never understand about it all. Was Sennesdiar speaking the truth? Could he really commune with the
spirit of the revered machine?
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Tech-Magos Sennesdiar let out a piercing mechanical shriek, and his adepts immediately turned
and stalked back to their idling Chimera where it sat atop the southern slope.
“My subordinates and I need to perform a ritual, general,” said Sennesdiar to deViers. “We shall
consult the machine-spirit and bring you your answer. Have faith. I am no lowly enginseer. I would
not have opted to join this mission in person had I harboured any doubts about its success. You will
have your prize.”
DeViers’ jaw was tight. He didn’t answer. Bergen suspected that the old man was simply too
damned angry for words. Sennesdiar didn’t wait for them anyway. With a swish of his robes, he
turned his massive bulk and headed back to his Chimera, leaving deViers and his senior officers
halfway down the hillside, looking up, watching him go.
“Damned tech-priests,” hissed Killian. He glanced over at Bergen, caught his eye, and said,
“Sorry, Gerard. I know you tankers are close with them.”
Bergen shook his head. “Not really, my friend. They only let us know as much as they want us
to. I don’t delude myself about that.”
“Do you think they really can perform some kind of sorcery?” asked Rennkamp. “If they can’t,
we’ve come all this way, lost all those men, for absolutely nothing.”
Bergen shrugged. “I guess we’ll know—”
He stopped short of finishing his sentence. There was fresh chatter on the vox-bead in his ear.
The others heard it, too. He saw the same expression steal over their faces as he knew must be
present on his own.
“Throne curse it all,” spat General deViers. “Back to your machines all of you,” he ordered.
“The tech-priests had better perform their rites damned quickly.”
The senior officers turned and marched at speed to their idling vehicles. The Sentinel pilots were
reporting orksign. The greenskins were only two hours out.
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CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
<We must be quick,> Tech-Magos Sennesdiar told his adepts in the security of their personal
Chimera. <But not so quick as to raise the officers’ suspicions even further. This has always been a
moment of great risk for us. There will be others to come, but they will hinge on the outcome of
what we do here. We must be convincing. The general must believe we lacked all foreknowledge of
the situation.>
<Finally we are closing on Dar Laq,> said Xephous. <I am eager to see it for myself.>
<I envy Magos Ipharod his discovery,> added Armadron.
<Do not let anticipation get the better of you,> Sennesdiar told them. <For all we know,
Ipharod’s discovery may have killed him. I do not know what kind of state we will find him in, if we
find him at all. Concern yourselves with matters of the present. Everything yet depends on evading
the orks and leading Exolon up into the mountains. The Cadians will not be keen to follow our
lead.>
<Then, how do we proceed, magos?> asked Armadron.
<We must convince them that our rites are genuine. At the very least, General deViers must
strongly believe that his prize is still within reach. He must believe that we have located The
Fortress of Arrogance through our communion with the machine-spirit.>
<His anger consumes him,> said Xephous. <He expected the Baneblade to be here. He will not
trust us readily.>
<He is desperate,> said Sennesdiar. <We offer the last possible hope of salvaging his quest.
Angry or not, he will grasp at anything we offer him, no matter how thin. I am not concerned about
General deViers so much as I am about his divisional commanders. Armadron, you spent the most
time with Major General Bergen. How much of a problem does he represent?>
Armadron prefixed his sonic burst with a single tone that signified his lack of absolute certainty.
<Gerard Bergen lacks confidence in his general. I feel that he longs to be rid of the man, but that his
respect for the methods and order of the Imperial Guard override every other instinct he has. I
project that he will continue to follow the proper chain of command no matter what.>
<Xephous,> said Sennesdiar. <You have observed Major Generals Rennkamp and Killian.
Speak.>
<Neither one, magos, seems the type to advance himself by illicit means. The Cadian code of
military honour holds fast. They adhere rigidly to mission protocols.>
<As it should be,> said Sennesdiar. <That is to our advantage. DeViers will follow us out of
desperation. The others will follow deViers out of duty. That will be enough to get us to Dar Laq.
