by Nick Kyme
Missile contrails clouded the air and thick conversion beams hummed powerfully as sergeants unleashed the might of their heavy divisions. To counter the barrage, the eldar released their pterosaurs and the winged reptilians dived towards the bigger guns at the back of Heka’tan’s formation. Heavy bolters struck up next and the air was filled with their blistering shells. Flung javelins fell in a piercing torrent but most were destroyed before they struck Legionary bodies. Flying saurians were chewed apart by the fusillade, but more were descending from their rookeries.
The sergeants of the forward squads kept them moving, firing from the hip. A massive squadron of raptors appeared on the flank, their riders brandishing power lances and spitting curses at the Emperor’s warrior angels. Dreadnoughts lumbered forwards to intercept them. Attion had been alone when he fought and was killed by the carnodon, but now an entire unit of the armoured monsters was coming at the raptors.
“Disrupt their flank attacks, venerable brothers, and break up the aerial sweeps from their flyers,” Heka’tan’s voice rang down the feed.
“In Vulkan’s name!” they responded together as they clashed with the eldar riders.
The distance to the temple was closing. Heka’tan revved up his chainblade, whispering an oath. His command squad were locked in beside him. He opened the feed again. “Heavy divisions withdraw into the forest. Captain Gravius—we are about to engage.”
The reply came swift and eager. “We are the hammer, Captain Heka’tan. Become the anvil and let’s see them broken.”
“It shall be done,” Heka’tan promised. The hellish kaleidoscope of close combat was almost upon them, “Salamanders. Bring them down!”
FROM THE SUMMIT of the ridge, Vulkan watched the 5th and 14th companies attack. It prompted a flood of eldar to uncloak and join the battle. In a matter of moments, the defenders of the psychic node had swelled with foot soldiers and saurian-riders.
“They’ve drawn out the eldar reserves,” said Numeon. The eagerness for combat in his voice was obvious and spread to the rest of the Pyre Guard.
Atanarius gripped the haft of his double-bladed power sword as if strangling an enemy; Ganne’s gauntlets cracked noisily as he clenched and unclenched his fists; Leodrakk and Skatar’var swung their power mauls off their shoulder guards and into ready positions in unison. Only Igataron was still, but then raw aggression bled off him in waves anyway.
Vulkan felt it too, but coaxed the embers of his belligerence a little longer before choosing to release it.
Numeon crouched near the edge of the ridge, the pommel of his halberd staved into the ground to support him. “I see none of the larger beasts amongst their number.”
There were none. Vulkan had found no evidence of carnodons hidden in the jungle depths. “Apparently, they are wary of our strength.”
Numeon stood up again. Varrun was behind him, sharpening the edge of his gladius, but did not offer a hand to the equerry. No warrior of the Pyre Guard would ever insult another by doing such a thing.
“You mean your strength, my lord.”
“My strength is our strength, Numeon. We are one, the Legion and I.” Despite his inner feelings of estrangement, this much Vulkan knew was true. Save perhaps Horus, who had his Mournival, all of the primarchs trod a solitary path. It was just the primarch of the Salamanders felt it more acutely than his brothers.
He was surveying the battlefield intently when his expression changed from one of aloof detachment to satisfied vindication.
A cadre of eldar had emerged into the open.
I’ve been waiting for you…
When he spoke, his deep voice was full of threat, presaging violence.
“Now we strike.”
Numeon turned to the others, brandishing his halberd like a rallying standard. “Pyre Guard. Embark!”
Supported by its landing stanchions on a patch of scorched earth behind them was a Stormbird. Its idling engines quickly built to loft speed and the vessel took off just as Vulkan and his inner-circle warriors got aboard. The other companies on the ridge would stay in reserve and could only watch as their lord took off.
The embarkation ramp was still closing when Numeon voxed the pilot from the hold.
“Lock assault vector on the node. Missile batteries and—”
Vulkan stopped him. “No. We do this hand-to-hand. Put us down at the edge of the node. I want to crack that thing with my hammer personally.”
