the crest of the breach, his power sword and bolt pistol drawn. His bronze breastplate shone like new and his uniform was freshly
pressed and immaculate. Brother-Captain Eshara stood alongside him, twin swords gripped tightly in his gauntlets.
Leonid felt the fury of the enemy soldiers strike him like a blow and its intensity stunned him.
'They hate us so,' he whispered to himself. 'Why?'
'They are heretics and hate all that is good,' stated Eshara in a voice that brooked no argument. The Space Marine captain swung
his arms, loosening his shoulder muscles and rotating his neck.
The guns of Mori bastion opened fire and a second later were joined by those in the Primus Ravelin. Hundreds of soldiers were
scythed down in the murderous crossfire, their bodies torn apart in a hail of shells and lasers.
The first wave was almost completely annihilated, but thousands more followed, spilling down into the ditch and swarming across
the rubble-strewn ground.
The floor of the ditch heaved upwards, obscuring the attackers in fire and shrapnel, as anti-personnel mines exploded and gouged
bloody holes in the charging horde. The ditch became a blood-soaked killing ground as soldiers died in their hundreds, blown
apart by mines or shot from the walls. A few hardy souls managed to climb to the top of the ravelin where they were brutally
hacked down by Guardsmen with long-bladed poleaxes. The noise of gunfire, screams and the clash of steel on steel echoed from
the valley sides as the slaughter continued.
More mines exploded. As some bloodied survivors managed to push themselves through to the rubble slopes of the breach, they
found themselves facing a barbed and spiked barricade of twisted girders hurled from above.
The attack floundered at the base of the breach, the ditch carpeted with bodies and blood. In the re-entrant angle of the Mori
bastion, where the arrowhead shape of the bastion narrowed before rejoining the main wall, Leonid had placed cannons armed
with shells filled with ballbearings, bolts and metal fragments. The first cannon fired, the shell bursting apart as it left the muzzle
and spraying lethal fragments in an expanding cone. The remaining cannons fired seconds later and the attackers at the base of the
breach were snatched away in the bloody storm, torn to ribbons by the guns' discharge.
Leonid shouted a warning to Major Anders in the Primus Ravelin, as the sheer volume of soldiers flooding the ditch finally
managed to sweep around the flanks of the V-shaped outwork. But Piet Anders was ready for them, leading his warriors in a
furious counter-charge. Battle was joined within the ravelin as the men of the Jouran Dragoons crashed into the disordered mob of
soldiers, chopping them down with swords and bludgeoning them with rifle butts. Major Anders hacked a bloody path through the
attackers with his blade, the ensigns bearing his colours fighting to keep up with the officer, killing anyone who came near.
The battle for the walls of the ravelin became fiercer as a giant of a man with a huge axe gained its ramparts. Huge and fat, his
reach was long and he killed anyone that stood against him. Enemy soldiers bunched around the man, beginning to fan out along
the ramparts in a fighting wedge that would allow yet more warriors to climb to the ramparts.
Leonid watched in desperation as the giant slaughtered the ravelin's defenders until a squad of Imperial Fists on the eastern wall
counterattacked. A volley of grenades blasted a hole in the wedge and the squad's sergeant shot the axe-wielding giant dead,
blasting his head from his shoulders with his plasma pistol. The defenders rallied and pushed the last of the enemy from the walls.
Leonid let out the breath he hadn't realised he was holding.
The carnage below was terrible. The scale of such killing in so short a time was incredible. But despite the death-toll, the soldiers
in red kept coming at the walls until every square metre of the ditch was covered in blood or bodies.
'They are brave, I'll give them that,' said Leonid, watching as another enemy soldier was shot dead as he clambered across the
barricades below.
'No,' snapped Eshara, raising his voice to be heard over the din of battle. 'They are not brave. Do not ever give voice to such
thoughts, Castellan. These traitors are heretics and know nothing of notions such as bravery and honour. They keep coming at our
walls to die because they fear the wrath of their masters more than us. Push such thoughts from your mind. You must not allow
yourself to identify with this scum in any way, lest you find pity staying your hand and pay with your life for that moment of
laxity.'
Leonid nodded and returned his gaze to the massacre below. 'What purpose is served here?' he asked. 'They will never gain a
foothold on the walls like this. It is madness.'
