Enough of this.
The beast I am seeking seeks me out in turn. Huge, towering above its lesser kin, packed with unnatural muscle around its malformed bones and reeking of the fungal blood that fuels its foul heart. It launches itself onto the tank's hull, perhaps expecting some titanic duel to impress its tribe. A champion, perhaps. A chieftain. It matters not. The brutes' leaders rarely resist the chance to engage Imperial commanders in full view - they are loathsomely predictable.
There is no time for sport. My first strike is my last, hammering through its guard, shattering its crossed axes and pounding the aquila head of my crozius into its roaring face.
It topples from the Baneblade, all loose limbs and worthless armour, as pathetic in death as it had been in life.
I hear Priamus laughing from the tank's side, voxing it through his helm's speakers, mocking the beasts even as he slays them. On the other side, Artarion and Bastilan do the same. The orks redouble their assault with twice the fury and half the skill, and though I could reprimand my brothers for this indignity, I do not.
My laughter joins theirs.
Asavan Tortellius was serene, and that surprised him given the shaking of the walls and the sounds of war's thunder. This was no Titan's fortress-cathedral back, where he had learned to worship in safety. This was a temple besieged.
It had not taken long to find work to do within the basilica. He quickly came to realise that he was the only priest with experience of preaching on the battlefield. Most of the lay brothers and low-ranking Ecclesiarchy servants spent their time attending to their daily tasks in hurried nervousness, praying the war would remain outside the walls. Several others cowered in the undercroft with the refugees, doing more harm than good and failing to ease a single soul with their stuttering, sweating sermons.
Asavan descended into the sublevel, immediately marked out from the other preachers by his grimy robes and dishevelled hair. He walked among the people, offering gentle words to families as he passed. He was especially patient with the children, giving them the blessing of the God-Emperor in His aspect as the Machine-God, and saying personal prayers over individual boys and girls that seemed the most weary or withdrawn.
There was a lone guard stationed at the bottom of the stairs. She was slight of frame, both short and slender, wearing a suit of power armour that seemed too bulky to be comfortable. In her hands was a boltgun, the weapon held across her chest as she stood to attention.
Asavan moved over to her, his worn boots whispering across the dusty stone.
'Hello, sister,' he said, keeping his voice low.
She remained unmoving, at perfect attention, though he could see the tremor in her eyes that betrayed how difficult she found it to bear this rigid nothingness.
'My name is Asavan Tortellius,' he told her. 'Will you please lower the weapon?'
She looked at him, her eyes meeting his. She didn't lower the bolter.
'What is your name?' he asked her.
'Sister Maralin of the Holy Order of the Ar—'
'Hello, Maralin. Be at ease, for the enemy is still outside the walls. Might I ask you, please, to lower the weapon?'
'Why?' she leaned closer to whisper.
'Because you are making the people here even more nervous than they already are. By all means, be visible. You are their defender, and they will take comfort in your presence. But walk among them, and offer a few kind words. Do not stand there in grim silence, weapon held tight. You are giving them greater reason to fear, and that is not why you were sent down here, Maralin.'
She nodded. 'Thank you. Father.' The bolter came down. She mag-locked it to her thigh plate.
'Come,' he smiled, 'let me introduce you to some of them.'
The Bane-Sidhe's void shields rippled and rained sparks, brought into visibility as another layer was stripped by the explosive shells raining against them. A short growl of accumulating power ended in a blasting discharge of energy as the Warlord annihilated the tanks laying claim to the Hel's Highway ahead.
A black, smoking scorch smear was all the evidence that the tanks had ever existed. Behind the striding Bane-Sidhe, Oberon drifted forward on its gravity suspensors, gently cruising over any obstructions in its path. Bringing up the column's rear were the clanking, ungainly Warhounds that Bane-Sidhe had ordered back into the city.
The agreement made was monumentally simple, and that was why Jurisian was certain it would work.
