After months of constant shelling, the walls of the citadel had finally been broken open and a half-kilometre wide breach had been torn in its shining walls. The citadel was ready to fall, but the Brotherhood would fight for it to the bitter end, and Loken knew that most of the warriors who were to climb that breach would die.
He waited for the order of battle with trepidation, knowing that an escalade was the surest way for a warrior to meet his end. Statistically, a man was almost certain to die when assaulting the walls of a well-defended fortress, and it was therefore beholden to him to make that death worthwhile.
'Will it be soon, do you think, Garvi?' asked Vipus, checking the action of his chainsword for the umpteenth time.
'I think so,' said Loken, 'but I imagine that the World Eaters will be first into the breach.'
'They're welcome to the honour,' grunted Torgaddon, and Loken was surprised at his comrade's sentiment. Torgaddon was normally the first to request a place in the speartip of any battle, though he had been withdrawn and sullen for some time now. He would not be drawn on the reasons why, but Loken knew it had to do with Aximand and Abaddon.
Their fellow Mournival members had barely spoken to them over the course of this war, except where operational necessity had demanded it. Neither had the four of them met with the Warmaster since Davin. For all intents and purposes, the Mournival was no more.
The Warmaster kept his own council, and Loken found himself in agreement with Iacton Qruze's sentiments that the Legion had lost its way. The words of the ''half-heard'' carried no real weight in the Sons of Horus, and the aged veteran's complaints were largely ignored.
Loken's growing suspicions had been fed by what Apothecary Vaddon had told him when he had rushed to the medicae deck after the departure of the Emperor's Children.
He had found the apothecary in the midst of surgery, ministering to the Legion's wounded, the tiled floor slick with Congealed blood.
Loken had known better than to disturb Vaddon's labours and only when the apothecary had finished did Loken speak to him.
'The anathame?' demanded Loken. 'Where is it?'
Vaddon looked up from washing his hands of blood. 'Captain Loken. The anathame? I don't have it any more. I thought you knew.'
'No,' said Loken. 'I didn't. What happened to it? I told you to tell no one that it was in your possession.'
'And nor did I,' said Vaddon angrily. 'He already knew I had it.'
'He?' asked Loken. 'Who are you talking about?'
'The apothecary of the Emperor's Children, Fabius,' said Vaddon. 'He came to the medicae deck a few hours ago and told me he had been authorised to remove it.'
A cold chill seized Loken as he asked, 'Authorised by whom?'
'By the Warmaster,' said Vaddon.
'And you just gave him it?' asked Loken. 'Just like that?'
'What was I supposed to do?' snarled Vaddon. 'This Fabius had the Warmaster's seal. I had to give it to him.'
Loken took a deep calming breath, knowing that the apothecary would have had no choice when presented with the seal of Horus. The months of research Vaddon had performed on the weapon had, thus far, yielded no results, and with its removal from the Vengeful Spirit, any chance of uncovering its secrets was lost forever.
A crackling voice in Loken's helmet shook him from his sour memory of the second theft of the anathame, and he focused on the order of battle streaming through his headset. Sure enough, the World Eaters were going in first, a full assault company led by Angron himself and supported by two companies of the Sons of Horus, the Tenth and the Second: Loken and Torgaddon's companies.
Torgaddon and Loken shared an uneasy glance. To be given the honour of going into the breach seemed at odds with their current status within the Legion, but the order was given and there was no changing it now. Army regiments would follow to secure the ground the Astartes won, and Hektor Varvarus himself would lead these detachments.
Loken shook hands with Torgaddon and said, 'See you on the inside, Tarik.'
'Try not to get yourself killed, Garvi,' said Torgaddon.
'Thanks for the reminder,' said Loken, 'and here was me thinking that was the point.'
'Don't joke, Garvi,' said Torgaddon. 'I'm serious. I think we're going to need each other's support before this campaign is over.'
'What do you mean?'
'Never mind,' said Torgaddon. 'We'll talk more once this citadel is ours, eh?'
