THE MOUTH OF CHAOS

by Chris Dows

The roar of unbreathable air blasted past Zachariah’s ears, rattling the tinted visor on his heavy pressure helmet and blurring his vision. Directly beneath him, more than eighty Elysians plunged towards the gaping maw of Rysgah City two kilometres below in close formation. Fourth Platoon’s captain, distinguished from the others by the outer red banding on the central yellow strip of his helmet, directed the drop from the lowest tier with deft flicks of his gloved hands.

It was too loud to use vox effectively so helmet comms were turned off, chatter and static replaced by the veteran sergeant’s own practised, rhythmic breathing. Despite wearing a thick thermal liner, his arms ached from the freezing cold and the full-reach spread he’d kept up since exiting the drop-ship; it increased stability and reduced fall rate, but the price was a bone-numbing fatigue that would be hard to shake off until well after landing. It was perilous enough dropping into a battle zone; the recovery time from the fall itself was a problem few non-Elysians would understand or appreciate.

Luckily, he knew he could rely on his veteran special weapons team to look after themselves and each other from the second they threw themselves from the belly of their high-altitude Valkyrie troop carrier. Zachariah glanced to his left, taking care not to wrench his neck by presenting too large a profile to the merciless jetstream: demolition experts Adullam and Beor fell gracefully despite their violently rippling dark olive jumpsuits and body-lashed weapons, while to the right the forms of Sojack, Coarto and the massive shape of Melnis kept an effortless perfect distance between each other, seemingly oblivious to their terminal velocity.

Returning his gaze downwards, the view below him was exactly that presented in the briefing room of the Obliteration short hours earlier – the huge, dish-shaped valley containing Rysgah’s capital loomed larger in the crisp dawn light, its towering outer walls striated by aeons of volcanic activity. Rysgah was a black, ugly planet, just the kind of world that Chaos would embrace as its own, and the massive shadows created by the slowly rising sun made the rim of the crater look like a mouth full of broken teeth.

An exaggerated full-arm signal from the captain caught Zachariah’s eye and, as one, all six special weapons veterans pulled their arms tight into their bodies and tipped forwards, increasing speed thanks to their shifted centre of balance. As they hurtled through the layers of falling men, he noticed some of the rookies struggling to keep their bodies under control. They’d get the dressing down of their lives when – or if – they landed safely, and he hoped they wouldn’t be his team’s back-up on this mission – the last thing he needed was having to look out for less experienced troops.

Steering away from the main group with a roll of the shoulders, the six were joined by two standard infantry squads, the twenty-six-strong group hurtling down in a V-shaped formation towards the western flank of the city’s outer wall and a clearing only recently secured by First and Second Platoons.

With the upper rim of the extinct volcano only seconds away to his right, Zachariah could see the shimmering blue void shields dancing around its massive circumference. Somewhere beneath them, penned inside the city’s impossibly cramped streets and crumbling ancient towers, were countless civilians caught up in the Rysgahan planetary defence force’s descent into madness. Facing Chaos forces smashing their way through the neighbouring Arx Gap and fearing the total destruction of their planet, a brutal rebellion had quickly swept through their ranks, ending in this stand-off within the sheer walls of Rysgah City.

The planet’s volcanic nature gave the Rysgahans almost limitless geothermal energy to power their defensive networks, and despite their best efforts to bombard the rebels into submission the Navy had failed to break the stalemate. This waste of effort played nicely into the hands of the insurgents who saw it as a simple waiting game – once the Chaos forces arrived, they would throw in their lot with the agents of evil and embrace the darkness. Unfortunately, those Rysgahans who remained loyal to their beloved Emperor would be surplus to requirements and, as such, executed in their hundreds of thousands, military or civilian.

Well, thought Zachariah, the rebels hadn’t counted on the 158th being called in to stop them.

The massive curved walls of the volcano loomed huge in his vision, pockmarked by vast craters barely visible in the blackened crystalline rock. An earlier plan had been to use the larger holes caused by the aerial bombing as entrances to the interior of the city, but this had been discounted as too risky even for drop-troops.

Something about those holes made him feel uneasy. He motioned a warning to Adullam and Beor, who immediately mimicked the movement to the other three. They dipped and rolled away from the wall, trusting the instincts of their sergeant.

As the infantry squads continued to fall around him, Zachariah’s awareness went into full sniper mode, his gaze darting from point to point, automatically scanning and analysing any and every detail he could see. Some of those holes were very deep, and the angle of the shafts meant they didn’t come from external detonations. No, these looked like they’d been drilled from the inside–

Zachariah’s world went red, a scarlet mist coating his visor. For a split second he couldn’t quite understand what had happened, but then, as he felt the wet impact of exploded flesh hit his side, he knew he’d been caught in the total annihilation of a human body.

Wiping his visor with the back of his gloved hand, he could just make out the perpetrator of the attack through a smudge of blood. Incredibly, the Rysgahans had managed to haul a Hydra tank turret up the inside of the volcanic walls and position it as a makeshift anti-aircraft weapon in the mouth of a cave halfway up the sheer rock face. The quadruple muzzles blazed into life, tracer dancing in lethal lines from the exposed cave and spreading outwards in a deadly arc. By the Emperor – this hadn’t been in the briefing!

Clearly panicked by the last thing they expected and wanted to encounter, some of the less experienced Guardsmen began to bunch together in confusion, forgetting their training and forming a larger, tempting target. The three-strong rebel crew wasted no time in traversing their weapon on its improvised mount towards them, the loader working overtime to maintain the decimating hail of fire.

Projectiles passed through one trooper as if he was wet tissue, spattering tiny gobbets of flesh in all directions and turning the man into a bloody cloud. A second lived just long enough to see the bottom half of his body completely eviscerated, the shock and torrent of blood loss mercifully claiming his life before he had time to scream.

While his own squad was safely out of the way, Zachariah calculated the remainder of Fourth Platoon would pass within range of the weapon even if they’d spotted what was happening from above. Something had to be done, and now. Hitting the thrusters on his grav harness, Zachariah halted his descent with a sickening jolt, the straps cutting into his armpits. In the recesses of his mind, a chrono was running, counting down the time he had to stay in position and, based on what he’d just witnessed, how long it would take the Rysgahans to zero in on his location. He had somewhere around fifteen to twenty seconds, he concluded as more bodies erupted in scarlet plumes around him.

A familiar sensation overwhelmed Zachariah, an uncanny calm that he had practised and mastered through sheer will and determination over his years of active service. Adrenaline and endorphins flooded into his body but he controlled the rush of excitement, instead using the heightened sensations to focus with supreme clarity on the target. Nothing existed other than the three rebels, their weapon and him; he was perfectly aware of the stream of deadly fire creeping closer and closer, of the carnage it would wreak if it hit him, but it simply didn’t matter.

Calculations flooded his mind – angles of potential beam deflection, the instability of his own precarious position, the distance and elevation to the gouged-out hole in the side of the volcanic wall. Heavy-gloved fingers unlatched his lasgun and, despite the extra distortion created by the blood-smeared visor, Zachariah brought the telescopic sight to his eye and regarded the furiously working trio in hazy detail, turning down the image intensifier to minimum in the gradually brightening morning light.

The deadly hail was only seconds away, tearing through the rarefied air as streaks of mortal danger. Like many of his fellow veterans, the sergeant had modified his weapon to suit his style of combat – for him, it meant removing the trigger guard completely, somewhat dangerous for a less experienced soldier but not for a man who’d been serving Elysia and the Emperor for thirty-six years.

The left thruster on his grav-chute sputtered, pitching him diagonally until it cut back in, and he had to track back to the three men; but the shot was ready.

Hold breath. Wait. Exhale. Squeeze.

The rebel he guessed to be the commander was the first to go, with a shot to the upper chest passing neatly through his grubby brown carapace armour and continuing out through the back, spattering fluid and bone into the darkness of the cave. A look of astonishment came over the soldier’s face as he looked down at the smoking hole in his chest, then to the gaping loader who crouched over the makeshift weapon clearly struggling to cope with what he was seeing.

As the commander fell to the floor like a dropped sack, the bottom of the loader’s jaw disappeared in a crimson slash. Clawing wildly at the gushing mess, he staggered to his feet in absolute panic and ran to the back of the cave, any threat he once posed now gone forever.

The third Rysgahan was made of sterner stuff, obviously a veteran of some order, and with teeth gritted he made straight for the firing controls of the Hydra. Zachariah took the opportunity to shoot him right between the eyes, just below the small peak of his close-fitting, tarnished bronze helmet, the beam cutting and cauterising his brain in an instant. Slumping sideways, he fell onto the now silenced Hydra’s feed casing. The blood running from his gaping dead mouth made the heated metal steam with every red drop.

Without hesitation, Zachariah clipped his lasgun back on to his quick-release chest harness and cut power to the thrusters, dropping immediately. Arrowing down head-first with arms flat to his sides, he increased his speed to a plummet, putting some distance between himself and the rest of Fourth Platoon above and behind. Waiting for the very last moment of safe freefall, he slammed his hand onto the grav-chute deployment rune and felt the familiar, sickening jolt of deceleration in his stomach. Looking down between his feet as a guide, he spotted the impossibly small section cordoned off for them within the black, brittle ground of the landing zone.

He hit the surface heavily, staggering forwards with the momentum but managing to avoid the rookie indignity of crashing into one of the many temporary structures and stacks of battered rectangular drop-canisters surrounding the area. Dozens of Elysians milled around, carrying ammunition and supplies towards a large smoking hole at the base of the overwhelming volcanic wall. The noise was deafening: boots crunching on the gritty black sand, shouts and calls from hastily erected tents and shacks, volleys fired into the air from heavy guns towards the few remaining Rysgahan wall emplacements within range.

Pulling off his helmet, he could feel that the air was warming in the morning sun and despite the smell of rotten eggs caused by the engineers’ recent blasting he was glad to shed the weight of his drop-gear. The upper layers of compacted ash had at first allowed Elysian engineers to quickly make an entrance at the base of the wall, but a series of much harder rock striations had slowed them down considerably. He hoped they didn’t have to hang around for long.

Pulling off his right glove, he began nursing some feeling back into his aching limbs, flexing his knuckles and running a calloused hand through his short dark hair. With fingers still numb from the cold, he felt a slick wet patch on his cheek; looking down, he found blood and matter glistening on his dirty hand. He wiped the mess away on the side of his fatigues and with a sigh cleaned off the top of his helmet so the white sergeant’s stripe running down its middle could be seen again.

‘So much for intelligence, sarge. We nearly got pasted there.’ Adullam wasn’t one for holding back his opinion, something that had got him into more than a few situations where his body hadn’t been able to uphold the promises his mouth had made. The craggy, scarred face of Zachariah’s oldest friend and comrade was still pale from the drop, but there was no time for full recovery – he and the shorter, disproportionately wider form of Beor crouched over a dozen Voss-pattern demolition charges just outside the landing zone, checking the flat, metallic discs for impact damage with a speed that would normally suggest a lack of thoroughness.

Not those two, thought Zachariah as he stood before his squad, checking the integrity of his sniper rifle by touch. When they set their minds to blowing someone or something up, they never failed.

‘You know what the Navy’s like, Adullam. Everything’s based on what they can see from their window.’ Melnis barked a laugh at his own joke, lifting the enormous bulk of his MkII plasma gun by the front-mounted bipod with one massive hand and staring straight down the barrel, its charred interior illuminated by the rising sun behind him.

‘Bloody Throne, Melnis. You nearly had our heads off there!’ Sojack snarled up at the hulking form, interrupting the fitting of a specially made extension tube onto his Voss-pattern grenade launcher. Coarto stopped too, his identical MkV unit partially assembled across his thigh.

‘Oh, I’m sorry if I interrupted your playtime, boys. I know how fond you are of those little toys.’

Sojack looked over to his best friend and they shook their heads as one, turning their attention back to improving the accuracy of their well-worn launchers. They weren’t biting – not today.

‘Now don’t be upsetting the Fourth’s finest, Melnis. Just remember how they saved your big, thick neck on Carmelia.’

Melnis snorted over at the smiling Beor, while Coarto and Sojack grinned up at him, still covered by his considerable shadow. Zachariah sighed, having heard it all before a hundred times, but it comforted him to see everyone in good spirits before a battle.

He noticed that Sojack and Coarto had re-inked the tattoos on the backs of their shaven heads. Each had the opposing half of the 158th’s aquila symbol, a stylised, swooping Imperial eagle with the skull of an ork in one talon and an eyepatch-wearing human head in the other. Their party trick was to put their heads together as a prelude for instigating brief, brutal and, to them, hugely enjoyable fist-fights with anyone they could find stupid enough to argue with or insult them.

‘I’d like to invite them on a drop one day, sarge. See how they like the nasty surprises we always seem to get.’

Beor was on his feet now, packing half a dozen of the heavy explosive devices into a rucksack by their stubby handles, breathing heavily as he did so. Built like an Elysian valley ox, his head and neck were virtually the same thickness, leading to the less than flattering nickname ‘Bulldozer Beor’ among his close friends. Despite his outward appearance of being unfit, they all knew this to be a dangerous assumption to make; his girth only added to his destructive potential.

There was no answer from Zachariah, whose attention was drawn to a sudden increase in activity at the mouth of the nearby drill-hole as several Elysian engineers ran from the man-made cavern. Seconds later, the ground shook and a huge, stinking black cloud billowed out of the entrance, bringing an uneasy silence to the encampment which a moment later broke with a roar as Third Platoon began pouring into the hole. Within seconds the unmistakable sound of close-quarter combat echoed into the foetid air.

‘We’ve breached the inner wall of Rysgah City, men. You know your orders: for the 158th and for the Emperor!’ Fourth Platoon’s captain took the lead within seconds of landing, his veteran personal guard shedding their harnesses and readying weapons as they cut a path through the milling soldiers. Zachariah and his squad fell in behind the surviving Guardsmen who had made it through the Hydra assault, assigned as their support for this mission. Zachariah replaced his helmet and buckled up, and before putting on his glove took a swig of water in an attempt to wash away the stench of the planet. It didn’t work.

The Elysians bunched up as they reached the mouth of the entrance in a swarm of dark-green camouflaged bodies, and Adullam looked back to Zachariah with a frown, more cracks than ever thrown into stark relief on his beaten face from the sunrise creeping steadily into the sky behind them. The heat was already stifling inside the poorly lit tunnel; the engineers had done a spectacular job in a short period of time, but it was too narrow and too low for troops to mount a full-on assault. This kind of bottleneck could only mean huge casualties on entering the killzone; which in itself was bad enough, but stepping over the bodies of fellow drop-troops could be too much for rookies and even for veterans never got any easier to face.

‘Weapons ready, squad. This is going to be unpleasant.’

Armed and armoured bodies pressed against each other, all eager to get to the fight. A soft glow of light could be seen in the distance, hazy shadows dancing and crossing in a blur of activity across its radius. Three loud explosions shook the tunnel and it was all Zachariah could do to keep his footing on the smooth, wet rock. Small-arms fire increased significantly after the final boom; screaming and shouting echoed from the walls, but something else could be heard too, a ghostly, amplified voice that drifted in and out of audibility.

‘I am the voice of Rysgah, I am the mouth of Chaos. Do not fight us. Join us. Together we can embrace the darkness...’

The voice rasped on Zachariah’s nerves and he shook his head to clear it, his mouth twisting. Join them? Had the hundreds of thousands of Rysgahan civilians had any real option in the face of their military’s treachery? The rebels had already left entire cities full of bodies in their retreat to the sanctuary of Rysgah City. Zachariah had seen many disturbing things in briefings before, but the sight of innocents not even accorded the decency of a burial or pyre but left to rot in the stinking, corrosive air of this vile planet filled him with a deep but, for him at least, still controllable fury.

‘How do you want to play it, sarge?’ Melnis had taken the lead but was barely able to bring his weapon to bear, such was the crush from the rest of Fourth Platoon before him. His voice had an edge of frustration, something Zachariah knew Melnis continually struggled with. Given the option he’d hop into the largest, most destructive vehicle available and shoot, ram and generally smash his way into and through a combat zone, but in such a confined space, Melnis felt claustrophobic and vulnerable. The best way to deal with him was to be straight and simple.

‘Two threes. Sojack, Coarto, fill your tubes and flank Melnis. Watch your feet on exit as there’ll be bodies all over the place. Fire at anything that moves. Adullam and Beor are with me. Wait for the ranks in front to get clear then move out.’ Turning to the support squad behind him, he told them to await further instruction following their exit. No point in pushing them out first to get uselessly killed, as they’d certainly need as many men as possible when they reached their objective.

Zachariah could hear all five of his men shuffling into position. They were ready.

A deafening volley of fire from the mouth of the tunnel created a gap for Zachariah’s squad to occupy, and they got their first real look at the interior of Rysgah City, much of it in deep morning shadow from the high rim of the extinct volcano’s walls. The geographical conditions had dictated where the tunnel could be dug in such a short time and it was hardly the most advantageous tactical position, opening out onto a line of crumbling black and grey stone buildings thirty metres across from the outer circumference wall.

Several heavy weapons nests were located on the buildings’ parapets and roofs, but many of them were little more than smouldering ruins, having attracted the fire of Third Platoon which currently busied itself with the hastily formed barricades to the left and right of their position. Fire still came from positions built into the towering, striated volcanic interior walls above and behind them, but the continual curve of the crater around the outside of the city and its buildings offered some protection for the moment. As soon as a few upper storeys disappeared, though, they’d be entirely exposed from just about every angle.

An explosion tore into the rockface on their right, showering black pumice over the dead Elysians at their feet. Coarto levelled his launcher and fired off a grenade towards a second-storey window to the left, blasting a huge hole and removing the threat in a shower of glass and brick. With no other fire returning, Zachariah patted the backs of the first three and they ran for the opposite side of the wide road, dodging stray fire until they made it to the relative safety of the buildings’ rough stone walls.

Zachariah trained his scope in a swift 180-degree arc: it looked clear enough so, in a half-crouch, he led Adullam and Beor across the rubble-strewn cobbled road. Catching his breath, he beckoned over to the ten remaining support Guardsmen who wasted no time in joining them.

‘Alpha team will–’ Zachariah’s words were drowned out by a high-pitched squeal of feedback from somewhere above, then the voice returned.

‘Give up, hopeless ones! You all will perish at the hands of Chaos. Surrender while you can!’

Zachariah flicked a glance over to Sojack and nodded his head upwards. Raising his grenade launcher with a grin, Sojack stepped away and into the road without a second’s thought of potential danger. Quickly scanning the roof-line, he spotted the oversized vox amplifier and fired off a single shot into the air.

The second he returned, the wall shook and debris rained down onto the road in front of them. The voice couldn’t be heard any more.

‘That’s what you get for opening your mouth when you shouldn’t.’ The others laughed weakly at Coarto’s joke, but there was no time for levity as Zachariah continued his instructions.

‘As I was saying… Alpha team will hit their objective in fifteen minutes. We’ve got ten to get to ours. It’s the smallest bridge but it’s bound to be heavily defended and it won’t take the Rysgahans long to figure out what we’re doing. We’ll head through the streets as planned but keep low and to the walls. This side of the chasm’s still crawling with the enemy.’

With a nod of the head, five of the Guardsmen filed towards a narrow gap between the shattered buildings as First and Second Platoon emerged from the tunnel exit across the road, respectfully avoiding the dead as best they could and joining the furious melees at the blazing roadblocks to the left and right.

Despite the loss of life Zachariah could see they were making headway on both flanks and, if all went according to plan, they’d pincer out and around this part of the capital and have it under control within half an hour. They only needed to destroy two of the three bridges that linked the uneven sides of the city, divided as it was by a gaping crevasse that dropped down into the extinct throat of the volcano. With only one crossing point for rebel reinforcements to use, they’d soon be able to control and ultimately capture the opposite side – since only one of the three was cramped by restrictive architecture that would hamper larger troop movements at either side, there was no doubt which it would be.

The towering form of Melnis followed the first group of Guardsmen and squeezed his way through the gap into a nearby alleyway formed by the six-storey buildings, again cursing the lack of space but more than comforted by the massive firepower in his hands. Coarto and Adullam followed next, then Beor who had his own issues with the passageway’s width.

Zachariah used his scope to sweep the high ledges as they jogged along, but the lack of good quality light made it difficult to see anything in detail. He could hear Sojack talking to the remaining Guardsmen behind, telling them to keep tight and watch out for anyone doubling back on them. He’d make a good sergeant one day, thought Zachariah.

Penned in as they were, they would have been an easy kill for any Rysgahan traitor who’d spied their position, but luck was with them as they spilled out of the passage into a wide courtyard.

Unfortunately, it didn’t last.

Fire erupted from all sides of the square, creating a furious crossfire that thumped into the leading group of Guardsmen. Two fell without even raising their lasguns. The third and fourth only managed to squeeze off a couple of wild shots before they, too, were cut down, and had it not been for Melnis’s lethal aim with the plasma gun, they might all have suffered the same fate. His deadly arcing swing completely destroyed three rebel positions, with a withering torrent of grenades from Coarto providing able assistance. Without even being asked, Sojack threw over a couple of shells to Coarto, who immediately loaded them into his weapon.

The light was improving all the time, but the view that presented itself was best left to the darkness. The area had been used for some form of execution, as evidenced by the piles of bodies, their hands tied behind their backs, lying in broken heaps at the base of a smashed statue. Melnis immediately recognised the carven figure’s desecrated remains.

‘De Haan,’ he rumbled dangerously.

Sojack reverently picked up the crumbling head of the martyred inquisitor’s statue, seeing the rest of its parts deliberately scattered between the corpses in a vile imitation of the man’s original, grisly end at the hands of Chaos worshippers. Adullam spat with disgust on the ashen ground and Beor whispered a prayer. Zachariah watched the Guardsmen carefully. This kind of sight was hard enough for veterans to stomach, but younger, less experienced troops could find themselves distracted enough to get themselves – and others – killed.

‘Elysians, fall in.’ Zachariah didn’t raise his voice, but he didn’t need to. The remaining six men snapped to, their minds suddenly focused on the frowning face and dark green eyes staring coolly at them.

‘You see this? This is Chaos. You’ve heard of it, you’ve been briefed about it, but now you’ve experienced it. This is how they treat their own, so think of what they’ll do to you.’ One man gulped; another shook his head as he clenched his teeth together. They understood the lesson.

‘Now, I don’t want to lose another man today. Three streets down is the chasm. They’re waiting for us, so get ready to fight for your lives.’

He looked at the smashed figurine, violated and broken in the gloomy shadows.

‘For your Emperor.’

Adullam gave the young men a frightening grin, while Melnis patted one of them on the back so hard he nearly collapsed. Satisfied everyone was suitably motivated, Zachariah nodded towards a wide avenue lined with more tall, decrepit dark buildings and the team jogged its way along the pavement, shielded from the inner volcanic wall emplacements by the looming constructions more by fortune than planning.

The renewed wailing of the infuriating Rysgahan propaganda machine told Zachariah they were getting close to their target. Raising a clenched fist to stop the small column, he pulled out the data-slate that contained the map he’d downloaded during the briefing on the Obliteration and calculated where the avenue would bisect the main road running alongside the volcanic fissure. He saw at once that it would bring them straight into the line of fire from the bridge’s entrance, but there was a narrower street running parallel with this one that could be reached down an alleyway some distance ahead. Unfortunately, that street would only bring them closer to the same position with the added disadvantage of being squeezed together on exit, much like the tunnel they’d used to enter the city.

Zachariah’s options abruptly decreased, as a sudden blast thumped into them and the middle of the deserted street’s surface erupted brick and stone in every direction. Huddling towards the wall with their faces turned away, the team were showered with debris as the ground shook from further detonations.

‘Get into that street up on the left! Move!’

The air turned black with rubble and dust as shells rained down from seemingly every direction. They’d clearly been spotted from a higher position and the enemy were zeroing in with alarming speed. Squeezing into yet another tight alleyway, the panting men found themselves faced with a line of heavily fortified back doors, clearly some form of emergency access for the buildings lining the crevasse. Explosions ripped apart the roofs high above and while it would take a lucky shot to drop a shell straight down on top of them, even one such hit would wipe them out in a heartbeat. Melnis’s frustration boiled over.

‘Let me go and sort this out, sarge. By the Emperor, we’re stuck like rats! I’m not dying like this.’

Sojack’s reply had the edge of calm needed in such a situation. ‘Cool it, Melnis. Why don’t you take it out of that door right in front of you? Pretend it’s mouth almighty over there.’

Coarto laughed at his friend’s suggestion, and Zachariah nodded a confirmation – they couldn’t go back or around, so they needed to go through the building to reach their target. Melnis didn’t even bother to level his weapon; one brief but mighty kick splintered the heavy door like matchwood.

