by Ben Counter
mutated strength redirecting the blow into one of the bookcases
beside him. The chainsword tore into the ancient wood and the
Howling Griffon paused for a moment to wrench it free. That was all the
time Graevus needed to bring his axe up into the Howling Griffon’s
chest, carving through ceramite, ribs and organs as his opponent’s
chest was cleaved in two. The Howling Griffon was still alive as he fell
but his death was held off only by his fury. His lungs were laid open, a
well of blood flooding his bisected ribcage and pouring like an
overflowing fountain across the dusty floor.
More charged in behind him. This was the position of honour for the
Howling Griffons – the head of the charge, the first men in, who
suffered the greatest chance of death but would bring out of the battle
the greatest acclaim whether they fell or survived.
Graevus was supposed to have Scamander alongside him. Scamander
was dead. Graevus would have to do the killing for both of them.
More Howling Griffons were forcing their way through the narrow
library corridors. A burning, armoured form crashed through the
bookcase ahead of Graevus – a Howling Griffon, blazing from head to
toe, the shape of a flamer-wielding Soul Drinker just visible through the
curtain of smoke and flame that surrounded him. Graevus hacked off
the Howling Griffon’s head with one slice of his power axe, whirled with
the force of the blow and followed up with a lateral strike that shattered
the chainblade in the hand of the Howling Griffon who charged around
the bend just ahead of him.
Soul Drinkers behind Graevus vaulted over the body of the dead
Howling Griffons to get to grips with the enemy. In the confines of the
library there was no room for numbers to tell. The battle was a series
of duels, vicious face-to-face struggles without enough room even to
feint or manoeuvre. It was war without skill, strength and fury the sole
factors in victory. Graevus had plenty of both.
A Soul Drinker fell beside him, a plasma pistol wound bored right
through him in a charred tunnel. Graevus dived into his killer, slamming
him against the bookcase and smashing the butt of his hammer into
his face. The stunned Howling Griffon fell to one knee and Graevus cut
off one of his arms, the backswing shearing the top half of his head off.
Another Soul Drinker died, shattered body riddled with bolter fire. A
long corridor up ahead was swept with volleys of fire from a Howling
Griffon with a heavy bolter at the far end. The bookcases were
disintegrating and Graevus could see the tally the Howling Griffon had
already reaped through rents in the wall. Burning books gathered in
drifts around his feet, gutted spines falling while their pages flitted up
towards the ceiling on a scalding breath of hot air.
Graevus charged on through the bookcase. It splintered underneath
him. Heavy bolter shots erupted around him, filling their air with a
thousand explosions. Graevus relied on his momentum to take him
through the weight of fire and he slammed into the Howling Griffons
warrior, hacking and wrestling as the two fell into the flames.
Graevus let the battle-lust in him take over. It was a rare that he
permitted himself to completely let go, to abandon everything that
made a Space Marine a disciplined weapon of war and allow the born
warrior, the celebrant of carnage, to take control.
Graevus’s mutated hand clamped around the Howling Griffon’s head
and dropped his axe among the burning debris. He twisted the Howling
Griffon’s head around until a seal gave on his helmet, and the helmet
came away.
The Howling Griffon was the image of Graevus himself, a gnarled and
relentless veteran, the kind of man that could be trusted to hold any
line and execute any order when the fire came down.
These are our brothers, thought Graevus.
They are the same as us.
The thought broke through Graevus’s battle-lust. He tried to force it
down but it would not be quieted.
Graevus took a step back from the Howling Griffon. The Griffon,
disarmed with his heavy bolter lying down in the wreckage, scrabbled
away from Graevus. Graevus picked up his axe, not taking his eyes
from his opponent.
‘Fall back!’ shouted Graevus. ‘Fall back! To your lines! Fall back!’
An instant after Graevus gave the order, the library in front of him
erupted in flame and ash. Heavy weapons hammered through the
bedlam. The Howling Griffons had brought their big guns up.
Their first attack was to drag the Soul Drinkers into the fight, to bog
them down in melee. The second was to shatter the cover of the library
and fill the Soul Drinkers positions with burning ruin, to open up
enough space for the Howling Griffons to use their numbers to their
fullest.
Ordinary soldiers could not have done it. The men of the first line
would have been at fatal risk from the heavy guns of the men behind
them. But the Howling Griffons were not ordinary soldiers; the first
Space Marines in trusted in the aim of their battle-brothers.
The library was torn apart. Graevus forged through the flames,
kicking shattered wooden bookcases out of his way and shielding his
face from the thousands of burning books falling as thick as a blizzard.
Lascannon blasts lanced through the chaos, glittering crimson and
shearing through everything they touched. Fat white-hot bursts of
plasma fire ripped out of the smoke.
