by Nick Kyme
Curved redoubts and precisely angled bastions cut into the rock dominated the upper reaches of the mountain and coils of razor wire, like an endless field of thorns, carpeted every approach to its great, iron-spiked barbican.
Honsou’s Iron Warrior soul swelled with pleasure at the sight of so formidable a fortress.
Mighty defensive turrets protected the fortress, armed with guns capable of bringing down the heaviest spaceship and smashing any armada that dared come against this place.
Even in its prime, Khalan-Ghol could not have boasted so fearsome an array of weapons.
Ardaric Vaanes leaned in close and pointed to a nearby gun emplacement aimed at the heavens. ‘Big guns never tire, isn’t that what he always says?’
‘So it’s said,’ agreed Honsou, ‘but if what happened on Medrengard taught me anything, it’s that fortresses are static and it’s only a matter of time until someone attacks you. This place is impressive, right enough, but my days of fortress building are over.’
‘I never thought I’d hear an Iron Warrior say he was tired of fortresses.’
‘I’m not tired of fortresses, Vaanes,’ said Honsou with a grin. ‘I’m just directing my energies in bringing them to ruin.’
HONSOU HAD BASED his warriors on a northern promontory of the mountain, a site that offered natural protection in the form of sheer cliffs on three sides that dropped thousands of metres to the valley floor. Under normal circumstances, it would have been a poor site for a fortress, as it could easily be blockaded, but Honsou had no intention of staying for any length of time and his warband had cleared the promontory of its former occupants in a brutal firefight that had seen them hurling their captives to their doom as an offering to the gods.
The Iron Skull flew over Honsou’s temporary fortress, a graceless collection of gabions fashioned from linked sections of thick wire mesh lined with heavy-duty fabric and filled with sand, earth, rocks and gravel. A line of these blocky gabions stretched across the width of the promontory, and yet more had been stacked to form towers where heavy weapons could be mounted.
In truth, it was more of a defensive wall than a fortress and wasn’t a patch on even the lowliest Warsmith’s citadel on Medrengard, but it was as strong as he could make it and should suffice for the length of the Skull Harvest.
An adamantine gate swung outwards as Honsou and the others approached, the guns mounted on the blocky towers either side of it tracking them until they passed inside. Two dozen Iron Warriors manned the walls, their armour dusty and scored by the planet’s harshly unpredictable climate. The remainder of Honsou’s force was spread throughout the camp or aboard the Warbreed, the venerable ship that had brought them here and which now moored uneasily among the fleets in orbit around this world.
Honsou marched directly to an iron-sheeted pavilion at the centre of his camp, itself protected by more of the blocky, earth-filled gabions. His banner snapped and fluttered in the wind, the Iron Skull seeming to grin with a mocking sneer, as though daring the world to attack. Grendel, Vaanes and the Newborn followed him past the two hulking warriors in Terminator armour guarding the entrance to the pavilion. Each of the giant praetorians was armed with a long, hook-bladed pike and looked like graven metal statues, their bodies as inflexible as their hearts.
Inside the pavilion, the walls were hung with maps depicting arcs of the galaxy, planetary orbits, system diagrams and a variety of mystical sigils scrawled on pale sheets of skin, both human and alien. An iron-framed bed sat in the centre of the space, surrounded by bare metal footlockers filled with books and scrolls. A trio of smoking braziers filled the pavilion with the heady scent of burning oils said to draw the eyes of the gods.
Honsou set his axe upon a rack of weapons and poured himself a goblet of water from a copper ewer. He didn’t offer any to his champions and took a long draught before turning to face them.
‘So,’ he began, ‘What do you make of our first foray?’
Grendel helped himself to a goblet of water and said, ‘Not bad, though I didn’t get to kill anything. If this Pashtoq Uluvent is as mad as all the other followers of the Blood God I’ve met, then we shouldn’t have to wait too long for his response.’
‘Vaanes? What do you think? You’ve fought in one of these before, what happens next?’
‘First you’ll be summoned to the citadel to pay homage,’ said Vaanes, idly lifting a book from the foot-locker nearest the bed. ‘Then there will be a day of sacrifices before the contests begin.’
