Praetorian of Dorn

by John French

  Dorn’s eyes moved to the neatly arranged scrolls, and he picked one up and spread it out on the table. Inked plans for buildings and structures crossed the parchment in black lines. Columns of notes and figures marched down the margins. Dorn examined each of the scrolls in turn, replacing them precisely where they had been. Archamus felt apprehension clench in his guts as his own pen work slid under Dorn’s eyes.

  ‘These plans, they are not for fortifications on this world,’ said Dorn, spreading the last plan on the table. A soaring structure of high pillars and curved crystal lay across the sheet, dissected and rendered in black ink. ‘Unless I have lost the ability to read an ink plan, this is not a fortification at all.’

  ‘Merely an exercise in craft, lord,’ said Archamus, unsure if he was facing a rebuke. The plans that Dorn was examining were some that he had been working on before the attack. ‘Theoretical works, that is all.’

  ‘They are excellent,’ said Dorn. ‘Though you have overcompensated for the weight of the dome structures in the thickness of the main pillar.’

  ‘The compression tolerance of most metamorphic limestone seemed to necessitate it, lord.’

  ‘The stone of the Pendelikon quarries has a higher tolerance, and a half degree added to the taper of the secondary pillars will balance the weight transfer, and correct the imperfection in the proportions when seen from the ground.’

  Archamus stared at Dorn, not knowing what to say. The primarch smiled.

  ‘You have both ability and eyes that see further than the task in front of you.’

  ‘Seneschal Calev taught me well.’

  ‘You learned well too.’ Dorn put the plans back down on the table.

  The ceiling shook, and a trail of dust fell from the evening sky. They both looked up.

  ‘They come again,’ said Archamus.

  ‘You have built a good dam to hold them back,’ said Dorn. ‘But it will fall in twelve hours.’

  Archamus struggled to control his shock.

  ‘But with you here, lord – now we can hold. They will beat themselves to nothing against us.’

  Dorn’s smile slid into something more tired and knowing.

  ‘I thank you for your faith, Archamus, but I did not say that it would fall because they would break us. It will fall because we will let it fall.’

  Archamus felt the blood pull from the skin of his face. His mind turned over and over, and the question he had not asked now came to his lips.

  ‘Why are you here, lord?’

  All traces of the smile had gone from Dorn’s face. His gaze was hard and cold.

  ‘The right question. I am here to defeat the orks that have come to this world, to crush them utterly and leave none alive to blight the stars.’ He turned back to the table and gestured to a stack of unused parchment, and Archamus’ draughtsman’s tools. ‘May I?’

  ‘Of course, lord. They are yours.’

  Dorn picked up a stick of graphite. In his hand it seemed like a grey pin. He began to draw. Archamus stared as circles and lines appeared, and then depth and relation formed in subtle shading. Not once did Dorn pause, and the trace of each line was perfect. Planets, moons and the drift of nebulae appeared. Then marks, runes and zones cut through the impression, marking it with locations, strengths of forces and lines of attack.

  Dorn put the drawing aside and took a second sheet, and the surface of Rennimar grew on the blank leaf. Mountains and vast seas spread as though Dorn’s hand were scraping the grime from a window that looked down on them from orbit. The positions of the river valley, the mountains and the fortress they now stood in came into being. Dorn paused for the first time, but Archamus sensed that it was for emphasis rather than time to consider. Then other fortifications, large and small, began to appear, dotting the sides of the river plain beyond the mountain-line.

  Dorn put the stick of graphite down. Archamus stared at what was before his eyes.

  ‘You were waiting for them...’ he breathed.

  ‘Yes,’ said Dorn. ‘This horde is a shard of the forces of the Over-Tyrant of Grel. When the Sixth and Fourteenth Legions broke the core of the beast’s domain, they did not destroy all of the orks. Armies scattered, perhaps to create their own realms of war, perhaps to burn whatever they could find. They do not have the numbers of the Over-Tyrant’s horde, but they have more than enough strength to put worlds to the torch. If left unchecked, who knows how that danger might grow and multiply? But while we knew that they had fled, where they went was far from clear.’

  ‘So you waited for them to come to a world.’

