But instead of shearing straight through the arm and skewering Honsou’s skull, the metal ran like liquid, reknitting itself as quickly as Berossus’s arm attempted to destroy it. The dreadnought watched amazed as the drill stuttered and jammed within Honsou’s arm. Even as Berossus paused, a black-armoured blur streaked through the air, twisting to land upon the upper mantlet of the dreadnought’s carapace.
Onyx landed gracefully on one knee and powered both bronze claws down into the armoured shell of the dreadnought. The terrible machine roared in pain, its arms spasming and dropping Honsou to the cratered ground.
Honsou rolled away from the thrashing dreadnought as he heard a thunderous crashing behind him and the headless form of Berossus’s Titan crashed through the last remaining portion of the main wall, hurling stone and blazing streamers of plasma through the air. One of his own Titans fell with it, shorn practically in half, and the impact to the two armoured leviathans sent shockwaves through the earth that were almost the equal of the blast beneath the ramp.
A great cry of dismay went up and Honsou knew that he could end this now. Berossus fought to dislodge Onyx, his clawed arms slashing and stabbing the daemonic symbiote repeatedly. Honsou gripped his axe and sprang to his feet, not about to waste the chance his champion had gained him.
With a roar of hate, he charged forwards while the dreadnought’s attention was fixated on Onyx and hammered his axe with all his strength into the now-unguarded portion of the dreadnought’s leg where the armour was weakest.
Screaming, warp-forged steel met ancient metal crafted by forgotten technologies in a blazing corona of flaring energy. Berossus roared and smashed to the ground, slamming down on his back as Onyx leapt gracefully clear of the toppled machine.
‘Call me half-breed now, you bastard!’ screamed Honsou, stepping in and hammering his axe against the dreadnought’s sarcophagus. The ancient metal split and Berossus wailed in agony as the daemon weapon tore into his iron body.
‘Still think you’re better than me?’ yelled Honsou as he hacked at the dying dreadnought’s body. Metal and sparks flew as the master of Khalan-Ghol butchered his iron foe. Berossus fought to right himself, but Honsou and Onyx gave him no chance, darting away from his clumsy blows and hacking his uselessly flailing limbs from his body.
‘You’re nothing, Berossus, nothing! Do you hear me?’
A grainy wash of static-laced, incoherence blared from Berossus’s vox-amp, and Honsou vaulted onto the dreadnought’s sarcophagus yelling, ‘Perhaps you can’t hear me through all that iron.’
He raised himself triumphant on the warsmith of the attacking army and brought his axe down again and again on the grinning skull-faced sarcophagus, finally splitting it apart with his fifth blow.
The sounds of battle faded and, for the first time in months, the fighting stopped as the battling Iron Warriors paused to watch the unfolding drama being played out before them.
Honsou knelt atop Berossus’s sarcophagus and punched his pristine silver arm into the dreadnought. With a grunt and wrench, he ripped something clear in a welter of black blood and amniotic fluids.
He held up his arm and shouted, ‘Your warsmith is dead!’
In his hand he held a monstrously swollen skull and dripping spinal column, fused wires like veins dangling from the last mortal remains of Warsmith Berossus.
The tension was palpable and Honsou knew he had to cow the scores of enemy warriors or risk this slaughter becoming a battle of mutually assured destruction. With a roar of hate, he swung the spinal column like a club and smashed Berossus’s skull to splinters of bone against the ruptured iron shell that had once housed it.
‘Your warsmith is dead!’ he repeated, hurling away the remains. ‘But you do not need to die! Berossus is gone and by right of conquest I offer any warrior who wants it a place in my army. You have proved yourselves warriors of courage, and I have need of such men.’
No one moved, and for the briefest second Honsou thought he had made a grave error.
But then a warrior in heavily tooled armour of burnished iron and sporting a burnt and tattered back banner of gold and black stepped forwards.
The warrior’s armour was bloody and scored from the hard fighting. He removed his cracked helmet, revealing scarred and pitted features topped with a close-cropped mohawk.
‘Why should we join you, half-breed?’ he shouted. ‘You may have defeated Berossus, but Toramino will wipe you and your fortress from the face of Medrengard.’