‘Homage,’ spat Honsou. ‘I detest the word. I give homage to no man.’
‘That’s as may be,’ said Vaanes. ‘But you’re not so powerful you can break the rules.’
Honsou nodded, though it sat ill with him to bow and scrape before another, even one as infamous as the master of this world. He snatched the book Vaanes held and set it down on the bed.
‘And after all this homage and sacrifice, what happens after that?’
‘Then the killings begin,’ said Vaanes, looking in puzzlement at him. ‘The leaders of the various warbands challenge one another for the right to take their warriors. Mostly their champions answer these challenges, for only when the stakes are highest do the leaders enter the fray.’
‘These challenges, are they straight up fights?’ asked Honsou.
‘Sometimes,’ said Vaanes. ‘The last one usually is, but they can take any form before that. You almost never know until you set foot in the arena what you’ll be up against. I’ve seen clashes of tanks, bare-knuckle fighting to the death, battles with xenos monsters and psychic duels. You never know.’
‘That mean I’ll maybe get to kill something?’ said Grendel with undisguised relish.
‘I can as good as guarantee it,’ replied Vaanes.
‘Then we need to know what we’re up against,’ said Honsou. ‘If we’re going to get ourselves an army, we need to know who we’re taking it from.’
‘How do you propose we do that?’ said Grendel.
‘Go through the city. Explore it and find out who’s here. Learn their strengths and weaknesses. Make no secret of where your allegiance lies and if you need to crack some heads open, then that’s fine too. Grendel, you know what to do?’
‘Aye,’ agreed Grendel, with a gleam of anticipation in his eye. ‘I do indeed.’
Honsou caught the look that passed between the Newborn and Ardaric Vaanes, relishing their confusion. It never did to have your underlings too familiar with your plans.
‘Now get out, I have research to do,’ said Honsou, lifting the book he had taken off Vaanes from the bed. ‘Amuse yourselves as you see fit until morning.’
‘Sounds like a plan to me,’ said Grendel, drawing a long-bladed knife.
Honsou was about to turn away from his subordinates when he saw the Newborn cock its head to one side and the inner light that lurked just beneath its borrowed skin pulse with a shimmering heartbeat. In the months they had fought together, Honsou recognised the warning.
‘Enemies are approaching,’ said the Newborn, answering Honsou’s unasked question.
‘What? How do you know?’ demanded Grendel.
‘I can smell the blood,’ said the Newborn.
THE GROUND BEFORE Honsou’s defensive wall was littered with bodies. Gunfire flashed from the towers and ramparts, a brutal curtain of fire that sawed through the ranks of flak-armoured warriors who hurled themselves without fear at the gates. Sudden darkness had fallen, as though a shroud of night had been cast over the promontory, and stuttering tongues of flame lit the night as the two forces tore at one another.
The Newborn’s warning had come not a second too soon and Honsou had massed his warriors on the crude walls in time to see a host of screaming men emerge from the darkness towards them. They were an unlikely storming force, a ragged mix of human renegades of all shapes and sizes. Most wore iron masks or skull-faced helmets and their uniforms – such as they were – were little more than bloodstained rags stitched together like the Newborn’s
skin.
They came on in a howling mass, firing a bizarre mix of weapons at the defenders. Las-bolts and solid rounds smacked into the walls or from the ceramite plates of the Iron Warriors. What the attackers lacked in skill and tactical acumen, they made up for in sheer, visceral ferocity.
It wasn’t nearly enough.
Disciplined volleys barked again and again from the Iron Warriors and line after line of attackers was cut down. Their primitive armour was no match for the mass-reactive bolts of the defenders, each a miniature rocket that exploded within the chest cavity of its target.
Heavy weapons on the towers carved bloody gouges in the attacking horde, but the carnage only seemed to spur them to new heights of fanaticism, as though the bloodshed were an end in itself.
‘Don’t these fools realise they’ll never get in?’ said Ardaric Vaanes as he calmly snapped off a shot that detonated within the bronze mask of a flag-waving maniac as he ran at the gate without even a weapon unsheathed.
‘They don’t seem to care,’ said Honsou, reloading his bolter. ‘This isn’t about getting in, it’s about letting us know that we’re being challenged.’