'Yes, we'll share a bottle of victory wine in the rains of the Brotherhood's citadel.'
Torgaddon nodded and said, 'You're buying though.'
They shook hands once more and Torgaddon jogged away to rejoin his warriors and ready them for the bloody assault. Loken watched him go, wondering if he would see his friend alive again to share that drink. He pushed such defeatism aside as he made his way through his own company to pass out orders and offer words of encouragement.
He turned as a huge cheer erupted from further down the mountains, seeing a column of warriors clad in the blue and white armour of the World Eaters, marching towards the approaches to the breach. The assaulters of the World Eaters were hulking warriors equipped with mighty chain axes and heavy jump packs. They were brutality distilled and concentrated violence moulded them into the most fearsome close combat fighters Loken had ever seen. Leading them was the Primarch Angron.
Angron, the Bloody One: the Red Angel.
Loken had heard all these names and more for Angron, but none of them did justice to the sheer brutal physicality of the Primarch of the World Eaters. Clad in an ancient suit of gladiatorial armour, Angron was like a warrior from some lost heroic age. A glinting mesh cape of chain mail hung from his high gorget and pauldrons, with skulls worked into its weave like barbaric trophies.
He was armed to the teeth with short, stabbing swords, and daggers the length of an Astartes chain-blade. An ornate pistol of antique design was holstered on each thigh, and he carried a monstrous chain-glaive, its terrifying size beyond anything Loken could believe.
'Throne alive…' breathed Nero Vipus as Angron approached. 'I wouldn't have believed it had I not seen it with my own eyes.'
'I know what you mean,' answered Loken, the mighty primarch's savage and tribal appearance putting him in mind of the bloody tales he had read in the Chronicles of Ursh.
Angron's face was murder itself, his thick features scarred and bloody. Dark iron glinted on his scalp where cerebral cortex implants punctured his skull to amplify his already fearsome aggression. The implants had been grafted to Angron's brain when he had been a slave, centuries before, and though the technology to remove them was available, he had never wanted them removed.
The bloody primarch marched past, glancing over at the men of 10th Company as he led his warriors towards the bloodletting. Loken shivered at the sight of him, seeing only death in his heavy-lidded eyes, and he wondered what terrible thoughts must fill Angron's violated skull.
No sooner had the Primarch of the World Eaters passed than the bombardment began, the guns of the Legio Mortis launching rippling salvoes of rockets and shells into the breach.
Loken watched as Angron delivered his assault orders with curt chops of his glaive, and felt a momentary pity for the Brotherhood warriors within the citadel. Though they were his sworn enemies, he did not envy them the prospect of fighting such a living avatar of blood and death.
A terrifying war cry sounded from the World Eaters, and Loken watched as Angron led his company in a crude ritual of scarification. The warriors removed their left gauntlets and slashed their axes across their palms, smearing the blood across the faceplates of their helmets as they chanted canticles of death and bloodshed.
'I almost feel sorry for the poor bastards in the citadel,' said Vipus, echoing Loken's earlier thoughts.
'Pass the word to stand ready,' he ordered. 'We move out when the World Eaters reach the crest of the breach.'
He held out his hand to Nero Vipus and said, 'Kill for the living, Nero.'
&n
bsp; 'Kill for die dead,' answered Vipus.
The assault began in a flurry of smoke as the World Eaters surged up the lower slopes of the breach with roaring blasts of their jump packs. The wall head and die breach itself were wreathed in explosions from the Titans' bombardment, and the idea that somediing could live through such a storm of shot and shell seemed impossible to Loken.
As the World Eaters powered up the slopes of rubble, Loken and his warriors clambered over the twisted, blackened spars of iron that had been blasted from die walls above. They moved and fired, adding tiieir own volleys of gunfire into the breach before the assaulters reached their targets.
The slope was steep, but eminently climbable, and they were making steady progress. Occasional shots and las blasts ricocheted from die rocks or their armour, but at this range, nothing could wound them.
Five hundred metres to his left, Loken saw Torgaddon leading Second Company up the slopes in the wake of the World Eaters, both forces of the Sons of Horus protecting the vulnerable flanks of the assaulters and ready with heavier weapons to secure the breach.
