第 43 页

body.

He faced off against the ork warboss. The shadow of its horrifying stature eclipsed him. Others were rushing

in support; Dak’ir saw Praetor and two of his Firedrakes free themselves from a swarm of greenskins.

Tsu’gan, too, was staggering towards him, his squad belatedly in tow.

Even from distance, Dak’ir could tell they would not reach Elysius in time. The Chaplain would have to

fight the beast alone.

An ork truck exploded somewhere off to Tsu’gan’s right, a roiling smoke cloud obscuring his vision as he

lost Elysius from view.

By the time it cleared, he saw the Chaplain was bent down to one knee. The beast loomed above him,

pressing Elysius down into the ash by grinding his chainblade against the Chaplain’s upraised crozius. There

was a dark welt above the ork’s left eye and an angry black scorch mark where the crozius had stung him.

Elysius was buckling.

Tsu’gan struggled to reach him, pain anchoring his legs and weighing them down. He watched, almost

transfixed, as the Chaplain aimed his bolt pistol through a gap in the crackling arcs thrown off by the

crozius, only for the warboss to lash down with its power claw.

The ground trembled as another tremor wracked Scoria. Elysius screamed in unison with it, and his anguish

seemed to shake the world. His arm was severed at the elbow. Blood was gushing from the wound, creating

an ugly red mire around the Chaplain’s feet and bended knee. Elysius seemed to sink into it, the beast

pressing down relentlessly as it stepped forward to crush the severed forearm into paste in a wanton act of

mutilation.

He was only a few metres away, but Tsu’gan could taste the death blow coming, feel it like a change in the

wind or a lurch in his stomach.

The Chaplain was about to die, and there was nothing Tsu’gan could do to prevent it. Another hero of the

company slain, just like—

Then N’keln was there, drakescale cloak billowing with the rush of his charge, twin-bladed power sword

gleaming, and fate was reversed. Bellowing Vulkan’s name, he rammed the master-crafted sword into the

ork’s neck and drew it out in a welter of dark blood. The beast roared; a ragged cry emitted from its ruined

throat where the gore was pumping readily. Elysius was forgotten and the Chaplain collapsed from shock

and blood loss. N’keln took a blow from the ork’s power claw against the flat of his blade and the air around

them became electrified.

Tsu’gan tasted the ozone. It numbed his lips and tanged his tongue as if it were on fire. Despite the pain, he

was running. His bolter was out, the promethium canister for the flamer attachment long spent too, so he

drew his spatha.

The earth shook again, in eerie synergy with the titanic battle unfolding upon it. The ork warboss rained

down blows upon the Salamander captain like an angry giant. Each was like a comet, skull-bound and

destined to kill before N’keln’s sword skill diffused or deflected it. A dark and viscous tabard of blood

coated the ork’s chest now, a second mouth cut by N’keln’s power sword in its neck frothing crimson.

Digging furrows in the ground, the Salamander captain was pushed back by the ork’s fury, finding no

purchase in ash.

Slow exsanguination was making the warboss sluggish. Its movements were heavier; its prodigious strength

fading. The more it exerted itself, the faster its blood spilled from its body. N’keln knew it and based his

combat strategy on attrition — it was a gloriously Promethean way to slay an enemy. None could match a

Salamander for sheer tenacity. Fire-born never knew when they were beaten.

The warboss slipped, its intended death blow failing to connect, and N’keln took his chance. Having dodged

the downward swipe of the ork’s power claw, he stepped into its fighting arc and cut off the wrist holding

the chainblade. N’keln then reversed the cut and brought it up into the beast’s exposed flank. The monomolecular

edge of the power-charged blades melted metal and overloaded the narrow-field force generator

rippling energy across the greenskins armour. It howled as the sword bit into hide then flesh and finally

bone.

The stink of cooking meat assailed Tsu’gan’s nostrils as he came at the ork from its blind side, ramming his

spatha into an exposed patch of green skin between the plates and the chain links.

N’keln drove his sword deeper, searching for organs and grisly ways to ruin this monster from within. The

beast lifted its power claw, a heavy burden, in attempted retaliation. Praetor smashed it down again with a

blow from his thunder hammer, the sergeant and his warriors having joined the battle at last. One of his

Firedrakes, Brother Ma’nubian, rammed the edge of his storm shield into the ork’s screaming maw.

