‘Was he part of the Tempestora contingent?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘If he was, I haven’t done him any favours by allowing his participation in the campaign.’
Von Strab smiled like a happy predator. ‘Pure conjecture, lord commissar. And you haven’t answered my question.’
‘Sebastian Yarrick has no conception of loyalty,’ Seroff said. He bit off the syllables of the man’s name. Speaking it left a foul taste in his mouth. ‘He deserves the worst humiliation, and a dishonourable death.’ Wounds more than a century old bled as freely as the day they had been inflicted. ‘But he’s skilled. He’s strong in the field. Which is why that should be taken away from him. Unless he’s useful.’ He drank from his refilled goblet. The amasec was bitter now. ‘Today he’s useful,’ Seroff finished.
‘I see,’ said von Strab. ‘And there’s the chance he could die being useful.’
‘You said it yourself. There are losses in war.’
3. Yarrick
The warbikers came for us. I heard the high-pitched growl of the engines and looked back through the dark grey of Armageddon’s new form of day. The sound grew louder, redolent of brutish speed. I saw dots at the horizon, pulling ahead of the main ork force, whose trace was still just the dust cloud. Warning shouts rang out along the length of the column.
Setheno and I were in the front ranks, leading the way forward with Stahl. He cursed when he heard the bikes. The walls of Tempestora were still kilometres away. The orks would be upon us in under a minute. Stahl looked at the broken plain before us. ‘We have no defensive position,’ he said.
‘We cannot afford one,’ Setheno told him.
‘If we let the bikes stop us,’ I said, ‘they’ll hold us until the rest of the greenskins arrive. They will destroy us in the open and then take Tempestora unopposed. We must keep moving.’
I saw the implications of our position sink into Stahl’s eyes. A running battle on open ground against warbikes would exact a heavy toll. But he had to understand that a defensive response would do nothing but buy a little more time before a worse disaster. He looked to the west, where a befouled river flowed on a parallel course to ours. The bikes would not be able to follow us there, true, but we would be handing high ground to the orks, who would not find it difficult to push us into the water.
I was pleased when Stahl shook his head. He was thinking his decisions through. He wasn’t about to lead us to oblivion.
‘Vox!’ he called, and a trooper ran up with a field unit. ‘Double-time march,’ Stahl ordered. ‘We’re about to be raided on both flanks. Heavier weapons to the edges. Take out the enemy vehicles.’
‘Sir,’ the trooper responded, then spoke into the handset.
Setheno nodded to me before she donned her helmet and moved towards the right flank. We would have need of someone with power armour against the ork vehicles. I headed left. I belonged wherever fighting would be most intense.
A long line of warbikes raced up the length of the column. The orks strafed us hard. Their bullets blew apart troopers on either side of me. Rounds dug up the ground as I jogged, and something hot and lethal burned through the left sleeve of my greatcoat and grazed my arm. The bullet was so big, even that glancing blow was almost enough to knock me down. I kept my feet and fired my bolt pistol. ‘Aim for the lead bikers!’ I shouted, and then led by example when one of my shots took off the head of a rider. The ork’s bike cartwheeled end over end. The greenskin coming on behind jerked right so fast that its nearest brother went out of control trying to avoid the collision. That brute went into a long skid. It rose and started to right its bike, but now it was an unmoving target. Concentrated lasfire burned it where it stood.
The stream of bikes streaked past the fallen riders and reached the front of our column. They cut in close, their guns punching holes into our ranks. The bikes from the left and right flanks joined up. They didn’t slow down.
We ran into a thresher of metal and gunfire.
4. Setheno
This was not the battle that had drawn her to Armageddon. This was not the disaster foretold by the Emperor’s Tarot. This was a skirmish, a mere prologue. Armageddon’s true ordeal had yet to begin. That was when she would understand her purpose here. The forces that would shape the war were still gathering, still aligning. The war was embryonic. When it had grown to its full storm, she would see how best to use her strength. She would see with the clarity that had been her gift and her curse since Mistral, so long ago. It didn’t worry her that she had no definite role yet. Recognising the early, rapid unfolding of battle as an avalanche of contingency and accident and randomness was another form of clarity. The fools were the ones who thought they could foresee and control the outcome.
