afterimages slowly faded. Adept Cycerin turned his head left and right, orientating himself with the location he had been
transported to. The scent of Jouran incense filled the air, and his altered eyes precisely mapped out the exact trigonometric
properties of the chamber he found himself in.
He wondered if he had set foot here in his previous life, but could not remember. He could only remember the imperatives that
thundered in his brain, firing along strange, new inorganic dendrites infesting his skull.
The chamber stretched high above him, black and studded with reliquaries. He stood on a floor of bronze, on a disc identical to the
one he had just left. Two tonsured priests hurried towards him, their faces lined with frantic worry.
The priests stopped at the edge of the disc and shouted at him, the words were unintelligible; part of his previous existence. He
could only converse in the machine language of the techno-virus now and the priests' banal, limited form of verbal communication
was utterly inimical to him.
He raised his arms, the black surface of his limbs writhing as the virus within him moulded his machine-flesh into a new form.
Metallic barrels and hissing muzzles formed from the engorged substance of his arms and Cycerin opened fire with his
biomechanical weaponry, blasting the two priests from their feet in a storm of shells.
Dozens of urns in the lower levels of the Ossuary shattered, spreading the bones of former castellans across the floor. Skulls
grinned up at Cycerin as he passed, making his way to the Sepulchre's exit.
At the door to the outer chambers, he stopped, lowered his arms and waited.
JHAREK KELMAUR PICKED his way painfully down the rocky slopes, pleased that he had answered the potential of his vision. He
did not know what part Adept Cycerin had yet to play in the unfolding drama on Hydra Cordatus, but was satisfied that he had
been instrumental in its fulfilment.
As soon as Cycerin had vanished, the pattern etched in the bronze disc in the floor had begun to fade along with the glow in the
walls, until any hint that either had existed was gone. The scroll had crumbled to dust and, with it, any means of using the ancient
device again. Kelmaur knew it didn't matter: Cycerin was where he needed to be and his involvement with him was over.
He groaned. The expenditure of so much power had left him drained and his bones hurt where Cycerin's explosive teleportation
had thrown him against the chamber wall. His ''near-sense'' was weakened and he stumbled several times, losing his footing on the
slippery rocks and loose rubble.
As he reached the bottom of the slope he straightened his cloak and set off towards his tent, his strides becoming more confident
as he found himself among more familiar surroundings.
Acolytes bowed as he passed, but he ignored them, too intent on rest and recuperation. As he ducked below the low entrance to his
abode, painful cramps seized his stomach. Immediately he sensed the Warsmith's presence.
'You were successful,' said the Warsmith. It was a statement, not a question.
Kelmaur bowed extravagantly.
'Yes, my lord. The servant of the machine with but one hand has gone. The secret chamber was below the mountain, just as I had
foreseen.'
'Good,' hissed the Warsmith, raising himself up to tower over Kelmaur. The sorcerer turned his head away, unable to look directly
Graham McNeill ?Storm of Iron?
at the roiling metamorphosis of the Warsmith's face. The lord of the Iron Warriors reached up and cupped Kelmaur's chin in one
massive gauntlet.
Kelmaur gasped in pain at the Warsmith's searing touch, squirming against his grip as black discolouration spread from where his
master held him. The tattoos on his skull danced as Kelmaur cried out, his face contorted in agony.
'Now, Jharek, is there anything you wish to tell me? Anything you have kept from your Warsmith?'
Kelmaur shook his head. 'No, my lord!' he wheezed. 'I swear I have told you true every vision I have had.'
'Is that true?' asked the Warsmith, his disbelief plain. No answer was forthcoming and he sighed in feigned regret.
The Warsmith said, 'You achieve nothing by lying to me, Jharek,' and reached out his hand, pressing a burning palm against the
sorcerer's temple.
Kelmaur screamed in agony as his flesh hissed and melted, filling the tent with the sickening stench of burned meat.
'You have one chance to live, Jharek,' promised the Warsmith. 'Tell me anything else you have kept from me and I will not kill
you.'
'Nothing!' gasped Kelmaur. 'I have kept nothing from you, my lord, I swear! I see nothing more than that which I have told you!'
