the screams of dying men around him and the battle cries of the hundreds of soldiers that now clambered up the rocky slopes
behind him.
The top of the breach was close now, he could make out individual forms through the smoke. He saw a Guardsman rigging
another demolition charge and waited until the man stood up, ready to heave the explosives over the lip of the breach, before
shooting him in the head. Blood sprayed from the stump of his neck and the man tumbled backwards, the primed demo charge
falling from his dead fingers.
Honsou dropped flat as the rocks above him were swept clear of defenders by the massive explosion. Screams and desperate
orders sounded from above. He leapt to his feet, drawing his sword and sprinting for all he was worth towards the billowing pillar
of black smoke that wreathed the crest of the breach.
He collided with a pair of figures dressed in sky blue uniforms, and swept his sword across their chests, dropping them screaming
to the ground. He could see more soldiers rushing to plug the sudden gap in their defence and shouted, 'Iron Warriors, with me!'
But Honsou was alone. He turned to face the nearest Guardsmen as they charged him. He killed the first men easily, but soon
more and more clustered around him, entangling his blade with their bodies and restricting his movements with their corpses. He
kicked out, spinning in a bloody arc as he clove his sword through his enemies. Shots and blades rang against his armour.
Where were the rest of his men?
He glanced down the sloping face of the breach. Below was a hell of lasers and bullets, enfilading fire from the flanking bastion
ripping great holes in the ranks of the human soldiers as they struggled up the rocks. Hundreds had fallen, their bodies shredded
by automatic weapons or burned by las-fire. The northern bastion had escaped relatively unscathed thus far. A few shells burst
overhead, but the main shelling had been directed against this bastion, and the men assaulting it were now paying the price for that
decision.
More enemies closed in around him as he shot, cut, stabbed, kicked and punched a red ruin through the defenders, roaring in
triumph as the warriors of his company climbed onto the walls, sweeping left and right along the ramparts. Bolters fired again and
Graham McNeill ?Storm of Iron?
again and men died in droves as the Iron Warriors took the ramparts of Kane bastion in blood and steel.
Silhouetted in the flames of the defenders' rout, Honsou leapt for the courtyard below, the stonework cracking under his weight.
Enemy soldiers streamed towards the narrow neck of the bastion, Iron Warriors in hot pursuit. The momentum of the charge must
not be lost. Despite this success, there were sure to be thousands more soldiers in the bastions either side of this one.
Honsou ran through the confusion of the battle, firing as he ran and cutting down those soldiers not quick enough to escape. At the
neck of the bastion he saw the Imperial troopers were heading for a wide trench, crossed by a narrow bridge. Troops bottlenecked
on the crossing despite the desperate shouts of officers for them not to. As Honsou watched, the bridge collapsed into the trench,
crushing those unfortunate to be trapped beneath it. Some soldiers dropped into the trench, turning to fire on the Iron Warriors, but
many more were streaming in panic to the main esplanade where a squat, round tower crouched at the base of the steep
escarpment.
Black coated officers in skull-embossed peaked caps bellowed orders for their men to stand firm, enforcing these orders with
bullets. Honsou let them shoot their own men, blasting holes in those enemy soldiers who weren't running. A swelling roar of hate
filled the night as the Iron Warriors' indentured soldiery swarmed over the walls, fanning out towards the stairs or simply jumping
into the courtyard. The bastion was theirs, now they just had to break out of it.
Stuttering volleys of las-fire blasted from the trench, but it was too little, too late as Honsou dropped into the prepared position
and killed with wanton abandon. His sword chopped through a terrified Guardsman, the reverse stroke disembowelling another.
He worked his way down the trench, hacking a bloody path through the defenders who fell back in horror from his deadly blade.
As Honsou killed the Guardsmen, he revelled in his superiority, and could well understand the attraction of Khorne's path.
The Iron Warriors swept over the trench killing everything in it with the fury of those who had fought their way through hell and
lived to tell the tale, butchering anything that came within reach.
FROM INSIDE THE keep of Tor Christo, Major Gunnar Tedeski watched the slaughter with a desperate heart. His men were dying
and there was nothing he could do to stop it. He'd gambled with the lower guns, trusting that they would be able to stop the
relentless advance of the Iron Warriors, but they had second guessed him, and now the fortress was as good as theirs.