Still it refused to die, its tiny eyes like malevolent red suns making false promises of retribution. The

warboss bowed, the weight of its body dragging it downwards. A plasma blast seared its shoulder, Dak’ir

shooting through a gap in the melee.

A dark figure loomed before the near-dead ork.

It was Elysius. He was bent-backed too, agony creasing his features behind the skull-faced grimace of his

battle-helm. The cleaved forearm had clotted almost, the Larraman cells working hard to staunch the wound.

A fine drizzle of blood issued from the ragged stump where at first there had been a torrent, and the Chaplain

cradled it close to his body protectively. Despite his passing out, he had maintained his grip on his crozius

arcanum.

“Death to the ork!” he rasped, bringing the crackling mace down and staving in the beast’s skull.

It was to prove the final blow in the greenskins’ defeat. Without their warboss to unify them, the clans broke

apart fully. Ill-disciplined, fighting amongst themselves, the orks were soon destroyed. Many fled across the

dunes into oblivion in the face of the Salamanders’ victory.

The beast’s own clan fought to the end, but the Firedrakes and the newly arrived squads of Dak’ir and

Tsu’gan, together with other reinforcements, quickly vanquished them. The Inferno Guard went to their

lord’s side. Brother Malicant passed the company banner to N’keln who thrust it into the gloaming sky and

roared.

“Glory to Prometheus! Glory to Vulkan and the Emperor!”

The Salamanders cheered, as did the human settlers, though they didn’t know what they were cheering

about, only that they were alive and the swine-tusks were dead.

Ba’ken caught up to Dak’ir and the rest, the slumped carcass of the ork warboss cooling slowly in front of

them.

“The greenskins have broken,” he announced.

Dak’ir saw Illiad following behind him and was glad the human had survived. Seventeen other settlers

accompanied him.

“They gave their lives for their home,” said Illiad as he approached, guessing the Salamander sergeant’s

thoughts. “It is what they and their families would have wanted.” His mood was defiant, but sombre and

grim too. The grief would come later.

“Akuma?” Dak’ir asked of the only other settler he knew the name of that had fought in the battle.

“He died with honour,” Ba’ken told him, and was struck by the sadness in his voice. “He is resting now,

before I take him to the pyreum to join the other heroes who fell today.”

A sombre quietude followed, broken by the arrival of the captain.

“Well met, brothers,” said N’keln, handing the banner back to Malicant and going to stand amongst them.

The assembled Salamanders bowed slightly, humbled by their captain’s courage and prowess.

Dak’ir felt emboldened by it and was gladdened that N’keln had found his strength through the fires of

battle. The anvil had tested him and he had emerged reforged. His optimism was abruptly crushed when he

caught the baleful gaze of Tsu’gan regarding him. The glow in the brother-sergeant’s eyes was dimmed as

he moved awkwardly. Fresh scars crosshatched his face, the honour markings of a battle well fought. Others

would be added in recognition of this day by the brander-priests. Tsu’gan’s look of ire was fleeting as he

passed from Dak’ir to N’keln. Dak’ir was heartened to see respect there and surprised to admit to himself

that perhaps Tsu’gan’s concerns were legitimate at first, that he desired what was best for the company and

not some grab for glory. If his brother-sergeant could acknowledge his mistake in hasty judgement, then

perhaps Dak’ir should do so also concerning Tsu’gan’s motives. It didn’t mean the enmity between them had

lessened, though.

“Apothecary Fugis will tend to that,” N’keln told Elysius, his tone brooking no argument from the Chaplain.

Dak’ir was astounded the Chaplain was still standing given the severity of the wound, even for one as robust

as an Astartes.

Elysius merely nodded. The adrenaline was leaving his body now, and he had to focus all of his efforts on

staying on his feet and conscious.

“What now, my lord?” asked Praetor, carrying scars of his own. His gaze flicked briefly to the distance

where Namor and Clyten had fallen. Two of their battle-brothers had dragged them together in readiness for

Fugis’ reductor. Sadness shadowed Praetor’s face for a moment before the sternness returned. “The orks are

defeated, but the Vulkan’s Wrath is grounded still and we are no closer to discovering why the Tome of Fire

led us here.”

“And the tremors worsen by the hour,” said Tsu’gan, his voice a strained rasp. “How much longer before

this world cracks apart and is sundered to galactic dust?”

A nerve trembled in Illiad’s cheek, just below his left eye, at Tsu’gan’s callous remark. The brother-sergeant

neither appreciated or noticed the effect his referral to the imminent demise of Scoria had upon the human

native.