  ‘And now we know where they are, they can be killed. I have brought ten thousand of the Legion to this world, no more, and with that we will do this bloody deed and then build a new world on the ashes. A bloodied and scarred world, but a world that will know truth and grow strong.’

  ‘It has suffered much already, lord. The cities to the north of here...’

  ‘Strength and truth shall be its future, but for now it will serve us as a place of slaughter. And this will be a slaughter, Archamus. That is the price of that future.’

  Archamus looked down at the plans that Dorn had drawn and the future they outlined. It was breathtaking.

  ‘Why did we not know? Why did you not tell us of what might come for us?’

  ‘I did not know on which world the blow would fall. There are twenty-one worlds with garrisons just like yours scattered before the path we thought the orks might take. And would the preparations that you made have been any less diligent if you had known? Would the forces at your disposal have been stronger from knowing, or weaker from expecting a blow that might not come? What if another threat had come to this place while you were expecting the orks?’

  ‘Ignorance is armour?’ said Archamus. ‘I... I cannot believe that, lord.’

  ‘Not always, but sometimes it is. But I do not trust in ignorance. I trust in the strength of my Legion, and the weakness of the enemy.’ The chamber shook again, and Dorn looked up, then back to Archamus. ‘Come. We have a slaughter to bring into being.’

  VI

  The last wall guarding the pass fell twelve hours after Rogal Dorn set foot on Rennimar.

  The last defenders fired as the orks flowed across the broken palisades. The wall the Imperial Fists stood on spanned the mouth of a gulley between two crags. A towering face of smooth rock and rockcrete, it seemed as immovable as the mountain itself. The orks did not falter. The largest of their breed had come for this last slaughter. Each twice as tall as a Space Marine, they came in a clanking wave. They reached the wall and began to climb. Hooked axes bit into the stone and rockcrete. Jets of flame poured down from the Imperial Fists on the firing step. Some of the orks fell, but the rest kept climbing, liquid fire clinging to them. Smaller orks began to scale the cliffs and crags to either side of the wall. Mines embedded in the rock shredded them. Bolt and las-fire raked the cliffs. Blood showered down to wet the hides of those beneath. But they kept climbing, the living taking the place of the dead as the rounds drained from the defenders’ guns.

  Archamus stood on the wall, bolter clamped in the metal of his right fist as he fired. In the distance the black sky was brightening with the light of a new day.

  ‘Is it time?’ asked Katafalque, from behind him. Archamus traced a burst of fire across the face of the wall and watched as a burning brute of an ork fell, its arms shredded stumps. The orks were almost at the top of the wall – another surge and they would be amongst the defenders.

  ‘All units, pull back,’ called Archamus. There were only Imperial Fists on the wall, and they moved instantly. One moment the parapet was manned and bright with muzzle flashes, and the next it was empty. Archamus dropped down on the inside of the wall and sprinted across the mouth of the pass. The ork tide spilled across the wall. Roars of triumph echoed from the mountain tops. They flowed on and on, down through
the pass like a river through a breached dam.

  Gunfire whipped around Archamus as he ran, hard rounds and chips of stone ringing on his armour. His warriors were at his side, the last twenty who had stood on the wall with him, all sprinting from the enemy they had fought against for days. That reality echoed in his mind, bitter and burning.

  The black-and-gold gunship came over the side of the mountain, just above the tops of the trees and outcrops. It slammed to a halt with a shudder of thrusters and turned as it dropped. Its doors were open. Archamus kept running. He could see the open ramp in the craft’s chin. A figure in burnished golden armour stood in the opening.

  A round slammed into the back of his helm. He staggered, eyes blurring, bionics clicking as his nerves struggled to know how to balance. The ramp of the gunship was just in front of him. He could see script etched into the gilt eagle head beneath the cockpit, which read The only strength is honour. His warriors were leaping up to the open hatches; wild bursts of fire were whipping down the mountainside. He took a step and leapt. His foot found the ramp, as the gunship rose with a scream of engines. His balance wavered.

  An armoured fist gripped his hand. Rogal Dorn pulled him up.

  ‘It is done, lord,’ said Archamus.

  Dorn nodded.

