Cold fear gripping him, Verenus began to fire wildly up at the incoming daemons. His soldiers began to run.
The monsters swooped down low over the Boros 232nd, unfurling blade-like talons to slash at their prey. The face of one soldier was ripped off as claws hooked into his flesh. Several soldiers were lifted off their feet, talons locking around their necks and shoulders, and others fell screaming as daemons dropped upon them, bearing them to the ground under their weight, biting and ripping.
A wild shot from Verenus hit one of the creatures in its skinless head. Its flesh, the colour of raw liver, turned grey and black as it cooked, and it crashed to the ground, the bones of its wings snapping as it impacted and rolled, bowling one of his soldiers over in the process. The man screamed horribly as the creature tore at him, slashing with its talons and biting with its needle fangs.
All semblance of order was lost. The Guardsmen of the Boros 232nd scattered blindly, and the daemons continued to sow their terror, ripping the soldiers apart in a gory frenzy.
Verenus was shouting orders, but no one heard him. Hot blood splashed across his face as the man at his side was slain, his throat torn out. Talons raked his shoulder, and Verenus screamed in pain, dropping his weapon. Wild with panic, one of his own soldiers ran into him blindly, desperate to escape, and Verenus was knocked to the ground. All hope was lost. Death had finally come for him.
A shadow descended on Verenus and he dropped to one knee, raising an arm protectively as a hideous, screeching fury hurtled overhead, talons slashing. He gasped as the daemon’s claws locked shut around his forearm, digging deep into his flesh. His shoulder was almost torn from its socket as he was dragged to his feet. Leathery wings covered in a spider web of red and blue veins flapped heavily, and Verenus felt a sudden panic as his feet lost contact with the ground.
The fury looked down at him, snarling. Its eyes were yellow and catlike and oozed steaming, milky tears. It opened its mouth wide – too wide – and strings of saliva dripped from its needle-teeth. A dozen worm-like tongues squirmed in its throat, and Verenus felt its hot breath upon his face. It smelt like sulphur, rotting meat and electricity.
A heavy weight suddenly pulled the fury back down towards the earth, and it screeched in anger. It released Verenus, who fell to the ground heavily, and coiled around to slash at the figure that had a solid grip upon its tail.
From the ground, Verenus looked up to see an imposing figure surrounded in a halo of light, a holy aura that made his breath catch in his throat. For a moment it was as if time stood still. Verenus was not alone in witnessing this divine vision; all the soldiers of Boros Prime nearby saw it, this holy figure bathed in seraphic light.
The glowing nimbus lasted just a fraction of a second, and while the rational part of Verenus’s mind insisted it was nothing but a momentary trick of the light reflecting off alabaster armour plates, the impression was indelible.
The halo bathing the figure dissipated, and the immense figure of a White Consul stood there, defiant and unwavering. Brother Aquilius, Coadjutor of Boros Prime, held the daemon by one of its hind legs. As it turned to swipe at him, spitting in hatred, he slammed his bolter into the side of its head. The force of the blow smashed it to the ground, crushing its skull.
Still alive, it landed heavily upon its back, and in one swift, violent movement it flipped itself over, snarling, crouched on all fours. Its tail cracked like a whip as it readied to spring, but before it could, Aquilius planted his foot upon its back and pinned it to the ground.
The White Consul pressed the barrel of his bolter against the back of its skinless head. It thrashed wildly but could not escape the crushing weight of the Space Marine.
‘Begone daemon-spawn!’ said Aquilius. The infernal beast’s movements ceased as he planted a bolt in its head. Within seconds, the creature had rotted away, its flesh ridden with maggots and worms before liquefying, leaving just a foetid pool of foulness upon the ground.
‘Be strong, men of Boros!’ shouted the White Consul. ‘The Emperor is with us!’
Verenus snatched up a lasgun from a fallen Guardsman and began firing on full auto, all fear evaporated. Other soldiers of the Boros 232nd fell in around Aquilius and Verenus, forming a tight knot of defiance anchored around the holy Astartes warrior.
One by one the screaming daemons were cut down, hissing ichor bursting from their Chaotic bodies, and Verenus felt savage joy to see the deviant, unholy beasts banished back to the warp.