Dak’ir stepped forward humbly, bowing his head in respect to Praetor and N’keln.

“I may have an answer to the second question,” he said.

“For now, it must wait,” Elysius interrupted. Fugis was now at his side and attending to the Chaplain’s

severed arm.

With his other hand, Elysius gestured to the sky.

The Salamanders around N’keln followed his gaze to where the black rock throbbed like a malignant

tumour. It seemed larger than before. The sun was now totally engulfed by it. Not even a ring of light

remained, just blackness, empty and consumptive. Splinters were breaking off from it, like jagged,

purposeful hail homing in on the planet.

Ork ships. Many more than before.

Despite the victory, the Salamanders were weakened. Though united, they had fought and paid much to

defeat the greenskins. There were no further reinforcements, no way to replenish their numbers. All that they

had was there before them, tired and battered upon the bloodied ash dunes.

“How long?” asked N’keln, his voice was deep and forbidding.

“A few hours,” answered Elysius. “That is all the time we have left.”

CHAPTER TWELVE

I

Doomed

“Bring him out.”

The Chaplain’s severed arm was swathed in a bloody sling, and he hugged it close to his body

subconsciously as he issued the curt order.

The chirurgeon-interrogators responded dutifully. The excrutiator frame and its incarcerated Iron Warrior

Warsmith were dragged into the eldritch day.

The prisoner had been secured within the hold of one of the company’s Rhinos. The idea was to keep him

away from the Salamanders on the walls and prevent him spewing any Chaotic dogma in an effort to

dissuade them from their purpose.

A small group looked on in the courtyard of the iron fortress as the traitor was wheeled into view. Dak’ir

was amongst the party that also included N’keln, Praetor and Pyriel. True to recent form, the Librarian was

never far away from him now and glanced at the brother-sergeant studiously from time to time. Dak’ir did

not know what was happening to him, nor what Pyriel made of it. If Scoria was to prove the 3rd Company’s

final battlefield, he might never find out. He knew it was getting stronger however, and despite all of his

experience, training and hypno-conditioning, he was afraid of it.

Elysius was leading the interrogation, refusing any further medical assistance besides the bandaged layer of

gauze beneath the sling used to bind his grievous wound.

Fugis had expected nothing less. There was little love lost between them, operating as they did at opposite

ends of the war spectrum. Dak’ir assumed the Apothecary was busied elsewhere, tending to the injured,

extracting the geneseed of the dead. The brother-sergeant guessed that Fugis did so in the troop compartment

of Fire Anvil. N’keln had declared that the keep of the iron fortress remain sealed. True, the intensity of the

ill-feeling and baleful emanations coming from the very stone and metal it was forged of, had, in the absence

of the orks’ natural psychic effusion, ebbed, but whatever lurked in the bowels of that place, corporeal or

not, needed to stay there, locked away.

The Land Raider was a good enough substitute in lieu of a more expansive makeshift Apothecarion. Many

injured Salamanders, even human settlers, gathered around the periphery of the assault tank awaiting an

Apothecary’s ministrations.

Dak’ir had seen Tsu’gan enter a half hour ago, annoyed that he would not bear witness to the interrogation

but ordered by N’keln to be assessed and made ready for battle again as soon as possible. In the light of his

apparent reneging over contesting the captaincy of 3rd Company, Dak’ir resolved to meet with him and

settle a few things before the orks came.

The rest of the Salamanders, those whose wounds were not severe or requiring Fugis’ attention, were

arrayed around the battlements in front of the gate.

Together, they watched the skies and dunes. Overhead, the black rock loomed like a curse. A few hours were

all that remained before the greenskins made landfall, the sky blotted with the orks’ raking ships.

“Speak, traitor, and your death will be swift,” declared Elysius, summoning up his hatred despite his pain

and discomfort.

The Iron Warrior failed to speak out loud, but there was a muttered sound emanating from his covered

mouth.

“Louder, craven worshipper of the false gods,” spat Elysius. “True servants of the Emperor do not cower

behind whispers.”

Dak’ir caught the susurrus of words as the Iron Warrior turned to face the Chaplain and raised his voice.

“Iron Within. Iron Without,” he chanted, like a mantra.

A lightning flash pre-empted Elysius’ cudgelling of the traitor across the chest with his crozius. The weapon

was at low power, so it didn’t kill the prisoner. The scar of scorched flesh was visible on his body, though,