Once we enter the tunnels, however, there will be questions, questions we do not wish to answer.>
<The veil will be lifted, magos,> said Armadron. <They will sense our deception. Even if they
do not, the truth remains. We cannot locate The Fortress of Arrogance for them. Ipharod’s
transmission merely states — >
<I received a copy of the transmission, adept,> said Sennesdiar. <I am well aware of its
contents.>
Armadron bowed. <Apologies, magos.>
<I do not need apologies. I need you both to gather the enginseers together. I will lead the
ceremony. It will be convincing. The Guardsmen will have no idea that it is a simple blessing rite.
137
They will see what they want to see. They will see us commune with the Omnissiah, and, when the
charade is over, we will guide them to our objective. Now, disperse.>
Wulfe yawned. He was lying on the rear decking of his tank, cap pulled down across his eyes, but
true rest seemed out of reach. Perhaps it was the dust. Perhaps he was sick and hadn’t realised it.
There was an ache in his muscles that would not go away. It had dulled somewhat since he lay
down, but it was still there, at the edge of his awareness.
Beans and Siegler were preparing rations of sliced meal-brick and water by the side of the tank.
There was nothing else to be had, but at least they weren’t back to drinking purified piss.
Would they even live long enough for that to happen again? Wulfe wondered. It seemed to him
that the 18th Army Group was practically broken already. Lifting his cap and looking around, he
saw crewmen resting on rear decking or track-guards just like he was, but there had been significant
losses. Van Droi’s 10th Company was down to just five tanks. The lieutenant’s crate, Foe-Breaker,
was still in the game, though the man himself had become extremely quiet since the death of the
colonel. Viess and his Steelhearted II had made it through. The man was a solid commander. Van
Droi had made a good move, promoting him to sergeant on the voyage to Golgotha. Viess had
justified that choice back at the wall, taking out his share of the ork armour, and Holtz seemed to be
doing all right with Old Smashbones. It was a small miracle that he had survived when so many
others had not. Perhaps it was beginner’s luck. In any case, Wulfe was damned glad van Droi hadn’t
promoted Holtz just to have him die in his first firefight as a commander.
Then, of course, there was Lenck.
Wulfe hadn’t given the bastard much thought during all the madness that had erupted since their
passage through Red Gorge. Battle was good that way. One could achieve an almost peaceful state
in the middle of all that mayhem.
Wulfe glanced over at Lenck’s tank, but if the crew was outside, they must’ve been lying low,
because he couldn’t see them. Perhaps, like Metzger, they were all sleeping.
Wulfe sat up and swung around to watch the tech-priests. They were down on the valley floor
performing some kind of arcane ritual he couldn’t begin to fathom. It looked different to the rites he
had watched them perform on the regiment’s tanks but not much. Every tech-priest and enginseer
attached to the expedition was down there, all dressed in the red robes of their cult, heads bowed in
prayer. They moved in a clockwise circle, chanting and emitting strange mechanical noises that no
human throat could have made.
Some of them carried censers that they swung back and forward, lacing the air with blue smoke
that hung above them, gently shifting in slow motion. There was no breeze. The air was thick and
warm. He looked up. The tall red peaks of the Ishawar rose so high in the near east that they pierced
the bellies of the clouds like tusks.
Why did everything have to remind him of orks? He would be facing them again soon enough.
Van Droi had voxed him just twenty minutes ago to say so. The orks were closing in on them, still
pursuing from the west. The Sentinels had used long-range scopes to spot them well out from the
valley, but, in a little over ninety minutes, the orks would be here, and the fighting would start all
over again. Would deViers lead them in another run? Or would he have them turn and fight?
Wulfe would have preferred to fight. It had become increasingly clear to him that no one was
going to make it out of this alive. The officers still talked of finding Yarrick’s lost tank, and they put
a lot of faith on the tech-priests’ ability to signal for evacuation. A lifter would come for them when
the time was right. At least, that was how Wulfe understood it. He just didn’t think it was going to
be that easy.
The thought of dying here didn’t anger him. He had spent his whole life knowing that he would
perish in the service of the Emperor. What better way was there?
None, he told himself, but Armageddon would have been preferable. There, at least, his last
moments could have been spent fighting to protect Holy Terra, rather than to retrieve an abandoned
138
relic. He told himself that any fight against orks was a good fight. If he and his crew were to die
here today, so be it. He would meet his fate head-on.
