by George Mann
As Koryn watched, figures began to emerge from the smoke, pouring out from inside the bastion like white blood cells rushing to the site of a wound. The Chaos troops were hurrying to defend the unexpected breach in their defences, just as he had anticipated. So far, their plan appeared to be working.
Then the world seemed to rush suddenly back in again, and along with the nearby bark of weapons fire, Koryn became aware of the buzzing of the vox-bead in his ear. ‘Captain?’
‘Speak, Cordae,’ replied Koryn, dragging his eyes away from the blast site to glance in the direction of his brothers, further along the wall. He could see nothing amidst the trailing dust.
‘The second breach was successful, captain,’ said Cordae, and Koryn grinned, noting the satisfaction in the Chaplain’s voice.
He turned to Argis, who was crouching beside him, his faceplate under-lit by the spitting flames of the Rhino. ‘We’re in,’ he said, standing. ‘Time to give these foul bastards an explosion that will really get their attention.’
Daed
The hole in the bastion wall was a ragged, open wound, suppurating with the stinking corpses of the walking dead. Daed watched them emerge in their droves, disgorged as if from a rancid, festering maw.
Traitorous Plague Marines in their ancient, corroded armour lumbered ahead of scores of malformed militia. The men clutched their lasrifles tightly as they were ushered forwards onto the battlefield, terrified of both the golden-armoured Space Marines they would be forced to face in open combat, and the grotesque daemonkin that goaded them from the rear. Blight drones – pulsating sacs of rippling flesh mounted on buzzing rotors – flitted like enormous flies over the heads of the traitors’ army, trailing noxious gases and stringy mucus.
The enemy formed a wall far deeper than the plascrete skirts of the bastion, and far more relentless. Daed knew, without doubt, that he was going to die here on Fortane’s World, but not before he had cut a swathe through the ranks of the traitors. He would serve his Chapter and his Emperor. He would hold the line while the Raven Guard struck at the heart of the enemy. Only when they had succeeded would he even begin to contemplate death. Until then, there was only one goal: to stay alive long enough to keep the enemy engaged.
Behind Daed massed the hulking ranks of the Brazen Minotaurs, their golden armour glinting in the perpetual gloaming. This was all that was left of the Third and Fifth Companies of their Chapter. Many had been lost, and their engines of war lay broken and smouldering behind them. Two Land Raiders, a Razorback and less than a hundred Space Marines now stood against the might of the Chaos forces. He had assembled them for their last stand, their last assault on the bastion. Together, they were an awe-inspiring sight, a solid wall of golden power armour and rage. The battle would be glorious.
Nevertheless, Daed hoped that Koryn knew what he was doing. He had no doubt in the veracity of the Raven Guard’s intentions, nor his abilities, but Daed had been here before. On Empalion II he had stood firm in the face of overwhelming odds in order that Koryn and his ebon-armoured brothers might prosecute a clandestine mission into the heart of enemy territory. He had provided the distraction necessary to enable them to move unimpeded, and they had proved successful in their endeavours – but the cost had simply been too high. The Brazen Minotaurs had lost an entire company in the ensuing battle, and the Chapter had not yet recovered from the blow. He was not yet sure if they ever would. Not only that, but Daed was acutely aware that, if the Raven Guard were not successful this time, the costs would be even higher.
He couldn’t help but feel wary of such risky strategies. He did not understand the ways of the Raven Guard, their desire to always lurk in the shadows, to strike their enemies from behind. Daed preferred to look his enemies in the eye as he struck them down, to ensure that the last thing they saw was the face of his golden helm as he meted out the justice of the Emperor.
Yet the Raven Guard’s bird-faced Chaplain had been right. The Brazen Minotaurs had been losing. And if the battle was lost, so was the war. He had been left with little choice but to go along with their plans. To insist on his existing course of action would have been foolish, and only end in death. Koryn had offered him a way to break the stalemate. Now, their only hope lay in keeping the traitors busy long enough that the Raven Guard could do their work.