‘You reckon these are Uluvent’s men?’ said Grendel, clearly enjoying this one-sided slaughter. Grendel had allowed the enemy to reach his section of the walls before ordering his men to open fire, and Honsou saw the relish he took in such close-range killing. ‘Without a doubt,’ said Honsou.
‘He must have known they’d all get killed,’ pointed out Vaanes.
‘He didn’t care,’ said the Newborn, standing just behind Honsou’s right shoulder. Its unnatural flesh was still glowing and there was a hungry light in its eyes. ‘His god cares not from where the blood flows and neither does he. By throwing away the lives of these men, Pashtoq Uluvent is showing us how powerful he is. That he can afford to lose so many men and not care.’
‘Getting clever in your old age,’ said Grendel with a grin and slapped the arm of the Newborn. His champion flinched at Grendel’s touch and Honsou knew it detested the mohicaned warrior. Something to bear in mind if Grendel became a problem.
The slaughter – it could not be called a battle – continued for another hour before the last shots faded. The attackers had not retreated and had fought to the last, their bodies spread like a carpet of ruptured flesh and blood before the Iron Warriors compound.
The strange darkness that had come with the attack now lifted like the dawn and Honsou saw a lone figure threading his way through the field of corpses towards the fortress.
Cadaras Grendel raised his bolter, but Vaanes reached out and lowered the weapon’s barrel.
‘What the hell do you think you’re doing, Vaanes?’ snarled Grendel.
‘That’s not one of Uluvent’s men,’ said Vaanes. ‘You don’t want to kill this one.’
‘Shows what you know,’ said the scarred warrior, turning to Honsou for acknowledgement. Honsou gave a brief nod and turned to watch as the newcomer approached the gate without apparent fear of the many guns aimed at him.
‘Who is he?’ said Honsou. ‘Do you recognise him?’
‘No, but I know who he represents,’ said Vaanes, gesturing to the looming citadel that dominated the skyline. ‘Open the gates,’ ordered Honsou. ‘Let’s hear what he has to say.’
DESPITE HIS EARLIER confidence, Honsou couldn’t help but feel apprehensive as he climbed the twisting, corkscrew stairs carved into the sheer sides of the rock face that led towards the mountainous citadel. The emissary led them, his sandaled feet seeking out the steps as surely as if he had trod them daily for a thousand years. For all Honsou knew, perhaps he had.
Honsou had met the emissary, a nameless peon in the robes of a scribe, at the gate of his makeshift fortress where he was handed a scroll case of ebony inlaid with golden thorns. He removed the scroll, a single sheet of cartridge paper instead of the more melodramatic human skin he’d expected, and read the tight, mechanical-looking script written upon it before passing the scroll to Ardaric Vaanes.
‘Well?’ he’d said when Vaanes had read its contents.
‘We go,’ said Vaanes instantly. ‘When this world’s master summons you, it is death to refuse.’
His message delivered, the emissary turned and led them through the squalid streets of the city towards the tallest peak, climbing steep stairs cut into the rocky flanks of the mountain. Honsou had brought Vaanes and the Newborn with him, leaving Grendel to finish the execution of the wounded attackers and keep the compound safe against further assaults.
The climb was arduous, even to one whose muscles were enhanced with power armour, and many times Honsou thought he was set to plummet to his death until the Newborn helped steady him. Their route took them across treacherous chain bridges, along narrow ledges and though snaking tunnels that wound a labyrinthine passage through the depths of the mountain and avoided the fields of razor wire. Though he tried to memorise the route, Honsou soon found himself confounded by occluded passageways, switchbacks and the strange angles within the bowels of the fortress.
On the few occasions they emerged onto the side of the mountain, Honsou saw how high they had climbed. Below them, the city shone like a bruised diamond, torches and cookfires dotting the mountainside like sunlight on quartz as the skies darkened to a sickly purple. Thousands upon thousands of warriors were gathered in makeshift camps throughout the city and Honsou knew that if he made the right moves, they could be his.
