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Not only was it a deadly weapon that left any greenskins it struck bludgeoned to death, it was also a sign of

prestige, as limpid as any rank insignia or Chapter honour a Space Marine might carry.

The beast wore a horned helmet with a curtain of chainmail hanging from the back and sides. Its armour

looked to be some form of mesh-carapace amalgam, daubed with glyphs and tribal tattoos, though Tsu’gan

thought he caught the glint of power servos in the ork’s protective panoply. Its boots were thick and black,

dusted by ash that collected in the armoured ribs of metal greaves. Grisly trophies dangled from its neck like

macabre jewellery: bleached skulls, gnawed-upon bones and the chewed-out husks of helmets. Dark, iron

torques banded its bulging wrist and arm; the other was taken up with the power claw. A thick belt girdled

the ork’s even broader girth and was heavy with a bulky pistol and chained-toothed axe.

Miniscule eyes, pitiless and red, held only menace and the promise of violence.

Tsu’gan felt his face tighten into a scowl. He would only be too happy to oblige the beast in that regard.

Satisfied that its presence had been properly noted, the giant ork threw back its head and roared.

“WAAARRRGH BOSS!”

“The beast establishes its dominance.” Brother Lazaras’ voice had a sneering tone to it as he watched the

display.

“No,” Tsu’gan corrected him, “it is a call to war and blood.”

II

The Last Redoubt

Photon flares blazed into the steadily thickening night like forlorn beacons in a black sea. They threw a red

cast over the slow march of the orks that tinted them the colour of blood. Magnesium bursts followed as the

blind grenades Tsu’gan and his combat squad had set up went off. The orks howled and bellowed in pain as

their eyes were flooded with harsh, angry light. Those who were closest stumbled into their brethren —

some were slain by their belligerent cousins, others struck out and killed the greenskins in their path, swiping

in wild agony.

The disruption was minimal. Many orks, upon witnessing the effects of the blind grenades, drew down bugeyed

goggles or simply shaded their eyes with a meaty hand.

Confusion wasn’t the only purpose for the bank of flares; the Salamanders used the percussive glow like a

search light. Ork clan leaders were identified in the pellucid bursts and executed with accurate bolter shots.

Brief internecine skirmishes broke out until another ork established its dominance, but it gave more time for

the heavy bolters to reap a bloodier toll. Lead vehicles were pinpointed and destroyed by multi-meltas or

missile launchers, causing fiery pileups in those following in column behind them. Trucks and buggies

mangled together in a twisted metal embrace, as their dazed crews were shot dead crawling from the wrecks.

The greenskins responded in kind. Random fire came from their long range weapons but to no effect, save

chipping rockcrete or kicking up clods of ash. Orks were not built for shooting, their efforts were halfhearted

at best. They did it more to hear the guns go off, the thud-bang and the stink of expelled smoke, than

to actually kill anything. Orks preferred to fight close up, where they could smell the blood and fear.

The beasts will find little of the first and none of the second from us, Tsu’gan thought.

The orks were close now and the brother-sergeant knew the order to unleash a firestorm was close too.

Crackling static in his ear over the comm-feed gave way to Captain N’keln’s voice, and Tsu’gan realised

that order was at hand.

Salamanders were pragmatic, not as given to lofty speeches and rousing rhetoric as some of their distant

cousins, such as the Ultramarines. The fact made N’keln’s speech comparatively epic.

“Sons of Vulkan, Fire-born all, this is our last redoubt. There is no line beyond this wall, no further gate to

defend or keep to garrison. This is it. I have but one edict: None shall pass.” He punctuated each and every

word. “Into the fires of battle!” cried N’keln, as his voice became many. “Unto the anvil of war!” the

Salamanders chorused.

“Let them close,” uttered Tsu’gan to his squad. Across the battlements, sergeants were priming their troops

in the wake of the captain’s speech.

Sighting down his bolter’s targeter, Tsu’gan felt a presence behind him and turned to see Elysius appearing

on their section of the wall.

“You have missed the start of the battle, brother,” Tsu’gan offered wryly.

The Chaplain snorted with derision.

“I have missed the parlay, you mean, brother-sergeant.” By his tone, it was difficult to tell whether or not

Elysius was serious. Tsu’gan would find out later if his idle remark had been taken in jest.

“The xenos are a stain upon the galaxy,” the Chaplain intoned, zealotry affecting his timbre as he lowered

his voice. “Let them burn in the fires of retribution!