‘What is your name, warrior?’ said Honsou, jumping from the broken carcass of the dreadnought and marching purposefully towards the Iron Warrior.
‘I am Cadaras Grendel, Captain of Arms of Lord Berossus.’
Honsou stood before the bloody warrior, seeing the defiance in his eyes.
‘Aye,’ agreed Honsou, raising his voice so that all the warriors gathered in the ruins of his fortress could hear him. ‘You may be right, Cadaras Grendel. Toramino has the strength of arms to destroy me, I cannot argue with that. But ask yourself this… why has he not blooded his warriors yet?’
Honsou turned to address the rest of the assembled warriors, raising his arms and punctuating his words by punching the air with his axe. ‘Where was Toramino while you all fought and bled to get here? You know who built this place and you know that only the bravest of warriors could take it. Where was Toramino while you were dying in your hundreds to storm this fortress?’
He could see his words were having the desired effect. Honsou felt a hot rash of adrenaline race around his body as he saw that he had correctly anticipated the rancour these brave Iron Warriors must have felt at the bloody work they did while Toramino’s warriors watched them die.
‘Toramino hung you out to dry and laughed while he did it. Even if you had succeeded here, do you think the spoils of Khalan-Ghol would be yours to plunder? Toramino has betrayed you, just as the Emperor betrayed the Iron Warriors in the ancient days. Will you be used like that or are you men of iron?’
‘We are men of iron!’ shouted Cadaras Grendel, the shout taken up by his surviving warriors.
‘Then join me!’ bellowed Honsou, gripping Grendel’s shoulder guards. ‘Join me and avenge this betrayal!’
Months of bitterness at the deaths of his men rose to the surface on Grendel’s face and he nodded. ‘Aye. Toramino will pay for this. My warriors and I are yours to command!’
Honsou turned and with Cadaras Grendel beside him roared, ‘Iron within!’
‘Iron without!’ came the answering bellow from every Iron Warrior, shouted over and over again.
And Honsou knew he had them.
URIEL WATCHED THE two Titans collapse and, amazingly, heard the sounds of battle fade away. Had Khalan-Ghol fallen or had Honsou defeated the escalade? It was impossible to tell, and they would only know when they reached the top.
Their ascent up the cliff-face had been heart-poundingly fraught, as the Unfleshed had carried them swiftly up slopes Uriel would have sworn were unclimbable. Their strength was prodigious and their endurance phenomenal.
In the sudden silence, Uriel could hear the crackling flames from the burning vehicles at the foot of the mountain and the occasional explosion from a shell as it detonated in the heat. The infrastructure of Berossus’s army burned and as the quietness stretched on, Uriel guessed that die attack had failed to take the fortress. Warriors who had fought their way through a breach were so fuelled on adrenaline and rage that looting and slaughter usually followed in the wake of a successful storming.
But silence… that was new to Uriel.
The Lord of the Unfleshed clambered over an overhanging splinter of rock, swinging his massive body up and over the lip of the plateau and Uriel had his first look at the bloody ruin of the final assault.
‘Emperor preserve us!’ breathed Pasanius as he joined Uriel.
‘Even the storm of the citadel was nothing compared to this…’ added Leonid as the fused twins deposited him next to the Space Marines.
>
The wreckage of a destroyed army lay strewn before the shattered remains of the spire’s defensive wall, itself no more than jagged stumps of black stone jutting from the ground like rotten teeth in a diseased gum. Blazing tanks and bodies were strewn about the plateau: some crushed flat, others hollowed out by explosions. Pyres of ammunition sparked and blew, and the remains of the Titans burned with a bright glare of plasma.
Gun barrels the size of cooling towers lay cracked and useless amid the debris and even had anyone been keeping watch on the battlefield, the smoke and flames would conceal them from detection.
‘Who won?’ asked Leonid.
‘I’m not sure…’ said Pasanius, following Uriel through the corpse-choked rubble.
He bent to retrieve a fallen bolter with his remaining hand and checked its load before saying, ‘Find yourself a weapon, colonel, and scavenge as much ammunition as you can carry.’
Leonid nodded and scooped up a battered, but serviceable lasgun, some charged clips and a bandolier of grenades. As he did so, his chest hiked in pain and he was bent double by a coughing fit. He wiped his hand across his mouth, seeing brackish, matter-flecked blood coat his palm before wiping it clear on what remained of his dusty, sky-blue uniform jacket.