'They gain a clearer understanding of our defences, explode our minefields and clog the walls with dead.'
'Why don't the Iron Warriors come, damn them?'
'Do not worry, Castellan, you will get your chance to fight the Iron Warriors, but you may soon regret that wish.'
'Perhaps,' said Leonid, watching as a dozen soldiers managed to survive long enough to traverse the barricades below and begin
scrambling up the breach. To either side of him, his platoon waited, rifles aimed in a line down the breach. Leonid swept down his
sword and shouted, 'Fire!'
Thirty rifles fired in a perfect volley and the enemy were blasted backwards, flopping like boneless puppets as they cartwheeled
down the breach.
For a further three bloody hours the enemy threw themselves at the wall before pulling back at some unheard signal, leaving over
Graham McNeill ?Storm of Iron?
two and a half thousand men dead in the ditch. Not a single traitor had managed to climb the breach.
A hoarse cheer followed the traitors back to their lines as the weary Guardsmen hurled enemy corpses from the walls of the
ravelin, and orderlies rushed from posterns in the Destiny Gate to carry back the wounded.
'Well, we survived,' said Leonid.
'That was just the beginning,' promised Eshara.
CAPTAIN ESHAKA'S WORDS were to prove prophetic, as the soldiers of the Iron Warriors launched another two assaults on the
walls. Thousands more died in the nightmare hell of the ditch, shelled to bloody rags, shot or blown apart by mines. On three
occasions, the Primus Ravelin almost fell, but Piet Anders and the Space Marines managed to rally the defenders every time and
take back the walls just when everything seemed lost.
Flanking fire from the face of the Mori bastion swept the face of the ravelin clear of attackers and as night fell on the first day of
the escalade, Leonid guessed that some five thousand enemy soldiers lay dead in the citadel's ditch. The preliminary butcher's bill
amongst his own men for today's fighting was estimated to be a hundred and eighty dead, with perhaps twice that seriously
wounded. Of these wounded, perhaps a third would not fight again.
The Iron Warriors could afford to suffer such horrendous loss of life without fear, but Leonid could not.
Even if the Jourans could keep up such an impressive kill-ratio, the Iron Warriors would inevitably wear them down. Leonid knew
he could not allow this battle to become one of attrition.
Under cover of darkness, he and Eshara descended from the walls, leaving the citadel through the Destiny Gate's postern and
making their way to the Primus ravelin. Here they found Major Anders, his face blood and sweat stained, sitting with his men
drinking a mug of caffeine.
'You've done well, men,' called Leonid. 'Damn well.'
The soldiers beamed with pride at their commander's words.
'But tomorrow will be just as hard, and I'll need your very best.'
'We won't let you down, sir,' said a soldier from the ramparts above.
Leonid raised his voice and said, 'I know you won't, son. You're doing fine here, and I'm damn proud of you. You've shown these
curs what it means to take on the 383rd!'
The soldiers cheered as Leonid turned to Piet Anders and shook his hand.
'Nice work, Piet, but watch your left flank,' he cautioned. 'With the breach on that side, we can't bring enough guns to bear and
more of the enemy are getting around it.'
Anders saluted. 'Aye, sir, I'll keep an eye out.'
Leonid nodded, confident in his officer's ability to hold the ravelin. He returned Anders' salute before he and Eshara returned to
the citadel.
They visited Vincare bastion, the curtain wall, the breach and Mori bastion, heaping praise on the soldiers and exhorting them
with tales of valour from the other sections of the citadel. Each body of men vowed to outdo the others, and by the time Leonid
returned to his temporary billet in the gate towers he was exhausted and a little light headed from the amount of amasec his men
had forced upon him.
He lay down on his simple pallet bed and fell into a dreamless sleep.
TWO
JHAREK KELMAUR CLIMBED the blasted mountain of Tor Christo, picking his way confidently across the rubble, despite the
darkness. His head scanned from side to side, as though searching for something, while a red-robed figure followed behind him,
hands clasped beneath its robes and head bowed. The robed figure's physique was swollen and disproportionate, with broad
shoulders, grossly misshapen arms and a barrel chest.