'Defend Oberon,' he'd said. 'Defend it for long enough to take a single shot, to down the enemy command gargant. Then the Ordinatus will be surrendered into your control during the retreat towards the Hemlock River.'
What choice did they have? Amasat's voice over the vox was harsh with the promise of recrimination should the plan fail to run smooth. Jurisian, for his part, could not have cared less. He had the support he needed, and he had a primary target to destroy.
Infantry resistance was met with punishing and instant devastation. Armour formations endured no longer. Through the Temple District, they encountered precious little in the way of enemy engines.
'That is because, blasphemer, Invigilata left the enemy Titan contingent in ruins,'
'Except for the Godbreaker,' the Forgemaster replied. 'Except for the slayer of Stormherald.'
Amasat chose not to retort.
'I have nothing on my auspex,' he said instead.
'Nor I,' reported one of the Warhound princeps.
'I see nothing,' confirmed the other.
'Keep hunting. Draw closer to the Temple of the Emperor Ascendant.'
The Mechanicus convoy traversed the urban ruination in bitter dignity for another eight minutes and twenty-three seconds before Amasat voxed again.
'Almost one quarter of the enemy inside this hive is embattled at the Temple of the Emperor Ascendant. You are threatening Oberon with destruction as well as desecration? Does your heresy know no end?'
It was Jurisian's turn to abstain from the argument.
'I have a thermal signature,' he said, studying the dim auspex console to the left of his control throne. 'It has a plasma shadow, much too hot to be natural flame.'
'I see nothing. Coordinates?'
Jurisian transmitted the location codes. It was on the very edge of scanning range, and still several minutes away.
'It is moving to the Temple.'
'Locomotion qualifiers?'
'Faster than us.'
The pause was almost painful, broken by Amasat's sneering tone. 'Then I will give you the victory you require. Talisman and Hallowed Verity - remain with the blessed weapon.'
'Yes, princeps,' both Warhounds responded. Bane-Sidhe leaned forward, its armoured shoulders hunching as it moved into a straining stride. Jurisian listened to the protesting gears, the overworked joints, hearing the engine's machine-spirit cry out in the stress of metal under tension. He said a quiet word of thanks for the sacrifice about to be made.
CHAPTER XXIII
Knightfall
Andrej and Maghernus skidded into the basilica's first chamber, their bloody boots finding loose purchase on the mosaic-inlaid floor. Dozens of Guardsmen and militia dispersed through the vast hall, catching their breath and taking up defensive points around pillars and behind pews.
The final fallback was beginning in earnest. The graveyard outside was blanketed in enemy dead, but the last few hundred Imperials could no longer hold any ground with their own numbers depleted.
'This room…' the former dockmaster was breathing heavily, '…doesn't have much cover.'
Andrej was unslinging his back-mounted power pack. 'It is a nave.'
'What?'
'This room. It is called a nave. And you are speaking the truth - there is no defence here.' The storm-trooper drew his pistol and started running deeper into the temple.
'Where are you going? What about your rifle?'
'It is out of power! Now follow, we must find the priest!'
Ryken fired with his autopistol, taking a moment between shots
to regain his aim. It was a custom, heavy-duty model that wouldn't have been out of place in an underhive gangfight, and as he crouched by a black stone shrine to a saint he didn't recognise, the gun barked hot and hard in his fist, ejecting spent cartridges that clattered off nearby gravestones.
'Fall back, sir!' one of his men was yelling. The alien beasts crashed through the graveyard like an apocalyptic flood, a unbreakable tide of noise.
'Not yet…'
'Now, you ass, come on!' Tyro dragged at his shoulder. It threw off his aim, but to hell with it - it was like spitting into the ocean anyway. He scrambled away from the relative cover of the weeping statue just in time to miss it being shattered into chips and shards by raking fire from a fully-automatic enemy stubber.
'Are they coming?' he shouted to his second officer, limping badly now.
'Who?'
'The bloody Templars!'
They were not coming.