The Warsmith said, 'Then you are of no more use to me,' and exhaled a foetid breath of dazzling orange and green.
Kelmaur, already hyperventilating in fear, took a huge breath of the Warsmith's corrupt substance and began convulsing.
Kelmaur burned with horrific change and his screams were music to the Warsmith's ears. Evolutionary anarchy ripped through the
sorcerer's frame. Kelmaur's body spasmed, grotesque changes warping through his flesh in a tornado of mutation. Tentacles,
pincers, wings and other more unnameable organs burst from every part of his rebellious anatomy, his body now unrecognisable
as human in the soup of aberrant growths.
Within seconds, all that remained of the sorcerer was a seething pile of pulped meat and bone, too grossly misshapen to survive.
'I promised I would not kill you, did I not?' sneered the Warsmith, turning and leaving the hideously mutated body of Jharek
Kelmaur hissing in mindless torpor on the floor of his tent.
Amongst the gibbering ruin of distorted flesh, a single unblinking human eye stared out in horror and incipient madness.
THREE
THE ATTACKS ON the walls continued for another three days, with thousands of men throwing themselves at the citadel and dying
in droves. Casualties amongst the Jourans were lighter than on the first day, the weakest men having fallen in the early assaults.
On the third day, at the height of the attack, the embrasures were removed from the earthwork that ran the length of the third
parallel and in a jet of exhaust fumes one hundred and thirteen Vindicator siege tanks moved into position and opened fire with an
ear-splitting crack.
The walls of the citadel and bastions disappeared in a rolling bank of grey smoke and fire. Before the echoes had begun to fade, a
second volley of shots battered the walls. Soldiers from both forces were pulverised in the massive barrage as shell after shell
hammered the walls and breach.
Whole swathes of unstable structure tore free from the breach, hundreds of tonnes of rubble crashing downwards, carrying scores
of men to their deaths and burying yet more beneath the falling blocks.
The bombardment continued for two punishing hours, undoing the repair work undertaken by the Imperial Fists and the Jourans to
the ramparts. Hundreds died before they were able to take shelter in the bombproof shelters and the screams of the wounded
carried as far back as the statue-lined road that led towards the Sepulchre. The face of the Mori bastion crumbled under the
onslaught, tonnes of shattered masonry crashing into the ditch and forming a steep, but practicable breach. But by this time, there
was no one left alive in the ditch to exploit it.
Broken by the twin blows of the stubborn defence of the Jourans and the betrayal of their masters, the Iron Warriors' soldiery
turned and fell back from the walls in disarray.
As the bloodied survivors of the attack stumbled away from the citadel, shell-shocked and insane with terror, they broke and
swirled around a giant figure in iron-black armour. A clear space surrounded the giant, who stood as still as a statue amongst the
fleeing soldiers of his army.
The Warsmith marched through the mob, the soldiers parting before the bow-wave of corruption that travelled before him. He
carried an arrow-headed icon bearing the skull-masked symbol of the Iron Warriors, which he planted in the blood-soaked earth at
the edge of the ditch.
Leonid lowered his bloody power sword and watched the giant figure with a terrible sense of foreboding. Who this warrior was,
he had no idea, but, instinctively, he feared him.
He turned to Corwin. The Space Marine Librarian's armour was scored with dozens of lasblasts, and blood ran from a gash torn in
his upper arm.
'He is their Warsmith, the leader of this army,' said Corwin.
The Warsmith was well within weapons range, yet not one amongst the garrison could raise his gun to open fire.
They watched as the Warsmith pointed to the icon and then towards the fortress. Then he lifted an enormous axe from a shoulder
scabbard and, in a rasping voice that carried the weight of ages said, 'You have until tomorrow morning to satisfy your honour and
fall upon your swords. After that, your souls belong to me and I promise I will send every man alive within these walls to hell.'
The enemy commander's voice should not have been able to carry across the walls, but every soldier of the Jourans felt the terror
of the Warsmith's words lodge like a splinter in his heart.
Leonid watched the Chaos warlord turn and march back through the earthworks, the lingering nausea in his gut fading to a dull
ache as the Warsmith vanished from sight.
