Borghal’s helm display glowed with the
‘He fights at your shoulder,’ came Hasik’s voxed injunction, sent to Borghal alone.
Borghal nodded. That was true of all of them – even when separated by many hundreds of kilometres, the Great Khan was always at their shoulder, as ever-present as the hawk’s gaze – but the sentiment was appreciated. Hasik was a good commander, and knew what risks were being run in this.
The rune glowed red. Then, in a blink of adjusting retinal substrate, it switched to
The battle horns blared, sending augmented audex blasts roaring from the throats of Chogorian raken trumpets. The Luna Wolves thundered in turn, kicking down the slope in a fury of dust and blazing vox-augmitters. Bullet-punched standards swung erect, displaying the livery of the XVI Legion, the V Legion, the 88th Cohort and the undying, eternal Imperium of Man whose destiny it was – and had always been – to scour all other life from the stars.
The jetbikes leapt forwards, six hundred of them boosting high on superloaded grav-plates, before their prows dipped and they shot down the incline liked loosed arrows. The sun rose in full, throwing long shadows back across the tangled crystals, flaring against the ranks of thundering thrusters. Borghal was first away, along with his Stormseer brothers. They hurtled down the incline, swaying around the terrain as it knifed past, keying their heavy bolters, volkite culverins and multi-meltas into juddering life and pulling targeting lines across their cogitator-linked helm displays.
Air support boomed ahead of them, barely fifteen metres over ground level and boosting hard. Twenty Sokar-pattern Stormbirds laid down volleys of lascannon fire, heavy bolter rounds and missile salvos, interspersed with sonic-booming Thunderhawks hammering every sliver of every gap, turning the entire kilometres-long battlefront into a false mountain range of magma-red explosions.
The White Scars shot clean through that fire curtain into the reeling xenos. The Stormbirds above wheeled around for a second pass, while the Auxilia’s mobile armour ground its way forwards, keeping its ranged fire just ahead of the cavalry onslaught. The Luna Wolves’ mechanised squads hit deep and hit fast, running through rank after rank of greenskin defiance and leaving it sticky and extended across their tracks.
But the White Scars, as ever, were faster. Faster than thought, the Khan had always promised – so fast that it addled the senses and shocked the nerves; so fast that as soon as the enemy realised it was being attacked it was already over for them, and the fight had started for the next target in line.
Borghal whooped aloud.
‘Khagan!’ The roar came from the lips of every fighter. Other Legions might invoke the Emperor, but for the White Scars there was only the lord of the plains, the one who had set them free to do this forever. ‘Ordu gamana Jaghatai!’
They crashed hard into the still-living throngs of orks, driving straight through them in a thrown shock wave of blood and armour shards. The bolter-rain never ceased, ploughing deep ahead to clear narrow tracks between the staggering xenos bodies. Those that survived the firestorm and the projectile hurricane were slashed in two by the glittering blades that whirled and thrust from the riders’ expert hands. The sword edges were travelling at an absurd velocity by then, impossible to evade, and the curved tulwars were as hard and sharp as starlight.
In these moments, there was nothing but exhilaration. Xiphon-pattern Interceptors scored overhead, strafing and twisting before darting free of return fire. The tanks belched shells, the Legion transports fizzed with las-fire and the infantry crunched and smacked its way north.
But the shock could not last. The orks had known it was coming, and had beckoned the impact. They were sent into paroxysms by the violence of it, for this was what they worshipped, the one thing that their sluggish minds could genuinely appreciate and respond to. The flames made them scream with something like joy, the thrown blood and burst organs eliciting only cackles of laughter from those next to face the blade.
They fought back. They surged up to meet the onslaught, grinning from those great tusked jawlines, utterly fearless, completely without hesitation or doubt. They struck riders from their bikes, sending the huge machines cartwheeling. They threw themselves at the tank tracks, blowing them up with messy blasts of looped grenades. They went toe to toe with the Legiones Astartes fighters – cracking blades into blades, throwing iron-bound punches, ramming spikes and gouges into breastplates, head-butting, gnawing, strangling.