He had failed and while Tor Christo's fate had never really been in doubt, it was galling for it to have fallen so quickly. The
attackers had not yet broken out of Kane bastion, but they would surely overrun the entrenchments behind the bastion soon. He
knew the images he was seeing on the remote pict-viewers did not capture the horror and carnage taking place outside. Thousands
of men were streaming over the walls and it would only be a matter of time until the Mars and Dragon bastions came under attack
from their vulnerable rears. If he let them, the men there would fight bravely, but they would die, and Tedeski would have no
more deaths on his conscience.
'Poulsen!' sighed Tedeski, wiping dust and sweat from his brow.
'Sir?'
'Send the "Heaven's Fall" signal to all company commanders and Castellan Vauban.'
'"Heaven's Fall", sir?' queried Poulsen.
'Yes, damn you!' snapped Tedeski. 'Quickly, man!'
'Y-yes, sir,' nodded Poulsen hurriedly and ran off to pass the evacuation code to the vox operators.
Tedeski turned from his aide-de-camp and straightened his duty uniform jacket before addressing the remaining men and officers
standing with him in the Christo's command centre.
'Gentlemen, it is time you left this place. It grieves me to say that Tor Christo is about to fall. As the commanding officer, I am
ordering you to lead as many men as you can into the tunnels and make your way to the citadel. Castellan Vauban will need every
man on the walls in the coming days and I will not deny him those men by sacrificing them needlessly here.'
Silence greeted his words until a junior officer asked, 'Will you not accompany us, sir?'
'No. I will stay to overload the reactor and deny our foes this fortress.'
Tedeski raised his arm as objections were shouted. 'I have made up my mind and will not be argued with. Now go! Time is of the
essence!'
'THE HEAVEN'S FALL signal has been sent from Tor Christo, arch magos,' reported Magos Naicin, staring at the encrypted voxthief
before him.
'So soon?' hissed Amaethon, and though his flesh had lost any true emotive qualities, Naicin saw a passable approximation of
genuine alarm cross the face of the arch magos.
'It appears that the men of the Guard are weaker than even I feared,' said Naicin sadly.
'We must protect ourselves! The citadel must not fall!'
'It must not,' agreed Naicin. 'What would you have me do, arch magos?'
'Blow the tunnel, Naicin! Do it now!'
CAPTAIN POULSEN HURRIED down the carved steps, clutching bundles of paper folders and an armful of data-slates. The fear was
unlike anything he had felt before. He'd never been on the front line before, his talents in organisation and logistics making him
much more valuable to the command echelons behind the line.
But standing on the walls of the Kane bastion with shells exploding all around him, he'd felt the bowel-loosening terror of an
artillery bombardment and was desperately grateful he had been spared the horror of combat. Hundreds of men thronged the
tunnels beneath the keep, descending into the depths of the promontory and heading for the wide cavern-tunnel that led back to the
citadel. Similar underground passageways allowed the men from the flanking bastions to escape, though it was too late for the
men in Kane bastion.
It was inevitable that some men would have to die so that the others might live.
Graham McNeill ?Storm of Iron?
Weak illumination from the glow-globes strung from the ceiling cast a fitful light over the soldiers around him. Fearful and guilty
expressions were writ large across his fellow officers' faces. Dust drifted from the ceiling and sputtering recyc-units struggled to
keep the air moving in the hot, stagnant underground.
Eventually, the steps ended and the tunnel widened into a large, roughly circular cavern with passages leading off into the rock
beneath Tor Christo. Men from the Dragon and Mars bastions were already streaming from these tunnels, yellow-coated provosts
attempting to impose a semblance of order of the retreat with limited success. Major Tedeski's order to withdraw was being
obeyed with speed. Four giant, blast-shielded elevator doors studded one wall and, ahead, the cavern narrowed to a well-lit
underground highway, nearly twelve metres wide and seven high.