To the retreating human survivors, it seemed as if the black knights had lost all sense, all reason, cutting their way forward while the humans that had supported them broke ranks and fled back.
No one could see why.
No one was getting a clear answer from the vox.
Bayard was dead.
Priamus saw the great champion fall, and all flair in his killing strokes was abandoned in a heartbeat. He slew with all the grace of a peasant chopping lumber upon the face of some backwater rural world, his masterwork sword reduced to a club with a vicious edge and draped in lethal energy.
'Nerovar!' he screamed his brother's name into the vox. 'Nerovar!'
Other Templars took up the cry, summoning the Apothecary to extract the gene-seed of a Chapter hero.
Bayard stood almost slouched against the wall of an ornate mausoleum shaped from pink-veined white stone. The body had not fallen only because of the crude spear pinning it through the throat. A killing blow, without a shadow of doubt. Priamus spared a moment of desperate blocks and thrusts, taking an axe blow against his pauldron, risking a second's distraction to pull the spear free. The ork's axe threw off sparks as it crashed aside from the ceramite shoulder guard. The corpse of the Emperor's Champion slumped to the ground, freed of its undignified need to stand.
'Nerovar!' Priamus cried again.
It was Bastilan that reached him first. The sergeant's helm was gone, revealing a face so bloody only the whites of his eyeballs revealed him as human anymore. Torn flaps of skin hung in wet patches, leaving his head open to the bone beneath.
'The Black Sword!'
Priamus deflected another dozen cuts in four beats of his pounding twin hearts. He had no time to reach for the blessed weapon Bayard had dropped in death.
Bastilan's ruined face vanished in a burst of red mist. Priamus had already rammed his power sword through the chest of the bolter-wielding ork behind the sergeant by the time Bastilan's headless body crashed to the ground with the dull clang of ceramite on stone.
'Nerovar!'
With Bastilan's last words, something changed within the Templars.
Twelve remained. Of these, only seven would escape what followed.
The knights pulled together, their blades slashing and carving not only to kill their foes, but to defend their brothers alongside them. It was an instinctive savagery born of so many decades fighting at each others' sides, and it spread through their failing ranks now as they stood on the precipice of destruction.
'Take the sword!' Grimaldus roared. His charge carried him ahead of the others, hammering his crozius in arhythmic fury, smashing a bloody path through to Priamus. 'Recover the Black Sword!'
We cannot leave it here. It cannot lie abandoned on a battlefield while one of us yet lives.
Over the vox, the humans are calling us insane and begging us to fall back with them. To them, this bloodshed must seem like madness, but there is no choice. We will not be the only Crusade to violate our most sacred tradition. The Black Sword will remain in black hands until there are none left to bear it.
I have a moment - just a single moment - of reflexive pain when I see Bayard's body next to Bastilan's. Two of the finest Sword Brethren ever to serve the Chapter, now slain in glory. More alien bodies block my view. More xenos bleed as I force my way closer to Priamus.
A sense of bloodthirsty, eerie calm descends between us. The battle rages, weapons clashing against our armour, but I speak in a fierce whisper that I know carries over the vox to him and him alone.
'Priamus.'
'Reclusiarch.'
My maul sends two of the beasts flying back, and for a heartbeat's span, there are no alien barbarians separating us. Our eye lenses meet for that precious second, before we are both forced to turn and engage other foes.
'You are the last Emperor's Champion of the Helsreach Crusade,' I tell him. 'Now recover your blade.'
Major Ryken spoke into his hand-vox, repeating the same words he'd been saying for almost a minute. His voice echoed around the nave in curiously calm counterpoint to the ragged breathing and moans of pain from the wounded.
'Any armour units still outside the basilica, respond. The Godbreaker has been sighted due south of the temple walls. Any armour units still outside, engage, engage.'
From his viewpoint by one of the broken stained glass windows, he watched the gargant's torso rising above the broken graveyard walls in the distance.
