of bodies falling beneath their blades. The ground dropped beneath their feet. Loose earth fell with the rain.
‘Second configuration,’ said Perturabo, his voice clear over the echo and roar. The Iron Warriors on the hill slope began to move. Squads with high shields moved forwards as the temporary palisades were pulled into new positions. Tanks drove into place, their hulls forming walls beside steel barriers and rows of interlocked shields. Thousands of warriors, fortifications and machines had redeployed in seconds. As the first World Eaters came out of the pits blown by the mine charges, they met not a wall but open corridors of shields and palisades leading further up the slope. Some ran at the palisades and shield walls. Only a warrior who dreamed of his own death would make such a charge. Armies had died across the ages of humanity when gripped by such battle madness. But they were blessed of the god of blood and war, and they lived only for the certainty of death and the song of slaughter.
Argonis felt the charge hit home, shuddering, vibrating through ground and air. And the line held. The Iron Warriors still did not fire; the will of their lord held their guns silent. To most forces that would have been suicide, but these warriors had been fighting on ammunition-starved battlefronts for years. They met the slaughter tide with blunt iron and muscle. Shield squads surged forwards an instant before the World Eaters struck, ramming thick plasteel forwards with genhanced strength. Power weapons lashed sparks from the shields. Iron Warriors fell, but the shield walls closed, and iron fists and maces battered back at the tide.
A berserker – chain-wrapped and screaming through the grin of a skull helm – leapt at a palisade wall. His axe hooked over the top, and he hauled himself up. An Iron Warrior swung a hammer down at the berserker, two-handed, the head cold metal. The World Eater raised a chain-wreathed hand to meet the blow. Ceramite and bone shattered. The World Eater bellowed and flung out his shattered arm. The chains hanging from his forearm arced up, tangling the Iron Warrior’s hammer head as it rose for another blow. The berserker yanked down. The Iron Warrior behind the wall jerked forwards, still gripping his hammer. Still hanging from the palisade, the World Eater rammed his helm into the Iron Warrior’s faceplate. Shards of crystal scattered from shattered eyepieces. The Iron Warrior was trying to recover as the berserker pulled himself over the palisade and hacked his axe into the back of the struggling warrior’s neck. Blood blushed the rain-streaked air. The World Eater raised his axe to the sky, and the roar of the tide behind him rolled like thunder.
Argonis watched Perturabo as the primarch saw his sons fall, and their blood began to mix with the mud. The rain was getting heavier, the drops black as they fell and crimson as they splashed.
‘Third configura
tion,’ said Perturabo into the vox. The Iron Warriors moved again, pulling back, switching position and surging into gaps in the World Eaters lines, with tanks and shield-bearing squads. Wide channels now opened in their formation, unfolding before the sons of Angron even as they charged. Sections of the Iron Warriors had pushed out and down the hill so that they were deeper in the horde than before. Seen from above, the progression of the battle would have seemed like a flower unfolding its petals as it drowned.
The World Eaters poured in. The Iron Warriors held them back still, withstanding the fury of the XII Legion’s assault. The armour of all those on the hill of rubble was red-slicked and ash-clogged now. And still the World Eaters came charging up the hill to break against the metal of the maze of shields, tanks and walls. Argonis saw a palisade give way under the weight of blows, saw the Iron Warriors behind it bludgeoned down and hacked apart. He saw a metal gauntlet rise from amongst the butchers, grasping, fingers flexing in air. A chainsword churned it into a bloody stump. All across the hill the lines drawn by Perturabo’s warriors were bowing, folding, creaking under the pressure of blind fury.
‘We cannot stand much longer,’ said Forrix. ‘Give the order to fire, my lord.’
Perturabo gave a single shake of his head.
‘He is coming,’ he said.
‘How can you know?’ asked Argonis.
Perturabo did not reply. Argonis looked up as the sky above flashed. Whips of lightning spiderwebbed across the sky. A cry of rage rose through the air to greet the thunder, and then another and another, the ragged war cries fusing together into a single sound. The clouds swelled and billowed, red folding with black, flame-yellow with grey.
‘The…’ The word came from behind Argonis, and he turned to see that Volk had raised his head to the sky. Thick rain was running down the steel of his face. The chrome of his eyes burned with reflected lightning. And his mouth was open. The voice that came from it growled with the clack of closing breeches and charging weapons. ‘The… Red Angel cometh.’