Piling into the gloomy interior, they found the ransacked remains of a bakery. From the shop’s filthy front windows, the dark ragged slash that formed the volcanic chasm could be seen along with the bridge’s entrance. Any thoughts of a surprise attack were lost when they spied half a dozen rebels moving cautiously forwards towards their position, while another six ducked and ran towards the far avenue from their hastily erected barricade. They were heading for the very passageway through which the Elysians had just entered; within minutes they’d be surrounded.

The front windows shattered in a volley of fire, showering glass and brick into the murky interior. Some protection was offered by the large ovens and mixing vats, but it wouldn’t be enough when the rearguard attacked and besides, given time, the artillery could simply level the building. They had to go on the offensive.

‘Sojack, Coarto – make a hole out there. Melnis, Adullam – go see to our friends creeping around the back. You six – get ready to move on the bridge.’

Brief nods and grins from his trusted comrades lifted Zachariah’s spirits. How many times had he come out of a tight spot with these men at his back? He stood back with the sweating Beor as Melnis muscled his way past, his weapon trained straight ahead and looking like a child’s toy in his massive arms. Adullam couldn’t see anything in front of him other than Melnis’s huge bulk, but it wasn’t the first time he’d been more than happy to use his friend as a living shield; something that had been the point of several jokes and, occasionally, fights between them.

Within seconds, battle commenced in the narrow corridor at the back, giving Sojack and Coarto their cue to move forwards through the gloom and deliver a barrage of grenades out of the shattered bakery’s gaping frontage. Years of teamwork showed as they executed a textbook dual-launcher attack, one firing just within the explosive killing radius of the other to create a line of devastation that engulfed the hapless Rysgahans and probed its way spectacularly towards the bridgehead. They didn’t even have to look at each other, such was their familiarity; they knew exactly what the other was doing.

All thoughts of the square put behind them, the six Elysian Guardsmen laid impressive supporting fire, carefully picking their targets as they advanced towards the ornate black ironwork of the bridge.

Moving into the street, Zachariah spotted two rebels wheeling a small cannon up to their defensive line, a third following closely with ammunition. For a split second, Zachariah felt real panic – they were completely exposed and one well-placed shell could wipe out the majority of his forces.

Just as he drew breath to bark a warning, the artillery bombardment returned in force. But instead of shells raining down on them, the Rysgahan barricade erupted in a yellow and black blossom of friendly fire, handily killing the majority of the rebels and clearing a path for the Elysians to enter the wide, two-hundred-metre-long iron walkway across the bottomless ravine.

‘Sarge, did you see that! The Emperor loves the 158th!’

Coarto was laughing at their good fortune, and even Zachariah had to smile – this kind of mistake meant the rebels were panicking, despite the incessant drone coming from the ‘mouth of Chaos’ across the chasm. Even so, if someone with nerve and experience took control things could change very quickly, so Zachariah looked for a high vantage point behind and upwards.

It took seconds for Coarto and Sojack to finish off the remaining rebels, and the six Guardsmen quickly took up crouched positions on either side of the bridge’s entrance. Burning buildings and military equipment made it difficult to see what was happening on the other side of the crevasse, but a deadly concentration of fire straight down the bridge’s length had the team retreating to the relative safety of the raised black stone embankment running along the banks of the inky chasm.

Shafts of sunlight began to streak down over the volcano’s mouth, tinged blue by the still-active void shields and glinting off the tops of buildings on the far side of the city. This would improve the view for the spotters located within the interior walls so, as Melnis and Adullam appeared from around the corner, Zachariah signalled to activate helmet comms.

‘If we can’t get on the bridge we can’t destroy it. Adullam, Beor – get your charges ready. I’ll go up that tower next to the bakery with Sojack and Melnis – no arguments.’

This cut off Melnis’s protestations immediately; he’d have to live without charging head-first down the bridge. His sergeant clearly had a more subtle plan in mind.

‘We’re going to need a lot of firepower up there to cover you. No point in us calling reinforcements as they’ll be too busy and, besides, if the Rysgahans try sending anyone down that bridge we’ll kill them just as easily as they could us. We need to even things out a bit. Coarto – go tell the regulars you’ll be covering Adullam and Beor while they set the charges. Move on my signal. Understood?’

Nods all around; and, on a final raise of the eyebrows and exhalation, he crouch-ran over to the larger, more ornate structure adjoining the now-burning bakery, once some proud municipal building but now a pock-marked, brutalised shell. Melnis threw himself through the thick wooden doors, splintering them on their hinges, and within seconds the three-strong team were running up the staircase of the rectangular tower, the amplified Rysgahan voice louder and clearer as they clattered up the dusty wooden steps.

A trapdoor opened up onto the tower’s exposed roof and Zachariah was immediately relieved to see a chest-high stone wall forming its outer edge. The sheer size of Rysgah City meant they’d be out of range from the far walls, but the accuracy of the recent artillery fire meant someone had a good angle on them close by. This was confirmed in no uncertain terms as they came under immediate fire, a shot hitting Melnis in the thigh and bringing him to his knees in fury.

‘Emperor damn it!’ he spat, crawling to the nearest wall as beams lanced overhead, punching neat holes in the stone above his head. Zachariah watched the angle of fire carefully and, readying his rifle, took a deep breath and edged upwards until he could see over the ledge. He ducked down, counted and visualised the location in his mind to within three metres; then, shifting a little to the right, he sprang up and fired two shots in rapid succession.

The first killed the spotter, the second his sniper protection. It wouldn’t be the end of it, but it gave them some breathing space.

‘Sojack, load up and range the other side of the bridge. Give ’em a good shower. Melnis – can you stand to cover?’

Melnis put weight on his leg and winced, his lower thigh already wrapped in a bloody field dressing. Zachariah immediately knew how bad it was for the big man to show any sign of discomfort, but like every Elysian veteran, he’d fought on with injuries as bad and worse.

Cautiously putting his head above the high ledge facing the fissure, Zachariah took a good look at Rysgah City’s interior. Black and grey stone buildings squeezed within the volcano’s towering walls, winding streets that, only days ago, would have been impossibly busy, brightly lit by the now-dead lamp posts and the buildings warm from the unlimited geothermal power deep below the city’s surface. Now it was a smoking, shadowy hell-hole, dying right before him, only suitable for the darkness to occupy.

Not if they had anything to do with it.

Satisfied they’d bought a few minutes of calm, Zachariah waved down to Adullum, Beor and Coarto who, in turn, saluted back. With a nudge from Zachariah’s boot, Sojack sprang to his feet, made a rough calculation to the other side of the rift and, despite the plumes of smoke hiding the Rysgahans’ movements, loosed a salvo into the air from his weapon.

Three familiar crumps thudded out from the base of the burning buildings lining the opposite bank, accompanied by dim yellow blossoms of flame at the bridge’s far entrance. The rattle of gunfire abruptly ceased, terminating the lethal hail ripping down the bridge but, unfortunately, not silencing the wailing, increasingly deranged Rysgahan broadcasts.

‘Be one with us! Your fight is lost! The mouth of Chaos is the truth!’

‘I swear, sarge, if I get my hands on that bloody traitor, I’ll pull his head off.’

Melnis was getting really annoyed now, which didn’t concern Zachariah unduly as it’d take his attention from his injury. What did worry him was the amount of movement towards the bridgehead on the far side, suggesting this was going to be a shorter respite than he’d hoped. Realising the same, Coarto didn’t waste the opportunity of lobbing a grenade directly, if not blindly, straight back down the bridge and, with the six Guardsmen advancing and firing in a line, Adullam and Beor moved in behind them with their charges.

At least the Rysgahans wouldn’t shell their own bridge – they needed it intact – but, unfortunately, they didn’t feel the same way about the tower in which Zachariah and his two comrades stood. The building shook with a rapid flurry of explosions, knocking Melnis off-balance and sending him sprawling to the cold stone floor with a curse. A loud whistle had the three of them ducking instinctively, but the mortar shell sailed overhead and down into the gaping fissure below the bridge.

With a couple of near hits and a far miss, it wouldn’t take long for the trajectory to be readjusted right on top of their heads, but this meant they had to be in line of sight somewhere relatively close. Zachariah calmly spoke into his comms unit. ‘That came from behind. Sort it out, Sojack.’

Striding over to the opposing wall, Sojack had a view of uneven rooftops and occasional towers all the way back to the massive black striated sheet enclosing the city. The Rysgahan defence troopers weren’t experienced soldiers, at least not by Elysian standards, so he looked for the most obvious launch point.

Within seconds, he spied the domes of helmets belonging to two crouched figures five hundred metres away and ten metres down, partially obscured behind a large ventilation duct on a narrow flat roof. With ammunition running low Sojack knew he had to make the shot count, and he did; the grenade sailed into the air and dropped right on top of their position, the roof of the building collapsing in on itself in a cloud of dust and filth.

Back on the other side of the tower, Melnis was upright once again and swivelling his plasma gun on its bipod along the bridge. The smoke was clearing at the far end, revealing dozens of rebels moving between a wide clearing directly opposite the bridge’s entrance and the tall buildings. One structure in particular caught his eye and he grunted as he shifted position slightly to give him a partial view of a large metallic framework on a high rooftop one street behind, where suggestions of figures moved busily between a network of snaking cables.

‘Listen to the voice of reason! The mouth of Chaos will never be silenced!’

Melnis clenched his teeth in pain, aimed deliberately high and squeezed the trigger. Super-heated plasma arced upwards and over the chasm, the jet losing shape and form as it reached the structure but still destructive enough to blow up the parts he could see. The amplified voice abruptly stopped and Melnis barked a triumphant laugh; it was the transmitter.

Fire flickered out of his line of sight, and his day was made when a flaming rebel plunged from the rooftop to the avenue below. It was wishful thinking, but he very much hoped it was the ‘mouth’.

‘That shut you up.’

Zachariah shook his head with a faint smile. The sun was creeping higher over the huge volcanic walls now, the destruction far below bathed in the first good light of the day. Something glinted in the distance down the street formed by the buildings, and he brought his lasgun’s scope back up with a frown. At exactly the same time, Coarto’s voice crackled in his ear. It was a single, simple word, and absolutely the last thing he wanted hear:

Tanks.

The lead vehicle drifted into focus through the thinning smoke, partially obscured by a milling group of rebels running in a confused swarm. It was low and flat, with the suggestion of a turret on top – a battered and barely functioning Chimera, its armour dented and split. The turret array was clearly no threat, but its hull-mounted heavy flamer looked worryingly intact. It seemed to have difficulty traversing to the right, suggesting the left-hand tracks or the steering mechanism was damaged, and the snub muzzle of its primary weapon seemed to be fixed forwards. At the moment it couldn’t quite bring the heavy flamer to bear but the driver was clearly intent on rectifying this.

Directly behind was an equally decrepit Leman Russ, its main gun missing but the port sponson cannon tracking menacingly. Partially obscured by the Chimera’s laboured manoeuvres, it posed no real threat while the APC stayed forward, and Zachariah assumed it was at the back because it wasn’t as battleworthy as the carrier. Even so, if that managed to get into place, it could wreak havoc over the chasm and into their part of the city.

Flicking his attention back to Adullam and Beor, he could see them working furiously on either side of the bridge, several silver discs now lined across its width and joined by red fuse wire. Beor took an opportunity to look up at precisely the moment the Chimera managed to turn enough to open fire.

Three of the Guardsmen became instant screaming torches as the flamer’s lethal jet consumed them, parts of the bridge’s ornate sidings melting away with the tremendous heat. The remaining three threw themselves to the ground on the right while Coarto fell to one knee and fired his final volley towards the front of the vehicle, blasting the road surface directly in front of the APC and causing it to pitch violently downwards into the smoking hole.

With restricted movement the heavy flamer couldn’t elevate enough to target the Elysians from its new position, but Zachariah could see from Adullam and Beor’s feverish movements that the demolition charges weren’t ready. They needed minutes, not seconds.

Ordering Melnis and Sojack to keep the bridge’s entrance as clear of rebels as possible, Zachariah rested his lasgun on to the tower’s smashed ledge and regarded the straining, shaking vehicle carefully through his image intensifier.

It was reversing out of the hole, tracks chewing on the crater’s shallow sides. The driver would be somewhere to the right, his head below the upper and lower section seam – precisely where a crack had developed at the corner of the viewing hatch, thanks to a number of popped rivets. Coarto’s crater had helped open it up a little more on impact, and with the APC not taking its full weight evenly across the lower section, it parted a few centimetres with the strain of movement.

Zachariah only had one chance at this before the Chimera got back to road level and the gap closed itself under the sheer weight of the turret above. He forced himself to relax; the stock and grip of the lasgun became an extension of his body and thanks to the bipod, he was absolutely static, leaving him to concentrate on timing out the violent rocking motion of the vehicle. He took a breath.

Target moving backwards, forwards, swinging up. Elevation and range calculated. Best angle approaching, largest gap forming… now.

The shot darted through the impossibly small hole formed between the thick armour plates, slicing into the vehicle somewhere around the driver’s seat. An extraordinary shot; one of his best for months, but self-congratulation wasn’t in Zachariah’s nature.

Even if it had been, the dismay he now felt would have quickly quashed his triumph as the APC kept on moving backwards, eventually righting itself with a grinding crunch. Its squat form loomed menacingly for a few seconds, like a predator deciding which prey to devour first, and Zachariah flicked his scope around the Chimera, urgently looking for another weak spot.

Suddenly, the carrier shuddered violently and began to spin wildly around its centre, mercilessly swiping away rebels using its bulk for cover. Tossed in a wide arc, some bounced off the front armour of the Leman Russ while others sailed like thrown dolls into the chasm, their screams quickly fading in the warm morning air.

A final bellow from the Chimera’s engines sent the hulking machine lurching forwards into the embankment, ploughing through a dozen more hapless Rysgahans and crushing several others. A few were pushed straight through the crevasse’s raised wall and followed it down into the bottomless darkness.

Something registered in Zachariah’s brain – he’d missed a critical change. What was–

The air exploded out of Zachariah’s lungs as he hit the floor of the tower face-up. His ears sang and he found he couldn’t focus properly; then he felt huge hands pull him to his feet from behind. The world spun and he pulled off his helmet, trying to shake his vision back to normality.

Melnis was shouting at him but all he could hear was a high-pitched tone, and within seconds he realised what had happened – the Leman Russ had opened fire on them and hit the corner of the tower with its first shot. Sojack crouched to one side of the large ragged hole newly created in the wall, firing the last of his grenades over the chasm, but the tank was just out of range.

Leaning on Melnis, Zachariah retrieved his lasgun and staggered over to Sojack’s position as a second shell hurtled overhead, exploding a hundred metres behind. Melnis pig-headedly stood in the middle of the gaping hole and tried to hit the tank, but his previous repeated firing had left the plasma gun dangerously overheated and it shut down, leaving the huge man bellowing in frustration.

Zachariah grabbed hold of Melnis’s webbing and yanked him back out of the direct field of fire, throwing a warning look at the furious man as he stumbled past.

Down below, Adullam and Beor frantically tried to finish wiring up the munitions while Coarto and the remaining three Guardsmen shuffled backwards towards them, firing sporadically, their ammunition nearly exhausted. The Rysgahans were readying their counter-attack on the bridge, which would surely come the second they had dispatched the three Elysians in the tower.

His head finally clearing, Zachariah rammed on his helmet, grabbed Sojack’s shoulder and pointed over to the roof’s trapdoor. ‘Get down there and give covering fire to the others. Keep out of sight as best you can and they might think we’ve been put out of action up here. I’m going to sort out that tank.’

With a nod, Sojack crawled over to the heavy wooden panel and heaved it open, allowing Melnis to squeeze his bulk into the opening before he, too, disappeared with a salute. Two seconds later, a shell hit the lower side of the tower, blasting a second hole in its heavy walls and collapsing the corner. The integrity of the building was failing and the Leman Russ crew now had Zachariah in their sights – one more shot to his position, possibly two, then they’d turn on the others.

Zachariah reached for a fresh power pack from his webbing, tapped it on his helmet to shake off any dirt it might have picked up in transit and slammed it home with a satisfying clunk. Taking a deep breath, he rolled onto his stomach, presenting as flat a profile as he could to the rebels – but breaking two golden rules of sniping by firing from a known and exposed position.

Time slowed. In his downward peripheral vision, Zachariah half-sensed, half saw the shape of Melnis limping across the avenue towards the entrance of the bridge, pulling out his entirely non-regulation and, at this range at least, entirely useless shotgun from the open holster on his back. Sojack had ditched his grenade launcher and was already firing single shots from his lasgun at the chasm’s far bank, the brilliant flashes flickering in the corner of Zachariah’s eye. All this he was entirely aware of, but it didn’t distract him from his primary focus – the sponson-mounted gun on the mangled port side of the tank. The muzzle’s angle was pointing directly at Zachariah; they couldn’t miss.

Zachariah smiled.

Hold breath. Wait. Exhale. Squeeze.

The lasgun threw a brilliant high-energy beam straight down the centre of the cannon’s muzzle, meeting the nose of the shell as it started its way out of the cannon. Without realising it they’d given Zachariah an absolute gift, the kind of shot he’d hear others tell stories about achieving over too many drinks at a bar, and he smiled as the tank left the ground on the left-hand side. It flipped on its side, smoke hissing out of its cracked shell, and when the magazine ignited the vehicle spectacularly erupted. Rysgahans were flattened on three sides, the remaining windows in nearby buildings blew out and shrapnel hurtled in every direction.

If the devastation wreaked by his single shot was good in itself, the utter shock and confusion on the rebels’ faces as they picked themselves up off the ground was even better. He’d bought Adullam and Beor the time they needed, and they were already using it.

‘Unbelievable, Zach! Unbelievable! We’re done – ten-second fuse starting now. Adullam out.’

Coarto took the lead in front of the three remaining Guardsmen, followed by the heavily panting Beor and Adullam, as Melnis and Sojack gave covering fire. A couple of Rysgahans ventured onto the bridge, clearly forced to try and disarm the charges squatting in a ragged line, but it was too late – the middle of the bridge was torn apart in a tremendous explosion, making Zachariah duck behind the remains of the tower’s roof to avoid the shower of iron fragments and stone thrown into the air. While he was spared the ignominy of being directly caught in his own successful detonation, the blast was clearly too much for the tower’s severely weakened structure, which began to collapse around and below him.

He dived through the open trapdoor. Huge chunks of masonry bounced off his helmet and armoured shoulder pads as he half-ran, half-fell down the disintegrating stairs. Entire blocks of stone plunged down the stairwell’s open centre and, with a deafening crash, a wall fell out into the street below.

Zachariah knew he wasn’t going to make it to the ground floor and so threw himself out of the gaping hole, landing awkwardly on a pile of rubble that had fallen after the Leman Russ’s first shell. Luckily, his sturdy high-ankled drop-boots took much of the twisting strain and the padded sections of his jumpsuit cushioned his untidy fall onto the avenue just as Melnis limped over, supported by Sojack.

Shots still arced overhead but, with a second rumbling explosion filling the air around the unseen bend of the chasm, the Rysgahans must have known the game was up.

Two bridges destroyed, one under Elysian control. They had nowhere left to run.

The quarters assigned to Zachariah and his squad on the Obliteration were cramped, spartan and noisy, but the showers worked and they were only a short walk from the mess hall – more than what they needed. Sitting on the edge of his peeling metal bunk, Zachariah worked on his lasgun’s sight mounting, gently coaxing it back into shape with a pair of pliers after his hasty exit from the crumbling tower. Sojack and Coarto could be heard laughing from the adjoining wash cubicle, their voices echoing around the low ceiling of the six-berth billet. Ignoring the tall tales of impossible deeds, Adullam lay on his bedroll opposite Zachariah’s position, staring at nothing in particular.

Beor lumbered into the room from the corridor outside, reading a fresh mission update from the briefing room three decks above, his laboured breathing pushing his barrel chest out to the limits of his extra-large tunic.

‘Only took an hour to get the shield down after the second bridge blew. The rebels surrendered after two.’

Adullam stretched and yawned, pushing his feet off the edge of the bunk and regarding his filthy outspread toes.

‘I imagine the executions started shortly after. That group of commissars I passed looked like they were going to burst with excitement.’

Zachariah smiled to himself; the Commissariat had, indeed, turned up in force once the 158th had secured the situation, ready to dispense the Emperor’s justice – and rightly so. He’d be surprised if a single traitorous rebel survived the night. It would be swift and brutal, but entirely justified; it was a wonder that the Inquisition hadn’t taken an interest, yet.

Exactly what would happen to the civilian populace far down beneath the orbiting Obliteration was beyond him; the planet was still right in the path of the Chaos forces’ seemingly relentless advance through the Arx Gap, and there was no formalised militia or effective government for them to turn to. Mass evacuation was simply too problematic, as was leaving anything other than a token garrison for protection; but as all of those issues now fell to those of higher rank than him, he shrugged inwardly and turned to re-attaching the sight onto its newly repaired mounting.

Beor looked up from the report, his interest lost now their involvement was over. ‘Any word on Melnis? Are they going to whip the leg off? Imagine what a pain in the arse he’d be with an augmetic one!’

Zachariah had seen Melnis an hour previously in the over-crowded charnel house that passed as the Obliteration’s infirmary. It’d been a lucky escape; while the wound was deep and he’d lost quite a bit of blood, a centimetre to the left and he wouldn’t have got off the planet alive. Not that any of this made the hulking brute any happier; after he’d shouted at the third orderly to get him back on his feet and signed fit for duty, a passing doctor administered a tranq dosage large enough to drop a bull grox and he’d likely be asleep for the following week if they were lucky.

‘He’ll be fine after some rest. Whatever that is.’ Adullam arched his back, the muscles cracking as he regarded a blue-black bruise on his shin. Beor rested himself slowly onto his bunk in the far corner, sighing deeply.

‘Don’t know about you two, but I’m sick of it out here. I can’t wait to get back home. A nice bit of ship-to-ship with some Elysian pirates – now that’s what I call...’

Zachariah was a master of self-control; he had the ability to slow down his pulse at will, reduce his breathing to a shallow whisper, remain completely still in the middle of an explosive maelstrom, but there was one, and only one thing that punched through all of his defences like no other. Any newcomer to the squad would have thought Beor’s comment had gone unheard by the veteran sergeant, but Adullam knew his friend far too well to miss the signs of his anger. The knuckles on his right hand had blanched, blood suddenly restricted by the vice-like grip currently transferred to the screwdriver being used on his lasgun.

It was at that exact moment Beor realised he’d said the wrong thing and met Adullam’s fiery glance; even the singing stopped from Sojack and Coarto in the shower. Everyone knew you didn’t talk about back home to Zachariah.

‘Sarge, I–’

Beor’s apology died in his throat as the tall, rangy form of Captain Makarah, a young but very effective officer from Third Platoon, appeared in the doorway. His darting glance finally rested on Zachariah, who looked up to meet his gaze with a neutral face. Adullam shook his head; he honestly didn’t know how his sergeant did it.

‘Sergeant, we need you in the briefing room right now. There’s a very nasty situation developed on Ophel Minoris – we’re nearest, so it’s up to us to sort it out.’

Placing his lasgun carefully on his bed and replacing his screwdriver on his opened repair kit roll, Zachariah rose to his feet and zipped up his jumpsuit. Without a word, he followed the captain out into the narrow corridor and disappeared from view, leaving Adullam and Beor in silence.

Adullam snorted air through his nose and, reaching under his bunk, pulled out his own lasgun. Beor followed suit, and shortly the only sounds that could be heard echoing off the thick metal bulkheads were the clinks and clacks of parts being dismantled, checked and cleaned.

The Butcher’s Beast

Jordan Ellinger

Men ran through the trees on the opposite river bank, giant men, swarthy men with tangled beards and blood on their lips. At the forest’s edge a regiment of swordsmen hastily assumed formation as screaming berserkers swept into their ranks, hewing about with blackened axes that glowed with savage runic light.

Knights in full armour, caught fording the Schilder, wrestled with their mounts as they tried to emerge from the churning froth and onto the rocky ground beyond. Somewhere close by a horse screamed as it was pulled under, the raging torrent swallowing it and its rider hungrily.

On a hill to the east, General Schalbourg’s fist tightened on the reins of his mount as he surveyed the scene in front of him.

‘The last reports we had were that the Skaelings were two days to the north.’

He kept his voice level, betraying none of the rage and helplessness that churned beneath his usually calm exterior. Men were dying in the valley below, and every moment he spared to indulge his anger meant another life lost. Several advisors sat impotently nearby on mountain ponies.

