The Lost and the Damned (The Horus Heresy Siege of Terra Book 2)

by Guy Haley

  The line bowed under the impact of the Blood Angels, but held. Guns fired from behind the shields, dropping more of the sons of Sanguinius. The Blood Angels wrenched at the Night Lords’ protection, dragging shields down and firing their bolters at the men behind, but they held. The line rearranged itself, and set firm.

  ‘Ilashovarath!’ The Night Lords officers shouted through their voxmitters. ‘Advance!’

  The Night Lords gave a wordless shout, and set themselves hard behind the shields. Arranged as a giant, pressing scrum, they pushed forwards. Blood Angels battered at them, killed them, but the pressure was immense. Red boots rasping on bloody rockcrete, the Night Lords pushed forwards three steps, and set their shields down again, rearranging themselves for another push.

  ‘Ilashovarath!’ The Night Lords commanded a second time.

  They shoved hard, pushing Raldoron and his men back another few steps towards the tower. The ground gained, they slammed down their shields and braced once more.

  Raldoron smote at his foe, but with the shields angled as they were, it was hard to land a telling blow, and though the shield in front of him bore several smoking gouges, it held. Raldoron reversed his grip, and pushed the point at the shield. Point and energy field worked together to cut into the surface. The breacher shield was thick, and though he strained with the effort, it nibbled only slowly through the metal towards its bearer.

  ‘Ilashovarath!’

  Night Lords’ shields squealed against the Blood Angels’ armour, forcing them back. Raldoron counted the distance to the southern tower of the Helios Gate. Two hundred metres. Each push brought the Night Lords a few metres closer to their gatehouse. They were dying from Thane’s shots angling in from above, but not quickly enough.

  ‘Ilashovarath!

  ‘Ilashovarath!

  ‘Ilashovarath!’

  The shield wall pushed on. The racket of weapons hitting shields was a hundred drums played to different rhythms. Raldoron had no need to push his blade. His sword sank into the shield before him as the legionary behind it was forced forwards. Bolts shot from the firing loops of the shields burst on his armour.

  Raldoron waited as long as he could.

  ‘Ilashovarath!’

  Until their backs were almost against the wall.

  ‘Ilashovarath!’

  The tower was behind them, massive, indomitable, its reinforced portals standing between the Night Lords and the taking of the gate.

  ‘Ilashovarath!’

  At the other points of the wall, similar things were happening. He wondered if any gates had fallen, if the enemy were on the wall elsewhere, or had come over it and got into the Palace.

  ‘Ilashovarath!’

  He had little vox contact with Bhab command. No guidance.

  ‘Ilashovarath!’

  Thane’s guns rained down their slaughter on the Night Lords. The Night Lords responded in kind, firing plasma guns up at the ramparts. Yellow-armoured figures fell back ablaze.

  ‘Ilashovarath!’

  The gate was ten metres behind him.

  The moment had come.

  ‘Now!’ Raldoron voxed.

  The portal ground open, rolling aside like the stone of an ancient tomb. Lens lights blinked at twice the height of a man. Servos purred in the darkness of the chamber.

  ‘Split!’ roared Raldoron.

  He yanked his sword free. His men stepped back. The shield wall, relieved of pressure, surged forwards in disarray.

  Giant footsteps thumped in the tower chamber towards the wall walk.

  Before the Dreadnoughts emerged onto the rampart, they were already firing.

  The first shots of the rotary cannons mowed down the leading ranks of Skraivok’s men. Shields shattered under thousand-round-a-minute blows. The shield wall broke. Three Contemptor-pattern Dreadnoughts in pristine red thundered out from the tower, the blood rain slicking them a bright gloss, and smashed into the Night Lords’ advance. Blue-armoured warriors were bowled over. A power fist smashed a Space Marine into the air, sending him shouting madly over the battlement to plummet down on the far side.

  The Blood Angels followed their walking dead, hacking and shooting. They roared like beasts, their famed refinement gone.

  The Dreadnoughts ploughed deep into the Night Lords’ line before the mass of troops slowed them to a halt. They stood embattled by dozens of Space Marines, and the real work began.

  The first Dreadnought fell a moment later, its leg blasted off by implosion charges.