Mere minutes into the huge massed charge, the pace of acceleration had already slowed by half. Legion spearheads pushed deeper, but their casualties mounted. The Saddleback remained frustratingly distant, like some gigantic tombstone destined to carry their names.
Borghal sped on, using his bike as a battering ram and riding down those who tried to leap up and drag him from the saddle. His Stormseers came with him, relying on bolter and tulwar to reap their toll of bodies. More than thirty of the Legion’s fighters kept close by them, forming a hard knot of jetbikes that scythed through the xenos like a goad twisted into pliant flesh.
‘Faster!’ roared Borghal, depressing his accelerator pedal another notch and feeling the engines kick. ‘No respite!’
Their formation was already far ahead of their supporting infantry. The artillery’s mortar arcs were falling a long way behind them, and the Imperial air cover was concentrated towards the main battlefront. In a few more seconds, they would be beyond help entirely, their dazzling charge cut off by the encircling bulk of xenos.
They kept going, enduring explosions and bike losses and ruptured drives. They took more hits – more jetbikes upended and swiftly devoured by the swarms, their carcasses bouncing and disintegrating before they shattered across the crystal towers.
Borghal never even saw them go. He leaned forwards in the saddle, oblivious to the percussive growl of his bike’s overheated bolters, oblivious even to the movements of his own dancing sword-hand. His every conscious effort was bent towards the origin of the hain-ghallh, the crushing psychic wave that made every assault as stifling as flying into the heart of a hurricane.
For a few horrific moments, it seemed as if their trajectory had been wrong, that the augurs had lied and the xenos shamans were placed further back in that seamless mass of bodies. Borghal maintained his ferocious pace, running down another ironclad brute and eviscerating a second with a slice of his curved blade. His brothers matched his speed and held formation, still committed to the same velocity and trajectory.
Then he sensed it. In his mind, he saw the originators of the psychic roar – the wizened, withered beasts clad in stinking robes, whirling their emaciated bodies around in frantic ritual movements, croaking out unintelligible words and pulling fresh mania from the skies.
‘I have it,’ he announced, changing direction a fraction to drive closer in. The rest of the bikes came with him. Every Stormseer stowed his blade and reached for his staff, and their slipstreams crackled with silver streaks of pre-detonation energy. The escorting warriors, down to twenty now, pulled up around them, protecting them from the orks with their own bodies.
Closer, closer, closer.
The press of xenos grew worse, a physical block of green hides that thudded into and slowed the assault. Once a bike was slowed it was vulnerable, the orks able to leap on it and smash the rider from the mount, so the White Scars kept on pressing, weaving and diving through the living terrain.
Borghal’s mental image clarified – he perceived the shamanic chorus now in their full trance state, their bodies consumed by the living aether, their hearts pounding and their adrenalin levels raging. He saw them gorge on the resonating power in the faceted land around them, drinking it in and vomiting it out again. The sheer volume of that discharge was incredible, fuelled by the sympathetic harmonics of the crystals and earthed into the rage of the xenos themselves. It was immense, titanic, a tidal wave of mindless force that dwarfed anythin
g the Stormseers could summon or contest.
It is about limitation.
Borghal’s jetbike skidded to a halt, smashing aside a whole swathe of greenskins as it kicked into the long slide. The other Stormseers did likewise, but the escorting warriors overshot, driving the orks back and clearing a small patch of open space in the midst of the horde. The xenos raged back instantly, hammering at the fragile barrier set up by the White Scars legionaries, but for the moment the Stormseers existed in a small bubble of calm, ringed on all sides by their guards and the xenos war host beyond them.
‘Nemaghd,’ commanded Borghal, and the Stormseers raised their staffs towards a single point. Energies immediately crackled around them, turning as green as the lightning bursts that flickered across the entire landscape.