Graham McNeill ?Storm of Iron?
NIGHT WAS FALLING as the Warsmith's champions gathered beneath his intricate pavilion. They knelt before the master of the Iron
Warriors, in awe at the changes rippling through his form. Honsou watched as a darkening shadow ghosted behind the Warsmith's
body, rippling the air with its passing, like mighty wings beating the air, or at least the suggestion of wings. The roiling souls
spinning within his armour were silent, their cries drowned out by the unheard crescendo of change writhing within the Warsmith.
'A time of great moment is upon us, my champions' began the Warsmith.
He turned his gaze towards the hazily lit silhouette of the citadel, barely visible over the lip of the earthwork. Flashes of artillery
fire lit the sky as Imperial mortars dropped shells on the Iron Warriors' camp, but it was undirected; and the vehicles and troops
were protected from all but direct hits in their reinforced bunkers.
'The future is becoming less tangled now, its paths unravelling and revealing their ultimate destinations to me. It is a wonderful
thing to see and to know that Perturabo chose the right path. To see the enemy's palaces in ruins, to see his warriors hung, broken
and defeated from stakes lining the roadways from here to the gates of Terra vindicates everything we have done. I have seen this
and more, victories and slaughters magnificent in their scale. It is pleasing, and the poor fools we must destroy will not accept this.
Like most mortals, the true majesty of Chaos turns them into frightened children. Such limited understanding and vision is to
blame for what their Emperor has brought them to.'
Honsou felt his pulse rising in time with the cadence of the Warsmith's voice. Each word dripped with potential. The battle here
was almost at an end and the Warsmith was promising them victory. The human soldiers had fulfilled their appointed task and
now the honour of taking the citadel would fall to the Iron Warriors. It would be soon, the Warsmith would not, could not, wait
any longer.
Any fool could see that.
Even the faintly disturbing presence of Kroeger beside him could not dampen his enthusiasm for the coming fight. Kroeger had
not spoken a single word to anyone for several days and while normally Honsou would have been grateful for such a reprieve, his
suspicions were aroused. Though he could not see his face beneath his helmet, Honsou's warrior's eye could tell that there was
something different about Kroeger. He moved with a confident, easy grace, rather than the bullish swagger he usually affected,
more like a fighter than of a simple butcher and Honsou did not like the change one bit.
He glanced over at Forrix, the ancient veteran shifting painfully under the weight of his new bionics. The Chirumeks had worked
wonders to reconstruct his body in so short a time, and daemonic sorceries had brought his life back from the brink of the void.
The Warsmith approached them again and Honsou steeled himself for the aching cramps and nausea.
'I now know the truth of the universe,' began the Warsmith. 'Only Chaos endures. The web of action and reaction, cause and effect
that has brought us to Hydra Cordatus began many thousands of years ago, though in this universe nothing ever really begins or
ends.'
The Warsmith turned and spread his arms before him, encompassing the extent of the citadel.
'Towards the end of the Great Crusade I helped build this citadel, working shoulder to shoulder with the great Perturabo himself.
We raised its magnificence towards the heavens for the glory of the Emperor. But Perturabo knew, even then, that the Emperor
would one day betray us, and fashioned it with great cunning. What I created, you will now put asunder.'
Honsou was amazed. The Warsmith had built the citadel? Now he began to understand the true genius behind its construction.
Had this been any other fortress, it would have fallen much sooner. The finest siege engineers of the day had built it and it would
take the finest warriors to tear it down.
'Billions upon billions of potential consequences spread out from the here and the now and each is capable of being massively
shaped by the tiniest action,' continued the Warsmith. 'Each of you will play a part in that future and you will not fail me. You will
not fail me or you will die, by my hand or the enemy's, it matters not. Some of you will die, and some of you have died already.'
Honsou's brow wrinkled as he pondered the Warsmith's words. Was he going to tell them the outcome of tomorrow's battle? As
though hearing his thoughts the Warsmith answered Honsou directly.
'Only the Great Conspirator himself knows the infinite possibilities the future can bring, but I have seen tantalising glimpses of the
shape of things to come. The myriad complexities of alternate histories yet to be written lie open to my sight.'