JAMMING HIS CHAINSWORD into the eldar’s guts, Heka’tan bellowed for his warriors to drive on. “Advance 14th! Vulkan is watching you.”
Vulkan is always watching. As the anvil tempers us, so too does the primarch.
A welter of gore erupted from the corpse as he tore the blade free, and he was quickly pressed into defending against another attack. An eldar with an ornate sword struck at his guard. Sparks flared from the clashing weapons as Legiones Astartes aggression met alien finesse, but Heka’tan’s blood was up and he dispatched his foe with a close-range burst from his bolt pistol. Scorch marks blighted the forest green of his vambrace occluding the lines of arterial blood staining much of his armour. It was war’s baptism and he embraced it with a shout of triumph as he sought out another foe.
This was where he wanted to be, in the thick of battle, eye to eye with the enemy and taking eldar heads. Heka’tan originated from Nocturne, he knew the terror of the slave raids; he had lived through them as a boy. Though his apotheosis had altered his memory of those torments, the intrinsic enmity remained. These were not like the slavers, their anima was different, but they were of the eldar caste so Heka’tan’s contempt felt justified.
A spit of flame spewed to his right flank, warming his pauldron and burning up a clutch of eldar snipers intent on evening the odds. He didn’t slow. Momentum was everything. It was inexorable, methodical, and exacting as an avalanche. Gravius was fully committed too; Heka’tan had heard the shouts of the valiant 5th as they’d closed for the kill. In truth, the near defeat in the jungle had wounded them both. The chance to excise those feelings in the fires of war was the greatest boon his primarch could have granted them.
Hammer and anvil, brothers, the words resounded in his mind, let us show them that Salamanders are not easily bowed.
The melee was intense, a sweeping chaos of bloody images. Burning alien flesh was redolent on the breeze, mixed with the stale aroma of their reptilian mounts. Grunting and baying, they were finding the Legion a tougher foe to overwhelm without their massive carnodon cousins or the intervention of their witches…
…Until a lightning storm erupted around the psychic node and four enrobed figures stepped forth. Heka’tan was close enough to see it happen through the press of warring bodies. It was as if they’d been carried on the lightning itself, invisible passengers riding the eldritch energy, and merely let go of its arc. They embarked to set foot on the earth as any man would step from a ship. Bolts of verdant green still coursed over the arcane sigils covering the psyker’s trappings in the wake of teleportation. As three witches stood sentinel around the node, a fourth came forwards.
Though the eldar were an androgynous race, Heka’tan could tell that this one was male. He wore no helm but sported an array of sigilic tattoos upon his pale and imperious face. His long hair was swept back, tied up with a runic clasp that ran around his temples in two half-hemispheres that each terminated with a ruby-like gemstone at his forehead. It had the effect of a crown and once again the Salamander was struck by the sheer decadence and arrogance of the aliens.
Unlike the others, he wore viridian robes shot through with cerulean blue. He parted the ensemble to draw forth a glittering runesword of unimaginable beauty. The weapon was psychically linked to its bearer and the blade crackled actinically as witch-fire filled the eldar’s eyes.
A growing void expanded slowly around him as the other aliens backed away.
Heka’tan soon found himself with clear ground between him and the warlock.
Kaitar, Luminor and the rest o
f the command squad were in sync with their sergeant’s orders before they were even given.
“In Vulkan’s name, kill that thing!”
They charged together. The warlock watched them come, his blade held in a swordsman’s guard position. He wore the leggings and tunic of a warrior-ascetic, festooned with runic iconography and arcana. Moments before the clash he tipped his head in what might have been a salute.
Heka’tan’s first blow cut air and fouled in the ground, churning earth as the warlock weaved aside. Kaitar fared better but his gladius was repelled by the flat of the eldar’s sword. Luminor snapped off a half-clip from his bolt pistol but the shells detonated harmlessly from a kine-shield impelled by the warlock’s open palm. A blast of force put the Apothecary on his back, and Brother Tu’var threw himself in the way of the eldar’s sword to save him from the subsequent sword strike. The runic blade penetrated the Salamander’s guard easily, snapping Tu’var’s gladius, cleaving into his armour and sinking up to the hilt in his chest.