The orks hurled themselves at the protective line of warriors, forcing them back, but for a few precious moments they couldn’t smash their way through. The Stormseers remained motionless within the circle, ramping up their power, channelling the superabundant aether into spinning vortices of physical energy.
It did nothing to dampen the xenos rage. If anything, the aura of violence increased, rearing further and churning more wildly, and soon the truth became apparent – the Stormseers’ intervention was bolstering it, feeding into it, shoving more fuel into an already thundering furnace. The more the Stormseers channelled and amplified, the more the skies raged green and the apoplexy increased. The xenos’ wrath became truly apocalyptic, breaking its flimsy bounds and descending into wholly unfocussed savagery. They began to attack one another, to mutilate themselves, fighting anything within an axe’s range, whether it be the enemy or their own kind.
Borghal gripped his staff tight, feeling sweat spike on his forehead. His psychic hood flared with heat, digging into his flesh like fish hooks. He could feel his consciousness slipping, the edges of his vision becoming blurred, but still he poured on the power, letting it surge through him like a river.
He could perceive the shamans still, too far away for his physical eyes but now well within his mental compass. They were screaming from a sudden fear now, aware that the forces they had summoned were running out of control, but unable to reel them back in. Their lips were drooling with blood, their eyes weeping, their capering desperate and jerky, as if they were being yanked by invisible chains.
Their psychic discharge kept on mounting. The Stormseers goaded it, whipping it onwards like a dumb beast, forcing it into becoming the stampede that would smash its bounds and rip apart the souls who had summoned it into being. The greenskins’ only true weakness – their lack of discipline – was now the thing that was killing them; once provoked into an overload, they had no way of hauling it back in.
‘More,’ uttered Borghal through a tight jawline, screwing his eyes closed and ripping further through the veil between the worlds. He became dimly aware of one of his brothers collapsing, and of the deranged orks rushing the fragile defences around him, and of the tug on his own soul from this reckless headlong charge into psychic excess. ‘More.’
The first greenskin shaman expired, locked into a rictus of agony, its long fingers trembling as it dropped its own clattering staff. Another fell to the ground, blood fountaining from its eyes and mouth, clutching at its foul pot belly as the robes around it ignited. A third spasmed uncontrollably, its jaw cantilevering open and gushing raw aether-matter. They were being snuffed out like candles, turned into husks by the netherworld burning through their veins and arteries.
The orks’ psychic aegis was breaking. Huge crystals shattered, blown into fragments by the whirling torrents, showering the figures still fighting under their shadow. For the first time since hostilities had commenced, the orks wavered, their unshakeable psychic aura ripped away like a ship’s sail caught by a storm.
Borghal fell to his knees. Xu Han was already out cold, drained by the effort. The rest of the Stormseers were fading fast, toppling from their mounts and sliding into stupor. Borghal fought to keep alert. His staff dropped from his fingers, smoking like an ember. Now was the moment of greatest danger. They were far from their own kind, lost in a sea of soul-crazed xenos, their entire strength spent on triggering the wild chain reaction that had only amplified the ferocity thrumming around them.
He shakily drew his blade, pushing himself back to a half stand, trying to focus. The world swung around him, blurry and fractured. He saw a white-armoured fighter go down at last, ripped apart by a red-eyed monster with a gunning chainsword, and knew that he would be next in line.
He rose up, bracing for the impact, and saw the creature lope at him, huge and ponderous, as if locked in some chrono distortion. He knew he was too weak to fight it off.
He could grin, though.
‘We broke your witches,’ he spat out, just as the chainsword revved in towards him.
The impact was horrific, nearly ripping his tulwar from his grip and sending him staggering backwards. The monster’s breath was overpowering, a mix of meat and blood and frenzy, and its massive chainsword hauled round to cleave his head from his shoulders.