Only Knight Templar Keller of the Order of Sigmar dared to answer him. ‘The Skaelings aren’t known for their speed, my lord. We have reports that they are fleeing a much larger, unidentified force to the north. If you had allowed me the use of the brass bull when we captured those heretics two days ago, we would know for certain what drives them.’

Schalbourg masked his distaste for the witch hunter’s savagery. ‘Those “heretics” were women and children fleeing before this very horde,’ he muttered.

‘You saw women and children, my lord. I saw spies whose disguises were so cunningly woven that they might fool even a general.’

Schalbourg finally let some of his repressed anger free in the form of a snarl. ‘You tread dangerously close to insubordination, Keller. Knight Templar or not, this army is under my command.’

‘A witch hunter is forever treading on ground where other men fear to walk, for it is there that the enemy is most powerful,’ responded Keller piously.

Schalbourg glared at the man for a moment, trying to determine whether or not he was being insulted. At length, he gave up. While they bickered the Skaelings were tearing his army apart, and now they had word there was another army out there somewhere. Hopefully it was loyal to the Empire.

‘Tell me about this larger force,’ he said. ‘Requests for reinforcements from the Elector Count of Middenland were rebuffed, but who else could it be so close to the Grey Mountains?’

His line of thought was cut off by a scream as a volley of black arrows scythed out of the trees and fell amongst Empire soldiers, killing men where they stood.

‘Never mind,’ he said, a sweep of his hand cutting Keller off before he could answer.

He quickly surveyed the battlefield. Though the bulk of his forces and the entirety of his artillery support were stuck on the wrong side of the river, four units had made it across. Three had broken almost the moment the northmen had hit them, but one had held its ground – a regiment of swordsmen had assumed a tight, square formation that had brought the enemy to a halt and they were now fighting furiously against increasingly desperate odds.

‘Get me Hesberger,’ Schalbourg barked.

An underling kicked the flanks of his mountain pony and darted towards a unit of mounted knights. Their leader separated from the group and galloped up to Schalbourg’s side.

‘My lord!’ he said, flipping up his visor. The man behind it displayed a lined, but honourable face punctuated with a silver moustache.

‘The Enderberg Narrows. Do you know them?’ asked Schalbourg.

‘My squire hails from these lands. He’ll be able to guide us to it.’

‘Go with all haste. We’ll hold until you return. May Sigmar’s grace speed your mounts.’ Schalbourg watched the knights peel away from the rest of the army and gallop downriver.

‘My lord,’ said Keller bitterly, ‘only a single unit of swordsmen still holds the opposite bank. If they fall before Hesberger returns he’ll be charging into the jaws of the Dark Gods.’

Schalbourg felt an icy chill settle into his veins. The witch hunter was right, but what other choice did he have? It was that or lose the battle and three-quarters of his army. All their hopes hinged on those swordsmen. Normally, the general could identify any unit under his command by sight, but the haze of battle had obscured their regimental colours. ‘Keller,’ he said tightly. ‘Which unit is that?’

The witch hunter squinted, and then shielded his eyes against the setting sun.

‘It’s the Carroburgs, my lord.’

Schalbourg felt his shoulders unknot. ‘Thank Sigmar. We have a chance.’

‘Don’t break formation! Don’t break forma–’ Commander Toft’s order was cut off by a grunt as a terrified rhinox, driven by northmen wielding cruel brands against its flanks, slammed into the unit. Three feet of ivory horn lashed out and impaled a swordsman, then hurled the body into Toft, knocking him into the mud.

Anton Erhardt charged the beast’s flanks, dancing on the balls of his feet to avoid its shifting bulk, then brought his sword in an underhand arc that glanced off the brute’s armoured jaw and into the soft flesh of its throat. Warm blood washed across his wrists and hands, making his grip on the weapon slick.

As the rhinox fell he spared a second to look for Toft, but the commander was nowhere in sight. Until he reappeared, Erhardt was in charge of the regiment.

Battle swirled around him, Greatswords wielding five-foot-long steel zweihanders with mastery that betrayed their elite training. Here, the fierce barbarians from the north were being driven back, their primitive fury no match for the precise manoeuvres and coordinated assault of the Empire’s most dedicated troops.

‘Push them back!’ he bellowed. ‘We need to clear space on the riverbank for reinforcements!’

‘Lieutenant!’

Erhardt peered through the melee and caught sight of Kord Gottswain, a massive Nordlander whose dwarf-forged breastplate was spattered by the dark, arterial blood of the men he’d killed.

‘Lieutenant, they’re after the commander!’

Suddenly, the ranks of northmen parted violently as several huge beastmen shouldered their way to the front, swatting at their own soldiers with their axes to make way for their leader. Eight feet tall at the shoulder with a mad tangle of horns curled around its goat-like head like a hellish crown, it held a tree-trunk-sized axe in an arm knotted with muscle. The stinking grey fur that carpeted its chest and back was matted with sweat and filth, and flecks of dried snot flew away from its muzzle as it panted. A necklace of human finger bones circled its neck, and upon this hung a mouldering skull. A broken lance jutted up from the creature’s back, flying a standard depicting a horrifying, fang-filled mouth swallowing a bleeding eyeball.

The beast reached down and almost casually threw aside the massive rhinox carcass, forcing Erhardt to leap back to avoid being crushed, then plucked Toft’s unconscious body off the ground. Sniffing in disgust, it handed the commander to a smaller beast who bellowed in triumph before disappearing back into the throng.

Erhardt swore. Toft was like a father to him, but the only thing keeping the Carroburgs alive was the tight square of their formation. If the beasts broke through the lines, every one of them would die. ‘Hold formation. That’s an order!’ he barked.

‘Chaos take your orders!’ shouted Kord over the sounds of battle. ‘They’ll kill him.’ Ignoring Erhardt, he lunged out of the battle-line, hewing about himself with his blade, carving through ranks of northmen in an effort to engage the beastmen directly.

The surrounding Greatswords couldn’t close the gap in the lines fast enough and a dozen beasts thrust their way past swinging blades and clawed into the men beyond. The lines buckled under their assault, and then slowly dissolved. In mere minutes, it was every man for himself as clusters of Greatswords battled furiously in a sea of northmen.

Before Erhardt could rally his men, a Skaeling berserker loomed in his vision, his mouth a circle of screaming darkness. Erhardt shattered his bone club with a swipe of his zweihander then used the momentum to bury his blade in the man’s guts. He twisted, ensuring the tribesman’s death would be quick enough that he wouldn’t have to worry about a blade in the back, and then kicked him to the ground.

Another northman, dressed in furs and reeking of rancid bear grease, lunged head first at Erhardt, trying to gore him upon a crude helmet of deer antlers, but the Greatsword merely stepped aside and beheaded the fool as he went past.

He caught occasional flashes of Gottswain through the melee. The Nordlander had ducked under the swinging axe of the massive beastman and now faced the monster directly. Though Gottswain was nearly a head taller than Erhardt, he looked like a child next to the creature he faced. Somehow, he had cut down the creature that had taken Toft, and now the commander lay prone at his feet.

Before Erhardt could join him, he spun and came face-to-face with an enemy champion; one of the northmen lords from the look of him, dressed in black plate inscribed with Chaos runes invoking their Dark Gods. He stood silently before Erhardt. Two red points behind the slit in his visor seemed to bore right into the Greatsword’s chest, and the warrior cursed him in some hissing, bestial language before bringing its sword and shield to bear.

The men didn’t talk much about Chaos champions, but many believed that their armour protected them absolutely against ordinary blades. If that was true, Erhardt was a dead man. Still, he raised his blade, unwilling to stand back and let another man take his place.

A distant horn sounded from the left flank.

Mobs of Skaelings cast away their weapons and fled for their lives. Panic spread amongst the Chaosmen as the ground began to shake under the weight of a hundred charging knights. Hesberger had returned from the second ford and caught the enemy force in its unguarded flank. Soon even the black champion was swept away, hissing as he was swallowed up by the tangle of fleeing soldiers.

Erhardt allowed his men a moment’s rest, before smiling grimly.

‘What are we waiting for?’ he bellowed. ‘After them!’

Night crept in slowly over the battlefield. From atop long stakes that had been thrust into the ground, dozens of torches cast ruddy light on a nightmarish scene. The river bank was littered with bodies, and the Order of Sigmar had conscripted teams of donkey handlers – usually used to haul cannon – to pull wagons loaded with enemy dead to massive funeral pyres. The air was heavy with smoke and the stench of burning flesh.

But amidst the horrors of the grim twilight, comradely laughter echoed. While the rest of the army chased small bands of Skaelings through the woodland, Erhardt’s men had been treated like heroes. Schalbourg had ordered for kegs of fine Middenland ale to be brought up from the supply wagons and tapped. In the time it took for the regiment to drain them, patriotic songs of celebration had given way to bawdy tavern tunes.

Erhardt watched them cavort for a while, and then slowly made his way towards the centre of the camp where drovers from the baggage trains had parked their wagons. While the army celebrated, here squires still sweated as they hauled supplies back to their master’s tents. Erhardt passed by stacks of supplies and hastily constructed corrals where wagon horses grazed on small piles of hay. Even though the army had only made camp that evening, the place already stank of offal and horse dung.

Two men bearing a stretcher passed Erhardt, sweating and swearing about the weight of the injured man they carried. He followed them to the edge of the supply area where they set down their charge in a field of many more. The moans of the wounded cut through the night as a fine drizzle washed ooze from suppurated wounds into the muddy soil. Shrouded priests of Morr walked up and down their ranks, tall men with hunched backs who hovered over the dying like ravens at a feast. Erhardt made the sign of the hammer over his chest as he passed them on his way. Not that the priests didn’t serve a valuable purpose in guiding the dying into Morr’s embrace, but he’d just as soon his own journey be delayed as long as possible.

He resisted the temptation to peer amongst the litters to see if he could recognise anyone, and instead made his way to the surgeons’ tents beyond. Once, they’d been pristine white cotton, but months of hard travel had stained them muddy brown and grey, the heart-and-teardrop stencilled in iron gall ink barely visible beneath the grime. It was fitting that the tent he sought lay behind them, as if its occupants were beyond even the powers of Shallya to save. He ducked under the flap and entered.

The air inside reeked of the sickly sweet scent of rot. Woodchips had been scattered on the floor to absorb some of the blood, but these were now foul and damp and added to the miasma. A few anatomical texts lay on a small wooden writing table at the side of the enclosed area, one of them sporting a bloody thumbprint on a page displaying a woodcut of a human cadaver.

Commander Toft lay on a wooden table in the centre of the room. Doktor Prolmann, a small man, almost the size of a child, but with wrinkled skin and a balding pate, carefully cut away Toft’s padded under-armour with a pair of large shears.

Erhardt let the tent flap close behind him and stood nervously to one side. After a moment, Prolmann spoke without looking up.

‘When the time comes, I’m going to need you to hold him down.’

Commander Toft groaned and shifted, trying feebly to fend off the doktor with his one good hand. ‘Erhardt...? Is that you? What... what’s he saying?’

Erhardt approached until he was standing across from the doktor. It was difficult to see Toft in such a state. The man was a hero of countless battles – he’d served as one of the elector count’s household guard before asking to be reassigned to a unit more likely to see combat. Now it appeared he’d gotten more than he bargained for, as commander of the prestigious Carroburg Greatswords. His face was battered and his eyes were stained with blood, and a fine sheen of sweat covered his brow. A trail of crusted blood ran up his forehead, past his hairline to where a patch of scalp hung loose. Prolmann had smeared a greasy substance on it that smelled of mint, but left it otherwise untreated, preferring to focus on the commander’s right arm. It was broken in at least four places and the skin was striped with purpling bruises. Erhardt knew, even without seeing the wicked, crescent-moon-shaped blade on a nearby table, what Prolmann meant.

‘You’re going to lose that arm, old friend.’

Toft grimaced. ‘It’s that bad?’

‘You’re alive.’

‘There’s that, I suppose...’

Prolmann slipped a leather belt over Toft’s bicep and tightened it, bracing a foot on the side of the operating table as leverage. Toft’s eyes widened in pain, and then closed. Erhardt imagined he could hear the commander’s teeth grinding.

‘By Sigmar, man,’ he said angrily. ‘Are you trying to make it drop off on its own?’

‘We need to restrict his humours or he’ll bleed to death,’ said Prolmann with a shrug.

Erhardt scowled. He disliked the mechanical way Prolmann went about his job, as if Toft were a ham that needed to be carved and not a living, breathing human whose career was about to end. There was no way Toft would ever wield a zweihander again and without it, how could he be a Greatsword?

‘Can we have a moment?’ he asked abruptly, not caring if he was being rude.

Prolmann scowled, his fingers tapping against the side of the operating table as he weighed Erhardt’s request. ‘One moment only. The longer we wait, the worse his chances are.’

Erhardt watched him retreat to his books, and then looked back at the commander. ‘Is there anything I can do for you?’

Toft groaned, then scratched at the belt that Prolmann had tied around his arm so violently that Erhardt was worried he might dislodge it. Gently, he caught the commander’s hand and put it over his chest, then filled a tin cup with water and brought it to Toft’s lips. The cold draught seemed to refocus the commander a little.

‘One of your men broke formation, Anton.’

Erhardt nodded. ‘Gottswain. He’s a good man. I served with him in Ubersreik.’

‘I had him arrested.’

‘That could be a problem. He’s a hero to the men. You would surely be dead if he hadn’t come after you.’

‘Every Greatsword is a hero before he joins us.’ Toft tried to shift to a more dignified position, but after a moment the pain became too great and he collapsed back onto the table. Though his words were pained he spoke clearly. ‘As their commander you must suppress the very qualities that brought them to greatness and instead wield them as a cohesive unit. Gottswain has shown that he cannot be suppressed, and so he must be excised.’

Erhardt hesitated. ‘You sound like the good doktor. Gottswain is hard to control, to be sure, but his skill with a blade, backed up by his enormous frame, is too great an asset to the Empire to simply cast aside. There is no man I’d rather have fighting by my side than Kord Gottswain.’

Toft’s eyes were closed, and for a moment Erhardt worried he had slipped into unconsciousness. When the commander finally spoke, it was so softly that Erhardt had to lean in to make out the words.

‘One man does not a regiment make.’

Prolmann returned with the knife. He offered Toft a folded leather strap to bite down on, which the commander refused. ‘If we wait any longer,’ said the doctor urgently, ‘the stink of Chaos will get into your wounds and they will suppurate.’

‘Erhardt,’ said Toft as Prolmann lined up his blade, ‘you’re in command until we return to Altdorf and someone more suitable can be found.’

Someone more suitable? Erhardt knew the men, knew the regiment – he was Toft’s natural successor. Had Gottswain just cost him his commission?

Prolmann indicated that he should hold down the commander’s legs. Reluctantly, Erhardt set his doubts aside and did his best. After the procedure was done, he gathered his helmet and left Toft unconscious on Prolmann’s table.

Gottswain sat in a rusting cage in a hastily-built shack of untrimmed logs. Erhardt nodded to the guards who stood at attention on either side of the low entrance then, helmet tucked loosely under one arm, ducked his head and entered.

The big Nordlander still wore his under-armour, but his hands had been bound together with thick strips of rawhide. His face was a mask of dirt and blood that extended all the way to his shaven head. He looked up when Erhardt entered, his features only partially lit by the torchlight that seeped through holes in the cut birch. He sneered, then kicked his legs out before him and crossed his arms as well as he could with his wrists bound, miming a relaxed position. ‘What do you want?’

‘Try that act on someone else, Kord,’ said Erhardt. ‘I don’t have the patience for it.’ He thrust a small unstoppered leather canteen through the bars.

Gottswain eyed the vessel suspiciously, then shrugged and dropped the bravado. He took the canteen, sniffed it, and then took a swig.

‘Good grog. What is it?’

‘The general’s own.’ Erhardt stepped away from the bars and crossed his arms. ‘The old wolf tapped his personal vintage to celebrate. This victory is as much yours as his, so I thought you deserved your share.’

Gottswain nodded and took another pull, swigging it against his teeth and gums before swallowing with an appreciative smack of his lips. ‘What about the boss?’

Erhardt studied Gottswain in the dim light. One man does not a regiment make. This one man had done what the regiment couldn’t – rescued the commander from a fate worse than death.

‘Commander Toft survived, thanks to you. That beastman broke his arm in four places, but he’s under the care of Doktor Prolmann.’

Gottswain balanced the canteen on the bench beside him, then leaned back uncomfortably and whistled through his teeth, glancing up at the corners of his cage. ‘So I’m a hero then?’

‘Toft ordered your incarceration from his sick bed. You broke formation. If Hesberger and his men hadn’t arrived at precisely the right moment, the Dark Gods would be sipping our blood right now.’

Gottswain headbutted the iron bars in frustration and began to speak, but Erhardt cut him off.

‘We’re not mercenaries, Kord. We each guard the man on our left. If you break formation, he dies.’

Gottswain stared hard at Erhardt through the bars. For a moment, it looked like the words were penetrating that thick skull. At last he swore. ‘Prolmann’s a butcher. He’ll lose that arm then, won’t he?’

‘Already has,’ Erhardt sighed. He tossed a set of keys through the bars.

Gottswain stared at them before picking them up. ‘You’re in command then?’

Erhardt considered the question for a moment. He fingered the straps of his vambrace, feeling the hard leather under his fingers. It always gave him a comforting feeling, that sensation. Dwarf-forged plate armour might protect a Greatsword in combat, but it was nothing without the web of leather that held it together.

‘For now. Let’s get back to our camp. This place makes me nervous.’

Gottswain closed the door behind him and tossed Erhardt the keys. ‘The hero of Ubersreik? Scared of a few iron bars?’

Erhardt shuddered. ‘They remind me of the Sigmar-be-damned witch hunters.’

Gottswain blinked at the curse, and then shrugged it off. ‘Don’t let them hear you say that, or you’ll be seeing more than the inside of the stockade.’

The company boy met them on the outskirts of the neatly ordered square of tents that was the Carroburg camp. His arms and hands were stained red, and for a moment Erhardt thought young Bert had been wounded.

‘It’s just dye, sir,’ the boy grinned. ‘New uniforms from the capital haven’t bled out yet.’

Bert ran a hand through his hair, absently painting red streaks through it. A double line of laundry hung near a boiling cauldron that had been set in the remains of the cook fire. As far as Erhardt knew, Toft’s Carroburgs were one of the few units who washed their uniforms regularly. At first, the policy had drawn the attentions of the witch hunters, but the unit lost far fewer men to disease than any other. That had gotten General Schalbourg’s attention, and Erhardt believed the practice would soon spread to other units.

‘Need help with your armour, sir?’ asked Bert. ‘Yours is with the quartermaster, Herr Gottswain.’

‘Have it sent to my tent please, Bert,’ said Gottswain. The boy nodded then dashed away down a nearby row of tents. Gottswain turned to Erhardt. ‘A good lad, him.’

‘I think he’s just pleased to work for the Carroburgs. His father is a blacksmith from my village and heard that I’d made the regiment. He paid a scribe what must have been a fortune to write me a letter begging to get Bert assigned to the unit. I was impressed by his sacrifice and I’ve been looking out for the boy ever since.’

A distant horn-call cut through the air. Gottswain looked up, ears pricked. The sound was coming from the direction they’d just come. ‘They’re sounding the attack? There’s no enemy left to fight.’

‘They seem to think there is,’ said Erhardt grimly. He set off in a run, shouting back over his shoulder. ‘Get the men!’

Erhardt got to the scene of the commotion just in time to see a giant creature slam into Doktor Prolmann’s tent, tearing it from its moorings. For one almost comical moment the canvas seemed to move of its own volition as the beast within was blinded. Then, with a horrendous tearing sound, it burst free, knocking aside two terrified swordsmen.

Erhardt could barely see the beast as it moved past the flickering torches. An eerie purple glow emanated from two points within its hulking form, points that seemed to move at random so that its gaze fell first one way, than another.

A trio of halberdiers charged the beast, sinking their weapons deep into its side. A hideous roar bellowed out of some hidden mouth, then the creature shrugged off the blows and was upon them, tearing the men to pieces.

‘Where did that monster come from?’ asked a voice beside him. It was Gottswain. He wore only his under-armour padding, but held a zweihander easily across his shoulder.

Erhardt wondered the same thing. Had the creature torn its way through half the army to get to the surgeons’ tents? It made no sense. Surely the alarm would have been raised long before now.

‘Where are the men?’

‘Mostly drunk,’ Gottswain confessed with a shrug. ‘We’ll have to do this on our own.’

The beast bellowed again and lumbered towards the line of stretchers. Those wounded who could rise under their own strength had already fled the area, leaving those who couldn’t to fend for themselves.

‘Where’s your armour?’ Erhardt demanded.

Gottswain spat. ‘I didn’t have time to put it on. You needed my help.’

‘How long do you think you can last against that beast without armour? I can at least slow it down long enough for you to return with reinforcements.’ Erhardt drew his blade. ‘Go. That’s an order.’

Gottswain’s eyes glittered darkly, but he disappeared into the darkness. Erhardt breathed a sigh of relief. He’d been worried that Gottswain was going to disobey yet another order, except this time his disobedience would probably have proven fatal.

The creature moved towards the stretchers in a kind of tumbling roll. Screams cut through the night as it moved amongst the wounded. Hoping he wasn’t too late, Erhardt charged the beast. Purplish eyes reoriented to track this new threat, but it was too late. Erhardt leaped on top of an overturned crate, then at the beast itself, swinging his zweihander in an overhead arc. Flesh parted before his blade and dark blood squirted across his breastplate. The creature roared and its bulk shifted. Instead of turning to face him, it simply reoriented those two glowing points of purplish light until the orbs glared at the small man who’d hurt it.

Morrslieb, the Chaos Moon, emerged from behind the rainclouds and the camp was illuminated by its sickly green light. For a brief second, Erhardt saw the beast as a twisted mass of flesh and bone. The foetid smell of offal and viscera was almost overwhelming but, taking advantage of the light, he shifted his grip on his zweihander and put his weight behind a thrust. His blade struck something solid, and dark blood poured down the length of the steel. Overcoming his disgust, Erhardt twisted his sword, then put his shoulder behind the blow to try and stab even deeper.

Heedless of the pain, the beast impaled itself further on Erhardt’s weapon. Its bulk slammed into him with enormous force and he fought to maintain his grip on his sword. Something tore at his helmet and he could hear metal scream as the visor bent and distorted under the beast’s weight. His boots dug furrows in the muddy earth as he was borne back. Terror welled up in him at the realisation that he would soon be crushed beneath its weight.

From somewhere behind him a score of thundercracks echoed in the night and Erhardt felt the passage of hot lead close by. A voice that might have belonged to Gottswain bellowed, ‘Hold your fire, by Sigmar! You’ll kill the commander!’

He felt the beast shudder, once twice. Light shifted and danced around Erhardt as dozens of sword blows drove the creature back. Its grip on his blade weakened and then broke, but Erhardt was unrelenting. He thrust deeper, trying to hit something vital. Screams sounded out all around him, some from the creature, and some from the swordsmen who fought it.

Suddenly, its bulk shifted again and Erhardt felt it pull away. He could see now that a score of pistoliers had formed up in double ranks and were pouring lead shot into it as fast as they could reload. Greatswords, Gottswain at their head, had begun streaming out of gaps between the tents, and though the beast was enormous, it couldn’t fight so many. With a moan, it reared backwards, those glowing purple eyes playing across its surface, looking from the pistoliers to the Greatswords, and back again. Finally, it twisted away and fled through the tents with frightening speed.

‘After it, men!’ cried Erhardt. Though the camp was on high alert, there was still the possibility, however remote, that it could break free and disappear into hills. Erhardt could not let that happen.

Ignoring the possibility of an ambush, he ran after the creature, catching sight of it moving between the tents and terrified camp followers. While Erhardt was forced to avoid the laundry lines and cook fires, somehow it passed right over them without slowing, without any loss of momentum. It wasn’t long before Erhardt lost sight of it and had to rely on the cries of alarm its passage provoked to track it. Soon even these disappeared.

He came upon a group of soldiers who were just pulling themselves out of their bedrolls and grabbing up their weapons.

‘Which way did it go?’ he shouted at them, breathlessly.

‘Which way did what go?’ asked a dumbstruck pikeman. He’d seen Erhardt’s gore-covered armour and clearly recognised him as one of the legendary Carroburgs.

Erhardt stared into the darkness in frustration. How could a beast of that size have eluded him? He turned back to the pikeman. ‘Gather your men and search the periphery of the camp.’

‘Aye, sir,’ he replied as Erhardt turned and jogged back the way he’d come. ‘But pray, what are we searching for?’

Erhardt cursed and then listened for more shouts of alarm, but though the camp was filled with bellowing sergeants and the rattle of weapons, he could hear nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing that sounded like men repelling an attack at any rate.