In the aftermath of battle he felt exultant, invigorated and inspired. He had felt the presence of the Emperor in that battle, and he saw the same glow of belief reflected in the eyes of his soldiers.
‘We are going to win this war, aren’t we?’ said one of his men.
‘We are,’ said Verenus, for the first time actually believing it. He turned his gaze towards Aquilius, talking softly with some of his soldiers. ‘The White Angel is with us.’
To the Word Bearers, the battlefield was their most sacred church, and Boros Prime had become one immense battlefield. The full Hosts of three Dark Apostles had descended upon it, hatred in their hearts. Every death was a sacrifice, and Marduk could feel the gluttonous pleasure of his infernal deities. Yet he could also sense their impatience, mirroring his own, and those of his captains.
Marduk’s chainsword was glutted with blood, but it still hungered for more. He was crouched low, moving towards the enemy position. He saw the enemy gathering for another assault, he knew that the daemon within his weapon, Borgh’ash, would not have long to wait.
‘It offends me that we have not yet won this war,’ came Kol Badar’s voice in Marduk’s ear. ‘This wretched planet resists us with every step!’
Marduk and Kol Badar were communing over a closed vox-channel, their words heard by none but each other. The Coryphaus was located over a hundred kilometres away, in the north-east of the sprawling city known as Sirenus Principal, fighting to hold a key landing-zone from Imperial counter-attack. The Imperial Guard, bolstered by White Consuls, had been battling for six solid days to retake the location.
‘Their resistance is frustrating,’ said Marduk. ‘But it cannot last.’
He rose to his full height and dropped two Guardsmen with carefully aimed shots from his bolt pistol. Shouts and gunfire erupted all around him, and Marduk broke cover, closing the distance with the enemy swiftly.
‘They threaten to overrun us at a score of key locations, through sheer numbers,’ continued Kol Badar. ‘The other Hosts too are struggling to maintain their footholds.’
‘Our faith is our armour,’ growled Marduk as he killed, tearing apart the chest of a Guardsman with his chainsword. He stepped forward and gunned down two more Guardsmen who were backing away from him, horror written across their faces. ‘With true faith, nothing can harm us.’
‘Empty rhetoric,’ came Kol Badar’s crackling reply. ‘It means nothing.’
‘Speak not such heresy, Kol Badar,’ said Marduk, breaking the arm of a Guardsman with a backhand swipe, before clubbing him to the ground with his bolt pistol. He slammed his boot down upon the warrior’s neck, breaking it with an audible crack. ‘Armoured with true faith, nothing can defeat us.’
‘All your praying will not stop their Bombards and Basilisks from ripping the Host to pieces, little by little.’
‘We will break them,’ said Marduk. ‘Their world is falling around them. It will be only a matter of time before their will is broken.’
The Dark Apostle lowered his smoking bolt pistol as the enemy routed before him.
‘Casualties?’ he said over his shoulder.
‘Two,’ replied Sabtec, champion of the exalted 13th. ‘Shulgar of 19th Coterie, and Erish-Bhor of the 52nd.’
‘The enemy?’ said Marduk, surveying the carnage before him. Bodies were strewn across the open square that the Imperials had been trying to retake.
Sabtec shrugged, the servo-motors of his power armour whining as they tried to replicate the movement.
&n
bsp; ‘Two hundred, give or take.’
‘A goodly sacrifice,’ said Marduk.
Sabtec grunted in response, and the Dark Apostle could feel what his champion was thinking.
‘Every one of their deaths brings us closer to victory,’ he said. His words sounded hollow, even to his own ears.
Sabtec saluted and spun away, barking orders.
A hot wind clawed at Marduk’s blood-matted cloak, bringing with it the redolence of butchery and oil, industry and suffering, and the insidious electric tang of Chaos itself.
The world was changing, and it would never again be the same. Like a worm wriggling its way through the core of an apple, the taint of Chaos was now rooted in the very substance of Boros Prime. Even if the Word Bearers were to leave, the Imperium would be forced to abandon it.