The Unfleshed capered across the battlefield, stooping to feed amid the cadavers, tearing limbs from bodies and devouring the still-warm meat straight from the bone. The Lord of the Unfleshed lifted the limbless corpse of an Iron Warrior and tore off its breastplate, biting into the chest and tearing off a great mouthful of flesh.
Even though it was the body of an enemy, Uriel was appalled and said, ‘No, do not eat this meat.’
The Lord of the Unfleshed turned, his face alight with horrid appetite and savage glee at this chance to feast on an Iron Warrior. ‘Is meat. Fresh.’
‘No!’ said Uriel, more forcefully.
‘No?’ replied the Lord of the Unfleshed. ‘Why?’
‘It is corrupt.’
Seeing the creature’s incomprehension, he said, ‘It is bad.’
‘No… is good,’ said the Lord of the Unfleshed, holding out the opened corpse of the Iron Warrior. The ribcage had been bitten through and the warrior’s internal organs were laid bare.
Uriel shook his head. ‘If you love the Emperor, you will not eat this meat.’
‘Love the Emperor!’ bellowed the Lord of the Unfleshed and Uriel winced, thinking that the creature’s voice could be heard even through the fury of a battle.
‘Many iron men dead,’ growled the Lord of the Unfleshed, angrily. ‘Much meat.’
‘Yes, but we are not here for meat,’ said Uriel. ‘We are here to kill iron men and flesh mothers, yes?’
The Lord of the Unfleshed looked set to argue the point, but with an angry snarl dropped the half-eaten body and said, ‘Kill iron men now?’
‘Yes, kill iron men,’ said Uriel as he heard the sound of approaching engines from within the fortress. ‘But we need to get to the heart of the fortress first.’
Uriel turned as Pasanius and Leonid approached, bearing guns, ammunition and grenades. Pasanius unslung a bolter from his shoulder and handed it to Uriel together with several magazines of shells.
‘It galls me that we must use the weapons of the Enemy,’ said Uriel as he slammed a magazine home in the bolter.
‘I suppose there’s a certain poetic justice in using their own guns against them,’ said Pasanius as he awkwardly loaded and cocked the weapon.
‘What’s that noise?’ asked Leonid as he finally heard the rumbling engine sound drawing yet closer.
‘It is our way in,’ said Uriel, gesturing to the bodies surrounding them. ‘I want you to conceal yourself amongst the dead Iron Warriors. We will lie close to one another, but must make sure we’re amongst the dead.’
Uriel turned to face the Lord of the Unfleshed and hurriedly said, ‘Have the tribe lie down with the dead iron men. You understand? Lie with the dead.’
‘Lie down with meat?’
‘Yes,’ confirmed Uriel. ‘Lie down with the iron men, and when we get up we will be where we need to be.’
The Lord of the Unfleshed nodded slowly and made his way through the tribe, grunting and pointing to piles of corpses.
As the Unfleshed began lying down amongst the dead Chaos Space Marines, Pasanius said, ‘You know they’ll feed on the bodies.’
‘I know,’ said Uriel, ‘but there is little we can do about it.’
‘Truly the Emperor does work in mysterious ways,’ added Leonid.
Uriel tried to put aside the thought of the Unfleshed’s cannibalistic tendencies as they located a group of shredded Iron Warriors arranged on the edges of a shell crater, and secreted themselves amongst their corpses.
Even as he dragged an Iron Warrior’s body over his own he saw their way into the fortress emerge from the rolling banks of smoke that hugged the ground.
Huge bulldozers, red and hateful, with tall banner poles hung with eight-pointed stars and iron tenders hitched behind them came from the Halls of the Savage Morticians.
They came to gather up the dead for crushing and feeding to the daemonculaba.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
DEAD EYES IN a skull with the top blown off stared at him, sightless and fixed in an expression of surprise. No matter where Uriel turned in the blood-filled container, he could not escape the staring eyes of the dead. Scooped up with the rest of the corpses by the daemonic bulldozers, he had been unceremoniously dumped in the tender by the growling machine as it performed its automated and graceless coroner’s task.