Her immediate path was clear: reach Tempestora, and ensure that the sacrifice that followed was as damaging as possible for the orks.
As the warbikes screamed up the right flank of the Steel Legion companies, she charged out of the column. She brandished Skarprattar. Saint Demetria’s relic sword was a daemon bane. It would end xenos abominations just as well.
An ork biker veered towards her, the brute’s features stretched wide in the ecstasy of velocity. Setheno braced. The ork rose in his seat, brandishing a shaft of pipe topped by a massive head of twisted, jagged scrap metal. Setheno sidestepped the blow and swung her blade against the ork’s back, severing its spine. The bike tumbled away, bouncing over the rocky plain. Setheno turned to counter the next bike. A stream of bullets slammed into her breastplate. The impact knocked her back, though the ceramite held. She raised her bolt pistol and shot the ork through the face. The body convulsed. So did the bike. It remained upright, its course wildly erratic, its guns still blazing. Disorder rippled outward from the bike as the other riders fought to steer around its death-ride.
A gap opened up in the orks’ strafing. The Steel Legion poured fire into the breach, and more riders went down. The flow of the bikes stuttered, a river of savage iron running dry. Multiple flamers lit up the bikes that came too close. The bodies of legionnaires were spread on the plain, but the column retained cohesion, and kept moving forward.
Setheno pounded over the earth to intercept a bike that was charging straight at the column. Focused on the humans it was mowing down, the rider didn’t see her until she brought Skarprattar down in an overhead arc. The blade’s aura shone blue as it cut through the bike’s front wheel. Setheno leapt back, out of the way of the wreck as the bike flipped over and crushed the ork beneath its weight.
Then there were no more bikes coming from the east. But the forward movement of the Steel Legion had slowed. Setheno ran to the west, towards the front of the lines once more, towards the snarl of butchery.
5. Yarrick
A biker came too close and ploughed into the column. It ground troopers beneath its wheels. The crush of flesh slowed it down. The bones of dead and dying comrades crunched beneath my boots as I launched myself forward and plunged my blade through the driver’s throat. The ork gurgled, blood jetting from its neck and mouth. It tried to beat me away. I dragged the sword back, sawing through muscle. The ork’s head flopped backwards and the bike fell over.
Stubber rounds from more bikes beat against our ranks, and I had to duck behind the vehicle I had just stopped. We were moving at a crawl. Two clusters of warbikes kept crossing each other’s paths ahead of us. The strafing was continuous. I could hear Stahl shouting to be heard over the hammering of the guns. He was urging the troops forward, but that wasn’t enough. Advance was impossible. The orks were putting up a fast-moving, lethal wall.
Multiple flamers opened up from the captain’s position. They sprayed burning promethium over the nearest orks and punished them for their approach. Troopers at the front dropped to a crouch so their comrades behind them had clear shots. Sheets of las reached out for the orks. Our attack was disciplined and relentless, but it
wasn’t enough. The smog of exhaust and the speed of the bikes made them difficult targets. Vehicles and riders were resilient to las, soaking up damage. We were still stymied. Rocket launchers had taken out a few of the bikes on the flanks, and we needed them now at the front.
A fireball bloomed to my right when ork rounds punched open a trooper’s flamer reservoir. A second tank went up. Our response faltered. A rocket launcher team arrived at my left. They loaded the weapon but were cut down before firing.
I dragged the launcher away from the bodies. I checked that its payload was a krakk missile, and then looked over the mound of the wrecked bike. The two streams of orks had finished crossing. There would be a slight pause as they reversed direction, and then we would get their redoubled fire once more, coming in at a murderous cross-hatch of angles.
I saw a chance.
‘Grenade launchers!’ I shouted. ‘Lascannons! To me now! To victory!’
Three troopers carrying launchers and a brace of two-man teams converged on my position, crouching low.