Somehow he parried, slapping the incoming strike away, but it nearly ripped his arms off. He detected more figures closing in on him – just smears of colour against a tilting world – and backed off, wondering how much time he’d bought Hasik’s forces.
The ork lunged, smacking Borghal’s blade clean away and driving the whirring chainsword teeth into his right pauldron. He felt the line of agony bite, and heard the clatter of armour shards against his helm. He punched out, trying to connect, and a gush of hot blood cascaded against his visor, blinding him.
He staggered, trying to right himself. When his vision cleared, he saw the ork still looming over him, huge and banded with glistening muscle, reeking of fresh slaughter.
Its head was gone. The stump of its neck was glossy with sinew, a ragged blast crater made by a single bolt-shell. The xenos body teetered for a moment before it finally crashed backwards, the still-snarling chainsword flying loose from its grip at last.
Borghal turned to see Hasik mounted on his hovering jetbike, his armour plastered in long red streaks and his bolt pistol raised. More Scars were arriving in his wake, and in the distance he could just make out the approaching grind of tank tracks.
‘You’re still needed, zadyin arga,’ the noyan-khan said, reloading his spent bolt pistol. ‘Can you fight on?’
Borghal blinked hard, trying to clear his head. His staff was gone, burned to cinders by the release of weather-magic. His body felt light, as if he might be dissipated by a gust of storm wind. All around him, his comrades were either prone or on their knees, but fresh reinforcements were arriving now, slamming into the newly confused ork lines and driving them back.
The change in the air was palpable. The pressure wave of madness had been banished, blown out through overload. They could win this now. The orks still fought, but without the incredible collective zeal they had displayed while locked within the hain-ghallh. Now they could be broken.
Borghal reached for his blade and took it up. His temples throbbed with savage levels of pain. Two of his Stormseers were still not moving. He could barely pull in a breath, barely stand, barely even see.
He shot a broken smile towards Hasik.
‘With joy, my khan,’ he said, bowing unsteadily before staggering back to his jetbike.
ELEVEN
They reached the Saddleback that night, breaking the spine of the intervening xenos army during the long advance. As the sun fell again, they set up camp on the higher ground, bringing north all that could be pulled intact from the ridge. They left behind a landscape of thoroughbred destruction: twisted carcasses of vehicles smouldering under the fading light, gouged earthworks, row upon row of rotting bodies.
Many long hours of labour lay ahead. The Auxilia’s troops marched up the flanks of the redoubt in weary lines, ready for the back-breaking work of constructing defence emplacements. Kill teams were assembled to strike out back across the battle
fields, hunting down the last knots of resistance. The orks could not merely be defeated – they had to be exterminated, the bodies incinerated and all trace of contaminated weaponry destroyed. Thunderhawks hovered over the darkening terrain with banks of neon-bright searchlights, sweeping the burning land like carrion crows.
Hasik stalked through the palls of ash, his guan dao black with blood. His armour had taken more damage and now looked half-destroyed, a collection of cracked ceramite plates hanging from his frame. He was one of the last to make it to the sanctuary of the higher ground, having remained where the fighting was thickest for longest. Only when the victory was secure did he at last turn away from what had become rank slaughter.
Rheor waited for him, flanked by his retinue of warriors. They were as battleworn as he, and the Luna Wolves captain’s helm had been lost somewhere in the fighting, exposing his pale-skinned face.
Hasik saluted wearily.
‘What did you do out there?’ Rheor asked. His tone was measured, but something infected it – irritation, perhaps.
Hasik laughed, a hack that coughed up speckles of blood onto his vox-grille. ‘Killed the witches,’ he said. ‘What we needed.’
‘How?’
‘Our Stormseers. Bloody savages.’ Hasik laughed again.
‘You should have told me what you planned.’
Hasik reached up, unscrewed his gorget seal and lifted his battered helm. His revealed face was criss-crossed with bloody weals from the impacts that his damaged armour had only partially blunted.
JAGHATAI KHAN WARHAWK OF CHOGORIS Page 11