Gottswain emerged from the darkness ahead of him, sword drawn. ‘Where did it go?’

Erhardt grimaced in frustration. ‘I don’t know. It wasn’t that far ahead of me, but it just disappeared.’

Gottswain’s jawline hardened. ‘We’re still close to the centre of camp. It can’t have escaped.’

Erhardt craned his neck, trying to see between the tents. It was as if the Ruinous Powers had reached down from the heavens and swept the beast into some hidden realm of Chaos. ‘We do a full sweep of the camp,’ he said. ‘It can’t have gone far.’

‘Erhardt. Commander Erhardt.’ The voice that called through the crowd of soldiers sounded gravelly and strained, as if its owner were in some pain. Erhardt was in the middle of a swarm of men, issuing orders to search the camp in groups of half a dozen soldiers – no tent was to be left undisturbed, no stone unturned. Even through the throng, Erhardt could guess at the identity of the man who called for him, simply by the way the others grew quiet. A wide-brimmed hat shielded his face, but he was well armed: the hilt of an enamelled longsword jutted out from his belt, and two pistols hung from a leather cord around his neck. The twin-tailed comet on his breastplate only confirmed Erhardt’s suspicions.

‘Knight Templar Keller,’ he said, struggling to mask his distaste. ‘You’ve run out of little old ladies to burn at the stake in Kemperbad, then?’

‘Is that an impious tone I hear in your voice?’ asked Keller sharply. He had no need to push his way through the crowd of soldiers – they simply melted away before him, finding other, more important things to do, or remembering urgent appointments elsewhere. ‘I hear that you had contact with a creature of Chaos today. Extended contact.’

The threat was ill-disguised, but they both knew it was relatively toothless. The Carroburgs had turned the tide of the battle earlier in the day, and Erhardt himself had charged the beast that had attacked the camp by night while others were running for their lives. ‘You are aware that the creature escaped, are you not?’ he said scornfully. ‘Are you sure you wouldn’t be more comfortable in your customary position at the rear of the army?’

‘Yes, I am aware that you failed to capture it,’ Keller snapped. Dawn was beginning to break over the hills to the east, and his breath misted the air. He removed his gloves, tucking them under one arm, and looked around at the clutter of broken stretchers and collapsed tents. ‘Eisenschalz,’ he called over his shoulder to a blond-haired lieutenant. ‘Seal off this area. Gather all the witnesses and put them to the question.’

Erhardt felt himself redden. ‘Seal off the area? How can my men conduct an effective search if they can’t leave the area without your permission?’

‘I’ve been told that the beast disappeared without a trace in the centre of the camp.’

One of Keller’s aides brought him a steaming cup of tea, which the witch hunter cupped in his hands for warmth before blowing upon its surface. When he spoke again, it was almost absently, as if he addressed the mug and Erhardt simply overheard. ‘How can such a thing occur without the aid of seditious and traitorous Chaos worshippers within our ranks?’

‘It was dark,’ said Erhardt defensively, ‘and it had already killed most of the soldiers in the area.’ To tell the truth, he wondered the same thing himself. A creature that large could only have found a limited number of places to hide. A search of the wagons was ongoing, but had been so far fruitless – limited by the fact that he was reluctant to commit to smaller search parties for fear that the beast would pick them off one by one.

‘Nevertheless, rooting out Chaos worshippers is within my jurisdiction,’ said Keller. He took a sip of tea, grimaced in disgust, and then poured it onto the ground. He handed the cup back to Eisenschalz with a look that threatened untold misery if he were ever again given such an inferior offering, and then turned back to Erhardt. ‘You are relieved of command.’

Erhardt bristled. He had fought the northmen to a standstill and, in the same night, risked his life against a beast of Chaos. Now this witch hunter thought he could simply swoop in and take over?

‘What does General Schalbourg have to say about this?’ he demanded.

‘General Schalbourg left camp hours ago to investigate reports of more troops to the north,’ said Keller. ‘You are welcome to send a messenger after him, but until he returns you are required to obey me. Anything less than full obedience will be regarded as heretical behaviour, warranting summary punishment.’

To signal that the conversation was over, Keller turned his back on Erhardt, ordering his men to spread out through the surgeons’ tents. Erhardt resented the casual dismissal, but before he could say anything the witch hunter might later use against him, he felt a hand clamp down on his shoulder.

‘It’s not worth it,’ said Gottswain. It was a tribute to his swordsmanship that the big Nordlander had sustained only minor wounds pulling Erhardt out of the clutches of the beast. He had only four red scratches down his cheek, as if he’d been clawed by a scorned wench and not a two-ton beast of Chaos. ‘Let them have their fun. We’ll get some rest, then seek the beast out with fresh eyes on the morrow.’

Erhardt glared at the retreating witch hunter with something close to hatred, and then nodded. ‘That we will, Herr Gottswain. That we will.’

Despite his anger, there didn’t seem to be too much Erhardt could do. The witch hunters argued that the Chaos beast wouldn’t reappear until nightfall, and then only when Morrslieb reared its greenish outline over the horizon. Both he and Gottswain had been up for more than twenty-four hours and participated in two battles. He had to admit that it would be prudent to face the beast again only after snatching a few hours’ sleep.

Bert met him at the entrance to the camp. The boy’s hair looked dishevelled and his muddy cheeks were streaked with pink. Though he’d done his best to hide it, he’d obviously been crying.

‘What’s wrong, Bert?’ asked Erhardt.

‘It’s Commander Toft, sir. Sergeant Pieter found his body after the attack. He’s dead.’

Erhardt felt a deep sadness at the news. In spite of the night’s events, Toft had been something of a father to him. To all of the men, in fact – it would be a sad day indeed in the Carroburg camp.

‘Don’t worry, lad. He’s dining in Sigmar’s longhouse now.’

Though the platitude felt empty, the boy seemed to take some comfort from it as he guided Erhardt to his tent. It took Bert some minutes to help him out of his armour, then he disappeared with a promise to try and buff out some of the dents and to wake up Erhardt at sundown. Almost as soon as he left, Erhardt collapsed into his bedroll.

Years of soldiering had given him the ability to sleep anywhere at any time, and though a military camp during the day was a cacophony of sound and the canvas of his tent did little to keep out the light, he knew enough to stuff his ears with cloth and make do. Soon, he was snoozing fitfully.

When he awoke again, it was dark outside.

He swore, and then headed out in only his armour padding to find another runner to help with his plate, which he donned as quickly as possible. As soon as the last leather strap was tightened, he went off in search of Gottswain.

He found the huge Nordlander in the mess tent, eating salted meat from a trencher with his fingers. ‘Have you seen Bert? He was supposed to wake me.’

Gottswain swallowed, and then wiped grease from his chin. ‘I just woke up, myself. He’s somewhere around camp I suspect. I can never keep track of the runners.’

Erhardt sat, and signalled the cooks. One of the advantages of being an officer was that one could have one’s food delivered, often straight to the command tent. Toft, however, had enjoyed eating with the men and it was a tradition that Erhardt intended to continue. A plate of ham and cheese with a few wilted string beans on the side landed in front of him within moments. ‘Any word on the creature?’ he asked Gottswain.

‘Keller has rounded up every wounded man in the army, anyone who might have been in the vicinity of Prolmann’s tent, and begun interrogating them.’ Gottswain tore off another chunk of meat then stuffed it into his mouth. ‘Not to any measure of success, so I hear.’

Erhardt shook his head. Keller’s methods were famously brutal. ‘We need to find that monster before the witch hunters do any more damage. A beast that large cannot hide forever.’

It was difficult to recognise the area that had once been reserved for the surgeons’ tents. The Order of Sigmar had cleared out a wide area and brought in lumber from other parts of the camp in order to construct a crude gallows, from which the bodies of Empire soldiers already swung. Men displaying the twin-tailed comet on their breastplates balanced bowls of salt on their hips, spreading thick handfuls onto the ground to make sure that nothing could grow on soil they deemed tainted. Elsewhere, torturers seized red-hot brands from iron baskets that dotted the area and pressed them into wounds that good fighting men had suffered battling the forces of Chaos, men whose only crime was to have been present when a Chaos beast had attacked. The smell of blood and burning flesh hung thickly in the air.

The sight of so much suffering sickened Erhardt. They’d already lost too many men to the forces of Chaos, and now Keller’s brutality was destroying the army from the inside. If Erhardt had his way, the Knight Templar would be hanging from his own gallows. He had half reached for the hilt of his zweihander before Gottswain interjected.

‘Remember, commander, that I am the impulsive one,’ he said calmly.

The warning was effective, and Erhardt forced himself to relax. The only thing he could gain by storming into a gathering of witch hunters was a charge of heresy and a quick trip to the gaol. ‘Agreed. Let us find this beast before that butcher takes any more lives.’

Together, they circled around the area the witch hunters had already searched. Normally a unit was considered lucky to secure a spot to pitch their tents near the supply train, but most had quickly relocated once the Order of Sigmar had arrived, leaving behind a wide swath of crushed grass and a few soot-stained fire pits. Gottswain and Erhardt bypassed these and headed towards the area where they’d first seen the beast.

Nothing was left of Prolmann’s tent but a few broken surgical devices. Everything else was gone; not so much as a crushed vial had been left behind. That in itself was strange – surely the witch hunters would have left much of Prolmann’s paraphernalia where it lay? Where were his personal belongings?

Erhardt called over Gottswain. ‘Do you remember if the good doktor was listed among the dead?’

Gottswain shrugged. ‘I’ve got no head for lists, but I don’t remember his name coming up. You think he had something to do with this?’

‘I don’t know.’ Erhardt squinted into the darkness. Maybe Prolmann had met his end when the monster attacked – or maybe not. He pursed his lips and nudged the churned earth with the toe of his boot. ‘Why did it attack here first?’

A few feet away, Gottswain cursed, then bent and scraped dirt away from something that reflected torchlight. He pulled Prolmann’s long amputation knife out of the dirt. ‘Obviously, the good doktor was not as thorough as he thought,’ he said, handing the blade to Erhardt.

Erhardt tucked it into his belt. It wasn’t a lead, but it did tell them that Prolmann had left in some haste. ‘If you were a doktor on the run, where would you go?’

‘To the nearest inn,’ said Gottswain with a smirk. ‘What? Doktor or no, that’s where I’d be.’

‘You’re a great help,’ said Erhardt wryly. Lacking a better idea, he chose the opposite direction to the attack and strode towards a few tents where priestesses of Shallya administered what aid they could to victims of the beast.

One priestess sat on a log outside a nearby tent spooning gruel from a wooden bowl. Her hand shook and her face was drawn and haggard-looking. Her brown hair was clasped behind her head, but it had the look of straw to it that spoke of severe undernourishment. Erhardt guessed that she carried the weight of many souls upon her back. She set aside her gruel and rose when the two Greatswords approached.

‘Evening, sirs. Have you need of the goddess’s aid?’

Erhardt nodded into the night. ‘It’s cold out here tonight. You should be making the most of the warmth inside.’

She blushed guiltily. ‘Sometimes the cries of dying men...’ She paused, realising that what she was saying was not quite right. ‘I find the night air gives me the courage I need to help them once more.’

‘We all need whatever courage we can muster on a night like this,’ said Erhardt.

She nodded, grateful that he’d caught her meaning. ‘I should be getting back.’

Erhardt was about to let her go when the tent flap was pushed aside and two rough-looking men emerged, carrying a stretcher bearing a third. The man in the stretcher was missing an arm, and judging from the pallor of his skin, he’d lost so much blood that even the goddess couldn’t restore him. The two men set the stretcher down just outside the tent and, casting a few suspicious looks at Erhardt and Gottswain, disappeared back inside.

‘Do the priests of Morr collect the dead from you when they pass?’ he asked the priestess, staring at the body on the stretcher.

‘Yes. We ask that they limit their visits to avoid scaring the wounded, but they do come.’

He found himself staring at the dead man’s arm stump. ‘What about the limbs?’

The priestess looked back into the tent, as if she felt she’d spent too much time away from the wounded already. ‘We don’t perform amputations, but I understand there is a limb pit not too far from here where the doktors dispose of them.’

‘A limb pit?’

‘Yes. When a soldier dies from his wounds, the limb is interred with him. When the soldier lives, something must be done with it.’ With that, the priestess begged his pardon and ducked back into the tent, leaving her gruel behind.

Gottswain watched her disappear, and then nudged her wooden bowl with his toe. ‘You never did have much of a way with the wenches, did you?’

Erhardt shrugged. ‘I suppose the idea of a limb pit disturbs her. Sigmar knows it disturbs me. Still, it might be our best chance to find this beast.’

‘By all means then,’ Gottswain said, testing his zweihander in its scabbard. ‘Let’s go find it.’

They were able to locate the limb pit by the stench, and the swarm of biting flies that ringed it. The night air was thick with them, swirling clouds that buzzed frantically in the air above the amputated limbs. The pit itself was ringed by torches set, Erhardt guessed, to provide enough illumination that no one would accidentally mistake its purpose. There was no telling how deep it was, but it was at least twenty feet across and filled with dozens of rotting limbs: legs and arms of every description – some naked, some partially clothed or tied off with scraps of blood-soaked bandage. The smell was awful enough that they had to cover their mouths and noses.

A lone figure worked at one side, next to a heaped pile of dirt. He had a shovel in his hands and was doing his best to fill in the pit. A small man, his actions were frantic and panicked, and his shirt was sodden with mud and sweat.

‘Now there’s an undertaker who earns his pay,’ Gottswain mumbled through the sleeve of his tunic.

‘That’s no undertaker,’ replied Erhardt. He raised his voice. ‘Doktor Prolmann, I presume?’

The figure looked up sharply and his hood fell back, revealing the small, balding man with the wrinkled face who’d treated Toft. His eyes widened when he saw their dwarf-forged plate, then he hurled the shovel at them and ran into the darkness.

‘I’ll get him!’ shouted Gottswain as he raced after the doktor.

Erhardt was about to pursue when he noticed something that brought him to a halt.

The limb pit was moving.

The movement was slight at best, but as he circled the lip of the pit, the limbs rose and fell like a living tide. Erhardt peered deeper, and gasped – the bulk of the thrashing, lumbering Chaos beast that had ravaged the camp was unmistakable in the rotting, stinking depths. He looked to the horizon, remembering the witch hunters’ prediction about the rising of Morrslieb. They knew a thing or two about Chaos, he had to give them that.

Hesitantly, he drew Prolmann’s amputation knife. In the pit, dozens of clawing, dead hands lifted towards it, but the beast did not arise. ‘Oh yes,’ he said to himself. ‘You remember this, don’t you...’

There was a shout, and then Gottswain emerged from the darkness with the doktor in tow. The tiny man struggled furiously, but could not break free from Gottswain’s powerful grip.

The sight of the doktor sickened Erhardt. The little weasel had fled the beast, and then tried to cover up his crimes. ‘I suppose you’ll tell me that digging in the dead of night is good for your health,’ he spat.

Prolmann ceased trying to escape, instead shrinking in on himself until he looked about half his normal size. ‘I have done nothing wrong.’

Gottswain twisted Prolmann’s wrist, eliciting a squeal. ‘I say we toss him in the pit. What do you reckon, boss?’

Prolmann looked as if he were about to protest again, but in the face of two angry Greatswords, he deflated. ‘Look, you have to understand, during the course of a large battle, I see hundreds of wounded men. Some of them are so horribly maimed that the scouts are unable to determine whose side they were on. Inevitably, I end up treating some small number of enemy soldiers.’

‘And you were worried you’d draw the ire of the witch hunters?’ asked Erhardt.

Prolmann shook his head. ‘No. Most of them make allowances, provided you follow procedure. Once treated, Chaosmen are to be separated out from our own soldiers for purgation.’

‘And you failed to do this?’ asked Gottswain with a shake.

‘No,’ replied Erhardt as he gazed out over the limb pit. ‘I believe he did. But there was one thing he forgot to separate.’

‘They were just arms, legs. Not whole men. How could I know...?’

‘Just arms and legs?’ asked Gottswain, grimly. ‘Those arms and legs killed our commander and dozens of men besides.’

Prolmann went white and began shaking uncontrollably. Erhardt felt some pity for him. Though his laziness had brought about an unimaginable horror, his crime was not deliberate. ‘No,’ he said at last. ‘We’ll take him to Keller. Let the witch hunters figure out an appropriate punishment.’

‘What about the pit?’

‘We have perhaps an hour before the rising of Morrslieb. We’ll come back and burn it.’

Gottswain and Erhardt found Keller in the midst of his devices of misery, standing before a giant brass bull. The statue was larger than a man, and a fire had been lit beneath it, heating the metal to a cherry-red glow. When they arrived, Erhardt thought the bull was actually lowing, but he soon realised to his horror that there was someone within slowly being cooked to death. Cleverly shaped tubes in the snout of the statue had been designed specifically to make the victim’s screams sound like bellowing cattle.

‘I thought I had you banned from the area, Herr Erhardt,’ said Keller, staring intently at the brass bull.

Erhardt couldn’t decide which enraged him more, the bastard’s self-satisfied smirk, or his failure to address him by his title. ‘It’s Commander Erhardt, until Schalbourg says differently.’

He appeared to have attracted Keller’s attention. The witch hunter turned, his eyes falling on Prolmann. ‘What have you brought me, commander?’

‘We’ve only done your bloody job for you, you damned peacock,’ growled Gottswain as he cast the doktor at Keller’s feet.

After they relayed Prolmann’s story, Keller expressed mock regret with a shrug. ‘All this appears to have been unnecessary then.’ He turned to the man feeding the fire beneath the bull. ‘Free the prisoner.’

The fire was quickly scattered and Keller’s servant hauled upon a lever at the statue’s base with a thick leather glove, opening a trap door in its belly. A blackened body with singed blond hair tumbled out, landing hard on the ground. Its skin was seared on its palms and knees, and its eyeballs had melted out of their sockets, painting two shining streaks down its cheeks.

‘Apologies, Commander Erhardt,’ said Keller with a shrug. ‘I had to be sure you weren’t a part of this.’

The comment caught Erhardt off guard. What was Keller apologising for? He stared down at the small body in confusion for some seconds before he realised who it was.

It was young Bert.

Beside him Gottswain made a terrifying sound that was a mixture of sob and roar. He lunged at Keller, throwing him with bone-jarring force into the side of the bull. Perhaps the witch hunter had been expecting some kind of attack, but Gottswain’s speed and strength were surprising. As hard as he’d been hit, Keller was on his feet in an eyeblink, pistol drawn.

Erhardt was only a heartbeat behind, putting his shoulder into Gottswain’s chest to restrain him. The Nordlander was incensed, his strength driving Erhardt back.

‘It’s not worth it, Kord,’ he growled, repeating Gottswain’s advice from the first time the witch hunter had defied them. ‘He’s not worth it.’

Somehow, that got through to the big Greatsword and he gradually began to come to his senses. Nonetheless, Keller was furious.

‘I’ll see you swing for that,’ he yelled.

Erhardt held out his hand to keep them apart. ‘Surely, he deserves punishment, but we have only minutes until Morrslieb rises and the creature is upon us once more. Let us discuss this when the beast is dead.’

Keller considered this and then stared hard at the horizon, where the first greenish glow was making itself apparent. ‘Fine. We go,’ he spat. Then his eyes found Gottswain’s. ‘I’ll deal with you later.’

Keller quickly gathered a score of witch hunters and as much timber and oil as they could carry. Once they were assembled, Erhardt and Gottswain led them back through the camp to the limb pit.

Gottswain was still enraged, but managed to restrain himself at Erhardt’s urging until they were far enough ahead to be out of earshot. ‘He killed Bert,’ he said urgently once they were clear. ‘Bert, who never said a rough word to anyone. You can’t let him walk away from that!’

Though Erhardt had been responsible for the death of many men under his command, Bert’s death weighed most heavily upon his heart. He’d failed in his promise to the boy’s father to look after his son. That Keller had done it for no other reason than to spite him made the pain even worse.

‘There’s nothing we can do,’ he said angrily.

And it was true. Keller was a Knight Templar of the Order of Sigmar. Merely to discuss causing him harm was heretical, and heresy was a crime punishable by death.

When they finally reached the pit, the witch hunters spread around its edge and began laying out their materials – torches, coal, and barrels of flammable oil. Erhardt remained where he was, petulantly refusing to help. He knew they had mere minutes until the Chaos Moon broke the horizon, but still he did nothing. Maybe he wanted a fight. Maybe he wanted to take out all the rage and pain he felt on something, and if that something was a Chaos beast, so much the better.

Gottswain, too, remained silent, lost in thought. Erhardt was grateful the big man hadn’t tried anything rash.

The Knight Templar stood apart from the others, outside the ring of torches, preferring – Erhardt knew – to lead from behind. Not wanting to let the man out of his sight, Erhardt joined him in the shadows.

They remained silent for a while, observing the preparations. Finally, the witch hunter spoke. ‘Thank you for the assistance with your man, earlier.’

Erhardt had trouble containing his surprise. Was Keller actually thanking him?

‘It wasn’t for your sake, I can assure you. Gottswain is a capable fighter, and I didn’t want him to go to the gallows over someone like you.’

Keller remained quiet, his eyes glittering in the torchlight. When he spoke again, it was with a note of regret. ‘Still, I admire your courage. I’m no coward, but I could never throw myself in the face of danger like you do.’

Erhardt studied Keller. What was this about? Was Keller looking for some kind of sympathy or was he playing a more subtle game? Either was possible. The man was a monster. He could not shake the image of poor Bert, just a few summers shy of his first beard, frying inside that bull. The screams hadn’t ceased until well after they’d arrived, meaning Keller must have continued to let the boy cook while they spoke. It enraged him that the monster who’d tortured an innocent boy to death was now asking for sympathy. He had to look away, simply to avoid throttling him on the spot. His gaze settled once more on the pit, and an idea came to him.

‘I have a confession to make,’ he told Keller, struggling to keep the hatred out of his voice. ‘We have discovered the beast’s weakness.’

Keller’s eyebrows rose. ‘Oh?’

‘Prolmann’s amputation knife. The beast fears it.’

‘Why did you not tell me this before?’

Erhardt shrugged. ‘Like you, I too am sometimes afraid, and I believed the knife would protect me against the beast.’ He turned to Keller and looked him in the eye. ‘Gottswain’s actions have forced me to reconsider. I would like to make you a deal: the knife for the life of my man.’ He drew the blade out of his belt pouch and handed it to Keller.

The witch hunter studied it critically. ‘A crude weapon at best.’

Erhardt made to take the knife back, but Keller closed his fist around the handle. ‘If this is an implement of Chaos, then it is my duty to see that it is destroyed.’

‘And Gottswain?’

‘Your man will get what’s coming to him,’ snarled Keller before striding towards the pit, ‘and you’re lucky I don’t report you for possessing it!’

Erhardt watched him go, then as quietly as he could, he stole around the edge of the circle of torches until he stood next to Gottswain. ‘I think you’d better step back,’ he said.

Gottswain shook his head. ‘What?’

A cry came, and one of the witch hunters pointed into the sky. ‘We’re too late! The Chaos Moon rises!’

As the man tossed a burning brand into the pit, a sickly purplish glow erupted from its depths. Scores of limbs began to churn like a whirlpool as the force that had awakened knit them together. Despite himself, Keller stumbled backwards, his hand clutching Prolmann’s knife. The Chaos beast rose slowly before him: huge and dark and terrible. Up and up it heaved, expanding until it seemed to blot out the night sky.

For perhaps the first time in his career, Keller confronted Chaos directly. But only for a moment. Then he screamed and ran.

Before he could take more than a single step, the beast enfolded him in its embrace, completely covering him in thrashing limbs.

Death was not instant. The Chaos beast was incredibly powerful, but each limb bore only the strength of the soldier to whom it had originally belonged. Human hands tipped with sharp nails tore at the witch hunter, leaving deep gouges in his skin, but it was a death by inches. As Keller’s screams grew louder and more frantic, they reminded Erhardt of the cries that had emanated from the brass bull. It was a satisfying thought.

With the other witch hunters too stunned by their commander’s death to intervene, it wasn’t until there was nothing left of Keller but a bunch of torn meat that Gottswain finally drew his zweihander. ‘Why do I get the impression you knew that would happen?’

Erhardt shrugged and drew his own blade. ‘Call it a gift from Doktor Prolmann.’

Moving like a centipede, the Chaos beast turned to face them, a hundred hands opening and closing as it awaited their charge. On the other side of the creature, several witch hunters hacked at it with their swords, but it seemed able to fight any number of them at the same time and they made little progress. It was the Greatswords’ mighty zweihanders it feared.