  ‘My lord,’ growled Skraivok’s Atramentar sergeant. ‘We must take you to a place of safety.’

  ‘What, now, at the moment of my triumph?’ Skraivok scoffed. ‘When word of my deed reaches the Warmaster, I will be rewarded with power and with riches. If I depart now, I will be known as nothing but a coward.’

  ‘The leader!’ Another of his escort raised his combi-bolter, sighting it on a veteran captain whose armour was encrusted with high honours.

  Skraivok put his hand on the top of the Terminator’s gun and pushed it down.

  ‘He’s mine,’ he said. ‘I want him. I want it to be known that I killed the captain of this gate myself.’

  Skraivok pushed forwards into the fray. His Atramentar followed behind.

  The first Blood Angel he encountered died so easily Skraivok barely felt the ceramite part. The sword shifted in his hands as he swung, perfecting the strike. The edge cleaved through the warrior’s helm, cutting it in half, and passing deep into his torso. A lesser blade would have stuck, but not his sword. He pulled it out with a light tug, easy as plucking a blade of grass. Skraivok smiled to himself. Power flooded him. His body tingled with it.

  ‘Blood Angel!’ he shouted. His Terminators pushed aside the combatants, clearing him a path. ‘Blood Angel!’

  The ramparts were broad, but crammed with fighters. The fighting was close and dirty work. There was little room for finesse.

  Another Blood Angel died to Skraivok’s blows. The Atramentar laid about themselves, the booming of their power fists and the roar of their heavier weapons drawing the attention of one of the Blood Angels Ancients. It crushed the Space Marine it was fighting and threw down the leaking body. Bullets sprayed from its rotary cannon. One of the Atramentar was hit hundreds of times. The cannon overloaded his field generator, chewed through his layered ceramite and plasteel, and tore into the adamantium frame beneath. The man died inside his giant suit, and fell over heavily.

  ‘Deal with that for me would you, sergeant?’ said Skraivok. ‘I do not wish to be distracted. I will have that captain’s skin for my cloak.’

  ‘Our role is to protect the leader of–’

  ‘Do it!’ shrieked Skraivok. ‘Bring it down.’

  His sergeant said no more but moved with his men to engage the Dreadnought. Skraivok pushed on. The lines of the two warring Legions were by now thoroughly blended. Bodies clogged the rampart. Footing was treacherous, but the enemy captain was near.

  ‘Blood Angel!’ Skraivok yelled joyfully. ‘Face me!’

  The Blood Angel finished his opponent and turned to face the Night Lord. Upon his left pauldron, his name was emblazoned across a scroll plate, just legible under rivulets of blood.

  ‘Raldoron?’ said Skraivok. ‘The Raldoron?’ He made a few passes with his sword, revelling in its lightness, in its killing edge. ‘This will be a day to celebrate, the day I slew the hero of the Blood Angels!’ He saluted, and declaimed pompously, ‘I am Gendor Skraivok, the Painted Count, Lord Commander of the Night Lords Legion, and I am your end.’

  The Blood Angel was unimpressed. ‘Never heard of you,’ he said, and came in to attack, his power sword buzzing.

  Skraivok laughed and parried. The daemon sword moved with a mind of its own to block the blow so fast Raldoron was almost taken down by Skraivok’s riposte, only a wild slicing deflection turning it aside. A second strike was thus deflected by Raldoron, and a third. The First Captain of the Blood Angels was as good as his reputation sugg
ested, but Skraivok was filled with sorcerous foreknowledge and supernatural speed. He saw an opening, and moved in for the kill.

  He missed. He was too slow. Raldoron sidestepped the blow and twisted it aside with a slight flick of his blade.

  Skraivok stepped back. The delicious feeling of power was gone. The world lost its sheen. He was in the rain, on the wall, surrounded by the dead, and he could not beat this man.

  Panic gripped Skraivok’s gut. The blade was heavy. It would not respond as it had. Where before it accentuated his skills, lending him greater speed and strength, now it did nothing. Raldoron pressed his attack, battering at Skraivok with a flurry of blows that he could barely deflect.

  The daemon had deserted him.

  ‘No,’ said Skraivok. ‘It cannot be!’

  Raldoron’s power sword banged against the edge of Skraivok’s blade, sending him stumbling backwards.