‘Fire at my target and on my signal,’ I said. ‘Not before.’
I coughed on the choking air. On either side of me, rebreather-clad heads nodded.
The strafing started again. The warbikes converged.
‘Lead bike on the left,’ I said. I shouldered the missile launcher. I stayed low. The ork bullets passed just over my head. ‘Grenades, now!’ I shouted.
The grenades arced towards the point where the two streams of bikes would meet. As they came down, I launched the rocket and said, ‘Las now!’
Grenades, missile and las burst hit the lead bikes at the same moment. The explosion took out three ork vehicles instantaneously, and ferociously. Their ends were more blasts, heavy shrapnel flying out at eviscerating speed. The chain reaction was huge. The orks were going too fast, and there was no way to avoid the growing collision. The view ahead of me disappeared in a maelstrom of metal carnage, flame and roiling smoke. I heard Stahl shouting, and though I couldn’t make out the words, I saw the effect. The companies poured their firepower into the spreading devastation.
There was sudden movement to the far right. Setheno led a charge straight at the stalled orks. Her towering figure in grey armour was the inevitability of death coming for the enemy. She was followed by the roar of soldiers hungry to carve their vengeance into the flesh of the foe. The orks didn’t wait for their arrival. Some turned bikes around to fire at the rush, and others mounted a counter-charge.
But now we had the advantage of firepower.
Stahl kept up the punishing las volleys. He pinned the orks and gave some cover to Setheno’s run.
The greenskins tried to regroup to meet our right flank. They moved away from the burn we had created. They weren’t paying attention to our left.
I seized on their mistake. I raised my sword high and vaulted over the wrecked bike. ‘For Tempestora!’ I shouted. ‘For Armageddon! Our path is over the bones of the greenskin!’
We charged, our numbers counting for something now. We had the momentum, and the orks were caught in the middle of our twin hammers. The rebreathers turned the men and women who ran with me into identical creatures, a legion of predators with insectoid skulls. A wave of ochre hurled itself against the green tide.
The orks fought as long as they could. The bikers were not the biggest of orks, but they were big enough. They were brutal masses of rage and muscle. A single blow from their axes or clubs or machetes imploded skulls and shattered spines. But we hit them harder, and we hit them more. I brought my sword down on the skull of one brute. My blade was embedded in his forehead, but he swung at me with his axe. I dodged the blow and finished him off with a bolt shell to the neck. I pushed the body down, yanked my sword free and rushed forward to the next one. I killed as fast as I could. I was drenched in xenos blood. I fought as if the annihilation of this small band of the enemy was the key to victory.
I knew this was not true. I knew we were fighting simply for the chance to fight again, to do something more than retreat from the orks’ march. But at a more profound level, there was a darker truth to how I fought, and I knew it too. If we didn’t attack the orks as if every struggle was the turning point of the war, then we would be defeated.
I killed each ork with the energy built up from a lifetime of hate. And it still wasn’t good enough, because I still didn’t realise what led them. I did not know what Ghazghkull meant, though these orks were chanting it too, and I sensed its great importance.
We cut the orks down. A few escaped. They tore off on their warbikes, filling the air with their guttural curses. I knew orkish. The howls were threats of retribution and return. So common that I paid them little attention.
There was one sentence, though, that chilled me to the bone. The clouds of exhaust had faded, and the way to Tempestora was clear. The battered companies of the 252nd cheered our first triumph against the enemy. I nearly missed what the last ork snarled as it retreated.
As we regrouped and moved forward again, I thought about what I had heard. I said nothing to Stahl. But Setheno saw. She always did.
‘What did you hear?’ she asked, keeping her voice down.
‘The ork said the Prophet will wear our skulls.’
I was precise in my translation.
Not warlord.
Prophet.
1. Yarrick
The governor of Tempestora, Lady Ingrid Sohm, was at Volcanus, being hosted by von Strab and reassured that nothing would threaten her hive. We were met by her lieutenant, Relja Thulin. I was prepared for the worst as we marched through the main gates, into the huge, rockcrete-paved square beyond, and Thulin walked forward to greet Stahl. Setheno and I followed a pace behind the captain.
