by Ben Counter
The pitch of the Thunderhawk engines kicked in and rose as the pre-launch countdown flicked the gunship's systems on. The air in the hangar boomed out as the doors ground open and there was a lurch as the ship bolted forwards on its primary thrust engines, jamming the occupants back into their grav-couches. Alaric glanced out of the gunship's porthole as it roared out of the Rubicon - the strike cruiser's hull ripped past and the glowing crescent of Sophano Secundus slid into view, barren and grim, the sole streak of fertile green now blackening purple.
Alaric could taste the sorcery, dark and mocking. But sorcery was what the Grey Knights had been trained to fight.
THE FORESTS STREAKED by beneath a darkening sky slashed with purple lightning, the valleys deep in shadows like rivers of ink, the distant barren mountains like broken teeth around the horizon. The Thunder-hawk engines screamed as the deceleration thrusters resisted the pull of gravity on the falling gunship.
The valley yawned blackly below the Thunderhawk as it dipped into its approach. The Thunderhawk's sensors were barely functioning thanks to the interference flowing from Hadjisheim and the Malleus pilots in the cockpit were flying mostly by eye. The dark grassy sides of the valley swept upwards and the Thunderhawk slewed into a wide crescent, landing gear grinding down from the hull. With a jolt the runners hit the ground and the main engines cut out.
The valley was deep and shadowy. The forest that rolled up to the crests on either side was deep and very dark, the greenery like a solid mass. The valley was covered in coarse grasses and shrubs. In the distance, some way along the valley, the sorcery could be seen like a solid blackish dome. The sky above was almost the same colour as the sorcery - black streaked with purple, the stars like silver dust. The runners of the Thunderhawks carved deep furrows in the thick earth as they came to a halt.
'Deploy!' called Alaric and, as the ramp descended, Squad Alaric and Squad Santoro were out of the gun-ship in seconds, storm bolters raised. Alaric hit the ground and at once felt the echoes the astropaths had reported - a seething in the warp, an agitation just beyond the veil of reality.
Alaric's auto-senses cut through the gloom. The vegetation of Sophano Secundus was dark and wretched, clinging feebly to the banks of the valley until it became a thick tangled row of trees at the crest. 'Tancred?' voxed Alaric on the all-squad channel.
'Coming down now. Do you have him?'
'Negative. We're searching.'
Tancred's Thunderhawk curved around, it's landing thrusters leaving glowing blue streaks in the air, to settle behind Alaric's. The ramp was down and Tancred's squad was out before the thrusters cut out, massive Terminator-armoured bodies dropping to thump onto the damp grass.
'Got something,' came a sudden vox from Brother Marl, one of Santoro's Marines. 'I think it's him.'
Santoro waved his squad forward in the direction Marl was indicating. 'Squad, get their back,' said Alaric, and his own Marines turned to keep an eye on the perimeter.
'Confirmed,' voxed Santoro. 'It's one of hers.'
'Taici?'
'It's hard to tell.'
'Squad, hold.' voxed Alaric to his squad and hurried over to where Santoro was standing over a dark shape sprawled on the ground.
It was one of Ligeia's death cultists, that was certain, wearing a glossy black bodysuit now torn and shredded. The hood had been torn off and Alaric realised it was the first time he had seen the face of one of Ligeia's cultists.
He recognized the sword still held in the man's hand as belonging to Taici - if the death cultists had a leader other than Ligeia, it was Taici. And if there was anyone she would send to summon the Grey Knights to a safe landing site, it was him.
Alaric knelt down beside Taici. He was still breathing, but he had taken a severe beating. His skin was torn and tattered. One leg was clearly broken and his chest was lopsided so much that Alaric was surprised he could manage even the shallow breaths he was taking. A sleek, handsome face was now bloody and broken, glossy black hair, bloodied golden skin, the jaw now broken and shattered. Slivers of teeth were mixed in with the blood running down his chin.
'He's alive.' said Alaric. 'Can you speak?'
Taici's eyes opened. But they were not eyes.
Like fat, pink worms, two tendrils poked from Taici's eye sockets, writhing obscenely like pointing fingers, tiny ravenous maws opening in the tips. Taici's face disintegrated and a nest of worms gnawed out through the bones, chewing the death cultist's head into a foul mess of bubbling gore.