Gottswain charged in with the force of a thunderbolt, a sweep of his blade showering the ground around him with severed limbs and sour gore. Instantly, he was enfolded, just as Keller had been, by dozens of tearing limbs. But instead of lurching away, Gottswain expertly twisted his body, letting the creature’s hands slide against his plate, then used his momentum to slash again.

Erhardt hit the beast a moment later. His attack was more nuanced then the Nordlander’s – he struck hard then danced backwards out of reach. It was hard to tell whose style was more effective.

On other side of the Chaos beast, he heard a hideous scream as one of the witch hunters was torn apart. The creature lurched backwards, then stopped as more soldiers poured into the clearing. Perhaps, thought Erhardt as he dodged another attack and returned one of his own, the beast was trying to escape? Impossible. Though it had fled once already, that had been because of the setting of the Chaos Moon. Morrslieb had only just broken the horizon.

Curious, he disengaged, then leapt atop the pile of earth. From this vantage point, it was easy to spot what had drawn the beast’s attention – the tents of the priestesses of Shallya. With every man the Chaos beast killed, its own bulk increased. Dozens of wounded would make for easy prey, and make the monster unstoppable. The process was happening even now. As it killed the witch hunters, it consumed their bodies and absorbed their flesh into its own. Sending more soldiers into the battle would be a mistake. But what else could they do?

‘Fire the pit!’ he yelled to a nearby sergeant. ‘Gottswain! We’ve got to drive it back!’

‘Then get down here and give me a hand!’ yelled the Nordlander from the ground.

Erhardt laughed and took his advice, charging into the creature’s flank. He thrust deeply with his zweihander, trying to attack that fleshy centre he’d felt during the first attack. Hands clawed at his helmet visor, blotting out his vision and deafening him with the sound of ragged nails scraping against steel. He thrust again, following five feet of steel deep into the creature’s body. Finally, his blade jarred to a halt and that dark flood poured over his hands once more. An inhuman scream sounded from all around him and the creature reared backwards. The two Greatswords had managed to push it back to the very brink of the pit.

Now Gottswain’s expert swordsmanship came into play. Instead of slashing wildly, his zweihander snickered out, cutting precisely into the limbs that the creature was using to hang onto the edge.

Behind them, several frightened witch hunters had hurled torches into the pit, but the coal was slow to catch without sufficient kindling. Thinking quickly, Erhardt cast around and spotted one of the barrels of oil the witch hunters had stacked on the pit’s edge. He ran over and hacked into it with his zweihander, spilling the contents. A swift kick knocked it into the pit, just as the beast caught hold of Gottswain’s sword by the blade – though the edge cut deep, more limbs tore it from the Nordlander’s grasp. The monster snatched up the now disarmed Greatsword just as it began to topple, and the oil-fuelled flames burst up from the depths.

Yanked to his knees, Gottswain scrabbled backwards, but another of the beast’s grasping hands grabbed onto the edge of his breastplate and dragged him in.

Too far away to help his fellow soldier, Erhardt spotted something in the dirt next to Gottswain that glinted in the light of the fire. It was Prolmann’s blade, half-buried where Keller had dropped it. ‘Gottswain! The knife!’ he called, pointing frantically into the dirt.

Gottswain quickly glanced down and the distraction was almost lethal. Oil had covered the beast’s flank and it was aflame. The Greatsword slid perilously close to the edge, scrabbling in the dirt. Letting out a desperate cry as he lunged, he caught hold of Prolmann’s blade and brought it down hard on the fingers holding onto his breastplate, severing them.

As Gottswain scrambled clear, with a final scream of frustration the Chaos beast collapsed, whatever foul magic that had animated it finally giving out as the flames bit deep into its corrupted flesh.

Hours later, when the smoke and the reek of charred flesh finally cleared, there was nothing but ash at the bottom of the pit. Still the witch hunters stood by, watchful as their acolytes scattered salt over the embers.

After the last spark had gone out, Gottswain pushed aside the flap of the command tent and cleared his throat. Erhardt sat behind Toft’s desk, a quill in his hand. Though he had yet to wash off the grime of combat, he had taken the time to fill out a detailed report, leaving out only the mention of Prolmann’s knife. However much Keller was hated, a Knight Templar of the Order of Sigmar had died tonight and difficult questions would be asked.

‘Some of the boys smuggled a priest of Morr past the guards,’ said Gottswain. ‘They didn’t feel right about Bert not having his prayers.’

‘Good.’ Erhardt said nothing more.

Gottswain hesitated, not knowing if he was being dismissed. ‘So... commander of the Carroburg Greatswords, eh? The men will be pleased. They like you.’ Then, straightening, he corrected himself. ‘They respect you, sir.’

Erhardt dipped his quill into the inkwell, then signed his name and tossed a pinch of sand onto the document to help it set. ‘I’m only commander until Altdorf. Toft wanted someone else in command after we reach the capital.’

Gottswain frowned and scratched his head. ‘Toft died without relaying that order to Schalbourg. As far as the general knows, you’re it.’

‘Nevertheless,’ muttered Erhardt.

The big Greatsword shook his head in confusion. If he lived to see a hundred summers, he’d likely never understand. As far as he was concerned, a promise to a dead man was no promise at all. He clearly knew enough to keep that thought silent, though, and turned to leave.

‘Sergeant,’ said Erhardt.

Gottswain was no sergeant, but there was no one else within earshot, so he stopped and faced Erhardt once more. The new commander smiled.

‘We’re not going to Altdorf quite yet, sergeant. Tell the men we break camp at dawn. The messengers say General Schalbourg has discovered a grand army of ogres heading for the capital. Tomorrow, we march to battle!’

MALEDICTION

C Z Dunn

Included in this issue of Hammer and Bolter is an exclusive extract from Malediction.

FIREBORN

Nick Kyme

Though it was forbidden, Evangeline ran through the Chapel of Divine Sanctuary.

She ran as if the hounds of Chaos were behind her.

Votive candles lit the way through one of the transepts of remembrance, guttering faintly as she swept by. Statues of martyred saints glared at her disapprovingly from shaded alcoves. As she passed through the holy narthex, Evangeline was trying to piece together what she’d seen. Her sandalled feet rapping on the cold convent floor, louder than incendiary blasts in the silence, muddled her thoughts.

Blood.

She’d seen blood, like red rain coming from the sky.

All shall bleed, the voices had said. Skulls for the throne of–

The last part made her dizzy. She smelled oil, tasted iron and heard the harsh clank of machinery though the convent was quiet as the void.

In the Devotional Gallery, she found Father Lumeon.

‘My child, what in the Emperor’s name is wrong?’

The breathless specimen, a waif of a girl in pale unadorned robes, could only pant.

Father Lumeon, officious in his priestly vestments, drifted from behind his blackwood desk. He’d been labouring over parchments and data-slates, a mechanised lexicanum savant scribing his dictations with a neuro-quill. Sublimation of native belief cultures into the auspices of the Imperial Creed – it was heavy work, gratefully postponed, even for a devoted man like Father Lumeon. Dismissing a pair of cyborganic cherubs who had descended on angelic wings to investigate the sudden fuss, he came before Evangeline and gently lifted her chin.

‘Be at peace…’

Evangeline’s frenzy lessened to an insistent ache.

‘And tell me what the matter is.’

The Sister Hospitaller had tears in her eyes and a tremor in her body.

An answer wasn’t forthcoming.

‘Come with me.’ Father Lumeon led her slowly to an ornate balcony, which looked out over all of Sepulchre IV.

Chapels and cathedra stretched into the distance, castellated bell towers touched the heavens, pilgrims marched over chasm-spanning ornate bridges, fluttering cherub-servitors flocked the skies. Armies of the righteous, adepts of the Ecclesiarchy and its most zealous defenders populated this shrine world. The sight of it gladdened Father Lumeon whenever he beheld it.

Sister Evangeline’s reaction was not as beatific. She wept and shook and looked away, pointing to the sky.

When Father Lumeon followed her gesture he noticed Sepulchre’s sun. It was red, where once it had been yellow. It was red and drenched the pale stone of the cathedrals so they looked as if they’d been fashioned from incarnadine bone.

‘What did you see?’ He seized Evangeline by the shoulder. He was hurting her and knew it. ‘Tell me now!’

Their eyes met, Evangeline’s full of fear and foreboding; Father Lumeon’s red-ringed and fervent.

What had she seen in the dark of the abyss? Why was the sky bleeding?

She confessed everything.

Pinching her under the arm to keep her close, Father Lumeon hurried Evangeline through the quiet corridors of the convent-bastion. Their passage was met by furtive glances from the other Sister Hospitallers of the Order of the Inner Sanctum. Some carried votive candles or pungent censer burners. They kept their eyes low but were obviously dismayed that one of their Order, even a lowly novitiate, was being led off so urgently. Lumeon bustled past them, scarcely stopping as he activated gilded blast doors and mechanised arch-gates. Artefact chambers, stasis-locked reliquary vaults, beautifully illuminated vaulted ceilings and finely sculptured columns went by in a blur of insignificance. Father Lumeon ignored them all.

He said nothing, only frowned with the furrowed expression of a man who’d asked and received an answer he wished to return. He half-glanced at Evangeline. Her face was grey as ash.

Within the Order, it was unprecedented.

Slowly the religious austerity of the convent-bastion gave way to military functionality. Slab-like walls of gunmetal grey rose around them like bulkheads. Steam-stamped barrack markings and warning chevrons provided direction. The distant ring of combat training became a muffled refrain to their softer footfalls.

Evangeline had only ever roamed in the Chapel of Divine Sanctuary and its annexes that included her dormitory. She had never been to this part of the sprawling convent-bastion. It was cold and harsh. Percussive weapons fire from some distant armoury hurt her ears. The clash of blades sent unpleasant jolts down her spine.

Father Lumeon sensed her reluctance to proceed and had to march Evangeline the rest of the way. At the end of a long, stark corridor their journey ended. Before them, a single figure stood silhouetted in the light from overhead lume-globes.

She had the cut and form of a Crusader. Her robes were red to resemble the blood of martyrs running in her veins. Her silver helm occluded her face completely, though her stance suggested it was severe beneath the mailed mask. One gauntleted fist gripped a vast Crusader shield almost the size of her entire body. Only with the augmented strength from her silver armour, which was also swathed with purity seals, devotional chains and holy parchments, could she wield it. The same was true of the Crusader sword in her other hand. Its blade was etched with tiny inscriptions and crackled with energy from an unseen source.

Father Lumeon found it levelled at him when he approached her.

He held up the aquila icon, suspended around his neck by a string of beads. Each one had been fashioned from a saint’s knuckle bone. It was a potent symbol and the staff of his office.

‘In the Emperor’s name, I must speak with Canoness Ignacia immediately. It is a dire matter.’

The slightest inclination of the formidable Crusader’s head suggested she regarded Evangeline cowering beside Father Lumeon. The warrior didn’t move and for a moment the venerable priest feared she might strike them both down.

At a silent command, the blast doors behind the Crusader broke open as if cracked by a bolt of invisible lightning. Lowering her sword, she backed off into the escaping pressure mist.

Wiping his brow with his sleeve, already knowing there’d be more grey in his temples come the morning, Father Lumeon started to drag Evangeline through after him.

The scream of warning klaxons brought them both to an abrupt halt.

The convent-bastion was on sudden alert.

‘It’s already here…’ he breathed.

Heavy booted feet were hammering down the corridor towards them. Canoness Ignacia was marshalling her troops.

Sepulchre IV was under attack.

A mass evacuation was underway. Fleets of ships – lighters, ark-cruisers, speeders, freight-haulers, clippers and gunships – were deserting Sepulchre IV in their droves, like insects fleeing a forest fire. On the ground, those without vessels to ferry them to the starships anchored in low orbit around the planet had to run. Masses of people clogged the roads. Some clung desperately to one another for succour, others screamed for deliverance. The few that had mechanised walkers or personal half-tracks were soon mired in the throng. Horns blared frantically like the wailing of the already damned.

‘Pandemonium reigns.’ Tsu’gan was unable to keep the sneer from his face. It was black. Not dark-skinned but really black, like onyx, and just as hard. The red spike of beard on his chin jutted like an accusing finger as he stared through one of the Implacable’s vision slits.

‘They want to live.’ Praetor’s deep voice was matter-of-fact but dominated over the Thunderhawk gunship’s engine noise. ‘It’s not so weak to cherish your own life,’ he added, guessing what the other Space Marine was thinking.

Tsu’gan turned – his heavy Terminator armour whirred and clanked as the hidden servos went to work shifting his bulk – and his red eyes blazed in the gloomy hold. He found the cumbersome suit a challenge, but relished the power it gave him. Tsu’gan valued strength above all else.

He appraised the rest of his squad in a glance.

Ankar and Kai’ru were as still as sentinels, their grav-harnesses locked and widened to accommodate their bulk.

Gathimu, the ‘spear’, was anointing his heavy flamer with ash. He drew a wide slash with his armoured finger then followed it with a drake’s head. It was Kalimar, the creature he’d slain below Mount Deathfire and whose flesh he now wore as a mantle on his left pauldron. So focused, so honed was Gathimu.

Praetor was his sergeant, a veteran of over a hundred campaigns, a hero of the Chapter. Apart from Tsu’gan, he was the only one yet to don his helmet. Praetor’s face and scalp were bald, polished to mirror sheen by his brander-priest. The scars upon his cheek and the three platinum service studs above his left brow were marks of honour and service. His Terminator armour was more ornate than Tsu’gan’s. Fashioned by a master artificer, it bore the heraldic devices of dragon heads and gilded laurels. It came with a cape of salamander hide that almost went down to the floor.

Praetor glowered.

‘To your harness, brother. It’s not much farther.’

Tsu’gan obeyed, still finding the unfamiliar sensation of walking in Tactical Dreadnought Armour unsettling. Once he was mag-locked and secured by thick metal bracers, he relaxed.

These men, these super-men, were his brothers. Not by blood but by battle. Born in Vulkan’s forge, their bond was stronger than adamantium. They were Salamanders, Fire-born. No, they were more than that. They were the Chapter’s First Company, to which their armour and its proud iconography testified, their Firedrakes.

As Praetor leaned forward to look through one of the vision slits, the green of his Terminator suit caught a shaft of light from outside and turned a lurid purple.

‘The sky is red as blood.’

‘Yet we defy it, going against the tide.’ Gathimu had finished his rituals and looked over at Tsu’gan through the cold lenses of his battle-helm. Ornate drake’s teeth gave the helm a feral snarl. ‘Flex your muscles, cycle through your pre-battle physical routines. It will help.’

‘I am ready,’ Tsu’gan snapped, a little too quickly.

‘You are untempered.’ Gathimu’s even tone suggested he meant no offence.

Tsu’gan bit back a reply. He glared through the vision slit and saw again the red sky of the shrine world. Fat clouds gorged on blood smashed against the gunship’s hull, painting it crimson and riming its edges with a visceral gum. Escaping ships sped past them too, headed away from the battle towards the hopeful salvation in low orbit.

A blockade of enemy starships was already forming around the planet. They planned to slaughter everyone on this world, a glorious sacrifice to their violent potentate. Soon, no one would be getting off alive. It leant the Salamanders’ mission a certain… urgency that Tsu’gan felt more acutely as he looked outside.

Fire wreathed the horizon, casting a ruddy glow on the ruins of chapels and cathedra. Flaming bell towers had crumpled, like broken fingers reaching for the earth. Collapsed bridges were clogged with the dead and the sky blossomed with explosions from faraway aerial battles.

Tsu’gan clenched his power fist. The servos whined within and he thought of the distant war he would not be part of. He’d seen enough. Eyes back in the hold, he saw his battle-brothers felt his frustration too.

The Red Rage had come to Sepulchre IV, and its blood-lust was not easily sated.

Roaring afterburners announced their arrival at the docking pad. Landing stanchions extended quickly as the Implacable touched down. The Salamanders disembarked from the rear hatch, green-armoured giants ploughing through the pneumatic pressure cloud.

An Ecclesiarchy representative met them with two of her fellow Battle Sisters. Backwash from the Thunderhawk’s half-powered down engines tossed her white hair, revealing a jagged scar that made her appear more severe.

Though they came from the Order of the Ardent Veil, these warrior-fanatics looked anything but peaceful. Their white power armour was studded with silver spikes, concomitant bodices drawn tight over their tauht muscles. They were akin to the suits worn by the Firedrakes’ battle and reserve company brothers, only slighter but still potent. Holy signifiers – purity seals, rosarius beads and icons of the Emperor’s aquila – bedecked the armour, defining the Battle Sisters’ purpose and zealous determination. They held bolters low-slung at their hips. The sister superior with the white hair also carried a flanged power mace. Her helmet, mag-locked to her belt, was silver. Whatever force of Chaos had come upon Sepulchre IV must have been dire that these soldiers of faith could not defeat it.

Praetor bowed his head before the Battle Sisters to show his respect. It had not been easy for them or the Ecclesiarchy to ask for help. The veteran sergeant had no wish to make it any more difficult.

The white-haired superior nodded then turned her back on the Salamanders, leading them away from the docking pad towards a thick perimeter wall crowned by razor-wire. Two watchtowers with mounted heavy bolters overlooked a reinforced gate on either side, the docking pad’s only access point. Hard-looking female faces regarded the strangers from within, their mood unreadable.

The docking pad doubled as a barracks and chapel, too. Tsu’gan noticed much of its religious statuary had been ripped down and replaced by ablative armour, sandbags and rockcrete barricades. Anything of significance to the faith of the Order was gone, leaving a blank echo on a wall or a denuded alcove. The fleeing ships transported not only people but Ecclesiastical artefacts too.

‘I’ve had warmer welcome on Fenris.’ Kai’ru kept his voice low.

A glare from Praetor silenced him, before they were led towards the gate.

Tsu’gan had to agree with his battle-brother. A cold wind was blowing through the Order of the Ardent Veil and the white of their battle sisters’ armour reminded him of frost. Salamanders fought with a core of fire in their breast; these warrior-maidens harboured a spike of ice.

Once past the docking pad, Praetor chose to enlighten his brothers over a closed comm-channel.

++Use the senses our father gave you. The Order is mute. They cannot acknowledge you even if they wished to.++

Kai’ru found suddenly that he was similarly afflicted.

‘Deeds not words are the speech of angels.’ Gathimu was quoting from some philosophical treatise he’d read.

Any reply was forestalled as a pair of Immolator battle tanks reversed from the gate, allowing the Salamanders through. Their turret-mounted inferno cannons swivelled as they moved, constantly trained on the gate. One trigger pull from the gunners would engulf the entranceway in a conflagration of burning promethium.

With the churn of hidden gears, the gate cracked and slid open. As they had seen from the air, the carnage of burnt out tanks and twisted corpses lay beyond it. Sepulchre IV was a place of ruins and shades, of scorched earth and blood-tainted air. Some of the fires still flickered in the hollow shells of the broken basilica.

Several Battle Sisters flanked the gate, bolters aimed into the killing ground before them.

The sister superior looked expectantly at Praetor. She wanted to seal the compound again quickly.

Tsu’gan detected no enemies nearby. He scowled behind his battle-helm at what he saw as fear.

Fear is the province of the weak.

‘Ave Imperator,’ he heard Praetor say to the Battle Sister.

She slammed her gauntleted first against her pauldron in salute as the Salamander sergeant led his Firedrakes out.

Deeds not words.

Once outside, the gate ground shut behind them. The gaze of the Battle Sisters in the towers was still upon them, though. Tsu’gan felt their heavy bolter sights like an itch at the back of his neck.

Gathimu released a spit of promethium from his heavy flamer to test the igniter on the nozzle, interrupting Tsu’gan’s thoughts. ‘This place reeks of death.’

Tsu’gan estimated over a thousand dead bodies strewn throughout the perimeter. ‘The battle moved elsewhere?’

‘To the convent-bastion.’ Praetor had donned his battle helm and was consulting a data feed running across his left lens. ‘Our destination.’ Topographical and geographical schemata spooled across his iris at rapid speed. Praetor’s occulobe implant absorbed the information in a single beat, storing it in his eidetic memory for later use. He’d locked in the route to the convent-bastion and was mission ready. He led them to a patch of open ground.

‘How many did they lose trying to get in?’ Ankar took his place in a ritual circle with the others.

Praetor paused to blink the relevant data onto his inner helm lens. ‘Nearly a quarter of their garrison – over a thousand battle sisters. Though I’d suggest that’s a conservative estimate.’

‘And within, defending the bastion?’

‘Celestians, mainly. They may have a few hundred troops inside. There are more beyond its walls. Holding firm… for now.’

‘Such a waste of lives,’ said Kai’ru. ‘No wonder they’re so aggrieved.’

Tsu’gan’s servos protested as he moved towards Praetor, his armour as belligerent as his mood. ‘They’re fools. Mute or not, they should’ve summoned us sooner.’

Gathimu was standing next to him. ‘Would your pride have allowed that, brother? Asking for help?’

‘We need none, we are Adeptus Astartes.’ He stamped heavily into position beside his sergeant. His uneven gait was obvious, especially to Gathimu.

‘Your anger weighs you down more than that armour ever could. Let go of it.’

It’s not anger, thought Tsu’gan. It’s hate.

And it went deep, into his flesh where he’d tried to have the brander-priest’s iron remove it. But no burning, however invasive, could go far enough. Not when the hate and anger was turned inwards…

Behind them, the burst of engine noise signalled the Implacable’s take-off from the docking pad. The gunship had brought them as close as it could without risking being downed by enemy flak. Several Ecclesiarchy craft littered the killing field outside the fortified compound, testament to the wisdom of a foot approach. The rapid deployment of the Terminators to Sepulchre IV prevented any other kind of insertion.

‘And so we are alone.’ Kai’ru lifted his head to watch the slowly vanishing outline of the Thunderhawk. Headed for Sepulchre IV’s spaceport, it would aid the evacuation effort until summoned again by Praetor.

Gathimu was philosophical. ‘In the end brother, we are always alone.’

Praetor looked to him now the Salamanders had formed the ritual circle.

‘Ignite the flame.’

A burst from Gathimu’s heavy flamer lit a column of fire in the wasteland, like a beacon torch.

‘Vulkan’s fire beats in my breast,’ Praetor intoned.

‘With it I shall smite the foes of the Emperor,’ they concluded as one then each thrust their fists into the blaze, allowing their armoured fingers to blacken at the tips before withdrawing them.

‘We are born in fire,’ the sergeant continued, ‘so do we wage war with it clenched in our mailed fist.’

‘Unto the anvil!’ bellowed the Terminators.

Praetor unslung his thunder hammer and storm shield. ‘Firedrakes! In Vulkan’s name!’

The ritual circle broke apart and the Salamanders fell into combat-march formation, Praetor at the front, the others forming a two by two square behind him.

Tsu’gan’s lens display showed ten kilometres to the convent-bastion. The land between them and it was fiercely contested by Ecclesiarchy and enemy troops. The war was close by. There was no way could they reach their destination without encountering it.

It would be a long walk.

Sister Evangeline prayed. She was in one of the convent-bastion’s sanctums kneeling before an icon of her Order’s patron, the martyred Sister Uthraxese. Silver-armoured Celestians surrounded her with ready bolters. Despite their experience and status, the elite Battle Sisters looked edgy.

Father Lumeon was conversing with Canoness Ignacia at the back of the small chamber. The Celestians were Ignacia’s personal guard. She also wore silver armour but of a more ornate design. An antique power sword was sheathed at her hip, next to her battle-helm. Oil censers and a book of scripture hung from her belt by a pearled rosarius string, whilst the scars of battle mapped the Canoness’s face like a continent of past glories.

Father Lumeon looked calm but the way he worried at his aquila betrayed his concern. ‘We could hide.’

Ignacia gave him narrowed eyes.

‘In the Chapel of Divine Sanctuary,’ the priest added.

The Canoness shook her head. The notion of hiding was anathema to her. She wanted to wait. Perhaps with reinforcements from the Space Marines they could break through to the gunships.

In a bout of frustration, Father Lumeon pointed to where Evangeline was praying before the icon. There was a finger bone of the great martyr herself within its coffin-like confines. Some, the particularly devout, suggested some spirit essence still existed within the calcified remains.

‘The relic must be taken from this place. It cannot fall to the enemy. Even now they seek it!’

Ignacia was about to admonish him, when he held up his hand contritely. ‘Our forces dwindle by the minute. Soon there’ll be none left and the Ruinous Powers will not stall long at our barred gates. The Adeptus Astartes are on the way, canoness.’

She scowled at this, ever prideful.

‘If we hide, it might give us more time. We might–’

The hard clang of Ignacia slamming her fist against the wall stopped Father Lumeon mid-plea. Evidently, signing would not convey her meaning accurately enough.