Bodies piled upon bodies, blood and entrails spilling to the sloshing floor and Uriel fought to claw his way to the surface, lest he drown in the stagnant blood of the fallen. He coughed red as he pushed his way clear of the bodies, keeping his head below the level of the tender’s railings for fear of discovery.
The hot stink of blood filled his nostrils and slippery bodies jostled him as the trailer bumped over the uneven ground. He rolled onto his back, craning his neck left and right to see as much as he could without raising his head too far. He saw the shattered remains of a high wall pass, its fabric riddled with shell impacts and looking as though it had been struck by an orbital bombardment. Smoke curled, fat and black, from pyres and Uriel could hear chanting voices shouting from afar.
They had penetrated the walls of Khalan-Ghol and now just had to stay concealed until these bulldozers took them back to the nightmare Halls of the Savage Morticians and the daemonculaba.
A cadaver bobbed from beneath the blood and Uriel made to push it away when it blinked at him.
‘Imperator! I thought you were a corpse!’ exclaimed Uriel when he saw it was Pasanius.
‘Not yet,’ grinned Pasanius, spitting blood.
‘Where is Leonid?’
‘Here,’ said a voice from the other side of the tender. ‘By the High Lord’s balls, this is almost worse than being flushed from the chambers below.’
Uriel raised an eyebrow and Leonid shrugged. ‘Well, maybe not.’
‘If I’m right, these will take us right where we want to go,’ said Uriel. ‘We just have to bear it for a little longer.’
‘How long do you think it’ll take to get there?’ asked Leonid, almost afraid of the answer.
Uriel shook his head. ‘I do not know for sure, but I do not believe these machines will be confounded by the magicks protecting this place, so not long would be my guess.’
Leonid nodded resignedly and shut his eyes, trying to block out the dreadful smell of the dead bodies.
As it transpired, the bulldozers’ journey through the twisting interior of Khalan-Ghol took perhaps another hour, travelling along grisly thoroughfares of sacrificial altars, winding between dark-armoured bunkers and through the maze of manufactorum that the warrior band had become so lost in.
The vast shadow of the gate of the tower of iron at the centre of the fortress passed over them, and once again they were deep in the heart of Honsou’s lair
. Distant hammer blows and the grinding clanking of nearby machines filled the gloom, and Uriel heard the clicking footsteps of unseen creatures as they filed past the growling bulldozers. Sickly yellow light came and went as they passed along wide, rockcrete tunnels lit by flickering lumo-strips.
Eventually, Uriel heard the thudding beat of a monstrous heart growing louder and shared an uneasy glance with his companions. The booming bass note was all too familiar.
‘The Heart of Blood,’ said Pasanius.
Uriel nodded, his muscles tensing as he heard clicking and wheezing mechanical footsteps approaching. The bulldozer ground to a halt with a juddering lurch. A tall silhouette loomed over the edge of the tender and Uriel snapped his eyes shut, recognising the dead skin features of one of the Savage Morticians.
He remained utterly immobile as he felt metal pincers jab into the tender. Hissing claws turned bodies within the pooled and now sticky blood. Corpses rolled and flopped in the tender as the Savage Mortician inspected the dead for some unknown purpose.
He fought back a gasp of revulsion as he felt a claw close on his leg and turn him over, fighting to remain still as his flesh was jabbed and probed.
The Savage Mortician clicked and whistled in its incomprehensible language, presumably to another of its fell, surgical kin, before releasing his limb and clanking off on some other errand. Uriel kept his eyes shut and his breathing shallow until the bulldozer set off once again and they had put some distance between them and the hellish surgeons.
‘Holy Throne,’ he whispered, sickened by the Savage Mortician’s touch.
Their nightmarish journey continued into the chamber of screams, the terrible beat of the daemonic Heart of Blood dulling his senses once more. Even over the heavy thuds of the Heart of Blood, Uriel heard the rumbling whine of heavy machinery as well as the grinding crack of bones and wet squelch of pulverised flesh.
‘Be ready!’ he hissed. ‘I think we have arrived!’
Pasanius and Leonid nodded as Uriel slid himself over the carpet of bodies and raised his head slowly over the edge of the tender.