'Mykros!' called Santoro, and his squad's flamer bearer stepped up. Alaric stood back and Mykros immolated the writhing mess with a heavy gout of blessed flame. Harsh, spicy incense mixed with the stink of charred flesh and soon the corpse was gone. 'That was-' began Santoro.
'Tancred, Genhain.' voxed Alaric, and he saw that both squads were now on the ground. 'Taici was being controlled. They've got her. Give me a...'
Tancred saw them first and Alaric knew something was wrong by the way his squad's aim suddenly snapped upwards, to the ridge along the top of the valley slope. Alaric followed their gaze and saw the ridge brisding, as if the forest itself were marching down towards them. There were suddenly spearpoints and banners, the bright colours of the Allking's barons muted in the gathering gloom, the jangling of armour and the grunt of the tharr filtering down over the sound of the cold wind through the trees.
Alaric looked around. There were men on both sides of the valleys, probably thousands of them. Waiting for the Grey Knights. The creature in Taici's head had controlled him, tricking him into leading the Grey Knights into the trap.
'Soldiers from the sky.' called down a herald's voice from the Allking's men. 'Our Emperor abhors the heretics who hunt His people. The spirits of the kings long dead spit on infidel invaders who befoul the Allking's lands. The Emperor, the Lord of Change, and the Prince of a Thousand Faces rot your hearts. Your deaths are our lives.'
'Close up.' voxed Alaric, and the Grey Knights gathered in a tight circle between the Thunderhawks. Then to his own squad, 'They'll charge. Vien, Clostus, in the front with me. Lykkos, in the centre with Squad Glaivan. Let them come to us. Cleanse your souls and have faith.'
A hunting horn brayed above and the army's leaders yelled a final order in the language of their dead kings. As One, in a spiky black mass, the tharr cavalry charged forward and the valley thundered. Alaric saw the massively muscled legs of the tharr powering them forward, the flashing armour of the knights on top and the streaming coloured pennants of a dozen feudal barons.
Justicar Genhain, in the centre of the Grey Knights, bellowed an order and storm bolter fire streaked out. Every Grey Knight's gun spat bright white streaks into the charging mass of soldiers, kicking up bursts of blood. Bodies wheeled as tharr hit the ground and threw their riders. Men were blasted backwards in flailing broken bursts of blood. But more came, trampling the bodies of their dead and, as the killing zone around the Grey Knights was piled deeper with the dead, the rear ranks of the cavalry galloped over the heaps of corpses and bore down on Alaric's Marines. The too-familiar stink of death flooded forward as the charge slammed home.
The first of them hit. Alaric saw gritted teeth beneath the noseguard, banded armour over bright flowing cloth, dark skin and white hair. Alaric turned the lance aimed at his head with the blade of his Nemesis halberd and punched his other hand into the grisly maw of the tharr beneath the rider. His fist smashed through ranks of teeth and Alaric squeezed the firing stud, sending a volley of bolt shells from the wrist-mounted storm bolter ripping through the beast.
Alaric impaled the rider on his halberd and, without throwing the body off his blade, hacked clean through the rider behind him. Beside Alaric, Brother Vien had sheared the head off a tharr and clambered over its fallen body, swinging his halberd like a mace and knocking men aside. Haulvarn reached over Alaric's shoulder and plunged his sword through yet another rider while Dvorn waded in, his hammer sweeping the squad's flank clear to leave a wide se
micircle of shattered bodies.
Alaric felt, more than heard, the charge hit Tancred's squad, and saw a tharr sailing through the air no doubt flung by one of Tancred's Terminators. He heard Santoro's voice yelling a prayer of steadfastness as the ringing of steel showed Santoro's Marines were already duelling with the swordsmen on foot.
Under the guns and blades of the Grey Knights the charge had been reduced to bloody tatters but the mass of the Allking's army was on foot, swordsmen and spearmen swarming forward. This was how the Grey Knights could be lost - swamped and smothered, trapped between a mountain of men where, eventually, their power armour would fail them, their bolters would run out of shells, their sword arms would be pinned and they would die.
Alaric spotted the Thunderhawks swarming with men who were clambering over them, trying to lever the hatches open and smash the windows. He caught sight of movement inside one cockpit where the Malleus pilots were evidently fighting soldiers who had got inside. They would fight to the death, but die they would. The Thunderhawks wouldn't survive, either.