Graevus saw the form of a fallen Soul Drinker at his feet. He grabbed
the downed brother by the shoulder guard and dragged him after
himself as he ran. The Soul Drinkers had fortified choke points and
firebases further in and Graevus saw one of them up ahead, guarding a
wide corridor with toppled bookcases and heaps of broken furniture as
a barricade. The Soul Drinkers behind it – Graevus recognised
Sergeant Salk among them – waved Graevus over and he vaulted the
barricade.
The battle-brother he had brought with him had been shot in the
thigh, hit by a lascannon blast. The leg was hanging on solely through
the tangled strips of torn ceramite that remained of his leg armour.
Graevus could not tell if the Soul Drinker was alive. Other Space
Marines dragged him down out of danger.
‘They’re burning us out!’ shouted Graevus to Salk. ‘Big guns and
flamers!’
‘Then we are the gun line!’ shouted Salk. ‘We’re ready!’ He handed
Graevus a bolter, no doubt taken from a wounded or dead Soul Drinker
who had no more need for it. Graevus nodded, checked the movement
of the bolter, and took his position kneeling at the barricade. His left
hand was his trigger hand, because his mutated right was too large to
fit a finger into the trigger guard.
Howling Griffons stalked through the smoke. It was impossible, with
the smoke rolling thick and dense, to tell now where the remnants of
the library stood, where they burned, and where they had been
completely shattered. The air was too thick and toxic for a man to
&
nbsp; breathe; only the lung augmentations of the Space Marines kept both
sides from choking. Visibility was well below bolter range.
Graevus could see the red and yellow livery of the Griffons, smudged
and filthy through the haze and soot, reduced to a contrast between
light and dark forming the quartered design the Griffons wore on their
armour. Half a dozen approached down the fire point’s field of view.
‘Fire!’ yelled Salk. The Soul Drinkers at the barricade, six or seven of
them including Graevus, opened fire. They rattled through half a
magazine of bolter rounds each, pumping shells into the armoured
shapes advancing on them.
Some fell, cut down. Others stumbled, alive but wounded. All who
still lived returned fire and the barricade shuddered as the thick
wooden slabs were chewed through, a layer of cover getting thinner
with every half-second. Explosive shells threw handfuls of splinters into
the haze and Graevus gritted his teeth against the stinging rain that fell
against his face.
Salk swapped out a magazine. A Soul Drinker had slipped down to
the floor beside him.
‘It’s not bad,’ said the Soul Drinker. Salk clapped a hand to the
wounded Space Marine’s shoulder, then turned to fire another volley.
Graevus strained to see through the smoke. The wounded were
being dragged away. A bookcase had been toppled for cover and the
Howling Griffons were regrouping. Soul Drinkers up and down the line
were sniping at movement but the Howling Griffons would not attack in
ones and twos. They would advance again, coordinated to move as
one.
‘This is no battle,’ said Graevus. ‘This is not warfare. This is just…’
‘Attrition,’ said Salk. ‘We killed Mercaeno. They all made an oath to
avenge him. They’re willing to spend a few of their lives if that means
they are the ones who get to kill us. They have more bodies than we
do. That’s what it comes down to.’
‘It’s no way for a Space Marine to fight,’ snarled Graevus. ‘By the
Throne, they could starve us out if they wanted. They don’t have to
die.’
Salk looked at Graevus, uncertain.
‘They don’t have to die!’ repeated Graevus. ‘Our Chapters are
brothers! On Nevermourn it was different, but here there is no need to
fight! What does it matter to them how we are killed? None of us are
leaving the Phalanx alive, this battle is needless murder!’
‘They made an oath,’ said Salk. ‘Mere logic cannot compete with
that.’
‘Let none mourn the losses,’ said Gethsemar. ‘Let no sorrow cloud the
celebrations of our victory. Bring joy, my brothers, as you bring death.’
In the shadowy confines of choristry chamber, the Angels Sanguine
had gathered to pray. The chamber was lined with servitor choirs, the
corpses of gifted singers transformed into machines that could sing for
days on end without need for maintenance. On the Phalanx they were
used in rituals of contemplation, when the deeds of Rogal Dorn were
matched against every Imperial Fist’s qualities and achievements. Now
they were silent, their hairless heads bowed on their metal shoulders,
the lungs stilled.
Gethsemar’s war-mask glanced between his Sanguinary Guard, as
if he was speaking a silent prayer that only each of his brothers could
hear. Then Gethsemar drew his glaive, a two-handed power weapon
with a blade of polished blue stone.
‘We are ready,’ he said.
‘Thank Guilliman for that,’ said Siege-Captain Daviks.
Daviks’s Silver Skulls and the Angels Sanguine had gathered in the
choristry chamber because it adjoined the library. Daviks’s warriors,
skilled siege engineers, had already set up the demolition charges on
one wall. The sound of gunfire came from beyond it as the Howling
Griffons alternately advanced through the burning ruin of the library and
swept the chaos with heavy weapons fire.