‘He is tired,’ Setheno said, observing Thulin.
‘Yes,’ I agreed. I was relieved. Thulin’s robes were excessive finery, out of place in the ashy grey of Tempestora, but they were filthy. They looked as if they had been slept in. Another good sign. I took the corruption and venality of Armageddon’s ruling class for granted. No honest administrator would have survived the first year of von Strab’s rule. The question that concerned me was Thulin’s realism. And what I saw in the thin, greying nobleman before us was a man who fully expected to die.
‘You are most welcome, captain,’ he said to Stahl. ‘We feared we had been abandoned, and when we saw the fleet brought down…’
‘The Steel Legion is a ground force, Count Thulin,’ said Stahl. He gave the viceroy as confident a smile as his exhaustion permitted. ‘The foe who shoots us out of the air is just calling down our anger on his head.’
Setheno’s eyes narrowed slightly. The captain’s bravado did not please her.
Stahl glanced up at the battlements behind us. There were no patrols on the parapet. ‘What defensive capabilities do you still have?’ he asked.
‘Our guns,’ said Thulin. ‘The ones in fixed emplacements, that is. But we have no one to fire them.’
‘No one?’ I asked. I had hoped von Strab’s mad order hadn’t been followed down to the very letter.
‘No one,’ Thulin repeated. ‘We lost the entire militia.’
Stahl winced. The twitch in his eye was subtle, but I caught it. ‘I see.’
Thulin hesitated, then asked, ‘The greenskins are heading this way?’
‘They’ll be here before nightfall,’ I said.
‘Will you have enough time to prepare?’
‘For what must be done, yes,’ Setheno said.
‘Praise the Emperor,’ said Thulin. ‘I was…’ He trailed off as the ambiguity of the canoness’s words sank in. ‘What must be done?’ he asked, barely whispering.
‘Tempestora has a hard task ahead,’ Setheno told him. ‘Sacrifice.’
‘Sacrifice.’ Thulin spoke the word as if he was unsure of its meaning, but the shape of its syllables hurt
his tongue. He swallowed. ‘What kind?’ And then, his voice whipped away by the wind, ‘How large?’
‘We will have the answer to that shortly,’ I said. I wanted to speak with Setheno before she announced Exterminatus for later that afternoon. The situation was desperate, but I rejected her instant fatalism and apparent willingness to throw Tempestora to the orks. Stahl looked distressed as well. He had no more illusions about the capacity of our reduced companies to hold off the orks than I did. But we still had orders. We still had a mission. We still had a duty.
Setheno gave a slight nod.
‘We need to inspect the defences,’ I said.
A few minutes later, the three of us stood on the ramparts, alone except for the other surviving captains. Gunzburg, Boidin and Mora were the only other company commanders to have made it through the fall of the lifters. In the east, the dust cloud of the ork army drew nearer.
‘Tempestora will fall,’ Setheno said.
‘Its walls are strong, canoness,’ Stahl began. ‘Breaching them won’t be easy.’
‘Your lack of confidence in the enemy’s means does you no credit, captain.’
He coloured. ‘You have none in the Steel Legion?’
I was impressed. I had seen very few individuals brave enough to challenge Setheno’s position so directly.
‘I have every confidence in it,’ Setheno answered. There was no anger in her voice. Only the calm of the sepulchre. ‘But even without knowing the full strength of the enemy, I can see where we stand. We cannot defend Tempestora. The siege will be a brief one.’
‘You are asking a great deal,’ I said to her. ‘You are asking soldiers to abandon their mission.’
‘In the service of a greater one,’ she said. ‘It is Armageddon that must be preserved, not an individual hive.’
‘Defeats have a way of accumulating.’
She cocked her head. ‘You surprise me, commissar. Do you believe we can hold the orks here?’
Yarrick: The Pyres of Armageddon Page 7