Evangeline didn’t start at the interruption, though it was loud enough. She stayed calm, channelling an inner peace as taught by the sister superior of the Hospitaller.

Anger serves only to promote further anger. Guidance is only found when the mind is still. Serenity breeds truth.

Before the Canoness could go further, a pair of Crusaders from the convent-bastion’s outer wall arrived at the sanctum’s force-shielded doorway.

Both had removed their helmets in the presence of their holy mistress. There was news from the battle-front. From their expressions, it wasn’t good.

The chains tightened around the sorcerer’s torso, forcing him awake. The iron links burned white-hot and sent needles of agony across his bare flesh where his power armour had been removed. Were it not for his enhanced constitution, he’d be dead.

Dreghgor knew that, just as he knew how far he could push his captive. The warlord of the Red Rage was a tyrant and a butcher but he was also wise. Khorne loathed magic, as did he. The collar of black iron around Dreghgor’s neck was inimical to sorcery, but he was not beyond using sorcerers as a tool to further his own ends.

The bitch-maidens of the False Emperor held his warrior legions at bay. No matter how many he threw against their defences, the spiteful whores would not break. Dreghgor knew what lay within their disgusting temple; the sorcerer had scryed its presence after the knives had gone in. Khorne wanted it. Dreghgor would not fail his master, who had seen fit to grant him an armada of ships to bring forth a bloody reign upon the sub-sector. Seven worlds already burned in the wake of his red crusade. He only needed one more… The Eye of the Gods was upon him. He felt it like razorblades under his changed skin.

From the burnt out shell of a shrine, Hagtah Dreghgor had fashioned an arena. The remains of its millennia-old reliquaries were scattered about the bloodied floor like carrion bones. Priceless relic-statues lay broken and beheaded on a carpet of stained-glass fragments. The blood of innocents anointed the shrine’s walls from where they hung impaled on hell-barbs. A Chaos star delineated the battlefield with a freshly flensed skull at each of its eight points.

Two of Dreghgor’s champions clashed within it, chainblade to chainblade. They wore sanguine power armour, chased with brass. Reinforced ribbing between the armour’s plates was as black as sackcloth, and each donned a skull-faced battle-helm in honour of their bloody god.

Dreghgor’s own helm was fashioned into the visage of a snarling hound, a dark iron echo of one of his master’s many forms, and had a single brass horn jutting from its left temple. His armour, scarred from numerous battles, was riddled with studs and barbs. Chains bearing eight skulls from his finest kills hung from plate to plate. He’d scrimshawed marks to represent the lesser ‘achievements’. The tallies resembled little more than deranged scratches there were so many of them. Rib bones were engineered into his vambraces. Alien teeth turned his gauntlets into spiked fists.

Slayer Lord, Ender of Lives – just two of Dreghgor’s well-earned honorifics.

The warlord watched his champions intently from a pile of ruined stone. Something was still twitching beneath him, mewling for a merciful death. He paid it no heed. Let the weak suffer. While the blood flows, Khorne’s will be done.

His warriors fought fiercely, hacking at each other with abandon. Every drop of spilled blood hissed as it touched the unholy circle. Dreghgor saw dark energy coursing through the lines he had carved in the shattered flagstones.

With a grunt, one of the champions severed the head of the other and roared. Though his armour was cut and his body bleeding from countless wounds, the warrior exulted in triumph.

Dreghgor smiled beneath his helm. Khorne would be satisfied. The blood-letting had been prodigious. He turned his gaze upon the shackled sorcerer, who looked on meekly from the opposite end of the arena, caged in an iron gibbet.

The warlord’s eyes burned like balefires, and he nodded.

As the sorcerer began to incant, blood from his ruptured organs flecked the inside of the cage. The victorious champion clutched his chest and went down on one knee.

Vokrhan was a mighty warrior; he would make a strong vessel.

Dark tendrils, like strands of hyperactive electricity, crackled around the circle. When the champion tried to rise, a black bolt felled him. He tried again, and this time the dark energy was more potent. Vokrhan’s roar of triumph had turned into a wail of agony. Despite all of his strength and fortitude, he collapsed and shook.

‘Take his flesh,’ Dreghgor uttered like a curse. ‘Bind it to the engine.’

From below Dreghgor’s ‘throne’ of sundered stone, a suit of dark mechanical armour was wheeled forth by Kharthak the Blood-wrought.

By now the champion’s body was ravaged by daemon-change. Something dark and abyssal had crept into his soul. The essence of the thing manifested in his tortured and mutated flesh. Claws and monstrous faces stretched it as they fought for release, whilst screams heralded every agonised jerk of Vokrhan’s body.

Kharthak released the ribcage of the engine, which sprang opened like a fanged maw. Chains spilled from within like hungry tentacles, driven by a smoke-spewing, oil-spattering device on the back of the armour that also colonised its joints and limbs.

Hooks fashioned at the end of the chains found purchase in the terrified meat-puppet and dragged Vokrhan thrashing into the engine’s iron embrace.

After the ribcage slammed shut with a hard bang, the screaming stopped. A dull glow smouldered in the eyes of the engine’s banded war-helm. Its studded torso, made to resemble bone, heaved as if with a first breath.

Dreghgor leapt from his rocky vantage point and landed in front of it, stone splintering beneath him.

Dominance had always been one of the warlord’s chief credos.

‘Who is your master?’

With a creak of shifting iron, the daemon-engine went down on one knee in front of the warlord and lowered its head.

Dreghgor smiled… then struck it, hard across the temple. Even bowed, the daemon-engine was a head taller than the warlord, but his blow was fearsome enough to send it reeling to its feet and back a step.

Its eyes flared with red-hate and an array of weapons – sharp, spiked and bladed things, festooned with chains and dripping oil – snapped from its arms, greedy for blood. Dreghgor fed it his rage and his fury, it boiled within him like a tempest. He sensed the thing that had hollowed out his champion’s corpse for its own, slaved to the engine. It struggled against its bonds. Let slip, it would devour him and all of his warriors.

Dreghgor liked that. The daemon-engine would cause such carnage. His smile became a snarl.

‘Slay our enemies. Bleed them. Bring me what I seek.’

The streets of Sepulchre IV were drowning in blood. Ecclesiarchy troops lay tangled in the rubble like broken alabaster dolls. Survivors fell back by degrees, sloshing through vital fluids and avoiding the corpses choking up the once proud avenues.

Despite their defiance, the shrine world’s defenders were wilting before the Chaos battalions. The Battle Sisters were losing. Several combat squads were trying to hold their ground in Unity Square of Monast, Sepulchre’s capital. All other cities had been evacuated or overrun. Here in Monast, the Red Rage fell hardest. Here in Monast they bracketed the defenders’ escape routes, destroyed the bridges before reinforcements could be brought in and ensured dominance of the blood-soaked skies. Here in Monast they sought something, a relic to satisfy their warmongering god. The Red Rage surrounded the convent-bastion but, as of yet, hadn’t broken through.

But time, Tsu’gan was acutely aware, was running out.

‘Enhance magnification.’

The image resolved itself in his occulobe.

A bare-headed Battle Sister was holding her power sword aloft, rallying the troops when she took a round to the neck. She fell seconds later as the mass-reactive shell exploded, staining her skull-white armour crimson.

Sustained bolter fire met her demise.

Tsu’gan was reluctantly impressed. The Battle Sisters had adopted a long firing line and kept it steady in spite of casualties. He watched another sister superior step into the dead one’s place and try to anchor the defenders.

No war cries, nor screams. It was… unnerving. At first, Tsu’gan thought it was pique at having to call on the Adeptus Astartes to retrieve their holy artefact. Now, he wasn’t so sure. The Battle Sisters were almost automatons.

A few shattered rockcrete barricades and a pair of half-destroyed tanks stood between them and the enemy. Red Rage Traitor Marines, their power armour baptised in arterial blood, wielding bolt guns and chainblades came at them in a mob. Cultists, those they had brought upon their graven ships and desperate converts, former natives now driven insane by the carnage, ranged ahead of them like pack dogs.

Tsu’gan sneered contemptuously.

Weak.

++Your orders, brother-sergeant?++ Ankar’s voice came across the comm-link.

The Firedrakes were a hundred metres or so from the battle-site, having penetrated Unity Square, and approached down its flank. They could avoid this fight, continue on to the convent-bastion and the mission.

Praetor ignited his thunder hammer. Energy crackled along the head and haft, stirring the weapon’s machine-spirit.

‘Combat formation.’

Tsu’gan rejoiced. Battle at last!

As the Firedrakes advanced, a missile scudded overhead and tore apart one of the immobilised tanks. It detonated the fuel reserves, slinging the warrior-maiden who’d been firing its turret-mounted heavy bolter to the ground where she lay bleeding.

Flamers were brought up, and bathed the onrushing Red Rage with super-heated promethium. The cultists died immediately, like pathetic candles withered by a blow-torch. The Traitor Marines were not so easily felled. One collapsed to a knee, shimmering in the heat haze, his armour wreathed by fire, but the others drove through it. Emerging from the smoke, they looked like daemons born from the fiery hells of the warp. Tendrils of licking flame trailed off their battle-plate.

Chainblades screeching for blood, the Red Rage were about to tear into the Battle Sisters when a second flamer blast smashed into them from the flank, spilling bodies unprepared to meet it.

‘Into the fires of battle!’ Praetor thundered towards the Traitor Marines like an armoured bull.

Tsu’gan was behind him. He felt the resonance of his heavy footfalls through his armour, and those of Kai’ru and Ankar, either side. Gathimu was at the rear, slow enough to scorch the Red Rage with his heavy flamer. Tsu’gan felt him too, saw his ident-rune on the grainy tac-display imposed on his helmet lens.

Advance three steps – fire. Advance three steps – fire.

Gathimu was unfaltering.

Running in Terminator armour was difficult, but not impossible. Unused to the manoeuvre, Tsu’gan found his enhanced physiology stretched but he soon compensated. His breath sounded harsh and reverberant inside his helmet. The enemy were getting closer through the yellow-orange optic lenses.

A spray of blood cascaded from the shattered skull of a Traitor Marine as Praetor connected with his thunder hammer. A second red slash tore from the warrior’s stomach as the Salamanders sergeant used his storm shield to open him up.

Tsu’gan triggered his storm bolter, the hard crash-bang staccato that followed filled his heart with righteous anger.

‘In Vulkan’s name! Glory to Prometheus!’ He strafed a fresh line of cultists rushing to intercept the Salamanders.

The Terminators barrelled through them like they were nothing. One crumpled against Ankar’s armoured bulk. Another disappeared in a visceral mist, torn apart by Kai’ru’s chainfist.

Ahead of them, the Battle Sisters were rallying. But further enemy forces were coming, Havoc squads armed with heavy weapons and a Rhino APC carrying another battle squad. A wall of fire whickered from their ranks. It pinged off the invulnerable Terminators but scythed into the Battle Sisters brutally. Bodies were spun and tossed by the fusillade. They fell in silence despite their wounds.

A trio of Ecclesiarchy tanks rolled up the street to meet the enemy’s secondary force, two Battle Sisters squads running alongside them. Unity Square was packed with troops. A short range fire-fight had erupted across a small patch of open ground. Frantic melta beams stabbed across the debris, generators screaming. Heavy bolters added a grunting chorus to the orchestra of war.

The skirmish was escalating.

In the middle of the storm, the Firedrakes met the enemy proper.

Cracking ceramite, the sound of sundered power armour, accompanied Tsu’gan’s bludgeoning of one of the Traitor Marines. Another came in his wake, firing his combi-bolter point blank into the Salamander’s torso. Tiny insect-like stings were no more than an annoyance.

Tsu’gan’s power fist crushed him into paste.

Buoyed by the sudden appearance of heavily armoured reinforcements, the Battle Sisters advanced beyond their barricades to link up with the Space Marines. Gathimu had reached his battle-brothers too, and sent a plume of burning promethium into the Chaos Rhino. Destroyed tracks and a badly scorched hull brought the vehicle to a skidding halt.

Keeping up the pressure, Gathimu engulfed the stricken Rhino. Smoke-shrouded figures stumbled from its hatches, before the hold ignited and blew out the rear door in a deep foom of exploding incendiary.

The muzzle-flare from Tsu’gan’s storm bolter lit up his armour in a stark glow. Already ablaze, the Traitor Marines from inside the vehicle bucked and spasmed against the bolt storm. Three survived, staggered by shell impacts but unbowed in their durable power armour.

Praetor’s thunder hammer showed no such mercy as he waded in and crushed them.

Emboldened, the Battle Sisters advanced ahead of the more cumbersome Terminators to establish a fresh strong-point beyond Unity Square. Further squads were moving in from the avenues of broken temples and collapsed spires. Rubble provided a natural cordon in which to funnel the Chaos renegades.

Tsu’gan noticed the sister superior he’d seen earlier give a curt nod of thanks to his sergeant before pressing on.

Praetor’s voice rumbled over the comm-link a moment later.

++Fire-born, converge on my position.++

A series of affirmation runes flashed up on Tsu’gan’s helmet lens as the squad tightened its coherency.

++Do we advance?++ Kai’ru sounded eager for more.

He wasn’t alone. Tsu’gan was getting ready to head after their allies when Praetor spoke again.

++Hold position.++

++Brother-sergeant–++

Gathimu cut Tsu’gan off before he made a mistake he’d regret.

‘Be patient, brother. This isn’t over yet.’

Tsu’gan followed his eye-line. A pair of Immolator battle tanks spearheaded the Ecclesiarchy counter-assault. Their inferno cannons were short-ranged but deadly. Shooting gouts of intense fire ahead of them, they laid a path for the warrior-maidens behind. Some rode inside the Rhino APC that followed. Others hung onto its outer rails, holding their bolters one-handed.

Tsu’gan’s eyes narrowed. His occulobe filtered out smoke graining and sharpened the image despite the distance and the heat haze. Something was coming, heralded by a squall of blood-crazed cultists. What was left of the Havocs and the few Traitor Marines from the battle squads retreated to consolidate with it.

++Massive heat signature, brother-sergeant.++ Gathimu was calm, the blind sword of utter stillness to Tsu’gan’s font of reckless anger.

++I read++

Threat icons in Tsu’gan’s helmet array flashed insistently.

++Looks like some sort of machine. Dreadnought?++

Tsu’gan locked onto it with his targeter. His tac-display spooled down the metres rapidly.

It was speeding up, and no Dreadnought.

Ankar cranked fresh rounds into his storm bolter. ++An Adeptus Astartes?++

A dense but distant thunk of metal against metal arrested Praetor’s reply. A dark shape was crashing out of the sky towards the Firedrakes. It took Tsu’gan a few seconds to realise it was one of the Immolators.

They were already moving when Praetor bellowed. ++Disperse!++

A hunk of flaming tank landed between them, like so much burning shrapnel. It had literally been torn apart.

++Forward on me, brothers!++ Praetor circled the wreck quickly, overcoming the weight of his armour with sheer strength.

Tsu’gan was first behind him, but Praetor already had a lead. ‘What is that thing?’

It resembled a suit of mechanised armour, a simulacrum of a man, something that might once have been part of the long defunct Legio Cybernetica. And though it had pistons and cogs, wheels and chains, and vented steam and oil like a mag-lev train, it was no robot. Something lived and drew breath in those dark iron confines. Tsu’gan felt it.

‘Unnatural…’ Gathimu sounded almost haunted. ‘It’s possessed.’

Tsu’gan’s teeth clenched. It was a daemon that had a hand in the death of his former captain, Ko’tan Kadai. His ire grew as he vowed this one would be banished back into the warp without taking anyone with it.

A short distance away, the Battle Sisters were levelling everything they had at it. Bolter fire, even melta blasts rolled off like they were nothing. Another Immolator crumpled like parchment when the daemon-engine shoulder-barged its hull. Fuel and ammunition exploded in a vast fireball that Tsu’gan felt in the resulting heat wash.

‘Emperor’s name… It’s strong.’

Praetor was swinging his thunder hammer in a slow but steady arc. ++We are stronger.++

The daemon-engine was relentless. It tossed Battle Sisters like limp marionettes. White-armoured bodies fell like rain, eviscerated by its blades and saws.

Tsu’gan heard Praetor mutter when the Firedrake’s charged.

++Vulkan guide me in my hour of doom.++

Up close, the daemon-engine was massive. It reeked of blood and oil. Smoke and heat exuded off its dark iron flesh in a pall. But it was the eyes that Tsu’gan really noticed. With every blow, as the carnage increased, they blazed brighter with a malign light.

Praetor swung. It was like lightning from the sky when he struck. Tsu’gan expected to see the daemon-engine crumble but instead his sergeant’s battle cry became a roar of agony as he was punched off his feet several metres through the air.

To see the mighty Praetor so humbled made the Firedrakes falter.

Kai’ru recovered quickest, getting ahead of Tsu’gan to ram his chainfist into the daemon-engine’s torso.

‘Taste Vulkan’s wrath, warp spawn.’ The oath died on his lips when one of the thing’s hell-blades punctured his Terminator armour as if it were tin. With his aegis broken, Kai’ru could only watch as the saw-teeth churned his innards to mulch.

Gathimu was advancing fast, Kai’ru’s name a cry of anguish on his lips. The igniter on his heavy flamer was already burning when the daemon-engine levelled its wrist-mounted cannon and unloaded. Dozens of armour-piercing shells, jacketed with hellfire, peppered his armour and detonated the promethium tanks on his back.

Blinded by the sudden explosion, Tsu’gan waited a few seconds before his occulobe implant compensated. Gathimu was burning.

++Ankar.++

The other Firedrake nodded. They would attack the daemon-engine together. Tsu’gan’s tac-display recorded five metres until engagement when a transmission icon flashed urgently on his helmet lens. It had an Imperial signature, emergency coded. The message spooled as rune-text across the display:

Incoming. Fall back five metres and stand fast.

A high-pitched whine broke overhead. No time to retreat. Tsu’gan and Ankar locked their bodies as the ordnance hit. It struck the daemon-engine squarely and it disappeared in a storm of fire and shrapnel.

The explosion billowed outwards, engulfing the Terminators who weathered the blast like a cliff against the tide. When the dust dispersed, the daemon-engine was crouched almost fifty metres away but still intact. It rose slowly. Its dead eyes blazed brighter.

Behind the Salamanders, Ecclesiarchy troops were advancing in force. A stern-faced sister superior appeared from the roof hatch of an Exorcist. It looked more like a grotesque church organ than a battle tank, but there it was, auto-loaders priming for another missile launch.

Another pair of Immolators flanked it, heavy bolter turrets rattling. High velocity, mass reactive shells stitched a thick line all the way to the daemon-engine. The dense impacts never even scratched it. The tanks rolled on past the Salamanders, determined to block it. Two Rhinos sped after them, fully loaded with engines screaming.

‘See to your battle-brother.’ Praetor was on his feet. His battle-helm was shattered and he’d torn it off. He was bloodied, still groggy from the blow. It was incredible he lived, let alone stood.

Praetor scowled when it didn’t happen immediately. ‘Get Gathimu up.’

With some effort, Ankar and Tsu’gan hauled the Firedrake to his feet. His armour was badly damage, blackened by burns, but he nodded his willingness to fight.

Tsu’gan was ready to go again. ‘How do we kill it?’

‘We don’t.’

‘But Brother Kai’ru–’

‘Is gone.’ Praetor’s face was grim. This wasn’t an easy decision. ‘We make for the convent-bastion. They have given us that chance.’ He gestured to where the Battle Sisters fought and died furiously.

Incomprehension and anger warred in Tsu’gan’s burning eyes. ‘What of vengeance? Our brother’s death demands it!’

Praetor snarled, thrusting his thunder hammer in Tsu’gan’s direction. ‘I’ll fell you where you stand. Obey my orders.’

He showed them his back and stalked away. ‘On my lead.’

Despite himself, Tsu’gan was about to protest again, when Gathimu touched his arm.

‘We’ll win no honour for Kai’ru by dying here, our oaths unfulfilled. Sacrifice is not always physical, brother.’

Grief softened Tsu’gan’s face briefly, before the mask returned and his impotent wrath dominated.

The Firedrakes left the battlefield. The convent-bastion wasn’t far. Tsu’gan knew, in their wake, the daemon-engine would be close.

The heavy drumming of explosions outside sounded muffled through the thick convent-bastion walls.

Father Lumeon was pacing.

Why don’t they feel thick enough?

Since departing with the Crusaders, Ignacia had not returned. Five Celestians remained, a full half of her bodyguard, led by Sister Clymene. They eyed the long corridor beyond the force-shield nervously. It was dark, its emergency lighting low.

He looked away when the shadows started to grow and coalesce in his mind. His heart was racing and he gripped his aquila for support.

Evangeline showed no such anxiety. She was kneeling before the reliquary, serene, bereft of all doubt. Though her lips moved in prayer, she made no sound.

Sister Clymene hunched over a tactical console fashioned like a shrine in one corner of the chamber. She turned to Father Lumeon, who then went over to her.

A grainy pict-viewer displayed the situation beyond the convent-bastion’s walls. Flaring bolter fire polluted the image with bright flashes, overloading the external pict-viewer. Static from comm-link chatter obscured it further. But the picture was painfully clear to Father Lumeon. There was no escape. They would all die here. All that mattered was the relic.

He was muttering a prayer to the Emperor when four armoured forms came into view at the edge of the pict. Lumeon had never studied the Adeptus Astartes in any great detail but he recognised the insignia of the Salamanders and offered up his profound thanks.

Despite their bulky armour, the Adeptus Astartes progressed steadily through the Chaos picket lines, shredding foes with their holy bolters and bathing the heinous masses with cleansing flame. Father Lumeon was transfixed as a bald-headed giant smashed his way to the gate, his warrior brothers behind him. As the barrier wall began to open, a force of Celestians came out to meet the Adeptus Astartes. Desperate to get inside, the Red Rage couldn’t get close. The defenders were just too fierce to breach.

Once the Salamanders were through, the Celestians retreated and the gate banged shut again. Pintle-mounted fire from the towers intensified and a battle tank was rolled into the small outer courtyard to watch the gate.

The vox-unit on the tactical console crackled to life.

++This is Sergeant Praetor of the Salamanders First Company Firedrakes – acknowledge.++

Father Lumeon looked to Sister Clymene, who gestured for him to answer.

His relief was almost palpable. ‘Lords, the Emperor’s blessing you have come. I am Father Lumeon, Missionary High Priest attached to the Orders.’

++We are sealing the inner doors now.++

Father Lumeon’s tone betrayed his surprise.

‘Ah… But how will we get out? The relic–’

++Is in safe hands. Be more concerned that the enemy doesn’t get in.++

There was a short pause that filled the priest’s gut with lead.

++Something is following us. There is little time. Ready the relic, we will be with you soon.++

The vox-link died and silence returned.

Something is following us.

Something.

The words replaying in Lumeon’s head chilled him before he found some resolve.

‘Sister Evangeline.’ She was praying in front of the reliquary and looked up. ‘It’s time.’

The force-shield shimmered once then dissipated before Praetor and his Firedrakes stepped into the sanctum. It was quick to resolve itself again, the waft of ozone from its reactivation souring the air.

Tsu’gan scowled at such fear.

‘That won’t save you,’ said Praetor, looking down at the frail, old priest in front of him.

‘Then we shall have to rely on the Emperor’s grace to protect us.’

If Praetor had an opinion about this, he kept it well hidden.

The priest bowed. ‘I am Father Lumeon.’

The Firedrake sergeant kept the introductions brief. He showed him a small, cylindrical device mag-locked to his belt. ‘Teleport homer. Once locked onto its signal, my ship will transport us and the relic aboard.’ Praetor’s expression became regretful. ‘Its localised field is too small for all of us. Besides, you would not survive translation intact. I am truly sorry.’

Lumeon was already resigned to his fate. He had no fear of death, only of losing the relic.

Praetor’s gaze alighted on the reliquary of Sister Uthraxese where a slim novitiate was kneeling.

‘Brothers, make way.’ The Firedrakes standing behind him spread out. A gap for Praetor and the relic formed between them.

‘When translation occurs, there will be a massive exothermic reaction. Stand well back. Better still, leave the chamber.’ Praetor had moved into position. When he turned the novitiate was standing downcast before him.

‘I am tempered in Vulkan’s forge, sister. I have no need of benediction.’ Praetor looked up. ‘Priest, bring forth the relic. Our time is almost up.’

A dull explosion echoed through the convent-bastion walls all the way to the sanctum. Luminal red bathed the chamber from the tactical console. The outer wall had been breached.

Tsu’gan had a decent view of the screen from where he was standing. The ensuing fire-fight was brutal. A familiar form appeared through the carnage of bolter fire and smoke. Celestians fell like porcelain statues, shattered by its irresistible force.