Eyes flashing with hate, Elysius ignited his crozius and pointed it in the direction of the onrushing horde.

Tsu’gan sighted down the targeter again. “Unleash hell!”

It was as if all the sergeants were somehow synchronised or linked by empathy as weapons fire erupted

across the wall in unison. Muzzle flashes ripped down the battlements of the iron fortress in a fiery wave, the

resultant din like thunder. Greenskins were torn apart in the brutal bolter salvo, the explosive shells wreaking

terrible havoc even amongst creatures as tough as orks. Exhorted by threats and the bellows of their captains,

the beasts weathered it, trudging over the chewed-up remains of their kin implacably and without remorse.

Some fled — those whose nerve had broken, or who’d lost their captains to enemy fire or infighting — they

were met mercilessly with a cleaver or axe upon reaching the line of green still poised at the apex of the

ridge. For this was just a first wave.

“Bolter fodder,” growled Tiberon, over the comm-feed. It was difficult to be heard above the roar of gunfire,

though Chaplain Elysius managed it with his scathing diatribes and xenophobic tirades. Pistols and flamers

were still out of range, as the orks had yet to close, so he directed each caustic utterance like a bullet aimed

to kill.

The side of Tsu’gan’s battle helm lit up as Brother M’lek fired his multi-melta. The hungry beam burned a

hole through an advancing ork truck, cooking its engine and turning it into a white fireball that engulfed

several foot sloggers rushing alongside it.

The brother-sergeant paused to commend M’lek’s fine shooting, before addressing Tiberon.

“That is why we must break them, brother, and maintain our strength for the real fight to come.”

Tsu’gan gunned down a chieftain’s armoured bodyguard, turning its skull into bone fragments and red

vapour as the bolter round entered its eye and exploded outwards. He saw only one ork battle leader in the

midst of the fighting, and judging from the clan markings of the greenskins barrelling towards them, this was

its tribe. Perhaps the claw-armed warboss on the ridge was letting his subordinates take turns at trying to

crack open the iron fortress.

“Let them come,” Tsu’gan hissed belligerently. He took aim again and executed the chieftain itself, who had

strayed too close to the fight. “They’ll die by my hand,” he concluded grimly.

With the death of their tribal leader, the orks faltered. A bloody killing field had materialised in the noman’s-

land before the wall; the greenskins in the first wave, despite their efforts, having been unable to get

close enough to launch a meaningful assault upon it.

Seeing this, up on the ridge, the warboss bellowed his anger. Sweeps of his brawny arm sent the other tribes

forwards, one after the other. Orks in their thousands charged at the Salamanders. Their tribal chieftains

hooted and roared, eager for their clans to be the first to reach the enemy. The swell of the greenskins’

brutish voices rose into a clamour.

Tsu’gan felt the dull nagging at the back of his head again, the sensation of being in the tunnel below the

iron hall. The feeling of cold metal against his forehead where he’d pressed the bolter’s mouth returned.

Nascent psychic energy from the orks was building. Perhaps it was somehow fuelling whatever lurked in the

darkness beneath the fortress.

Elysius’ voice responded to it, became the anchor once more to keep the Salamanders grounded. In their

multitudes, the orks had got beyond the killing field and were readying for a first assault against the wall.

The Chaplain used the bark of his bolt pistol to punctuate his spite-filled sermons, whilst all across the

battlements flamers spewed with promethium fury.

“Cleanse and burn!” roared Honorious, as his faceplate was lit by his weapon’s fiery glow.

Despite the Space Marines’ strategic acquisition of targets, and their spoiling tactics, the sheer mass of

greenskins meant a close-up battle was inevitable. That suited the Salamanders well.

“Here is where your mettle shall be tested,” cried N’keln, his voice clear as a silver spear thrown in sunlight,

resonating through the comm-feed. “Be the anvil, become the hammer!” The effect was galvanising.

“Judged in the fires of battle…” remarked Lazarus with genuine admiration.

Iagon stayed silent, focused on slaying the approaching orks with angry bursts of his bolter.

“Hold them here,” snarled Tsu’gan, steeling his squad as he knew his brother-sergeants would be too. “We

knew this was coming,” he added, as the first of the ork grapnels clanged and found purchase against the

battlements. He blasted apart the thick chain dangling off it, waiting for the line to become taut before he

fired. Muffled screams from the unseen greenskins once climbing up the severed chain, now falling to their

deaths, made Tsu’gan smile beneath his battle-helm.

