A Lesson in Iron
Page 3
Who would miss an orphan moon that no Imperial cartographer had yet bothered to stick a number to?
He turned away to see that Gaius Caphen had worked his way up the line towards him.
‘I am uncertain about this tactic, Lord Commander.’
DuCaine laughed. An inbred respect for the proper chain of command and an innate disapproval of so single-minded an approach to warfare were clearly tying the boy’s head in knots.
‘This tactic is a classic. Did I not tell you of the time that Lord Horus assigned his own First Captain as my equerry after Rust, to see it first-hand?’
‘I think you may have,’ muttered Tannen.
The Techmarine had been amongst the last cohort to learn his craft in the Ural forges. He was among the last to have retained a Terran sense of humour. DuCaine threw him an ironic ‘thank you’ wave.
‘It won’t work against the Emperor’s Children,’ said Caphen.
That single statement soured the mood more than all the artillery of the III Legion ever could.
DuCaine had been trying not to think about it.
But if the lad had any qualms about facing his own brothers in battle, then he wasn’t showing it. DuCaine was impressed. Even if it had been Fulgrim himself who had given the boy his orders. The rest of the command squad picked up on his resolve; their attitudes of suspicion noticeably relaxed.
‘The warlord clans of old Albia have been perfecting this way of war on each other for hundreds of years,’ DuCaine explained. ‘The trick of it is to deploy only the exact amount of strength you need to draw your enemy into a straight fight.’
‘And in ensuring the men so deployed have the nerve to stand before the storm,’ said Glassius, in characteristically portentous language. The Apothecary liked to project an air of gravitas onto the suckling neophytes he had to call brother. ‘And in increasing numbers, sir.’
DuCaine nodded in agreement. He’d become aware of the custom that had developed amongst the mortal auxilia of the 52nd Expedition, of scribing their own condolence letters prior to deployment. DuCaine heartily approved.
The clans of old Albia had observed similar traditions.
‘This phase is called Raising the Storm. It’s a template we followed on the Central Afrik, and in the Panpacific Campaigns.’
Caphen’s look, even through the frosted amethyst of his helmet lenses, was one that DuCaine had come to recognise all too well over the last century and a half. It wondered just how hard Unification could have been. How it could possibly have taken the Master of Mankind and his twenty Legions so long to achieve.
‘You heard of Rust?’
‘I think he may have,’ said Tannen.
‘It won’t work,’ Caphen repeated. ‘The Third Legion don’t fight in that way.’
‘I know the boy we’re fighting here well, and he’s not nearly as good as he thinks he is. In my experience a battle can be controlled right up to the point where it begins. After that I don’t care if you’re a technobarbarian from the Afrik, an ork, or aye, even Legiones Astartes, you do what everyone does in a battle.’
Caphen shook his head, but did not protest further.
DuCaine shrugged, turned back to the wall, slung his bolter strap over his shoulder, then set his boot against the frozen rockcrete surface as if about to pull himself up over the top.
‘We just have to sweeten the lure a little bit.’
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A Black Library Publication
First published in Black Library Events Anthology 2017/2018 in Great Britain in 2017.
This eBook edition published in 2018 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.
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Cover illustration by Diana Martinez.
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