‘The machine has broken through.’

It scythed through the defenders, crushing tanks and swatting Battle Sisters aside, until it reached the inner gate. Flamers and melta guns were brought up, but nothing fazed it. If anything, the daemon-engine looked bigger, a mutating hulk whose unnatural flesh strained at its corporeal bonds. Tsu’gan’s eyes narrowed when he caught something through the melee. Before he could analyse it further, a stray explosion killed the pict-feed and the tactical console went dark.

Tsu’gan’s eyes met his sergeant’s.

It will be here soon.

Already, the heavy thump of the daemon-engine’s feet could be heard hammering up the corridor towards them.

Praetor’s face was solemn. None would survive. But retrieve the reliquary and it would all be worth it.

‘Now, priest.’

Father Lumeon looked nonplussed. ‘It is before you, Astartes. Sister Evangeline is the relic.’

What might have been anger crossed Praetor’s face. ‘Don’t mock me, priest. If you’ve lost your mind to Chaos, I’ll vanquish you here… now.’

‘Evangeline is the relic, a living relic! She beheld a vision from the Emperor on Earth and it has awoken her grace.’

Praetor saw the truth in the priest’s eyes, and beseeched Vulkan for his strength.

‘Then we have a problem.’

Father Lumeon was shaking his head. ‘No, no. You’re here now. Rescue Evangeline. The rest of us do not matter. You must do this, lord. I beg of you!’

Praetor ignored the priest’s pleas, addressing his Firedrakes instead. ‘Secure the corridor. Firepoints at every ingress.’

Gathimu and Ankar waited for the force-shield to deactivate again then lumbered through the doorway.

‘Astartes, what are you doing? The living relic–’

‘Is a girl, and thusly will not survive teleportation to my ship.’ Praetor spoke harshly. He wasn’t angry at Lumeon, thrusting the serene-looking novitiate towards him desperately. He was angry at the situation and the fact they faced a foe he knew they couldn’t best with strength of arms. Herculon Praetor was not used to such impasses.

Father Lumeon seemed to shrink with despair. Evangeline, by contrast, was utterly calm. Her serenity and grace emanated outwards. It was slow, but even Tsu’gan was beginning to feel his choler lessen just by being near her.

Praetor felt it too. He reached out to touch Evangeline’s cheek but stopped short.

‘I can see why the Red Rage wants you so badly, child. Have no fear, they won’t claim you.’

Judging by his ambivalent demeanour, Father Lumeon was unsure if that was a good or a bad thing given the circumstances. He looked askance down the corridor where the sounds of battle were growing louder.

‘What do we do?’

Praetor regarded the priest sternly.

‘Return to your reliquary, both of you, and pray.’

Tsu’gan couldn’t avert his gaze from Sister Evangeline as she knelt in prayer. Such poise and calm. She radiated tranquillity. Peace threatened to overcome his rage. Tsu’gan had not experienced such a feeling in a long time.

The din coming from the corridor had lessened in the last few minutes. It could mean only one thing. The Celestians had been defeated.

A ring of explosives rigged from the Battle Sisters’ frag and krak grenades booby trapped the entrance to the sanctum. When the daemon-engine breached the force-shield, it would set them off. By then the Firedrakes and their ward would be withdrawing into the room behind it. Tsu’gan had performed the short reconnoitre himself: from the sanctum to a long gallery, which then led to a transept and finally a chapel. Cloisters and dormitories bled off from this chamber, but the daemon-engine would have caught them at that point and have to be fought.

Tsu’gan didn’t fear it, but nor did he wish to be found wanting when the time came. A desire for flagellation at the brander-priest’s rod had welled up in him during the tour. Upon returning to the sanctum and Sister Evangeline, that masochistic urge had ebbed.

Gathimu’s voice came through on the comm-link. He and Ankar were at the opposite end of the corridor.

++It comes.++ Harsh-sounding bolter fire broke the feed. ++Glory to Vulkan and the Emperor, brothers. I go to them now.++

Gathimu disappeared, wading into the battle that Tsu’gan could only imagine beyond the corridor.

Ankar was behind him.

++Unto the Anvil, brothers.++

Even Evangeline’s presence couldn’t quell Tsu’gan’s anger. He fist was clenched. ‘I will carve their names into its hell-bound flesh.’

Praetor hefted his thunder hammer. ‘Honour their sacrifice with victory, brother.’

Tsu’gan was in no mood for pragmatism.

‘I hope their blood is worth this human’s grace. We don’t even know why she is so important to the Ecclesiarchy.’

Father Lumeon rose from the reliquary where he prayed with Sister Evangeline to approach the Firedrakes.

‘Do you know what true names are, Astartes?’

‘They are a daemon’s weakness, words of power that can banish them into the warp.’

Lumeon faced Praetor. ‘Yes, they are. Sister Evangeline knows true names.’

‘What do you mean, priest? Speak plainly.’

‘By being close to a daemon, she can hear their true names. She can banish the denizens of the warp with but a word! That is why she is so valuable. That is why you must save her.’

Only Evangeline’s presence kept Tsu’gan’s rage from boiling over. He wrenched off his battle-helm. He was livid. Praetor’s outstretched hand warned him to be still.

‘A pity you did not mention this before.’ The sergeant leaned in closer. ‘But what of the fact she is mute? How can she even utter such a word?’

Father Lumeon followed the Firedrake’s gaze to Evangeline then back again.

‘The Emperor’s divine will is not for us to question, it just is. I do not know how.’

Praetor slammed his fist into Tsu’gan’s chest to hold him. ‘Go back to your prayers, but be ready to move.’

He sighed, turning to Tsu’gan as the priest sloped away again. ‘Vulkan give us strength.’

‘There is no way to defeat this thing.’

Praetor’s brow furrowed. ‘Not with the weapons we have here at least.’ He paused, deciding on their final strategy. ‘We hold it as long as we can. Then do what must be done. The enemy must not claim her. Whatever vile sacrifice is in mind for this child will be far worse than death, for her and the sub-sector.’

‘I will do my duty.’

Praetor nodded. ‘If we still live, I will engage the beacon and pull us back to the ship.’

The two ident-runes on both Firedrakes’ tac-displays blinked out.

Tsu’gan’s face was grim. Their brothers were dead. He checked the load on his storm bolter. It was getting low. As Praetor backed away, gesturing for the priest and his novitiate to get up, Tsu’gan stomped into position in front of the force-shield. The five Celestians, including Sister Clymene, formed a firing line with him.

Silence flushed the corridor. Unseen fires sent flickering fingers of dusk across the metal walls. Smoke drizzled outwards like a carpet of fog. The heavy clank of the daemon-engine’s footfalls beat in time with the defenders’ hearts.

Tsu’gan aimed at the end of the corridor. ‘Brace yourselves.’

Five boltguns locked and loaded beside him.

‘Lower the force-shield.’

The energy veil flickered and dissipated at Tsu’gan’s command.

A large silhouette bled onto the gunmetal floor. The daemon-engine lumbered into view.

It was much larger than before. Its flesh strained against the machine shackling it. Blood and oil seeped from every cleft in its armour. Long, hell-runed chains scraped along the floor as it moved. Steam and smoke spewed from the engine on its broad back. And the eyes… the eyes burned with a baleful fire, stoked by the fear and rage of its enemies.

Tsu’gan hesitated for a second.

‘Fire!’

An incandescent bolter storm roared from the sanctum archway. For a few moments the daemon-engine took it, even staggered as the mass reactive shells exploded against it. Then it charged.

Its bulk had slowed it and it took a few seconds to overcome inertia but then it was moving, like a battle tank with engines screaming.

Tsu’gan estimated it would clear the corridor in approximately five more seconds.

‘Back into the sanctum. Now!’

The force-shield was reactivated in their wake.

Reunited with Praetor, Tsu’gan was retreating into the long gallery when the daemon-engine hit the force-shield. The energy veil stretched and crackled, sending jolts of electricity through the abomination’s metal frame. As if it was wading through bands of viscous light, the daemon-engine pushed and strained against the field. Then like rubber put under too much stress, the bands snapped and the veil shut down for the last time.

Tsu’gan’s storm bolter was already blazing halfway down the gallery when the daemon-engine stepped across the sanctum’s threshold and tripped the grenades.

Intensified by the close confines of the chamber, the explosion was deafening and blew smoke and fire in both directions. Shrapnel careened off Tsu’gan’s armour, embedding itself in the walls and floor.

Laying down suppressing fire all the way, Tsu’gan and the Celestians reached the chapel. Nothing stopped the daemon-engine. They didn’t even slow it down.

Three of the Celestians rushed forward, bolters flaring at close range, righteous fury in their eyes.

They were scattered in seconds, smashed and broken against the walls.

‘Protect them, brother!’ Praetor led with his storm shield, the daemon-engine looming ahead.

It went against Tsu’gan’s every instinct to leave his sergeant. But, shielding the non-combatants with his body and backing off from the battle, he obeyed. He was her last defence. Sister Evangeline needed him.

Expecting to slow, rather than smite it, Praetor was lasting longer against the daemon-engine this time. Its bulk actually worked against it, and the Firedrake was able to get in beneath its guard and land a few blows.

Bolter fire raked down the machine’s torso, before the last Celestian was impaled on a hell-blade. Transfixed, she shuddered once and then died.

Sister Clymene made the most of her comrade’s sacrifice by attaching a melta bomb to the daemon-engine’s blind side. Too close to withdraw, she was cooked in her armour while the abomination was rocked but stayed standing.

Only Praetor remained.

Tsu’gan and the others had almost reached the end of the chapel when he saw the sergeant smashed aside. Praetor was lifted off his feet and left a ragged hole in the wall where he’d crashed through it. His thunder hammer was sent spinning loose, embedding itself in the chapel floor just a metre from Tsu’gan’s grasp.

They’d reached the door to one of the dormitories. The daemon-engine had slowed, sensing its prey was near and at its mercy.

Tsu’gan’s storm bolter was empty. He’d have to crush her neck.

‘Shut your eyes.’

He struck Father Lumeon, as hard as he dare without killing him, knocking the priest unconscious before he could protest.

‘Shut your eyes, Evangeline.’

Tsu’gan reached around her tiny neck, sensed the warmth of her skin against his gauntleted fingers… and stopped. He thrust Evangeline into the centre of the chapel, where she stumbled and fell.

As he dragged Father Lumeon and closed the dormitory blast door behind them, he saw the daemon-engine close on Evangeline.

By Vulkan, I hope this works…

Alone, Evangeline faced the daemon-engine. She quietened her fast-beating heart and recovered from her stumble into a kneeling position. She began to pray.

With each silent benediction, the abomination that had been summoned to sacrifice her soul to Khorne slowed. Whereas before, brute force and fury had driven the daemon-engine to impossible feats, now every step was an effort. The closer the machine came to Evangeline, the more it began to shrink. Its grotesque musculature withered and atrophied. The baleful lights in its eyes started to fade, like a candle starved of oxygen.

This was the Chapel of Divine Sanctuary – its borders were anathema to rage and fear. Here, peace and tranquillity held sway. Sister Evangeline was the paragon of that fundamental truth. She was order in place of chaos, serenity opposed to anger. There was nothing in this place or in her for the daemon-engine to feed upon. She had disarmed it, and by the time it reached her it had returned to its former size, hell-blade poised above her bowed head but unable to strike. Ichor was drooling from between the daemon-engine’s armour plates, its body seized as if fossilized. Impotent, dwindling rage smoked away to almost nothing in its eyes.

The blast door opened and in stepped Tsu’gan. His eyes were closed. He felt Evangeline’s aura brush against him, and envelop him, like a cool breeze. Reaching out, he found the thunder hammer in his grasp and released it without effort. He could hear everything, every heart beat, every shallow breath.

A spark ignited in the daemon-engine’s eyes. Hellish hope became neutered fury as it found nothing but calm in the warrior before it.

In a pure moment of awakening, Tsu’gan hurled the thunder hammer.

It spun, end over end, until his righteous blow broke open the machine chassis that bound but also girded the abomination within.

Free of its fetters, fire surged into the now unbound daemon’s eyes. Hellish claws reached out from the shattered rib cage as it pulled loose.

I will feast upon this world.

Evangeline opened her eyes and uttered the first and last words she would ever speak. A true name…

Khartak-shek-hlad-bahkarn…

The daemon shrieked before a harsh corona of light engulfed it. Hot winds, the stench of ash and blood tainted the air, then was gone, the daemon with it. The banishing spilled outwards like a droplet expanding in a massive pool, beyond the chamber, beyond the convent-bastion walls, across all of Sepulchre IV.

In the chapel, only a smouldering hunk of machine metal remained. The scorched remnants of the engine were lifeless and inert.

Praetor staggered in, bloody but with storm shield in hand.

It was over.

Father Lumeon had roused too and stumbled in behind Tsu’gan. What he saw made him weep.

Evangeline’s aura had almost faded.

‘Her grace is spent. By speaking, she violated the most sacred credo of the Order. Her unique gift is lost.’ The priest was distraught, but glad Evangeline was alive.

Tsu’gan saw it differently. ‘A daemon is banished and the Red Rage has been dealt a severe blow.’

Reports were flooding in through his comm-link. He read them aloud. ‘Their forces are in retreat. The skies are clearing and the blockade lifts.’

Praetor scowled. ‘It will not last. We have only a short opportunity.’

Going to the comm-bead in his ear, he contacted the Implacable with extraction coordinates. Praetor turned to the priest and novitiate. ‘You will ride with us.’

Father Lumeon nodded, holding Evangeline close like a child.

‘Brother-sergeant.’

Praetor took his thunder hammer from Tsu’gan and nodded.

‘A worthy blow.’

Tsu’gan saw the respect in his eyes and made the most of it. With Evangeline’s grace gone, the old anger was returning. He’d been a fool to believe it was anything more than a temporary reprieve.

‘What’s wrong, brother?’

‘Nothing,’ he lied. By the time the sound of the Implacable’s engines were overhead, his inner-pain, his rage had returned.

LEECHLORD

Frank Cavallo

The man who should have been dead opened his eyes just after sunrise. One of the scouts marching beside Jürgen von Sturm’s stretcher noticed him stirring, craning his neck and reaching out with languid arms. The ranger called out to his superior, a few paces ahead.

‘Sir, he’s coming around.’

The scout captain pulled back on the reins of his horse, slowing its pace until the gurney reached him. The haggard figure that lay upon it looked up at him with bulging, bloodshot eyes. He tried to speak, but the effort produced nothing more than a hoarse whisper.

‘Rest now, my friend. You’re safe,’ the captain said, handing him a flagon of water. ‘And fortunate, by Sigmar. If we hadn’t come upon you when we did, who knows what might have become of you.’

Von Sturm took it, clutching the jug to his lips and drinking every drop without a breath. The instant he was finished, he cast the empty bottle aside. His arms quivering, he grabbed at the captain’s leg, clutching the man’s leather boot with a trembling hand.

Von Sturm stared into the captain’s eyes with a haunted, empty gaze, as though looking right through him.

‘He’s mad, you know,’ he gasped. ‘Brilliant. Wise. So very wise… but quite, quite mad…’ His eyes rolled back. ‘The plague. The daemons. He cares for them like… like his own children.’

The forest trail opened into a clearing just ahead. The weathered battlements of Ferlangen rose up from the woodland with flame-scarred granite walls and a black gate of iron teeth. One of the scouts sounded a brass horn as the city came into view, blaring with the proper signal of three short notes and two long, alerting the sentinels atop the bastions. As the gates began to slowly roll open with the heavy clank of steel chains and pulleys, a pair of guardsmen marched out to meet the scouting party.

‘We have a man in need of attention here!’ the captain shouted. ‘Alert the citadel, and call for the Burgomeister’s doktor at once!’

Despite their disparity in rank, the guardsmen openly balked at the captain’s order.

‘The Burgomeister’s own doktor?’ one of them questioned. ‘With all respect, sir, you can’t expect us to send word to the citadel at the return of every wounded soldier.’

‘This is no common soldier,’ the captain replied.

Von Sturm lurched up from the gurney again, reaching out towards the guardsmen with bony fingers.

‘You’re all in danger here,’ he muttered. ‘The doktor… The rat pox… All of you are in danger…’

One of the guardsmen saw the insignia on von Sturm’s cloak. Though tattered, stained with blood and ripped across the centre, the emblem was unmistakable.

‘He’s one of the Black Eagle Guard?’

‘We think so,’ the captain replied. ‘He was wandering alone on the edge of the Forest of Shadows, babbling just as he is now, talking of daemons and poxes.’

‘The Black Eagle Guard?’ the other sentinel replied. ‘But weren’t they–’

The captain waved off their concerns.

‘That’s a discussion for another time. This man requires care. Take him to the citadel. He must be tended to by the chirurgeon. General Vormann himself will certainly wish to speak with him. He’s the only one who knows what happened to the missing regiments.’

Doktor Matthias Kohlrek shook his head. ‘It’s no use,’ the chirurgeon said. ‘The man’s totally unresponsive. Whatever horror he encountered in the wilderness, it has left him delirious.’

Von Sturm lay on a bed of wool and straw in the musty, crowded room of the Burgomeister’s personal physician. He stared up at the ceiling, apparently caring nothing for the fact that his presence had brought together some of the most powerful men in the city.

General Heinrich Vormann stared down at the pathetic wretch, at a man who had once been one of Ostland’s finest knights. He refused to accept the doktor’s answer.

‘There must be something you can do,’ he said.

‘I’ve tried everything I can think of, for the last twelve hours. Nothing appears to work,’ the doktor replied. ‘It makes no sense. He shows signs of recent injuries, but they all appear to have been healed. If this fever passes and the rashes subsides, he should be just fine.’

‘We need to know what happened to this man, and to his brothers-at-arms,’ Vormann said. ‘Whatever savagery befell them, it still stalks the dark forests beyond these gates.’

Doktor Kohlrek, a hunched and withered old man, rubbed his fingers into his exhausted eyes. For a moment, the general did not press the physician. Then von Sturm turned from his mindless contemplation of the walls to stare directly at the warlord.

‘The enemy is within! Kill me now, or you will all die here,’ he said, before collapsing back onto the bed.

General Vormann’s stoic face paled. He dismissed everyone, sending away his own retainers and the court officials with a wave and a terse command. Once the room had emptied, he looked back to the doktor, now slumped in a chair.

‘There must be something more you can do,’ the general said.

Doktor Kohlrek did not respond.

General Vormann turned and grabbed the doktor by his dirty apron, yanking him from his seat.

‘The rest of the army is rotting out there in the cold mud,’ he seethed. ‘If there is any chance that he might be able to tell us how that happened, then we’ll do it. You’ll do it.’

‘There is a chance,’ the doktor replied. ‘But our only weapon now is patience. If his fever is going to break, it will do so overnight. If it worsens, I’m afraid no medicine in the world can help him.’

General Vormann released his grip. He looked over again at von Sturm, writhing in listless delirium on the bed.

‘How soon will you know?’ the warlord asked.

‘I will stay by his side tonight. Return in the morning. If he lives through the dawn, we may yet learn what happened to him out there,’ Doktor Kohlrek said. ‘Shallya only knows what horrors this man has witnessed. I imagine they will torture his mind as the fever burns itself out.’

Jürgen von Sturm stared into the darkness. He heard laughter, echoing in the distance. He smelled brimstone and torch smoke. He sensed a thousand things, all at once. Everything was a blur, every sight, every sound and every thought.

Then, in an instant, it all came back to him to him. And his ordeal began again…

He was in the forest. He was with his men, riding with his sword unsheathed, though he saw no enemy. On a light-armoured stallion he trailed his comrades as they drove deep into the murky forests of northern Ostland. The grim, familiar parade of the Black Eagle Guard marched ahead; an ordered line of three hundred battle-hardened veterans, always spoiling for a fight.

His fellow mounted knights flanked the marching column. Like him, they wore white tunics over their steel plate, emblazoned with the scarlet bull of the Grand Principality, all of them yellowed and frayed from exposure, caked in dust and soot. The bulk of the ranks were grizzled foot soldiers, pikemen with craggy faces and untrimmed beards. They marched in pairs with their longswords and bedrolls slung across their backs, in mail hauberks and gore-stained leather jerkins.

Strips of wool were tied around arms, legs and torsos, stained red with the blood of wounds endured over the long weeks of their campaign, battle after battle against an inhuman enemy horde that never seemed to tire.

Von Sturm clutched at his own bandaged injury when a gust of cold wind passed over the column. Every time he shifted in his saddle, the steel of his cuirass rubbed against the wound in his side. It brought a wince to his frost-burned face, sweating despite the cold. He grimaced and snarled against the pain, a constant effort to steel himself against the complaints of his own body.

He reached under his plate mail to feel the tender swath of broken flesh, where a dirty ratman blade had ripped across his belly. He inspected his hand – the palm of his glove was slick with bloody pus. The wound wasn’t healing, festering now for the better part of five days, since the cowardly vermin had stormed their camp by night, forcing him into combat without armour for the first time in years. But von Sturm shrugged off the infection, even as a chill sent a shudder through him that had nothing to do with the cold.

He looked ahead, squeezing his eyes tight to make them focus. He scanned the wintry woodlands, seeking any unnatural movement amid the copses of naked trees, clumped together and shivering in the icy wind. His ears caught every rustle in the thorny underbrush and every raspy squawk in the grey skies. A dead carpet of fallen leaves lay underfoot, layer upon layer of wet mulch and dry brambles. Every footstep and hoofbeat crackled and squished in the loam, sending up tiny divots of foul steam from the permanently composting ground.

None of it escaped von Sturm’s awareness, as he kept a mental note of his surroundings: the sights, the smells and the sounds. Ever growing, always changing. It was one of the habits that had kept him alive through more battles than he could name. And the more he concentrated on his environs, the less attention he paid to the pain in his side. Or the chills, the sweats and the cough that now burned in his lungs.

The further his column pressed into the Forest of Shadows, the more the haunted woods seemed to close in around them. Winter-shorn, sclerotic trees huddled in gaunt thickets, grown together in tangled clusters that merged into a low-hanging canopy overhead. The branches rattled with every turn of the wind, as if threatening to reach down and clutch at them as they rode beneath.

For all the macabre eeriness of the woods however, nothing von Sturm saw troubled him – not until an hour past midday. Then something caught his eye that banished all thoughts of his own pains.

It was just a hint at first, a shape in the distance.

The outline was hard to make out, only barely visible over a rocky knoll to the far left of his marching column. For a moment he thought it might be nothing but a twisted tree, half hidden in the mist and shadows. As he rode closer though, beyond the hill, he looked again. And this time von Sturm was certain.

It was a man.

A gauzy curtain of fog shrouded him. Von Sturm squinted, craning his neck and straining to see any detail. Though partly obscured by the dancing shadows of wind-tossed trees, he was able to make out the figure’s shape. What he saw made him shiver.

It was no lean warrior or muscular beast. The man’s height was stunted and his frame was fat; a slovenly girth bulging out of tattered robes that seemed to merge with the mist. Legends of the haunted forests had long spoken of such a watcher-in-the-woods. Von Sturm knew the tales well. He knew to dread the ghastly figure whose very appearance was the most grim of portents, an omen of disease and suffering known by many names.

The Plague-stalker. Old Sawbones. The Fecundite.

He studied the distant figure, mesmerised in a sort of morbid fascination. For a long, eerie moment the stout phantom stood perfectly still, until a shift in the winds broke the fog hanging around him, revealing the mad doktor’s walking staff. Twisted like a petrified black serpent, it was crowned with a daemonic skull marked across the forehead with a blood-rune. As von Sturm strained to see it through the haze, the mist continued to churn behind the ghastly icon, discoloured and fuming as though disturbed by the evil totem.

Von Sturm’s lungs seized up, tightening his chest and forcing a pained cough. As if in response, the skull turned its black, empty eye sockets to stare directly back at him.

His blood ran cold.

An instant later his chest seized again, worse this time. Von Sturm turned away to catch his breath, and to steady his quivering limbs. When he looked again, only a moment later, there was nothing. The strange figure was gone.

He gathered himself, taking several long, ragged breaths until his heart stopped pounding like a warhammer in his chest. Then von Sturm left his lieutenant in command of the rearguard, and he rode double-quick for the front of the column.

He reined his galloping steed back to a trot when he came within a few dozen yards of the command retinue’s crimson and sable flags. The noble in charge of their expedition, Ludwig Ehrenhof, saw him, and called out to von Sturm as he approached. The youth was as unmistakable for his gaudy gold-plated helmet and matching cape as he was for his beardless chin and boyish face. Though he was seventeen years von Sturm’s junior, as the nephew of Count Valmir himself, the young equestrian had been awarded command of their prestigious order.