  ‘That always was the problem with your Legion, Night Lord,’ said Raldoron. ‘You are quick with your torturer’s knives, but so few of you are worthy warriors.’

  Raldoron swung his sword overarm, building momentum into a blow that would cut a power-armoured warrior in two. Skraivok parried it only just in time, stepping back and nearly tripping on the corpse of a Night Lord. Raldoron followed with another blow, and another. Skraivok struggled to stop him. He was so fast. Skraivok was a Space Marine captain, and more than a passable swordsman, but Raldoron was a hero of the Imperium whose name was known across the galaxy.

  Raldoron attacked with greater ferocity. Skraivok’s arm was numb from deflecting the blows. He forayed a few attacks, but they put him in more danger, as Raldoron caught and countered every one. His latest riposte was turned away, and Raldoron’s power blade scraped sparks up the side of his breast-plate.

  ‘Atramentar!’ Skraivok called, his panic rising. ‘To me!’

  If they heard, they could do nothing; they fought the Blood Angels Dreadnought still, their number reduced to three.

  ‘Night Lords! Help me!’ His power pack scraped on rockcrete. He had his back to the outer crenellations, and could retreat no further.

  Raldoron faced him. His sword energy field buzzed in the downpour.

  ‘Listen to you,’ Raldoron said. ‘The masters of fear. You are cowards, like all cruel men.’

  Raldoron’s power sword slashed across Skraivok’s chest, breaking open the ceramite and severing his power cabling. The Painted Count staggered, unbalanced by the sudden loss of energy to his war-plate’s systems. Raldoron lunged forwards, stunning Skraivok further with a blow to the face from the punch guard of his sword. Cracks crazed over Skraivok’s eye-lenses. His faceplate systems fizzed and broke down into a display of meaningless blocks. He feebly attempted to parry, but Raldoron smashed it aside and turned the blade downwards, his own sword cutting deep into Skraivok’s greave, cleaving through ceramite, undersuit and flesh, and sliding into the bone.

  Skraivok staggered to the side, slipped and fell backwards into the chute of a crenel. A wedge-shaped gap between merlons, the crenel sloped down and narrowed towards the edge. Skraivok scrabbled at the smooth, polished plascrete of the surface, and succeeded only in making himself slide towards the killing drop.

  A red boot on his wounded leg pinned him in place.

  Skraivok cried out in pain.

  Raldoron leaned forwards to address him.

  ‘You are and always were an evil Legion. You took the Emperor’s mission and twisted it. Selfish. Monstrous. Tormentors of the weak,’ snarled Raldoron. ‘If Horus had not turned, I would have gladly led the hunt for your kind myself. I thank you from my heart that you came to my sword and saved me the trouble of looking.’ He shifted the weight of his foot, bringing another cry from Skraivok.

  ‘Wait!’ the Painted Count said. ‘I give you my surrender. You beat me. I am your prisoner!’

  ‘There can be no prisoners in this war,’ said Raldoron. ‘How much mercy have you shown to all those that you harmed? I have as much mercy for you as you had for them. Now get off my wall.’

  He shoved hard with his foot, sending Skraivok skidding towards the drop. The Night Lord dropped the daemon sword to grip at the polished rockcrete with both of his hands, but there was no purchase on the blood-slick surface. He managed to brace himself on the merlon’s rounded corners with his elbows, and for a moment he thought he might save himself. He looked up to see the Blood Angel still staring at him.

  ‘You are a pompous man,’ Skraivok said.

  Raldoron raised his bolt pistol.

  Screaming in defiance, Skraivok shoved himself over the edge, whence he plummeted, reaching terminal velocity long before he hit the ground and the stone broke him.

  The Night Lords were retreating. More than half their number had fallen. Three Terminators fought Ancient Axiel, but they would not last long. All those near Raldoron were dead. Thane’s men continued to shoot down onto the enemy, while his own warriors were reforming their squads to better discipline their firing at the retreating foe. A report from Captain Galliard of Raldoron’s Chapter crackled in his ear, informing him the Night Lords rearguard was falling back. Their gunships were powering up. True to their nature, some were taking off without their passengers, the pilots seizing the opportunity to save their own skins.

  But the battle was far from over.