The mass of men pressed home. Swords stabbed out at Alaric, clanging off his armour, a wall of steel in front of a sea of hate-filled faces. One of them ducked Dvorn's hammer and leapt on the Marine, knocking him back a step to be followed by a dozen more who dragged Dvorn to the ground. Clostus cut one swordsman from throat to groin and threw off another, but they were pouring in through the breach, fearless, fanatical.
'Tancred! Break us out, there are too many!' voxed Alaric. He spotted Santoro clambering over the sea of soldiers, striking left and right with his Nemesis mace. Storm bolter fire was still streaking from Genhain's squad, and Lykkos's psycannon threw shining blasts into the rear ranks, but there were too many to thin out.
Tancred, Alaric knew, was probably their only way out.
'Brothers!' Tancred was yelling. 'For vengeance! For purity! In hatred be strong, in valour be sure!'
'In vengeance be foremost!' echoed his men, and Alaric could feel the buzzing in that part of his mind that possessed enough psychic talent to accept the training of a Grey Knight.
'In suffering! In glory!' lead Tancred, slicing two men in half with a sweep of his Nemesis sword as the crescendo rose, a deafening choir, and white blades of light flickered around Squad Tancred.
Finally, like a bomb detonating, like a meteor hitting, a titanic burst of light ripped through the surging throng in front of Tancred, sending a shockwave tearing through the Allking's ranks. In the flash Alaric saw men blasted clean of their flesh, tharr disintegrating, a wide space scoured of the enemy who were sent flying through the air and thrown backwards onto the men behind them.
The inquisitors of the Ordo Malleus had nicknamed it the holocaust, but it was something far more complicated than that. Only those of the Grey Knights with the strongest psychic signature could do it, and even then not alone - it took a full squad, led by a psyker, to channel the hatred placed in them by years of training and prayer into a devastating physical form.
The holocaust had blasted a space clear in front of Tancred, the earth scoured white. With a roar Tancred charged into the broken ranks and Squad Genhain followed, spraying gunfire into the mass. Tancred's Terminators excelled on the offensive and they carved through the Secundan swordsmen, Nemesis weapons flashing, gunfire blazing.
Alaric and Santoro followed, hacking all around them to keep back the press, following the trail of carnage that Tancred bored into the army. The ranks were fleeing now, dropping their weapons and running back up the side of the valley as Tancred chased them. The battle had turned into a rout and more and more swordsmen followed. Officers, noblemen on tharrback or even on horses, yelled at their men to keep fighting, but the banners of the barons were down now.
That was how to break an army. Show them what the Grey Knights could do, make sure every man saw it, and convince them that if they stayed then they would be next.
Alaric checked the runes projected by his auto-senses back onto his retina. Dvorn's rune was flickering, he must be wounded. 'Any men lost?' voxed Alaric.
'Caanos is dead.' said Santoro simply. 'Mykros is car-tying him.'
Alaric felt a flare of anger. Sophano Secundus had betrayed the Grey Knights and now it had taken the life of a Marine. Alaric remembered a Marine in Santoro's own mould, quiet, devout, devoted. Now Caanos would never pray for anything again.
It was the worst of omens to leave a Grey Knight's body on the battle field. The gene-seed that regulated Caanos's metabolism and his vat-grown organs would be removed and taken back to Titan, so they could be implanted in a novice just beginning the path of the Grey Knight. But that would only happen if any of them got off Sophano Secundus.
'Take cover in the treeline and keep moving.' voxed Alaric. 'They'll have men following us.' He switched to squad frequency. 'Dvorn?'
'Broken arm.' said Dvorn. It was all the answer Alaric needed - a Marine's metabolism would quickly heal a broken bone, but Dvorn would be fighting below his best until then.
The Allking's army was disintegrating below the Grey Knights. Nobles tried to organise the swarming mob to pursue the Grey Knights but it was bedlam down there, all order lost. Tancred was already in the forest, his Marines snapping storm bolter shots off at the few men trying to follow them.
Alaric glanced down and saw orange flames burning in the engines of the two Thunderhawk gunships where the Allking's men - either with great prescience or, more likely, under orders - had cut the fuel lines and set the promethium alight. If the Grey Knights were going to escape Sophano Secundus, it would not be by gunship.