He turned his attention back to the tech-priests. Their ceremony intrigued him. He was a firm
believer in machine-spirits. Nothing strange in that, of course. All tankers came to feel that way, no
matter their original outlook on the matter. Throughout his career, he had seen members of the
Adeptus Mechanicus achieve things he couldn’t hope to explain. It wasn’t stretching credence to
imagine that the senior cogboys down there might actually come away with some kind of answer.
The Fortress of Arrogance was gone, but how far had it gone? If it was still within reach, then
he would like to see it before he died. It was a rare machine, after all, almost unique in the galaxy in
that, since its loss thirty-eight years ago, it had been sanctified by both the Ministorum and the techpriests,
and those two august bodies almost never saw eye to optic sensor.
“Grub’s up, sarge,” called Siegler from the side of the tank. “You want to wake Metzger?”
Wulfe slid off the track-guard and landed on his feet by Siegler and Beans.
“Let him rest a little more,” he told them. “We’ll keep some for when he wakes up.”
The three men sat and enjoyed their small repast as chanting lifted towards them from the valley
floor.
“I still don’t get it,” said Beans. “They think they can find out where it went?”
Wulfe nodded and spoke around a mouthful of tough, dry meal-brick. “You’d better hope they
can. The orks will be on us soon. I think deViers will give the cogboys enough time to finish their
little communion and then lead us off somewhere. He won’t give up looking.”
Siegler shook his head. “And people call me crazy,” he said. Wulfe grinned and clapped his
friend on the shoulder. “Yes, they do.” Beans laughed.
A burst of vox-chatter from the bead in his ear made the smile suddenly drop from Wulfe’s face.
He spat his mouthful of meal-brick onto the hard ground at his side.
“What’s up, sarge?” asked Siegler.
Wulfe stood bolt upright.
“Get your arses into the tank,” he told them, “and wake Metzger at once.”
All around them, the air shook with the rumble of engines being turned. A Chimera just ten
metres away rumbled noisily to life, coughing blue-black fumes from her exhausts. Siegler and
Beans jumped to their feet.
“That was van Droi,” said Wulfe, picking up the remains of his meal and stuffing them into a tin
box. “The tech-priests say they got their answer. We’re moving out.”
“But where to, sarge?” asked Beans.
Wulfe had turned and was already clambering up the side of the tank. He didn’t stop climbing,
but called over his shoulder, “To the mountains, trooper. We’re going into the mountains.”
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CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
The path the 18th Army Group took from the valley up into the Ishawar Mountains soon became
treacherous, especially for the tanks, most of which weighed over sixty tonnes, but there was no
time to be careful. The orks were less than an hour behind them. They had spotted the Cadians rising
up into the hills and had turned on a burst of speed. Bergen didn’t know how long it would be before
the orks caught up to them, but he knew the machines at the rear of the column would soon face the
threat of ork bikes and buggies. The light, speedy greenskin machines were far more adept at
handling rough terrain like this. The steep gradients and narrow trails that Exolon found itself forced
to follow were really challenging the heaviest of the Cadian machines.
For now, though, there was little choice but to push on with all the speed they could muster.
General deViers was taking Tech-Magos Sennesdiar extremely seriously. The magos claimed that
the almighty Omnissiah, tech-aspect of the Divine Emperor of Mankind, had been roused by their
ceremony and had spoken to them directly through their most powerful and sophisticated auspex
scanners. The data was irrefutable, the tech-priests insisted. The Fortress of Arrogance had indeed
lain in the valley for many years, but had been moved in the recent past. Even now, Sennesdiar told
them, the orks that had taken it were within striking distance, if only the general would lead his
forces up into the mountains exactly as the magos directed.
It sounded entirely too convenient to Gerard Bergen. He was sure the tech-priests had known
from the start that Yarrick’s lost tank was no longer in the valley. DeViers was still in charge,
however, and the old general had become so frantic, so desperate, that he might believe just about
anything he was told. Whether deViers was mad or not, Bergen and the other divisional leaders
weren’t about to protest. Not now. What was the point? Rennkamp and Killian both seemed to feel