  ‘Take us up,’ he said into the vox.

  ‘By your will,’ came the pilot’s reply.

  The gunship climbed, banking across the mountainside. Air rushed through the open doors. Beneath them the river glinted under the rising sun. An avalanche of orks was pouring from the pass down the side of the mountain. In the sky above, the shape of the ork hulk was rising from the horizon, like a dark, jagged sun. Archamus could see the shapes of the primary bastion sitting near the base of the valley floor, like a child’s sandcastle waiting on the shoreline for the sea. The mountainside was a dark carpet kilometres wide and deep, a sea of countless bodies, all running, all shouting for the joy of destruction. They were almost at the base of the valley.

  ‘Cut the pass,’ said Dorn.

  Archamus took the detonator from his belt, armed it and depressed the first switch.

  There was a second of delay and then twin flashes on the mountain tops. A plume of dust shot into the sky. A resonating boom shook the air as the rock faces above the pass dissolved. Thousands of tonnes of rock sheared from the peaks and buried the orks still pouring across the pass into the river valley. The mass of orks nearest the explosion stumbled as they turned back.

  Archamus triggered the next switch. Charges under the ground on the slopes beneath the pass detonated in sequence. A sheet of stone cleaved from the mountain top and slid down, rolling and roaring as it gathered speed, enveloping the orks in a wave of boulders. Those already filling the valley bottom charged on, blind to or uncaring of what had happened to those behind them.

  The guns on the bastion on the valley floor opened up for the first time. A lattice of blazing lines scored through the air and cut into the green tide. The synchronised bark of bolters rose to Archamus’ ears. Carronades shot volkite beams into the mass. Orks exploded in clouds of boiling blood and burning flesh. The orks surged on towards the bastion like insects drawn towards a flame.

  Dorn looked down from the gunship door as the green tide encircled the bastion’s walls. Beside him, Archamus could see the yellow-armoured warriors on the walls, shooting jets of flame over the parapet, throwing grenades and hacking down at the orks trying to scale the palisades. Human auxiliaries moved amongst mortar batteries. They acted without flaw or hesitation, but Archamus could read the progression of battle at a glance. The orks would overwhelm the lone bastion within minutes.

  ‘Give the strike orders to the warships,’ said Dorn, his voice carrying clear over the sound of the gunship’s engines and the roar of the wind.

  Archamus looked up. The ork hulk was a looming blot on the sky. As he watched he saw four shapes slide above the horizon, shining bright as they streaked across the lightening vault of fading night. For a second they seemed serene, a silent ornament to the heavens. White light burst around the ork ship as nova shells exploded in its outer mass. Archamus’ display blinked black. The light strobed across the sky.

  The melta torpedoes hit next. Orange flames flashed over the ork hulk. Chunks of it broke off and fell, trailing burning claw marks.

  Inside the gunship, one of Dorn’s Huscarls turned towards the primarch. The warrior’s helm was a swollen mass of sensor and signal equipment.

  ‘The strike forces are within the ork hulk and advancing on reactor locations,’ said the Huscarl signal master. Simple words, but Archamus knew that above them a thousand of his Legion brothers would be hacking, burning and battering through the corridors of the xenos craft.

  Dorn nodded acknowledgement.

  ‘Close the fist,’ he said.

  Beneath them, the valley roared.

  Twelve hours had seen nine thousand Imperial Fists drop from orbit. They had come in Stormbirds, flying from beyond the horizon, and from the moment they had landed they had worked to change the river valley into a killing ground. They had sunk trenches into the slopes near the valley bottom. Firing points capped every piece of high ground. These were not the sculpted defences of great fortresses, but piled stone and earth braced between ballistic fabric and plasteel plates, and set by fast-hardening rockcrete.

  Camouflage nets covered their more obvious features. The concealment was minimal. An army with any caution would have realised that they were there, and the danger they represented. But the orks had no caution. Driven by their hunger for battle, their ferocity had built with every hour they had battered against the defences across the mountain pass. They were no longer reckless – they were blind. And as they had poured into the valley, Dorn had trapped them in the centre of a fist that now closed with a sound like the end of worlds.