Tearing the blade free, the warlock spun and cut open Angvenon’s plastron and fed a jag of lightning into the blow, spinning the Salamander and launching him off his feet. Battle-plate smoking, Angvenon tried to rise, but fell onto his front and stayed down.
“Break him!” snarled Heka’tan, taking another swing. His world had condensed to this one fight, the rest of the battle a dim and bloody blur around him. This was the anvil, he realised, the moment when he would overcome and rise or capitulate and fall.
It was like three warrior-knights fighting a dancer as the eldar dodged their clumsy blows whilst attacking with rapid thrusts of his rune sword.
Heka’tan refused to give in.
I am Legion. I am a warrior born.
The warlock had reduced three of the Emperor’s Angels to oafs wielding lumps of noisy metal and that rankled at Heka’tan. He swung again but cut at shadows. Bringing up his pistol he pulled the trigger, but was hit by a barrage of lightning from the warlock’s clenched fist. Warning icons sprang into life instantly across the captain’s retinal display. Pain suppressors went to work in the same bio-mechanical reaction, keeping him on his feet. The bolt pistol was overloaded and exploded in his fist, showering Heka’tan with hot shrapnel. He was only dimly aware of the spasms jolting his muscles but knew he was injured when his vision started clouding.
“Fire-born!” It was as much a yell of defiance as it was a cry for reinforcement to the others.
Kaitar and Luminor closed in, robbing the warlock of a killing blow. The view was narrowing, made worse by his battle-helm, so Heka’tan tore at the release clamps to discard it.
It clattered to the ground and the smells, sights and sounds of the alien jungle staggered him before his genhanced senses could compensate. He still carried his chainsword, buzzing belligerently in his hand. One of Bannon’s ex-flamer division appeared in Heka’tan’s peripheral vision and he shouted to him above the din.
“Legionary! Hell and flame!”
A swathe of burning promethium swept over the combatants.
Kaitar fell, buffeted by the blast and on fire, while Luminor shielded himself with his forearm. The warlock thwarted the flame storm with another kine-shield, but as he threw up one defence he lowered another. Heka’tan leapt through the blaze with his chainsword in a two-handed grip and brought it down savagely as he landed.
A feeble, choking sound emanated from the eldar’s gullet as he swallowed a metre of churning blade. All the wards and sigils protecting the alien were broken, his preternatural swiftness undone in a single brutal moment. He glared at Heka’tan who glared back, his eyes alive with a vengeful crimson glow. Pain should have slowed him, taken him out of the fight, but the sons of Vulkan were tenacious, just as their father had taught them to be.
He came in close, teeth locked together in half grimace and half snarl. “Salamanders fight as one!”
A gobbet of acid spit seared the ashen cheek of the eldar as Heka’tan visited a final insult upon him before the light in the alien’s eyes dimmed and he died. Wrenching his blade from the corpse, Heka’tan prepared to fight on.
Ahead of the Salamanders was the node, but the warlock had bought the others in his coven enough time to tap into its power. A coruscation of energy was rippling between the three witches as if the stone was feeding and enhancing their abilities.
Heka’tan had time to lift his chainblade in a rallying gesture before a lightning whip struck out from the node. The eldar coven channelled it, a bending crackling bolt of energy that ripped Dreadnoughts off their feet and flattened Salamanders. It swept across the Legion in a wave, leaving electrified and scorched battle-plate behind it. The eldar still engaged in the melee were struck too, the shimmering beam was undiscriminating, and Heka’tan realised then just what they were willing to sacrifice to protect the node. Mercifully he and his command squad had been spared from the first bolt but a second was already building.
Unleashed in a matter of seconds, the bolt would easily outstrip him for pace. It hurt like hellfire but still Heka’tan ran with all the fading strength in his body.