Even so, Marduk’s face was grim. Victory was a certainty, he was sure of this, and yet with every passing day it seemed further from their grasp. The acidic taste of defeat was in his mouth, no matter how he tried to deny it.
His warriors were genetically enhanced killers armoured in the finest power armour. Each was more than a match for fifty or a hundred lesser mortals. Their weapons slew tens of thousands with every passing day, and their war engines sowed terror and destruction across the length and breadth of the world. A demi-Legion of Titans marched behind them, laying waste to entire cities.
Nevertheless, the number of XVII Legion warrior brothers fighting upon the surface of Boros Prime numbered less than seven thousand all told, whereas Imperial vermin infested this world.
Boros Prime was home to more than twelve billion, and almost another two billion had been evacuated to the relative safety of the planet from its surrounding planets and moons. More than half of that number served in its armed forces, or had been drafted into service. Every citizen of eligible age served a tenure in the Guard – even the bureaucrats and public servants knew their way around a lasgun and basic small-unit tactics. By Marduk’s reckoning, the five thousand warriors of Lorgar faced off against nigh on ten billion soldiers. Added to the mix were the White Consuls, and while there were no more than three companies engaged here on Boros – three hundred loyalist Astartes – their mere presence bolstered the resolve of the Guardsmen, and they were always to be found in the thickest fighting. In these battles, neither side gave any quarter, their fury and hatred fuelled by ten thousand years of mutual loathing and bitterness. It was glorious.
Industrious forge-hives located towards the poles spewed out a constant stream of weapons and armour, and the smoking plains outside the world’s sprawling cities were dominated by massive tank formations. The Titans of Legio Vulturus had stalked out to meet one of these grand tank companies, and had notched up a kill-tally numbering in the thousands. Nevertheless, these confirmed kills were rendered insignificant against the sheer number of tanks taking the field. Four Titans, ancient war engines that had stalked across battlefields for ten thousand years, were brought down and three others suffered crippling damage as their void shields and armoured carapaces were hammered by ordnance and focused battle cannon fire. One of the Titans, one hulking Warlord-class engine, now a daemonically infested monster, was laid low by a devastating barrage from super-heavy Shadowswords. Suffering these losses, the Legio had been forced from the plains back into the relative safety of Boros’s cities.
Far to the north, in the frozen wastes, the Dark Apostle Belagosa, the ranks of his host swollen with the warriors of Sarabdal’s Host, fought a bloody siege against the largest of the world’s industrial forge-hives. Five thousand kilometres southward, Ankh-Heloth’s 11th Host ranged eastward, occupying and destroying the equatorial city-bastions in turn.
Every day tens of thousands of enemy soldiers perished, but every day scores of Word Bearers fell, and their loss was felt keenly. On all three fronts, the Word Bearers suffered.
Marduk’s gaze lifted. Though he could see past the choking fumes engulfing the lower atmosphere, he knew that beyond, hanging in orbit like a malevolent sentinel, was the Kronos star fort. It too still held out, fighting Ekodas and his Host to a standstill. Like clockwork, every hour the star fort would unleash its barrage upon the world below, decimating everything within a three-kilometre radius of its target. The constant need for Marduk’s Host to shift its battlefront to avoid annihilation was growing tiresome, and while on one hand he wished that Ekodas would hurry up and take the orbital bastion, there was a part of him that relished the Apostle’s failure.
Nevertheless, Marduk felt his anger rise as he gazed heavenward. If the star fort had fallen, then the Chaos fleet would have been able to move into high orbit and commence a devastating bombardment upon the planet below that would have quickly changed the tide of the war. As it was, no Chaos warship was able to move into position without coming under fire from the Imperial star fort. For the thousandth time, Marduk cursed Ekodas’s name for his weakness.
Like rolling thunder, artillery batteries in the distance began to roar.
‘They attack again, Dark Apostle,’ called Sabtec.
‘Let them come,’ said Marduk.
Ashkanez stalked back and forth within the centre of the gathering of hooded Astartes of the 34th Host, the strength of his faith and conviction obvious in every inflection, in every movement.