IN THE MIDDLE of the night, in the heart of the forest, they buried Caanos. Stripped of his armour, the gene-seed organ in his throat cut out by Justicar Santoro, Brother Caanos was lowered into the makeshift grave.
Santoro made a short speech about duty and sacrifice and an honourable death before the gaze of the Emperor, the sort of thing Caanos might have said himself.
Alaric understood, as he heard again the same words he had listened to in every sermon and hero's funeral he had ever heard, why Ligeia had wanted him to lead. He could think outside the constraints that bound most Grey Knights, but at the same time, he was strong enough to always remember the truly important things _ strength against the corruption of the Enemy, devotion to a fight that could not be won, faith in the strength the Emperor had given him.
Santoro could not lead, not really. Not when he understood his place in the universe as rigid and unchangeable. Neither could Genhain or Tancred, good men though they were. They were the soldiers that could hold back the darkness, but to lead them, they needed men like Alaric. He would be able to change the rules they lived by when the Enemy's designs meant they had to adapt. That was why Durendin had shown such faith in him, and why Ligeia had seen something in him that even grand masters did not possess.
Alaric was not sure if he was grateful. It would be so much easier just to fight and to obey. Leadership over men like the Grey Knights needed so much more than he could offer now, he had so much to learn and so many trials to endure before he could prove he was worthy.
Santoro had finished. Caanos's battle-brothers were heaping earth into the shallow grave. Alaric noted down the grave's coordinates on his data-slate to make sure that, if possible, Malleus interrogators could return and recover Caanos's body for burial in the vaults of Titan. They would recover Caanos's armour and weapons, too, which had been buried at his feet once Santoro's squad had shared out his ammunition. Alaric realized that, if they were trapped on the planet without support, they might find themselves running low.
Before they moved off Alaric sent a secure communication to the Rubicon telling the Malleus crew that the Thunderhawks were lost, but that shuttles could not come down to the planet. He ordered the crew not to accept any communication from anyone but him, even Ligeia herself, and told them he would contact them if those orders changed. He received a terse acknowledgement code in reply.
Ju
sticar Genhain walked over from Caanos's grave. 'Justicar?' he said, his bionic eye glinting in the faint moonlight. 'Where next?'
'Where else is there?' said Alaric, putting away his data-slate and unholstering his Nemesis halberd. 'Hadjisheim.'
THE ALLKING'S PALACE was a huge labyrinth, extending underground where the huge vaulted chambers became long, low galleries, plunging white stone staircases, complexes of rooms and narrow hallways, all covered in holy texts chiselled into the stone. The deeper the palace went, the more the Imperial prayers were replaced by profane texts glorifying the Secundan people's service to the Lord of Change and to a many-faced servant god that could only be Ghargatuloth. The air was close and smelled of burned flesh, the lanterns guttered and whole floors were plunged into darkness at random. The sound of angry men filtered down from every direction at once, and the whole place was like the stone warren of a hunted animal.
That animal was Inquisitor Ligeia. Five of her death cultists still lived - Taici had given his life so the rest could escape down the staircase from the grand ground floor - but there were scores of men closing in on her. She could hear prayers and curses, soldier's songs, orders yelled, the clank of armoured feet on stone, the hiss of swords unsheathed.
'Xiang, Shan, go ahead. We have to go deeper.' said Ligeia as she hurried along a long, low corridor lined with statues. Each statue's face had been eaten away as if by acid. The two death cultists loped ahead in long, graceful strides, slipped around the corner like ghosts. The others stuck close by their mistress - Ligeia could smell the spices of the artificial hormones now coursing through their veins.
The death cultists owed Ligeia lifelong fealty, even to the death, and they were literally bred to kill. The cult was a curious offshoot of the Imperial church, developing away from the monitoring of the Ecclesiarchy. It offered the deaths of their enemies as a sacrifice to the Emperor. The cultists offered their services to anyone who did the Emperor's work, and since Ligeia had saved the cult from a parasitic daemon in their midst the cult had given six of its best to guard Ligeia permanently. Each one had a complement of artificial tendons, neuro-activated hormone injectors, muscular enhancements, and digestive alterations to allow them to live off the blood they drew from their victims.