Behind the Astartes, the soldiers of Hektor Varvarus's Byzant Janizars - wearing long cream greatcoats with gold frogging - followed in disciplined ranks. To march into battle in ceremonial dress uniforms seemed ridiculous to Loken, but Varvaras had declared that he and his men were not going to enter the citadel looking less than their best.
Loken turned from the splendid sight of the marching soldiers as he heard a deep, bass rumbling that seemed to come from the ground itself. Powdered rubble and rocks danced as the vibrations grew stronger still and Loken knew that something was terribly wrong. Ahead, he could see Angron and the World Eaters reaching the crest of the breach. Blazing columns of smoke surrounded Angron, and Loken heard the mighty primarch's bellowing cry of triumph even over the thunderous explosions of battle.
The rumbling grew louder and more violent, and Loken had to grip onto a rusted spar of rebar to hold himself in place as the ground continued to shake as though in the grip of a mighty earthquake. Great cracks split the ground and plumes of fire shot from them.
'What's happening?' he shouted over the noise.
No one answered and Loken fell as the top of the breach suddenly exploded in a sheet of flame that reached hundreds of metres into the air. Rocks and metal were hurled skywards as the top of the wall vanished in a massive seismic detonation.
Like the bunkers in the cities, the Brotherhood destroyed what they could not hold, and Loken's reactive senses shut down briefly with the overload of light and noise. Twisted rubble and wreckage slammed down around them, and Loken heard screams of pain and the crack of splintering armour as scores of his men were pulverised by the storm of boulders.
Dust and matter filled the air, and when Loken felt safe enough to move, he saw in horror that the entire crest of the breach had been destroyed.
Angron and the World Eaters were gone, buried beneath the wreckage of a mountain.
Torgaddon saw the same thing, and picked himself up from the ground. He shouted at his warriors to get to their feet and charged towards the ruin of the breach. Filthy, dust-covered warriors clambered from the wreckage and followed their captain as he led them onwards and upwards to what might be their deaths. Torgaddon knew that such a course of action was probably suicidal, but he had seen Angron buried beneath the mountain, and retreating was not an option.
He activated the blade of his chainsword and scrambled up the slopes with the feral cry of the Sons of Horus bursting from his lips.
'Lupercal! Lupercal!' he screamed as he charged.
Loken watched his brother rise from the aftermath of the explosion like a true hero, and began his own charge towards the breach. He knew that there was every chance a second seismic mine was buried in the breach, but the sight of a primarch brought low by the Brotherhood obliterated all thoughts of any tactical response, except charging.
'Warriors of the Tenth!' he roared. 'With me! Lupercal!'
Loken's surviving warriors pulled themselves from the rubble and followed Loken with the Warmaster's name echoing from the mountains. Loken sprang from rock to rock, clambering uphill faster than he would have believed possible, his anger hot and bright. He was ready to wreak vengeance upon the Brotherhood for what they had done in the name of spite, and nothing was going to stop him.
Loken knew that he had to reach the breach before the Brotherhood realised that its strategy had not killed all the attackers, and he kept moving upwards at a fast pace, using all the increased muscle power his armour afforded him. A storm of gunfire flashed from above: las shots and solid rounds spanging from the rocks and metal rabble. A heavy shell clipped his shoulder guard, spinning him around, but Loken shrugged off the impact and charged on.
The roaring tide of Astartes warriors climbed the breach, the last rays of the morning's sun glinting from the brilliant green of their armour. To see so many warriors in battle was magnificent, an unstoppable wave of death that would sweep away all resistance in a storm of gunfire and blades.
All tactics were moot now, the sight of Angron's fall robbing each and every warrior of any sense of restraint. Loken could see the gleaming silver armour of Brotherhood warriors as they climbed to what was left of the breach, dragging bipod-mounted heavy weapons with them.
'Bolters!' he shouted. 'Open fire!'