Daed watched as three immense figures emerged from the splintered ruins of the fortress wall. They were bound together with iron chains and led by one of the Death Guard, dragged along like animals, shambolic and uncoordinated. Abhumans, Daed realised: former allies of the Guard, now pressed into the service of the traitors’ despicable god. Their pugilist faces and spade-like hands showed sign of infection by the rot; just like the humans of this blighted world, both the flesh and minds of these ogryns had been corrupted by the Sickening.
Daed glanced behind him at the serried ranks of his golden-armoured brothers. Captain Lumeous of the Fifth was already dead, torn apart by an enemy Defiler as he had attempted to lead a small team of veterans closer to the bastion walls.
That had been days ago, perhaps longer. Daed had lost track of time. Not helped, he thought grimly, by the ever-present night.
To his left stood Bast and Throle, to his right Forteon and Ebula. He could sense their urgency, their desire to engage the massing enemy. He felt it too.
‘Emperor be with us!’ he called over an open channel.
‘For Tauron!’ came the deafening response, as each of his brothers replied in unison, raising their weapons above their heads in a defiant salute. They, too, knew they were most likely marching to their deaths on this killing field, but they would do so with relish. If this was to be their last stand, it would be legendary.
‘Here they come!’ bellowed Bast, levelling his bolter and fixing his stance. ‘Prepare yourselves!’
Daed surveyed the enemy lines as the monstrous army charged across the muddy, corpse-strewn battlefield towards the Brazen Minotaurs. They were flanked by daemonkin, the creatures’ long, worm-like tongues snaking hungrily from their bloated, ulcerated lips. It would feel good to send the nauseating beasts screaming back to the hell-pits from whence they were spawned.
He raised his axe high above his head, and then let it fall, indicating that the time had come for his brothers to attack.
The Brazen Minotaurs roared as they charged forwards, thundering across the battlefield towards the oncoming enemy, their bolters barking out a symphony of searing destruction. Heavy weapons belched death, showering the tightly packed ranks of militia with scalding plasma; grenades rained down upon the Death Guard, blowing them into oblivion or igniting their rancid flesh into walking pyres.
They kept on coming, clambering over their own dead, trampling their fallen brethren into the loam as they charged.
Daed felt a stray bolter round smack off his helm and spun around involuntarily, fighting to retain his footing. He steadied himself, grasping the haft of his axe with both fists. He heard screaming, and then suddenly the enemy were all around him, swarming everywhere, and the world became a riot of clashing weapons, buzzing chainswords and wailing death.
He swung his axe, lopping the head from the shoulders of a Traitor Marine who had lumbered too close. The corpse staggered forwards another two steps before keeling over, weeping blood and yellow pus from the fleshy stump of its neck.
Daed unholstered his bolt pistol and discharged it five times in quick succession, turning on the spot, each time dropping a former Guardsman with a neat round in the centre of their forehead.
‘The abhumans, captain,’ came Forteon’s ragged voice over the vox, and Daed glanced frantically from side to side, trying to see past the chaotic morass of combat.
They were over on his extreme left, slamming their way through their own ranks in an effort to get at a squad of Brazen Minotaurs who were still holding the line, cutting down swathes of the enemy with their spitting bolters. Daed sa
w the first of the ogryns bowl a human through the air as it pushed forwards, dragging the others behind it. The second, intent on squashing another human with its fists, yanked angrily on the chain between them, but received only a spade-like fist in its face in reply.
The third had already reached the Brazen Minotaurs, and Daed saw it heft one of his brothers into the air, wrenching his arm from its socket with a sharp twist. It dropped the Space Marine a second later when another of the Brazen Minotaurs ripped out its guts with a chainsword. The ogryn staggered forwards and then toppled over, crushing another of Daed’s brothers as it fell.
With an angry cry, Daed charged forwards, swinging his axe before him to cleave a path through the battle lines. Militia fell in their droves as he ran, some of them reduced to bloody ribbons by the swipe of his power axe, others simply shouldered brutally out of the way as Daed rushed to the aid of his brethren.