  Siege towers lumbered on towards the wall, the nearest now approaching the cratered zone where the third outwork line had been. Enemy artillery pounded at the wall directly. Overhead the failing aegis held out the bombardment, but would not for much longer, while in the sky lines of fire marked the approach of hundreds of drop pods.

  ‘Thane,’ voxed Raldoron. ‘Imminent drop strike. What is the status of our reinforcements?’

  ‘Incoming,’ said Thane. ‘Requested Ninth and Seventh Legion reinforcements estimated arrival within fifteen minutes. Bhab has commanded four Imperial Army regiments to be redeployed from the inner districts as reserves to our section of the wall.’

  ‘I would prefer more legionaries.’

  More drop pods were hurtling through the clouds.

  ‘You have re-established contact with the Bhab Bastion?’

  ‘Hardline only.’

  ‘What occurs elsewhere?’

  ‘The same as here. Direct assault on the walls. No breaches reported.’

  Raldoron looked down the wall after his men. Close at hand, the final Atramentar went down to a piledriver blow from the Dreadnought. The fighting had drawn away from his position. The Night Lords were boxed in on both sides. The last ship was lifting off under fire it could not survive.

  ‘The threat here is contained,’ Raldoron said. ‘Concentrate all fire on the siege towers. If we can weather their assault, and that of the drop pods, then we may yet–’

  A squeal of feedback cut off the line between Thane and Raldoron.

  ‘Thane?’ he said. ‘Thane?’

  He scrolled through other channels. The vox was silent, then half deafened him with a cacophony of screams, like a million people dying at once. He shut it off.

  Flame burned in the sky. Lightning spread out in a ring around the fire. Thunder rolled.

  A fireball fell from the churning heavens towards the land before the Helios Gate; too big to be a drop pod, too controlled to be debris from the fleet, too slow to be a shell or mass round.

  Raldoron followed the fireball down, the blood running over his helm blurring its outline.

  It hit the ground, sending out a billow of flame that raced over traitor and loyalist alike.

  The vox burst back into life.

  ‘What was that?’ said Thane.

  Raldoron increased the magnification of his helm lenses, revealing a smoking figure crouched in the glowing, eight-pointed emblem of the enemy stamped into the ground by its arrival. Bat wings wrapped around the figure protectively. Its head was bowed, a giant, black sword placed point down into the earth, both hands resting on the hilt. Fissures raced away from the sword point, and fi
res glowed within. The fissures widened, becoming chasms, and from them leapt sheets of flame.

  The figure at the centre of the octed rose, spread its wings, and lifted its sword to show the world it had arrived. Raldoron didn’t recognise it at first. The being was vast, a daemon-beast of a size that exceeded those he had battled on Signus. But something in the way it moved made him suddenly sure of its identity.

  ‘Angron. It is Angron,’ said Raldoron quietly. ‘By the Emperor, what has happened to him?’

  Even from so far away, the primarch’s fury touched Raldoron, stirring something hot and vile in the Blood Angel’s being.

  Angron howled. Horus’ mortal armies surged forwards over the carpet of dead fronting the outworks and the walls. The first drop pods hit the ground among them, hatches blowing wide, bringing more Space Marines into the attack. Dreadclaw pods angled down at the walls. The dying aegis destroyed some; others hit the fortifications and glanced off. More extended their claws at the right moment, catching the crenellations and holding fast. Two landed close together, between Raldoron and his men engaging the remnants of the Night Lords. World Eaters leapt from inside into the downpour of blood.

  ‘Father!’ roared the giant; his furious, brazen voice was empowered by the violence, thundering louder than any cannonade and audible over all the racket of battle. ‘I have come for you!’

  The breaking of the line

  The gates open

  The Great Mother

  Palace outworks, Daylight Wall section 16, 15th of Quartus

  Katsuhiro was running from the tunnel when Bastion 16 exploded. Flaming chunks of rockcrete rained down over that section of the battlefield, as deadly as any weapon. The outer lines were deserted, and with the bastion gone there was nothing to hold back the enemy. They poured over the shattered ground. Worse things were joining them, emerging from the smoke and fire to kill. Surrounded by flames, Katsuhiro did not see Angron fall from the sky, but he heard his call, and he saw the things the fallen primarch summoned.