‘What brings you from your post this hour, Jürgen?’ Ludwig asked.

Von Sturm wasted no time with pleasantries, as he rarely did.

‘My lord, I saw something in the woods. Off to our left, about a mile back,’ he said.

‘Nothing troubling enough for you to sound a general alarm, I see,’ Ludwig replied, no hint of worry evident in his confident tone. ‘What was it?’

Von Sturm pondered the question for a moment.

‘A man,’ he replied at last. ‘At least, it looked like a man. I turned away for a moment, and when I looked back he… it was gone.’

‘Just one man?’ Ludwig joked. ‘I think our lads can handle that.’

‘I don’t know that it was a man. I don’t know what it was,’ von Sturm answered, his voice failing as the pain in his infected lungs grew worse. ‘It could have been…’

He let his voice trail off, unsure if he should continue. Ludwig prompted him.

‘It could have been what?’

‘Festus,’ von Sturm muttered, almost ashamed of himself for saying the name out loud.

Ludwig shook his head. ‘Festus? The mad doktor? Are you getting jittery in your old age? My uncle told me that you were the keenest officer he ever rode with. Not a man given to wild imaginings.’ He seemed to take a long moment to look over von Sturm, who was trying hard to fight against the fevered shivering that gripped his bones.

Von Sturm growled at the young noble under his breath, raising his voice in frustration.

‘I’m fine. And I’m telling you that we must be careful in these lands. Dangers of every sort lurk in these woods.’

Ludwig’s bare face flushed. He kicked his mount ahead, near enough to reach out and grab von Sturm by the cloak, pulling him close enough to whisper.

‘You may have known me since I was a child,’ he said. ‘But you must never speak to me as one in front of the men. Do you understand?’

He released the knight only a moment later, taking a moment to look him over a second time, closer now.

‘Is it the fever?’ Ludwig continued. ‘You look pale, old friend. And you’re drenched with sweat on the coldest day we’ve had out here. Let the apothecary have a look at you.’

‘I said I’m fine. Maybe it was nothing. Let me send out a party, so we know for certain,’ von Sturm said.

‘No, our orders are clear. This is not a scouting expedition. My uncle gave us one mission. Search out the warband that savaged Salkalten and destroy every last one of them before they reach any of the villages further south. That’s exactly what I intend to do to those mongrel beasts.’

‘If you’d just allow me to–’

They both stopped. A horn sounded from somewhere in the woods. It was a low-pitched, moaning call and it echoed between the barren trees. The ghostly howl raised a murmur from the men.

‘Steady, men,’ Ludwig called out.

The horn faded away. A tense silence descended, but only for a moment. A shuffling, skittering noise replaced it. The pitter-patter of a thousand footsteps, seeming to come from every side this time.

‘On your guard, men!’ von Sturm commanded, his training and experience taking over. ‘Form up the lines, prepare defensive formation!’ The infantry responded with practised skill – shifting in position, drawing blades and strapping down their shields.

They were just in time. The haunted forest came alive an instant later. A chittering horde teemed out of the mist, as though spawned from the foul earth itself.

Their lean bodies were covered in coarse, prickly fur. Most were pale brown or the dull grey shade of peat smoke, with inhuman snouts flanked by bristle-like whiskers.

Ratmen.

They attacked with the same speed with which they scampered out of the shadows, leaping and pouncing from different directions with every slash and thrust. Most carried no shield, instead whirling rusted blades in each claw-like fist. Most were dressed in filthy rags, with only a few sporting small iron breastplates and coats of rusted mail.

Upon reaching the battle-line, the horde broke off into smaller groups, setting upon knights or pikemen in parties of three or more. Though each stood about the height of a man, the rats preferred to swarm their enemies, shrinking from single combat and striking from multiple angles at once. Von Sturm drew his blade and slew two of the vermin in short order. The third attacker did not press the fight; instead he yelped, threw a handful of dirt in the knight’s face and slunk back into the shadows in their common, cowardly fashion.

Though still coughing and sweating, the ardour of battle brought a surge to von Sturm’s creaking bones. He bounded into the fray atop his stallion, cutting a path through the heart of the swarm. He hacked down at the foul attackers from his saddle, swinging his longsword in a series of practised, deadly arcs. Each punishing sweep ended with the wet thump of edged steel chopping through muscle; the same cruel sound no matter the victim, human, greenskin or beast. Rodent blood splattered across his armour, soaking his riding gloves until every clench of his fists sent red rivulets down his arms.

A single lethal stroke felled two ratmen with one swipe, the first disembowelled and the other decapitated. The moment of respite offered him a chance to pull back his steed, and to once again survey the fight, this time from the far side of the field.

The distraction cost him.

Von Sturm felt his horse lurch and stagger. He turned to find a jagged lance blade sticking through the stallion’s neck. Swathed in warm blood, the halberd was thrust clean through the horse’s flesh, the serrated edge only barely missing von Sturm’s belly.

He saw three ratmen howling in triumph underneath, still twisting the shaft of the spear, trying to direct the great, dying stallion to the ground like a felled cedar. He reached down, grabbing one by the throat, hauling it across the saddle like a rag doll.

He stared at the whimpering ratman for an instant. Even in the midst of battle, with blood-stink filling the air, von Sturm could smell the nasty sewage reek that clung to its fur. A nest of fleas infested its hide, spilling out from its undercoat as von Sturm tightened his fist into a strangling death-grip. Choking as its larynx collapsed, the ratman hissed, opening its mouth to threaten its captor with two pairs of pointed yellow incisors. Von Sturm held fast, grimacing at the rotten-egg breath and the flecks of bloody saliva it spat with every wheeze, until the ratman finally fell still.

Only an instant later, the front legs of his whinnying horse buckled, trapping von Sturm’s left ankle in the stirrup as it twisted on the way down. Von Sturm tried to pull his leg free as the steed fell, and to clutch at his sword simultaneously.

He accomplished neither.

The murdered stallion did not obey the path the ratmen sought for it, instead crumpling into the gully of a dead riverbed, barrelling von Sturm underneath its great girth like a catapult. Agony tore through him – he felt his thighbones snap as the massive beast rolled over him, pulling his ruined left leg from its socket.

He let loose the deepest, longest scream he’d ever uttered.

Then everything went black.

It was hours before von Sturm’s wits returned to him.

He came around slowly, looking out through blurry eyes and muttering what he expected to be his final prayers to Sigmar.

The woodlands were littered in every direction with the remains of his comrades, their corpses hacked to pieces in a wasteland of broken armour and mutilated flesh. Mud and blood blended in putrid puddles. Flies swarmed and carrion birds cried overhead, circling the fields before their rancid feast.

Still trapped under the carcass of his steed, his broken legs had gone numb. His fever swelled. Every breath burned like cinders in his lungs. Lingering somewhere near the edge of delirium, his eyes wandered over the desolation, overwhelmed by the terrible sights, the awful smells and the pained whimpers of those other cursed few who were not yet dead.

But there was something else. Something worse stalked the fields of ruin.

A strange flock of creatures fanned out around him, leaping and crawling over everything in sight; some no larger than horseflies, others as large as hounds. The herd was horrific. Some of the beasts were nothing more than torsos dragging themselves along with claw-like hands. Others rubbed exposed organs and intestinal tracts against the rocks, slurping and lurching and drooling as they moved about. Smaller, faster creatures crept between them, neither insect nor reptile nor bird, but bastardised hybrids of all these things. Some had bulging, bullfrog eyeballs dripping with viscous tears; others were without eyes altogether. Prickly grey tongues dangled to the side of maws lined with broken teeth, nestled beside up-turned fangs, the sharp ivory coated in layers of dried mucus. Those daemons not sniffing for carrion or picking through the human debris mounted their packmates, stroking and grooming one another in unnerving displays of affection.

A familiar, shambling figure trailed the daemon swarm, ragged and moth-eaten.

He ministered arcane rites to the dead and the dying. Carrying his skull-topped staff, the macabre old doktor studied several of the corpses in particular, fiddling with disembodied limbs and scraps of bloody meat like a fishmonger at market.

Festus.

His immense girth was swaddled in grimy, tattered robes; the demands of his grossly distended physique had ripped and stretched everything he wore. The woollen threads were browned with age, their natural colour soiled in shades of dried excrement and crawling with cultures of green and black mould. Barefoot in spite of the cold, his toes were uncommonly large, dirty and tipped with ingrown, thickened nails.

A rusty bandolier chain was slung over his shoulder, dangling boiled human skulls. It was tied with braided scalps to an enormous wooden chest he wore like a rucksack. The open pack rattled with the clinking of dozens of glass vials, most half-filled with milky, bubbling fluids, a few glowing with a poisonous luminescence.

Hissing snakes slithered around the enormous crooked staff he clutched in his left hand. The daemonic skull that had fixed its ghostly sights on von Sturm hours earlier still moved with a sinister, sentient independence.

His own face was a diseased mess – a bulbous nose dribbled slow, sticky mucus onto chapped lips, while cysts drooled pus down his fat cheeks, pock-marked with open sores of necrotic flesh and mouldering ulcers. His jowls slobbered, submerging his jaw under a neck that bulged like a toad’s.

Von Sturm watched him, surrounded by the daemon host, sifting through the bodies of the dead. It was clear that Festus was no thief. He took nothing from the corpses he examined, but he was looking for something. It was only when von Sturm coughed again that he realised what that was.

Festus was looking for him.

Festus turned at the raspy sound of von Sturm’s straining lungs. Even from a distance, in the dim of the gloaming von Sturm could see his wild eyes lighting up at the sound of the putrid phlegm coughed out from the dying knight’s throat.

The fat, dishevelled old doktor ambled closer, navigating the fields of the dead with uncommon grace. He stopped a few feet from von Sturm, looking down at him buried under mud and rotting horseflesh. The mad doktor said nothing; he seemed only to study him, listening to the tortured wheezing that came with every breath, sampling the odours of decay. He appeared to take an interest in even the smallest details of the fallen knight’s predicament, but without any apparent regard for his suffering.

‘I know you,’ von Sturm finally said, his voice hoarse and faltering. ‘I know who you are.’

There was no reply.

‘You’re Doktor Festus,’ he continued. ‘They say you were… the greatest physician in the Empire. That there was no ailment you… couldn’t cure. Yet now, it seems…’

The bloated figure smiled with a wide, crooked grin, exposing irregular rows of rotten teeth, some worn down to stumps, some stained urine-yellow and coated in brown plaque. When he lowered his filthy, green hood his misshapen head was exposed: pallid, veiny skin that had rarely seen the sun, sprouting matted locks blackened from years of sebaceous grease and infested with lice.

He lifted his porcine nose like a bloodhound, sniffing over von Sturm’s hands, then his chest and finally all around his face. As if searching for a scent, or following an invisible trail, he nodded with peculiar satisfaction after every different breath.

‘High fever. Cold sweat,’ he said, as though cataloguing rather than explaining. ‘Dark yellow mucus. Pale green rash spreading outwards from the face and throat, covering the extremities. A raspy cough, high in the chest. Yes, it’s just as I suspected. So very rare, and so very beautiful.’

‘Can you… help me?’ von Sturm muttered. ‘Whatever has become of you now… If it is true that you once mastered the medicine and remedies of every realm… Can you heal my wounds?’

Festus sneered. Rather than answer he continued to study the knight’s symptoms. This time he reached in close and stroked his chubby finger along the edges of von Sturm’s deep, infected wound. A slather of congealed pus and clotted blood coated his digit, which he promptly brought to his lips. Tasting the foetid mélange, Festus nodded again, now with a more certain expression.

Von Sturm feebly brushed his hand aside. ‘I ask again… do you know how to heal me?’

Again there was no reply, other than a derisive shake of the doktor’s bloated head.

‘Please,’ von Sturm begged. ‘Long have I served the Count of Ostland. Whatever you desire, I will see that he makes it yours, but I implore you, if the power is within you, cure me of these foul afflictions!’

The plea brought a snarl from Festus. His eyes bulged with wrath. He recoiled from von Sturm as though taunted by the deepest of insults. For a long, quiet moment the old doktor looked away, clenching his fat fists and muttering to himself. Finally he turned back to the knight, a devious glimmer in his eyes.

‘Have you any children?’ he asked.

Von Sturm puzzled for a moment, afraid of giving away more information than necessary to the deviant, disturbed figure.

‘I did,’ he said. ‘A son and a daughter. They died some years back.’

‘Died... or were killed?’

The question jolted von Sturm as no blade could have. A tear came to his eye.

‘Murdered. During a greenskin raid on our village,’ he answered, barely above a whisper.

The suggestion brought an even more scheming glare to the doktor’s face. ‘It must have been a horrible end,’ he said. ‘Tell me, did you see them die?’

The memory brought an ache to von Sturm’s chest worse than any caused by his injury.

‘No, I was on a campaign north of Kislev when it happened,’ he said.

Festus drew closer, near enough that von Sturm could smell the ammonia fumes of his foul breath with every word. ‘If I told you I could run the sands of time in reverse,’ the mad apothecary began, ‘to wind back the years and let you watch their demise… would you? Would you watch your beloved children being killed?’

Von Sturm recoiled, shaking his head to rid himself of the images, straining to control the anger they sparked in his heart. He clenched his fists, shook his head and whispered under his breath. He looked up at Festus, staring back at him with a knowing, sad glare. Then he looked down to the boils festering on his hands, the pus drooling from the wound in his side, the bloody phlegm he’d coughed up onto his own chest.

‘I would no sooner cure you than you would watch your own children put to the sword,’ Festus said.

The mad doktor turned from von Sturm, raising his staff and muttering under his breath once more, but this time in a foul, dark tongue. In response, the daemon swarm coalesced, drawing inwards to the call of their master’s strange summoning. The motley horde jammed together, scrambling over one another with scaly tails and claws, all eyes turned to Festus, like a pack of docile wolves panting in anticipation of a command.

The Leechlord did not speak. He lowered his staff, pointed it towards von Sturm and nodded. As if in response, the throng surged, lifting themselves in a tide of warped flesh. Roused to action and moving with a single purpose, they descended as one upon von Sturm.

The trunks of two massive oaks stood side by side, intertwining as they rose so that the upper branches had grown together. Like a sentinel of the woods, the twins stood apart from the otherwise dense foliage in a wide clearing.

The conjoined trunks were thick, bloated and bulging outwards with growths sagging from the grey bark. Few branches grew lower than the height of two men. Those that did sprout off the main rise were as wide and round as full trees themselves, reaching out in weird perpendicular growths. Their joining blotted out all but a few slivers of moonlight. It felt like the interior of a cavern, but the whole of the area reeked – the rank, heavy stench of excrement mixed with the stale smell of death.

The daemon-swarm brought the crippled von Sturm there, ferrying him through the woods like a colony of giant ants.

A scream howled through the dimness. It wailed as if suddenly roused to agony, then lapsed, fading into a voiceless whimper. A greenish-yellow gleam ignited at the death-knell of the scream. Von Sturm could see the source of the light and the wail, for they were one and the same – a man hung suspended in an iron gibbet, his limbs shackled and his grey, naked flesh pierced with corroded rods. Fitted around his skull like a battle-helm, the top of the iron coffin merged with his head, fused into one being by some black sorcery.

It was from there that the sickly light emanated, from a translucent, plasma-churning globe that grew from the poor wretch’s brain. Festus was standing beside him, and quite clearly found no horror in the display.

The glow revealed the true nature of his camp. While there were no permanent structures to be seen, it was clearly more than a mere haven in the wilderness; to von Sturm it seemed more like a makeshift workshop, though for only the most foul of experiments.

A dozen human effigies lined the periphery. As far as the green light penetrated, rows of corpses hung suspended from the tree limbs. Rotting away in different stages of decomposition, maggots oozed through the flesh of some, while others, the skin desiccated and blackened, were falling to pieces.

Each body was suspended on hooks and rusty chains, like slabs of slaughtered chattel in a butcher’s pen. Many were incomplete specimens, missing whole limbs, pieces of limbs or merely other, smaller assets – eyes, noses and ears having been severed and stitched over in gruesome acts of surgery.

The swarm laid von Sturm down on a flat section of stone, almost like an altar or a physician’s examination table. He could feel nothing in either leg. Every minute brought new kinds of agony from the wound in his side. His fever had swelled. His vision betrayed him, focusing in and out and settling on a blurry medium, while the cough and the burning in his lungs made him shiver and convulse.

Festus stood over him yet again, dismissing the beast-swarm with a wave. The doktor then set down his massive wooden pack. It opened like a cabinet, revealing a portable laboratory stocked with all manner of foul gear.

Countless vials, tubes and flasks hung in niches, bubbling and fuming. Hundreds of age-worn scrolls were crammed into slots carved from human skulls beside them, the parchment and vellum yellowed and frayed. There were scalpels of varying sizes, along with needles, clamps, pincers and hooks and a pair of bone-saws with dried blood crusting the teeth.

When von Sturm saw the macabre implements, his heart began to race.

‘Foul trickster! What do you intend for me?’ he demanded.

Festus ignored him, tending to his vials and rusty tools.

‘If you mean to torture me for information, I will give you none. Do with me as you wish, but I am a loyal servant of the Empire and I would rather die than betray my lord!’

At length, Festus turned back to von Sturm again.

‘You were cut with a skaven blade, wielded by a rat from the Clan Pestilens,’ he said.

‘How do you–’

‘The metal was coated with rodent saliva, itself infected with a plague that is most common among the short-clawed brown rat populations of the Under-Empire. It is spread among them by the green-winged flea. A particular favourite of mine actually, quite a rare strain indeed.’

‘Rare?’

‘In humans at least. Although it was once deadly to them, the rats have grown to live with it rather well. Among men, however, this pox is quite virulent. You should have died days ago,’ he mused, almost to himself. Then he cocked his head to the side and looked at von Sturm again, as if for the first time. ‘Why haven’t you?’

‘Maybe I’m just lucky,’ von Sturm replied.

Festus shook his head, either missing the attempt at humour or looking past it.

‘Do you know what a plague wants?’ he asked. ‘What it desires the most?’

Von Sturm puzzled, rubbing his increasingly blurry eyes. The question made no sense to him. Given the pain rippling through his chest and his head, he could think of only one reply.

‘To kill?’ he wheezed.

Festus wagged his fat finger like a school teacher.

‘That is what a plague does, not what it desires,’ he answered. ‘Tell me, what would you say are the greatest plagues of all the ages?’

Again, von Sturm struggled to think, fighting through the delirium to force himself to consider.

‘I don’t know… Blacklegge. The ghoulpox. Gnashing fever, perhaps,’ he replied.

‘I treated them all,’ said Festus. ‘And they killed thousands, perhaps tens or even hundreds of thousands. The dead went uncounted.’ Festus drew in closer to von Sturm yet again. ‘Failures all,’ he whispered.

‘I don’t understand,’ von Sturm croaked. ‘If you mean to kill me, then get on with it. I should have died on the field, not like this.’

Still Festus paid his suffering no mind.

‘Can you guess why they failed, all those terrible plagues?’ Festus asked, continuing the exchange with little urgency.

Von Sturm shook his head. He was losing his strength by the moment.

‘It was not because they killed, but because of how they killed. Exactly because they were so very deadly,’ Festus replied. ‘The most successful plague is not the one that kills overnight. On the contrary, the pox that eats through its host too quickly is no use to me at all.’

‘Why are you telling me this?’

‘Because you aren’t dead,’ Festus replied.

‘By the gods, you really are insane!’

Festus shook his head. ‘A host,’ he said. ‘That is what every plague desires. A home where it can thrive, a strong specimen with enough resistance to stay alive long enough for the pox to grow, to mature. To spread. You see, my friend, the greatest plague of all is the one that can spread without killing, at least not until it has used its host for all that it has to offer, to spawn new disease swarms to continue on, and on and on. For that it needs a sturdy victim, such a rare thing to find. But when one does appear, there is no more wonderful pairing to be had. A perfect symbiosis – the most virulent of poxes spread by the most durable of hosts.’

Horrible realisation began to dawn on von Sturm. ‘No,’ he replied, his breath failing. ‘Kill me. Kill me now.’

‘Kill you? I must say, I fear that you have understood nothing I’ve told you,’ Festus replied. ‘No, in fact killing you is the last thing I mean to do, not when you’ve shown such natural talent. No, I mean to leave you even better than I found you. In my hands, you will become perfect.’

‘Perfect? I don’t understand,’ he wheezed. ‘Do you mean to heal me after all?’

‘I shall shortly bestow a great gift upon you,’ Festus said. ‘You’re a lucky soul – few who have crossed my path have ever been as fortunate as you. The gods have truly blessed you indeed. I intend to see that your blessing is not wasted.’

Festus raised a vial, bubbling with sickly froth and green fluid. In his other hand he lifted a giant rusty needle, smiling and laughing as he brought them near. Von Sturm breathed and tried to speak, but lost consciousness before the words came to his lips.

Von Sturm held his eyes tightly shut. He remembered everything, but he hoped that he was wrong. He hoped he was mistaken. He prayed that it wasn’t true, that all of it was a dream. A nightmare. But when he finally opened his eyes, his worst fears were confirmed.

It was morning. Soft, pale light spilled in through a pair of open windows. Everything was utterly still. He was not in the lair of Festus – instead he lay once more in the care of the Burgomeister’s doktor in Ferlangen, with the physician seated beside him, sleeping in his chair.

Von Sturm rose from the bed and shakily nudged the slumped figure of Doktor Kohlrek. The chirurgeon did not respond. He grabbed the old man with both hands, trying to rouse him, but his head merely sagged. His neck was limp, his body lifeless.

The Black Eagle knight lifted the doktor’s chin, and the reason was immediately clear. Doktor Kohlrek’s face was covered in a pale green rash. His cheeks were swollen with blisters. Yellow phlegm had dried into a crust across his lips.

Von Sturm stumbled across the room, clutching at a mirror hanging from the far wall. He stared at his reflection in the polished glass.

He froze.

His own face was a twisted ruin. Green pustules swelled across his flesh. His hair had fallen out in clumps, leaving patches of mottled, scaly skin. He tore off his tunic, and his blood ran cold. Beneath his clothing he saw that his entire body was mangled by the pox, warped and seething with pus.

But he felt nothing. The burning in his lungs was gone, as was the cough, and the fever. He felt no sickness. No malady of any kind. The strength in his legs had returned.

He bounded across the room and threw open the door, but no guards stood outside. He realised why – they were slumped against the wall, their flesh riddled with weeping sores. Down the hall, more bodies lay sprawled on the floor, all of them dead from the same affliction. From his affliction.

He loped down the corridor, tearing open the heavy front door of the building and stumbling into the open air beyond.

A silent horror greeted him, and an unimaginable stench of rotting flesh.

The city was no more. Corpses littered every street, collapsed against doorways or horse troughs, frozen in their final moments of retching agony. Soldiers, women and even children lay where they had fallen. Bloated flies buzzed in the cold air.

Jürgen von Sturm sank to his knees. The words of Festus echoed in his head.

The most virulent of poxes spread by the most durable of hosts.

He screamed to the heavens, but there was no one else left alive in Ferlangen to hear him.

A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION

Published in 2012 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd., Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK

Cover illustration by Cheoljoo Lee

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o 3.3 you print and distribute hard copies of the e-book to any company, individual or other legal person who does not possess a license to use or store it;

o 3.4 You attempt to reverse engineer, bypass, alter, amend, remove or otherwise make any change to any copy protection technology which may be applied to the e-book.

* 4. By purchasing an e-book, you agree for the purposes of the Consumer Protection (Distance Selling) Regulations 2000 that Black Library may commence the service (of provision of the e-book to you) prior to your ordinary cancellation period coming to an end, and that by purchasing an e-book, your cancellation rights shall end immediately upon receipt of the e-book.

* 5. You acknowledge that all copyright, trademark and other intellectual property rights in the e-book are, shall remain, the sole property of Black Library.

* 6. On termination of this license, howsoever effected, you shall immediately and permanently delete all copies of the e-book from your computers and storage media, and shall destroy all hard copies of the e-book which you have derived from the e-book.

* 7. Black Library shall be entitled to amend these terms and conditions from time to time by written notice to you.

* 8. These terms and conditions shall be governed by English law, and shall be subject only to the jurisdiction of the Courts in England and Wales.

* 9. If any part of this license is illegal, or becomes illegal as a result of any change in the law, then that part shall be deleted, and replaced with wording that is as close to the original meaning as possible without being illegal.

* 10. Any failure by Black Library to exercise its rights under this license for whatever reason shall not be in any way deemed to be a waiver of its rights, and in particular, Black Library reserves the right at all times to terminate this license in the event that you breach clause 2 or clause 3.