The clandestine meeting was taking place in the dead of night within the burnt-out shell of a bunker complex. The ground shook with intermittent artillery shelling in the distance, and flashes lit the night sky. Aircraft could be heard roaring overhead. It was a small group, numbering less than twenty of the cult members. With the war raging, it was difficult for Coterie members to slip away from their warrior brothers unobserved, yet even so, the Brotherhood met in dozens of small congregations like this whenever it could.
Burias draw his hood up over his face as he ghosted in to join the gathering.
‘In the aftermath of the cleansing, the Legion shall be stronger,’ Ashkanez was saying. ‘The Legion shall be unified once more.’
Ashkanez stopped stalking back and forth and lowered his voice.
‘But more than this,’ he said, ‘it is prophesied that the Urizen shall once more walk among us.’
Burias’s eyes widened, and there were gasps and muttering from amongst the gather warrior brothers.
‘Yes, my brothers,’ said Ashkanez after a moment. ‘Once the cleansing has been achieved, our lord and Primarch Lorgar shall rejoin the Legion. Once more he shall lead us in glorified battle, striding at our forefront and setting the universe aflame with faith and death.’
‘Then let us begin!’ growled a voice in the crowd, which was greeted with murmurs and foot-stamping in agreement. Burias found himself nodding and lending his own voice to the proclamation. Ashkanez lifted a hand for silence.
‘I understand your eagerness, my brothers, for I feel it too. But no, we must not act yet. We must gather our strength, for the reach and cunning of our enemy is great.’
‘Who is the enemy of the Brotherhood, lord?’ said a voice from nearby.
Burias smiled, for he recognized that voice – it belonged to the brutal champion Khalaxis, a mighty warrior. He was pleased that Khalaxis too had been embraced into this noble fraternity.
‘I cannot say,’ said Ashkanez. ‘Not yet, at least. The enemy has ears everywhere. Perhaps even amongst us here.’
A heavy silence descended on the gathering. Ashkanez’s gaze fell upon Burias, noticing him for the first time. Even hooded as he was, Burias felt the First Acolyte’s eyes burrowing into his own.
‘But know that the day draws near, my brothers. And when it comes, we will all have our part to play.’
Ashkanez’s eyes lingered on Burias as he spoke these last words, and the Icon Bearer knew that they were spoken for him in particular. He would be ready, he swore to himself.
‘Return to your Coteries, my brothers,’ said Ashkanez. ‘All will be revealed soon.’
As the hooded warriors began to filter out of the shattered bun
ker-complex, Burias almost bumped into a towering warrior. Burias had noted his presence at several other Brotherhood conclaves, and though the warrior had always been careful to keep his identity concealed, as did all the brethren, from his size he was clearly garbed in Terminator armour – one of the Anointed.
‘My pardon, brother,’ said Burias.
The warrior did not respond, but as he looked up into the dark shadow of the warrior’s hood his eyes widened. The hulking warrior turned away, pulling his cowl down lower, and moved off.
‘It surprised me as well,’ said Ashkanez in a low voice, suddenly at the Icon Bearer’s side. Burias had not heard the First Acolyte’s approach. ‘But he has been with us since the beginning.’
‘But…’ said Burias. ‘You promised me–’
‘This changes nothing,’ said Ashkanez.
Burias’s face split in a daemonic grin, though hidden within the darkness of his cowl, it was all but invisible.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Proconsul Ostorius’s humming power blade was a blur as he cut through the melee. Wave after wave of boarding parties were assaulting the Kronos star fort in this, the latest attack by the Word Bearers, and as ever Ostorius was in the thick of it.
Ostorius fought with astonishing economy of movement, expending no more energy than was required. For all his skill, there was no flourish or showmanship in his combat style; he merely killed, effectively and efficiently, again and again.
He slashed his sword across the faceplate of a Word Bearer, cutting deep into flesh and bone, before spinning and driving his blade into the throat of another enemy. Blood bubbled up from the wound, spitting off the super-heated power sword’s blade.
Ostorius whipped his sword free, and before the Word Bearer had even hit the ground he was already away and moving, engaging a new foe. With his combat shield he turned aside a blade stabbing for him and cut down the Word Bearer with a stroke that sliced the enemy open from right shoulder blade to left hip.
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