The crest of the breach vanished as a spray of bolter rounds impacted. Sparks and chunks of flesh flew as Astartes rounds found homes in flesh, and though many were firing from the hip, most were deadly accurate.
The noise was incredible, hundreds of bolter rounds ripping enemy warriors to shreds and skirling wolf howls ringing in his ears as the Astartes swept over the breach and reverted once again to the persona of the Luna Wolves. Loken threw aside his bolter, the magazine empty, and drew his chainsword, thumbing the activation stud as he vaulted the smoking rocks that had crushed Angron and the World Eaters.
Beyond the walls of the Iron Citadel was a wide esplanade, its surface strewn with gun positions and coils of razor wire. A shell-battered keep was built into the mountainside, but its gates were in pieces and black smoke poured from its gun ports. Brotherhood warriors were streaming back from the rain of the walls towards these prepared positions, but they had horribly misjudged the timing of their fallback.
The Sons of Horus were already amongst them, hacking them down with brutal arcs of chainblades or gunning them down as they fled. Loken tore his way through a knot of Brotherhood warriors who turned to fight, killing three of them in as many strokes of his sword, and backhanding his elbow into the last opponent's head, smashing his skull to splinters.
All was pandemonium as the Sons of Horus ran amok within the precincts of the Iron Citadel, its defenders slaughtered in frantic moments of unimaginable violence. Loken killed and killed, revelling in the shedding of enemy blood and realising that, with this victory, the war would be over.
With that thought, the cold reality of what was happening penetrated the red fog of his rage. They had won, and already he could see the victory turning into a massacre.
'Garviel!' a desperate voice called over the suit-vox. 'Garviel, can you hear me?'
'Loud and dear, Tarik!' answered Loken.
'We have to stop this!' cried Torgaddon. 'We've won, it's over. Get a hold of your company.'
'Understood,' said Loken, pleased that Torgaddon had realised the same thing as he had.
Soon the inter-suit vox network was alive with barked orders to halt the attack that quickly passed down the chain of command.
By the time the echoes of battle were finally stilled, Loken could see that the Astartes had just barely managed to hold themselves from plunging into an abyss of barbarity, out of which they might never have climbed. Blood, bodies and the stink of battle filled the day, and as Loken looked up into the beautifully clear sky, he could see that the sun was almost at its zenith.
The final storm of the Iron Citadel had taken less than an hour, yet ha
d cost the lives of a primarch, hundreds of the World Eaters, thousands of the Brotherhood, and the Emperor alone knew how many Sons of Horus.
The mass slaughter seemed such a terrible waste of life for what was a paltry prize: ruined cities, a battered and hostile populace, and a world that was sure to rebel as soon as it had the chance.
Was this world's compliance worth such bloodshed?
The majority of the Brotherhood warriors had died in those last enraged minutes, but many more were prisoners of the Sons of Horus, rather than their victims.
Loken removed his helmet and gulped in a lungful of the clear air, its crispness tasting like the sweetest wine after the recycled air of his armour. He made his way through the wreckage of battle, the torn remnants of enemy warriors strewn like offal throughout the esplanade.
He found Torgaddon on his knees, also with his helmet off and breathing deeply. His friend looked up as Loken approached and smiled weakly. 'Well… we did it.'
'Yes,' agreed Loken sadly, looking around at the crimson spoils of victory. 'We did, didn't we?'
Loken had killed thousands of enemies before, and he would kill thousands more in wars yet to be fought, but something in the savagery of this battle had soured his notion of triumph.
The two captains turned as they heard the tramp of booted feet behind them, seeing the lead battalions of the Byzant Janizars finally climbing into the citadel. Loken could see the horror on the soldiers' faces and knew that the glory of the Astartes would be tarnished for every man who set foot inside.
'Varvarus is here,' said Loken.
'Just in time, eh?' said Torgaddon. 'This'll sweeten his mood towards us.'
Loken nodded and simply watched as the richly appointed command units of the Byzant Janizars entered the citadel, their tall blue banners snapping in the wind, and brilliantly decorated officers scanning the battlefield.
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