Any army gathered from this place would be a patchwork force of differing fighting styles, races and temperaments, but it would be large and, above all, it would be powerful enough to achieve its objective. And if the books he had taken from the chained libraries of Khalan-Ghol gave up their secrets, he would have something of even greater value than mere warriors to drown the worlds of Ultramar in blood.
The higher they climbed, the more Honsou felt his appreciation for the design of this fortress shift from grudging admiration to awe. It was constructed with all the cunning of the most devious military architect, yet eschewed the brutal functionality common to the Iron Warriors for a malicious spite in some of the more deadly traps.
At last, they emerged within an enclosed esplanade lined with pillars and crowned with what could only be the outer hull plates of a spaceship. The metal was buckled and scored from multiple impacts, the sheeting blackened and curved where the intense heat of laser batteries had pounded the armour to destruction.
A great, thorn-patterned gate stood open at the end of the esplanade and a hundred warriors in power armour lined the route they must take through it. Each of the warriors was armoured differently, a multitude of colours and designs, some so old they were the image of that worn by Honsou. Only one thing unified these warriors, a jagged red cross painted through the Chapter insignia worn on their left shoulder guard.
The emissary led them down this gauntlet of warriors, and Honsou saw Salamanders, Night Lords, Space Wolves, Dark Angels, Flesh Tearers, Iron Hands and a dozen other Chapters. He noted with grim amusement that no Ultramarines made up these warriors’ numbers and doubted that any of Macragge’s finest would be found in this garrison.
Beyond the gateway, the fortress became a gaudy palace, a golden wonder of fabulous, soaring design that was completely at odds with the external solemnity of its design. Honsou found the interior garish and vulgar, its ostentation the antithesis of his tastes, such as they were. This was not the palace of a warlord; it was the domain of a decadent egotist. Then again, he should not have been surprised, after all, wasn’t it his monstrous ego and megalomania that had brought the citadel’s builder low in the first place? At last they came to a set of gilded doors, taller than a warlord titan, which swung open in a smooth arc to reveal a grand throne room of milky white marble and gold. The sounds of voices and armoured bodies came from beyond and, as Honsou and his retinue followed the emissary through, they saw the towering form of a daemonic Battle Titan serving as the backdrop to a tall throne that sat on a raised dais at the far en
d of the chamber.
A hundred captured battle flags hung from the vaulted ceiling and the chamber was thick with warriors of all sizes and descriptions.
‘I thought this summons was just for us,’ said Honsou.
‘What made you think that?’ replied Vaanes. ‘Did you think you were a special case?’
Honsou ignored the venomous relish in Vaanes’s words and didn’t reply. He had thought the summons was for him and him alone, but saw how foolish that belief had been. This was the Skull Harvest and every warrior gathered here would be thinking that he alone would be the victor.
He saw a profusion of horns, crimson helms, glittering axes and swords, alien creatures in segmented armour and a riotous profusion of standards, many depicting one of the glorious sigils of the Dark Gods.
‘Should we have brought a standard?’ hissed Honsou, leaning close to Ardaric Vaanes.
‘We could have, but it wouldn’t have impressed him.’
‘There is fear in this room,’ said the Newborn. ‘I can sense it flowing through this place like the currents of the warp.’
Honsou nodded. Even he could sense the lurking undercurrent of unease that permeated the throne room. The throne itself was empty, a carved block of thorn-wrapped onyx that would surely dwarf any man who sat upon it, even a Space Marine.
He turned as his instincts for danger warned him of threat and his hand snatched to his sword hilt as a looming shadow enveloped him.
‘You are Honsou?’ said a booming voice like the sound of tombstones colliding.
‘I am,’ he said, looking up into the furnace eyes of a warrior clad in vivid red battle plate that was scarred and burned with the fires of battle and which resembled the lined texture of exposed muscle. His shoulder guards were formed from an agglomerated mass of bones, upon which was carved the icon of a planet being devoured between a set of fanged jaws.
Upon a heavily scored breastplate of fused ribs, Honsou saw a red skull branded over the insignia of an eight-pointed star and knew who stood before him. The warrior’s blazing eyes were set deep within a helmet fashioned from a skull surely taken from the largest greenskin imaginable, and they were fixed on Honsou in an expression of controlled rage.