‘You see no art in war,’ said Gethsemar. ‘And if a Space Marine’s
life must consist of nothing but war and the preparations for it, that
means there is no place in your lives for art at all. So sad, my brother.
So sad.’
‘We live with it,’ replied Daviks.
‘This is Borganor!’ came a voice over the vox-channel. ‘We have
them engaged! Now is the time!’
‘Very well,’ replied Daviks. ‘We’re going in.’
Daviks gave a hand signal to the Silver Skull holding the detonator.
The Space Marines backed off and knelt, turning away from the wall,
and the charges went off. They were shaped to direct the full force into
the wall and it disintegrated, leaving a huge black hole from floor to
ceiling. The shockwave and debris toppled many of the servitor choir,
once-human components spilling out.
Gethsemar’s Angels Sanguine charged in before the debris had
finished pattering onto the floor. Smoke boiled out past them and the
gunfire was louder, the yells of orders overlapping with the cries of pain
as Space Marines fell.
Daviks followed Gethsemar. His squad was a siege engineer unit,
armed with bolters and demolition charges, while Gethsemar’s was an
all-out assault unit. Gethsemar soared forward, his jump pack hurling
him horizontally down the narrow alley of bookcases that confronted
him. His Sanguinary Guard were equally nimble with their jump packs,
jinking around the tight corners with bursts of exhaust, their feet barely
touching the ground. A Soul Drinker watching the rear of the library
was cut down as Gethsemar roared past him, his power glaive slicing
the sentry’s arm off before another Sanguinary Guard finished the job
with a downward cut that nearly bisected him.
The first Soul Drinkers were reacting to the sudden second front
opening up in the library. Daviks swapped bolter fire with Soul Drinkers
who ran around the corner in front of him, scattering books in the volley
of bolter fire his squad kicked out in reply. Two Soul Drinkers fell and
Daviks paused in his advance for long enough to put a bolter round
through the head of each. A Silver Skull did not take death for granted.
It was his way to be sure.
Gethsemar fell back past a corner up ahead. His golden armoured
body crashed against the bookcase behind him.
‘Gethsemar!’ yelled Daviks into the vox. ‘What is it?’
The thing that lumbered around the corner after Gethsemar was an
abhorrence that Daviks’s senses could barely contain. Composed of
screaming heads gathered in a roughly humanoid shape, its lumpen
shoulders brushed the ceiling of the library. The terrible cacophony
that keened from it was enough to all but stun Daviks, filling his mind
with the awful sound of pain and grief distilled. The thing’s hands were
bunches of withered and broken human arms, arranged like fingers,
and its head was a yawning maw ringed with bleeding jawbones. In its
throat, thousands of eyes clustered. The thing stamped a pace closer
to Gethsemar, trailing masses of entrails and tangled limbs in its
wake.
Daviks’
s squad opened fire, covering Gethsemar as he scrambled
out of the beast’s way. Bolter fire thudded into its hundreds of heads
but it did not falter. It turned to Daviks, mouth yawning wide as it
roared, and a gale of utter foulness shrieked around the Silver Skulls.
Bloodied hands reached from the bookcases. Mouths filled with
gnashing teeth opened up in the floor to snare their feet. The Angels
Sanguine were stumbling through the confusion, laying about them
with their glaives at every shape that loomed through the smoky
gloom.
‘Stand fast!’ yelled Daviks. ‘Onwards, brethren, for the honour is
ours! Though the Griffons reap the tally, it is we who shall take the
head of the arch-traitor! Sarpedon is here! Onwards and take his head!’
Daviks felt a flare of pride. It was unbecoming for him to lust after an
honour in battle, but it came unbidden, and he let it push him forward
through the horrors unfolding around him.
He knew that Sarpedon was here.
He knew it, because he had walked right into hell.
‘Do you know where you are?’ said the grating metallic voice of
Daenyathos.
N’Kalo struggled. He was chained. His consciousness barely
surfaced over the thudding of pain, but the feeling of his restraints sang
clearly. He forced against them, but they held.
He had been battered senseless. He remembered Iktinos, the skullhelm
of the Soul Drinkers Chaplain emotionless as the crozius
hammered again and again into the side of his head. Where and how
still escaped him. He was a captive, he was sure, and over him stood
a purple-armoured dreadnought that could only be the legendary
Daenyathos.
N’Kalo did not answer.
‘You are somewhere you will never leave,’ said Daenyathos.
N’Kalo was aware of a room of immense size. His vision swam back
beyond the dreadnought and he saw that he was in a cargo hold, a
vast space that could hold legions of tanks and Rhino APCs. It was
empty now save for the area set up in the centre, at the heart of which
N’Kalo was chained. He was surrounded by a complicated circular
pattern scorched into the deck, scattered with bones and flower
petals, gemstones and bundles of herbs, pages torn from books,
human teeth, bullets and chunks of rock torn from alien worlds. Around
this sigil knelt the pilgrims who had arrived on the Phalanx, they had