The sorcerer crested a ridge of jagged rock and scanned the ground before him. His tattooed skull bobbed as he hunted for
something within the wreckage of the mountain. Something that, for now, eluded him.
'It should be here,' he muttered to himself, withdrawing a tattered scroll, its gold lettering faded and almost illegible. His
frustration was growing and he knew he did not have much time left. His vision had promised him a hidden chamber beneath the
rock of Tor Christo, so where was it? He descended into a huge crater of loose stone and scarred rock, his footing sure even
through the black night and rough ground.
His silent companion dutifully followed him, its footsteps surprisingly heavy for a being of such mass.
The moonlight pooled around the curious pair, bathing them in vermilion light. Kelmaur circled the crater with increasing
desperation. Behind him, the robed figure stopped abruptly and lifted its head to stare directly towards a huge slab of rock, toppled
from the mountain and lying flush with the blasted rockface.
Without any word to Kelmaur, the figure strode across the crater towards the rock, halting ten metres from the slab.
Jharek Kelmaur smiled.
'You sense it, don't you?' he whispered and watched as the figure unclasped its arms and extended them towards the slab. The
fabric of its robe rippled, as though some monstrous motion disturbed it, and something black and glossy extended from the ends
of the sleeves.
The crater was suddenly bathed in light as twin beams of incandescent fire shot from the figure's arms and the rock exploded into
fragments. As the dust dissipated, Kelmaur rejoiced at the sight of an ancient, verdigris-stained bronze gate. Again the searing
beams stabbed out and the gate exploded into molten chunks, revealing a darkened passageway that led deep into the mountain.
Kelmaur felt his heart race in excitement. Here, he would walk passages that had not known the tread of man for ten thousand
Graham McNeill ?Storm of Iron?
years. The robed figure clasped its arms once more and set off towards the revealed passage. Kelmaur followed and the pair made
their way through the remains of the gate and into the mountain.
Neither Kelmaur nor his fellow traveller required light to see. The sorcerer marvelled at the precise, geomantic precision of the
tunnel as it descended for hundreds of metres into the rock of Tor Christo.
Eventually, the tunnel emerged into a wide, domed chamber, lit by a diffuse glow that radiated from the walls. The floor was a
broad disc of solid bronze, almost thirty metres in diameter, with an intricately designed pattern etched onto it. It was familiar to
Kelmaur, but he could not remember why. Reluctantly, he tore his senses away from its beguiling pattern.
His wordless companion moved to the chamber's centre, reaching up with glistening, black hands that seemed just a little too
large, and pulled back the hood of its robes.
Beneath was a face that had once been human, but was now disfigured beyond all recognition. Adept Etolph Cycerin's face was
alive with crawling bio-organic circuitry. Even the augmentations grafted on by the Adeptus Mechanicus had transformed, their
mechanical structure hideously altered by the techno-virus. Cycerin turned expectantly to face Kelmaur and raised his other arm,
the flesh of the limb running, liquefying and transforming from the shape of a weapon into a hand. The hand pointed at Kelmaur
and the sorcerer frowned at such impatience.
Had the transformation obliterated any sense of awe or reverence Cycerin once had?
Kelmaur removed the tattered scroll once more and unravelled it, clearing his throat before chanting a series of guttural and
clicking harmonics in a language that had not been spoken in ten millennia. The chant consisted of syllables no human mouth was
ever meant to give voice to, sliding between the air, pulling its fragile structure further and further apart.
Whipcord arcs of purple lightning flickered around the circumference of the bronze disc, growing in brightness as Kelmaur's chant
continued. The air in the chamber grew dense, like the heavy overpressure before a thunderstorm, and the actinic tang of ozone set
his teeth on edge.
The chant neared its end, the lightning arcs whipping upwards and joining in a tensing web of magenta that spun faster and faster
around the disc's perimeter.
As the last syllable passed Kelmaur's lips, crackling, whirling lightning exploded, flaring outwards with a powerful coronal
discharge. The sorcerer was hurled from his feet and slammed into the cavern wall, slumping to the floor in a bruised pile.
Dazed and in great pain, Kelmaur raised his head and smiled.
The creature he had created from Adept Cycerin had vanished.
A BLAZE OF light flared in the centre of the glowing disc, a dancing crackle of energy swirling around the chamber as the pulsing