Three more grapnels followed it. Brother S’tang took out one, before another five rattled onto the

battlements, biting deep.

Brother Catus mistakenly hacked at a chain with his combat blade before leaning over to strafe the orks

below with his bolter. He lurched back with a cleaver lodged between his neck and clavicle, spurting blood.

S’tang dragged him aside, putting a bolt through the cranium of the ork that dared be the first to poke its

head up over the rockcrete lip of the wall.

Ugly greenskin faces emerged en masse after that. They were attached to brutish bodies carrying cleavers

and saw-toothed blades.

Chaplain Elysius brained one of the orks with his crozius, electricity still coursing through its shattered

frame as it fell back in the morass of warriors below, before jamming his bolt pistol into the maw of a

second and reducing its head to shredded meat. A red haze spattered his skull-faced visage, anointing him in

blood. Yet as deadly as he was, Elysius could not kill them all.

“Honorious!” yelled Tsu’gan.

The battle-brother swept his flamer around from pouring gouts of promethium down the wall and sent a

searing blaze over the greenskins trying to outflank the Chaplain.

“Burn in the fires of perdition, xenos!” spat Elysius, as the orks were consumed and plunged, flailing, into

the mobs amassing at the foot of the wall.

Tsu’gan wiped a swathe of blood from his visor and took a moment to look around the battle site. Sporadic

skirmishes had erupted all across the wall. The Tactical squads bore the brunt of the attacks, allowing the

Devastators in the higher, less accessible towers to continue wreaking carnage amongst the greater horde

that swelled beyond in the ash basin like a green slough.

Many sergeants had broken their warriors up into combat squads; those that fought hand-to-hand or to

disengage the grapnels, and those that maintained a ranged fusillade.

In the brief seconds of assessment he allowed himself, Tsu’gan also noticed ork vehicles prosecuting suicide

runs against the walls. He saw a bulky wagon, festooned with plates and brimming with orks, rammed

headlong in the wall. Shot apart by heavy bolters and multi-meltas, the wagon was a wreck, but now the

greenskins were climbing up its tower-like pulpit and using the debris to gain the battlements. Missiles

choomed overhead, super-heated beams cross-hatched the night obliterating the ork suicide runners before

they could close, but couldn’t stop them all.

An impact against the lower part of his section almost knocked Tsu’gan off his feet. The tremor rippled up

through the metal and rockcrete. A blast wave of heat washed over the sergeant and his squad, as the vehicle

that had collided into the wall ignited and exploded. A few seconds later, scrapes and clanks could be heard

as the orks scrambled up the makeshift siege tower.

“Grenades!” ordered Tsu’gan, knowing that he was out, but that half of his squad could oblige him. Frag

grenades bounded down the wrecked carcass of the vehicle, pulped and burning against the wall, and

exploded in a series of dull percussions. The scraping and clanking ceased.

“Glory to Prometheus!” he yelled, exultant in this small victory.

Then he saw the force approaching the Techmarine Draedius’ gate.

A mob of heavily armoured orks advanced under fire towards the fortress’ only ingress.

Something moved amongst the larger ork bodies. Tsu’gan caught the glint of metal, a spherical object

daubed in jagged iconography, akin to a mine…

“Concentrate fi—”

A concussive blast erupted from the gate below, cutting the sergeant off before he could issue the order to

try and stop it. The Salamanders occupying the section of wall directly above it were thrown off their feet.

Out the corner of his eye, Tsu’gan thought he saw Shen’kar pitched off the battlements. His vision was

marred by coiling smoke and exploding debris, so he couldn’t be certain. Brother Malicant stumbled and the

company banner fell. Only Captain N’keln kept his footing, snatching the banner in defiance of the fire

crawling rapidly up the wall, lashing tongues of flame devouring everything they touched.

“Tank bombers,” said Tiberon, groggily. The squad had felt the blast wave like the full force of a hammer

blow. “Must’ve cracked open the gate…”

Greenskins swarming into the dust cloud billowing from the gate confirmed Tiberon’s theory. The

Salamanders still standing aimed through the murk, trying to take out the ork assault force that had

seemingly appeared from nowhere. Ork commandos returned fire, and Tsu’gan saw another of his brothers

fall; a lucky shot through his gorget disabling him.

The heavy-armoured brutes also returned, obscured by the grey fug of smoke and churned ash now swathing