Normally this level of the fort was used to move artillery and ordnance between Tor Christo and the citadel, but it was equally
well-suited for large scale movements of troops. Poulsen jostled alongside sweating troopers, the shouts of fiie provosts and
soldiers almost deafening. The heaving mass of men moved towards the main tunnel and Poulsen felt himself being carried along
with it. An elbow dug painfully into his side and he yelped, dropping the armful of data-slates to the painted floor.
The bureaucrat in him took over and he fell to his knees to gather up the fallen slates, cursing under his breath as a booted foot
crunched the nearest one to splinters. A hand grabbed him and hauled him roughly upright.
'Leave them!' snarled a grim-faced provost. 'Keep moving.'
Poulsen was about to protest at this rough treatment, when the ground shook and cries of alarm echoed around the cavern. A rain
of dust dropped from the roof and an eerie quiet descended upon the chamber.
'What was that?' breathed Poulsen. 'Artillery?'
'No,' hissed the provost. 'We wouldn't hear artillery down here. That was something else.'
'Then what?'
'I don't know, but I don't like the sound of it.'
Another louder vibration shook the cavern, then another. Shouts of alarm turned to cries of terror as Poulsen saw a hellish orange
glow race towards them down the main tunnel, followed by a furious whooshing roar. Poulsen watched the approaching glow with
incomprehension. What was happening?
His unasked question was suddenly answered as someone shouted, 'Emperor's Blood, they're blowing the tunnel!'
Blowing the tunnel? That was inconceivable! While there were men still here? Castellan Vauban would never give such an order.
This couldn't be happening. Hundreds of soldiers turned in panic and attempted to race back into the tunnels they had recently
fled, pushing their comrades aside in terror. Men fell and were trampled underfoot as the terrified men of the Jourans stampeded
back from the collapsing tunnel.
Poulsen stumbled backwards, dropping the slates he had collected from the floor, all thoughts of their worth forgotten. Explosions
of demolition charges marched their way along the tunnel, bringing down thousands of tonnes of rock upon the trapped men of the
Guard within it.
He staggered back towards the clogged tunnel he had just come from, clawing at the men in front of him, desperate to escape.
The main tunnel suddenly exploded in fire and noise, rubble blasting from its mouth, crashing and burning hundreds of men in an
instant. Poulsen wrenched a man from in front of him, and pushed his way forwards as he heard an ominous crack from the ceiling
above him. A demolition charge set in the centre of the cavern's roof exploded, showering the soldiers below in chunks of rock
and collapsing the entire cavern roof.
Poulsen screamed as falling rocks pummelled him to the ground, smashing his skull and crashing his body to a jellied pulp.
Nearly three thousand men joined him in death as the tunnel between the citadel and Tor Christo was sealed.
MAJOR TEDESKI SWIGGED from a bottle of amasec as he stared at the pict-viewer displaying the exterior of the keep, watching
thousands of soldiers in red swamp the walls of his fortress. Mars and Dragon bastions were thronged with enemy soldiers, firing
their weapons into the air and cheering at their victory. He'd watched in fury as his captured soldiers were lined up and shot
against the bastion walls or herded into the trenches and set alight with flamers. Tedeski had never felt such a strong hatred before.
A grim smile touched his lips as he pictured sending these bastards to hell.
He took another drink from the bottle and nodded slowly. The command centre was empty except for himself and Magos Yelede,
who sat dejectedly in the corner. The machine priest had protested at being ordered to stay behind, but Tedeski had told him that
he would either stay willingly or he would be shot.
Tedeski drained the last of the bottle and turned away from the sickening atrocities being committed within his walls. He gripped
Magos Yelede's robes, hauling him to his feet.
'Come on, Yelede. Time to earn your keep.'
Tedeski dragged the reluctant magos from the control centre, through a maze of corridors and security sealed barriers before
descending in a key-controlled elevator to the power chamber far below the keep. As the elevator rumbled downwards, a
pounding vibration shook the elevator car, the lights flickering and metal squealing as it ground against the walls of the shaft.
'What the hell?' began Tedeski as the elevator began its downward journey again.
No sooner had the elevator doors opened than Tedeski pushed Magos Yelede out into the featureless grey corridor that led
towards the reactor chamber. He tried to raise Captain Poulsen and the rest of his company commanders on the vox, but met with