  Nine thousand warriors fired within a heartbeat of each other. Within a second over thirty thousand bolts had hit the enemy. A second later the shells lobbed from a hundred dug-in mortar platforms landed in the heart of the horde. The mortar crews had zeroed the impacts in during the night, based on Dorn’s prediction of the horde’s movement. The mortars struck true. The blasts stuttered outwards, unfolding like a flower of fire and blood.

  The second bolter volleys struck, ripping the sides of the horde, chewing into it, biting chunks from its bulk. The mortar platforms had already adjusted their aim, and now a second chain of explosions marched up the valley floor. Other heavy weapons joined the torrent. Conversion beamers drew lines of exploding flesh and armour through the ork horde. The stuttered voice of heavy bolters rose to join the cacophony. Archamus watched ork bodies dance as rounds and shrapnel hit them from every direction.

  The orks began to respond. They had lost thousands, and perhaps any other creatures would have broken in those first moments. But the orks were born to thrive in the roar of battle. They charged into the fire, bellowing and leaping over the dead as they fell. Towering brutes shoved their way forwards, bolt-rounds and shrapnel ringing off their armour. Some reached the Imperial Fists’ lines and began to batter their way down the trenches. Corridors of howling energy ripped from huge guns.

  Archamus could read the flow of battle beneath him. The initial ambush had been devastating to the orks, but they were striking back with the raw instinct and ferocity of a trapped beast that could feel the blood leaking from a mortal wound. In those moments the scales of battle could tip. He had heard that the warriors of the XIII Legion had a name for such a point of balance, just as they did for so many of the details of war. ‘The rise of the blade’ they called it, for the moment when the victor raised his weapon for a killing blow, and could be killed in turn before it fell. They did not have a name for it but the VII Legion knew that truth all too well. In other battles, this would have been a moment for the armour of the Legion to sally out and drive a killing blow into the enemy’s heart. On
this day there were no tanks. There had been no time to bring them in alongside the material for the fortifications, but their absence had been planned for.

  Dorn took his bolter from one of the Huscarls, checked it and clamped it to his armour. Another came forwards with the primarch’s chainsword. Two-thirds as tall as Archamus, its name was Storm’s Teeth, and each of those teeth glinted sharply. Dorn gripped its hilt and turned towards the open assault ramp. Archamus’ squad and the Huscarls tensed, weapons steady as the gunship turned high. The trio of interceptors had joined them, holding close formation above and beneath them. Other gunships moved into the formation, rising from the valley floor below.

  The interceptors dived first, dagger shapes stabbing downwards, dawn light glinting from their canopies. Rockets and streams of lascannon fire reached from beneath their wings. The primarch’s gunship dived after them. Air roared in through the open hatches. Smoke and ash from the battle blurred the sight of the ground. Missiles streaked free of weapon pods. Blisters of fire burst across the mass of orks. The gunship plunged into the rising heat, then slammed level just above the ground. Smoke swallowed the view beyond the hatch.

  Dorn looked over his shoulder at the warriors waiting behind him.

  ‘For the Imperium,’ he said, and stepped from the ramp.

  Archamus followed. Hot air slammed into him. He hit the ground. Armour and bionics screeched. He rolled and came up into the face of an ork with a fanged faceplate. He fired a trio of bolts into its head. It reeled, and he pulled the seax from the scabbard at his waist. The broad blade punched up under the lip of the ork’s helm as it came back at him. Blood gushed over Archamus’ machine hand. The ork juddered and shook. Archamus ripped the seax out, and turned. Katafalque and his squad were there, cutting a ring into the orks they had landed amongst. And there beside them was Dorn.

  The orks crowding close to the primarch were the largest Archamus had seen, towering, muscle-bloated things, clanking with metal plates and weaponry. For a second Dorn seemed frozen, a still figure amongst a churning sea of wild ferocity. The orks were swinging, raw muscle and weight uncoiling. Archamus could see their mouths, wide beneath the edges of their faceplates, strings of phlegm falling from yellow tusks. The teeth of their buzz-saws slid through the smoke-heavy air, so fast they seemed shadows, and there was no way that anything could stand beneath those blows and live.