ENGINES SCREAMING, the Stormbird drew closer to the lightning storm. A flash lit the darkened interior of the hold, revealing the forbidding form of Vulkan standing by the open side-hatch. It was drawn as wide as it would go and the wind whipped within the gunship, buffeting the oaths of moment pinned to the warriors’ armour. Vulkan was stooped, eyes narrowed as he focused on the node. Its pointed tip was the focal point for the storm and the runes along its surface glowed in sympathetic union with the lightning. Even from above and at distance, it was monolithic. Destroying it would not be easy. The grip Vulkan had around his hammer’s haft tightened.
Behind him, the Pyre Guard waited with barely fettered aggression.
Unleash us…
The primarch could sense what they desired as surely as he felt it in his own blood.
A crack of lightning surged past the side of the ship, clipping one of its wings, and the hold shuddered and pitched. Smoke trailed from the wound in the armour plate. It wasn’t serious enough for the Stormbird to withdraw but they’d come about as far as they could without risking a crash.
Vulkan didn’t even reach for a handhold. His body was utterly still, his intensity unbroken.
Slowly, the pilot brought them back on course and the node loomed again, several metres below and wreathed with crackling power. The witch coven at its foundation was ready to siphon its energy into another bolt. The devastation wrought by the first must have been egregious to witness on the ground and from above its destructive trail was all too plain to see.
It seemed strange for the eldar to protect the edifice with such vehemence when their tactics suggested an entirely different method of warfare. Here, by holding onto the obelisk, they exposed all of their weakness and mitigated their strengths. The suspicion of something unseen and unknown entered the primarch’s mind, but for now he could not affect it, whatever it was. Instead, he concentrated on the thing he could do something about.
Vulkan crouched a little lower and waited until the Stormbird banked so the hatch was angled down towards the node. The hammer he bore was a weapon of his own creation. Thunderhead was its name. He’d fashioned it on Nocturne in honour of N’bel and his heritage. Captured storms thrashed within its ornate head, beaten into the metal through many long hours of toil in the forge. There was no other like it. No Legionary could wield it. No man could even lift it. Vulkan alone possessed the strength and mastery to bend it to his will.
He donned his drake-helm and it mag-locked to his gorget.
“Do you know what comes after lightning, brothers?”
The Pyre Guard did not answer. Instead they readied their weapons.
Vulkan’s eyes flashed with inner fire.
“Thunder…”
He leapt from the hold.
SHRIEKING AIR WHIPPED past Vulkan as he plummeted through the storm-wracked sky. He descended like a hammer-wielding comet, a roar
of the firedrakes of Mount Deathfire on his lips. His salamander cloak flapped wildly behind him, as if the spirit of the beast it once belonged to had returned and approved of its master’s exultation.
A grimace formed on his face behind his helmet as the primarch reached terminal velocity. The wind became an ear-piercing whine as he descended through it. Surrounded by the tempest, he had never felt more alive than in that moment. He wondered briefly if Corax and Sanguinius felt the same elation as they soared through the heavens.
As he closed on the obelisk, Vulkan clenched his hammer in both hands and lifted it above his head. At the moment of impact, he smashed the arrowed summit of the obelisk like he was hitting the head of a nail. With a tremor of energy, the psychic node ruptured and shattered. Vulkan didn’t slow but kept driving through the ancient stone, following an almighty crack that spread through the obelisk’s core. Shockwaves throbbed outwards from the breaking stone, chunks of it pummelling the eldar who looked up at the falling rock and wailed from below before being crushed. Each successive energy pulse emitted from the destroyed obelisk jolted the now transfixed coven with greater and greater violence. The eldar witches had made themselves conduits for the psychic power in the node and now they were being fed every last residual trace of it. No mortal creature could withstand such a backlash of energy. Vulkan landed and the earth blasted outwards from his craterous impact. In synchrony with it, the witches died one by one. Their eyes burned and flesh melted until at last their skulls exploded and they collapsed, headless, to the ground.
Dust and fire surrounded the primarch in a churning pall. He was crouched on one knee, his hammer embedded in the earth. He stayed like that for several moments. His armour rose and fell as he breathed. The remains of the node collapsed around him. Great clefts of stone sheared away and broke into fragments. By the time it was done, Vulkan was encircled by a belt of shattered rock. The engraved runes had all been broken and their captured light bled away.