He didn't recognise the voice that eventually answered. It sounded both bitter and disgusted, but it still made Ryken grin.
'Engaging.'
'Hello? Identify yourself!'
'I am Princeps Amasat of the Warlord Titan Bane-Sidhe.'
The Bane-Sidhe, named for a shrieking monster from ancient Terran mythology, did everything in its power to gain the Godbreaker's attention. Opening salvos from its arm-cannons and shoulder-mounted weapon batteries lashed against the larger Titan's force fields. Siren horns, used to warn loyal infantry of the Titan's passing close - or even through - their regiments, blared now at the enemy engine. Whatever primitive communications array passed for a vox system on board the Godbreaker was scrambled into white noise by a focussed spike of machine-code from Bane-Sidhe's tech-adepts.
All of this was enough to drag the towering beast-machine away from its intent to flatten the Temple of the Emperor Ascendant.
The Warlord, thirty-three metres of armour plating and city-killing weaponry forged into an iconic image of the Machine-God Himself, began its shameful retreat. All guns fired at will as it clanked backwards, drawing the Godbreaker away from the last Imperials alive in the hive's most sacred sector.
'May I have a weapon, please?'
Andrej shrugged as he cleaned his goggles with a dirty cloth. 'I have no other pistol, fat priest. For this, I apologise.'
Tomaz Maghernus shook his head when Asavan looked his way. 'I don't, either.'
Several maidens of the Order of the Argent Shroud came down the wide stairs into the undercroft. Prioress Sindal led them, carrying her bolter with ease due to the machine-muscles of her power armour.
'It is time to seal the undercroft,' the old woman said, her voice low. She, at least, knew the merits of not panicking the refugees gathered in the sublevel. 'The beasts have reached the inner grounds.'
'May I have a weapon, please?' Asavan asked her.
'Have you ever fired a bolter?'
'Until this month, I had never even seen a bolter. Nevertheless, I would like a weapon with which to defend these people.'
'Father, with the greatest respect, it would do you no good. My thanks for comforting the flock, but it is time to prepare for the end. Everyone who is staying behind, be ready to be sealed down here within the next three minutes. The oxygen should last a month, as long as the xenos do not destroy the air filtration systems above ground.'
Andrej raised a singed eyebrow. 'And if they do?'
'Use your imagination, Guardsman. And return to the surface, quickly. Every able body is needed in defence of the temple.'
'A moment,
please.' Andrej turned back to Asavan. 'Fat priest. You are destined to either survive this, or die at least some time later than I.' He handed the holy man a small leather pouch. Asavan took it, clutching it tight in fingers that would have trembled in this moment only weeks before.
'What is this?'
'My mother's wedding ring, and a letter of explanation. Once this is over, if you are still drawing breath, please find Trooper Natalina Domoska of the 91st Steel Elite. You will recognise her - this, I promise to you. She is the most beautiful woman in the world. Every man says so.'
'Move, young man,' the prioress insisted.
Andrej snapped a crisp salute to the overweight priest, and made his way back up the stairs, his laspistol held in both hands. Maghernus followed him, casting a lingering look back at Asavan and the refugees. He waved as the underground bulkheads slammed closed. Asavan didn't seem to see, preoccupied with the refugees who were rising to their feet in panic and protest.
Several of the battle-sisters remained at the base of the stairs, entering codes to seal the doors and imprison the civilians away from harm. The prioress managed to keep up with Andrej and Maghernus. The dockmaster smiled at her, knowing the gesture was meaningless and filled with melancholy. She returned the smile, her expression carrying the same emotions as his. The Temple was shaking as the orks battered at its walls.
The next time Maghernus would see Prioress Sindal of the Order of the Argent Shroud, she would be a mangled corpse in three pieces, spread across the floor of the inner sanctum.
That would be in less than one hour's time, and her body would be one of the last things he saw before he was killed by a bolt round in the back.
Bane-Sidhe tore clean through the Hel's Highway when it fell.
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