A plaguebearer lurched suddenly into his path and he swung at it wildly, putting his fist through the back of its head and dragging it nearly two metres before he managed to shake its juddering corpse from his arm.
Ahead, his brothers were not faring well against the two remaining abhumans. The plague had rendered the creatures near-impervious to harm, and while one of his brothers set about carving great hunks out of an ogryn’s flank with a chainsword, it simply ignored him, continuing to batter another Brazen Minotaur with its fists.
The other was being goaded by its Plague Marine slaver, pressed forwards into the midst of the fighting. Daed noted its apparent confusion and saw his chance. He barrelled forwards, leaping high into the air and swung his axe up and over his head, bringing it down in a whistling arc upon the creature’s bald head, cleaving it neatly in two. His axe buried itself deep in its chest cavity, lodging amongst the splintered ribs and fibrous muscle. Blood sprayed in a glossy fountain, spattering Daed’s helm and chest.
The enormous corpse of the ogryn rocked back and forth unsteadily and Daed kicked it deftly, sending it keeling backwards with a wet thud. The Plague Marine, too slow to get out of the way in time, found itself bowled over by the falling corpse, pinned beneath its massive bulk and smothered by thick, viscous blood, which continued to burble energetically from both halves of the severed torso. Daed clambered unceremoniously over the heap of quivering flesh, coming to stand over the trapped Death Guard. He reached down and grabbed its head in his fists, his fingers sinking into the slick, pliable flesh of its neck. He sought for a solid grip and wrenched, ignoring the hissing protestations of the former Space Marine, twisting with all his might until the head came away with a wet, sucking pop. Daed gave a hoarse roar of satisfaction and hurled it into the seething mass of the enemy, still trailing fragments of spinal column behind it.
He stooped, reaching for the haft of his axe. Just as his fist closed around the slender handle, however, something struck him forcibly between the shoulders, knocking him sprawling across the traitor’s decapitated corpse.
Daed fell hard, his shoulder taking the brunt of the fall, and rolled immediately to the left, ignoring the warning sigils that flared up inside his helm. Within seconds his bolt pistol was in his hand and he was emptying it into the hulking figure that loomed over him: the third, and last, of the ogryns. It was spinning a length of heavy iron chain in its fist and laughing maniacally as the bolt-rounds shredded its chest. It spluttered and choked up dark blood, but otherwise the weapon appeared to have little effect. The chain lashed down and Daed moved again, rolling swiftly out of the way so that the heavy links struck the earth where his head had been only moments earlier.
He felt his left arm flare in pain as the ogryn’s foot pinned it to the ground. He jabbed at its calf ineffectually with his other fist, wishing he had been able to free his axe before this abhuman had reached him. He could see now that it was missing a whole section of its ribcage and belly where a chainsword had chewed massive, bloody hunks from its side, but it had obviously prevailed against the Brazen Minotaur who had inflicted the wounds.
The creature’s other foot came slamming down hard upon Daed’s chest, and this time he had nowhere to roll, no way of prising his arm free from beneath its boot. Alarms screamed shrilly in his ears as the ceramite flexed and cracked, threatening to give way and allow him to be crushed by the titanic weight of the abhuman.
He looked up and saw the ogryn raise the chain high above its head. And then something unexpected happened. The sun came up.
The false dawn swept across the battlefield like the very breath of the Emperor Himself. The brilliant, white light flared, banishing the almost tangible gloom, boiling it away into smoke that dispersed upon the wind.
The sudden glare caught the ogryn full in the face, momentarily blinding it and causing it to stagger backwards, covering its face with its hands in sudden confusion.
Freed from its grip, Daed scrambled to his feet, his helm more than compensating for the sudden change in the quality of the light. The Ogryn stumbled, catching its heel on the corpse of its dead kin, and dropping to one knee.
Daed sprung immediately into action, charging at the abhuman and grabbing fistfuls of the thick chain that was still draped across its shoulders. He pulled them taught, crushing the creature’s windpipe as the links tightened around its throat. It gargled for breath, clutching at Daed, grabbing him around the waist and squeezing with all its might. Daed felt something break inside his power armour, but continued to ignore the insistent warning sigils that flashed before his eyes. He held firm, drawing the chains as tight as he could, his face level with the creature so that he could see the yellow, jaundiced eyes as they rolled back in their sockets. The ogryn gave a last, wheezing attempt at a breath, and then pitched forwards, limp and dead.
Daed turned, taking in the scene all around him. The light was spearing through the roiling clouds of darkness, spreading across the battlefield as he watched, causing many of the traitors to recoil. Some of them scattered in its wake, running for cover, and Daed realised that this was not simply the pure light of day, but something greater, something far more powerful.
Theseon.
The Librarian had woken. His power was returning. Daed felt hope flare along with the brilliant, searing illumination. Despite their faltering numbers, despite the odds, they had the enemy at a disadvantage. If Koryn and his Raven Guard had managed to get inside the bastion, the battle might yet be theirs...
Daed staggered over to where his axe was still jutting rudely from the corpse of the ogryn. He was injured, his armour was compromised and he was drenched in the festering blood of the traitors. Yet his hearts were singing.
He yanked his axe free and weighed it in his hands. It felt good. It felt right. ‘For Tauron!’ he bellowed, his lungs burning, before raising his head and charging headlong into the fight.
Koryn
Behind the immense plascrete skirts of the bastion was a capacious courtyard filled with the walking dead. These shambling, peeling servants of the dark god stood waiting nervously to be marched to their destruction.
These were the human Guardsmen who had once been garrisoned on Fortane’s World, defending the planet in the name of the Emperor. Now they had given themselves over to the foul taint of the warp, and were reduced to this, a shambolic half-life as cannon fodder for the traitors’ army. This denigration might have seemed punishment enough to the humans, assuming they had retained enough of their former intelligence to understand their fate, but now, touched by Chaos as they were, the only possible outcome was death. The humans would be cleansed, their corpses razed from existence.
Koryn watched a Death Guard bellow wetly at a group of soldiers, shooting one of them down with a quick blast from his bolter in order to underline his orders. Koryn could sense the palpable tension in the air, the sudden panic that was swelling in the enemy ranks.
The traitorous masters of Empyrion’s Blight had not come to Fortane’s World with a view to winning the
war – they had wished only to delay the breaking of the siege long enough to mount their attack on the neighbouring Kandoor system. Now, as the Brazen Minotaurs formed a spearhead to attack the gaping hole in their defences, the Chaos troops seemed suddenly disorganised and unsure of their own aims. The Raven Guard would use that confusion to their advantage. They would strike while the enemy were at their weakest, distracted and threatened by the might of the golden warriors who waited on the other side of the makeshift gate.
From the shadows Koryn watched the militia being goaded unceremoniously through the main breach in their droves. Death was waiting for them on the other side of that wall. Real death, at the hands of the Brazen Minotaurs, not the foul living death of Nurgle. Daed would rip their heads from their shoulders and scatter their foetid remains to the winds.
The bastion itself appeared to be formed of a series of unconnected structures: long, thin barracks where the Guardsmen had slept formed a circular pattern around a central hub, like the stylised rays of a star. The central hub was squat and grey, constructed from dense plascrete blocks, and the entrance, Koryn guessed, was on the opposite side from where the Raven Guard now lurked, their backs to the inner side of the wall.
The courtyard was teeming with the enemy. Aside from thousands of former Guardsmen, traitorous Space Marines of the Death Guard marched alongside strange, corroded war machines, awkward looking things that trundled along beside their masters, belching green fumes and leaving stringy trails of mucus in their wake. Plague Marines lumbered towards the breach too, as well as scores of blight drones and the perverse, sickening forms of the daemonkin.
It was a mighty army that the dark gods had amassed here on Fortane’s World. It would make victory all the sweeter, thought Koryn, as he silently gestured for his brothers to follow him, tracing the edge of the bastion wall as they skirted around the perimeter of the courtyard, careful to remain hidden from the prying eyes of the traitors.
