direction of Sergeant Grodolkin. Stavin stayed beside his commissar. He put away his lamp and
gripped his lasgun tight in both hands. His bayonet was fixed securely under the weapon’s long
barrel.
Karif’s heart quickened and adrenaline coursed through him, lending extra power and speed to
his limbs. His laspistol and chainsword felt reassuringly weighty in his hands.
Who knows how many there are, he thought? Or what we’re walking into? The men are ready.
There’s no point speculating. We attack!
He gave the signal to charge. Squad Grodolkin surged forward along the bend in the tunnel,
holding formation as they ran. Before them, a great mob of gretchin, scores of them, spun at the
sudden noise, freezing for a moment in absolute surprise.
Squad Grodolkin opened fire immediately. Lasguns cracked with uncommon sharpness in the
enclosed confines of the sewers. Beams slashed out, cutting green bodies into smoking pieces. The
echoes in the tunnel made it seem as if thousands of Vostroyans were attacking at once.
As the screams of dying xenos filled the air, the gretchin snapped out of their shock and
launched into a retaliatory action. But it was too late. Scores of them fell howling as las-bolts carved
deep black wounds in their flesh. It was a massacre. The gretchin had been so intent on their task
that they were utterly unprepared to defend themselves.
In the light of the gretchin torches, Karif realised with a start just what their task had been.
“Stop firing!” he yelled at the top of his voice. “Hold your fire, Throne damn it!”
Stavin must have seen it too, because he joined the commissar, his high voice cutting through
the noise as he yelled: “Hold your fire!”
The surviving gretchin, of which there were just over twenty, began firing back. They hefted
their heavy pistols with two hands and loosed shots off towards Grodolkin’s men. But the
Vostroyans saw the reason for the commissar’s order. They saw for themselves how close they’d
come to disaster. There, fixed to the ceiling overhead, was a mass of ork explosives. Long fuses
dangled all the way to the floor, waiting to be fixed to the timing device that lay in the middle of a
ring of fresh, green corpses.
A single stray shot, thought Karif, and we’d be dead already.
“Bayonets,” yelled Sergeant Grodolkin. “Engage at close quarters.”
115
The gretchin fired again and again as the Vostroyans rushed forward, but the weight of their
pistols made it difficult for them to aim properly. Even so, given the volume of fire they loosed at
the charging men, it was inevitable that some shots would find their marks. The Vostroyans’
cherished carapace armour saved their lives, absorbing most of the impacts from those shots, even at
close range.
Only two of Grodolkin’s men went down in the hail of bullets. Karif was right behind one of
them when it happened. The luckless man was thrown backwards, lifted clear off his feet with his
head demolished. Before the responsible gretchin could reload, both Karif and Stavin raced forward,
closing the distance at a sprint. Stavin pierced the creature’s belly with a thrust of his bayonet, but
the gretchin lashed out with its long arms at the same time. Fingernails like talons cut deep red
gashes in the adjutant’s left cheek.
As Stavin reeled from the blow, Karif swept his chainsword up and lopped off one of the
creature’s arms. He immediately followed with a savage kick to its bleeding belly. The kick was a
blur, launched with a speed and technique developed over long years of daily training on Terrax.
The gretchin was blasted backwards, howling pitifully until its skull cracked against the tunnel wall
behind it.
As it slumped unconscious to the tunnel floor, Karif turned to his adjutant. The young trooper
was shaking with anger and adrenaline. “Finish it off, Stavin. No mercy for the Emperor’s foes. Kill
it.”
Stavin stepped forward wordlessly and ran his bayonet through the unconscious creature again
and again, driven by rage and shock, fear and pain.
That’s the stuff, Stavin, thought Karif. Mercy has no place in a soldier’s arsenal. I told you back
in Nhalich, remember? The graveyards are full of merciful men.
High-pitched alien screams filled the tunnel as Grodolkin’s troopers exterminated the last of the
gretchin. The stunted greenskins were no match for Vostroyan Firstborn in hand-to-hand combat.
“Damn, but that was a close thing, commissar,” said Sergeant Grodolkin, stepping up to Karif’s
side. The big sergeant noticed that Stavin was still ramming his blade into the lifeless xenos corpse.
“That’s enough, trooper. It’s dead. Save your energy for the next one you meet.”
Stavin stepped back, his chest rising and falling with deep breaths.
“If a single las-bolt had struck the explosives, sergeant,” said Karif with a gesture at the bomb
clusters on the ceiling, “we’d have met a very noisy and, in my opinion, early death.”
“Why here?” wondered Grodolkin.
“I suspect we’re very near our destination, sergeant. We must try to find an exit hatch nearby.
There must be a ladder leading to a manhole cover. I can hear the rushing waters of the Solenne, so
the bridge can’t be far. The gretchin were trying to bring down the road.”
Grodolkin nodded. “Meaning we might just be behind Vostroyan lines?”
“More likely, we’re right under them.”
As if to confirm this, the tunnel shook with a mighty boom. Karif said, “The orks must be
closing on the bridge even as we speak, sergeant. We’ve got to get a move on.”
Another blast shook the tunnel. One of Grodolkin’s troopers shouted for his sergeant’s attention.
Karif and Stavin followed Grodolkin over to the trooper and discovered that the man had found a
series of steel rungs set into the stone wall. At the top of the ladder there was a manhole cover, their
way out of the sewers.
“Outstanding,” said Karif. “Sergeant, order your men to carefully dismantle the gretchin
explosives. We don’t want any accidents after all we’ve achieved down here.”
“Aye, commissar,” said Grodolkin. He turned and began barking orders to his men.
“As for me,” said Karif, “I could do with a bit of fresh air.”
116
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Day 688
East Grazzen — 15:37hrs, -22°C
The sky above was dark and heavy as Fifth Company charged straight towards the greenskin
horde. The churning black clouds matched the moment well. Sebastev bore little real hope that
they’d make it through. Mere men, even soldiers as brave and skilful as the men of this company,
couldn’t hope to survive for long in close combat against enemies as powerful and savage as the
Venomhead orks.
Colonel Kabanov had ordered the men into a fighting wedge with heavy weapons spread evenly
along the line. Sebastev placed himself near his colonel with Lieutenant Kuritsin at his side. Father
Olov was nearby, as was Lieutenant Maro. The other officers placed themselves by the surviving
men of their own platoons. Leading the thirty-nine troopers that remained, the officers of Fifth
Company charged up the street with weapons blazing, eager to fell as many of the enemy as they
could before the two sides crashed together.
The orks ran, too, roaring and laughing as they hefted their blades into the air. They loved
nothing more than a bloody battle at close quarters. This was a fight on their terms. For Fifth
Company, there were simply no alternatives. If the Emperor was with them, there would be an
opening somewhere. Some of them had to make it through. Trooper Aronov ran just a few metres
off to Sebastev’s right. The rebel prisoner was slung across the big scout’s shoulder, hanging limp.
Aronov had immediately knocked him unconscious rather than wrestle him forward during the fight.
The prisoner was a terrible burden on Aronov. His fighting would be seriously hampered. Still,
Sebastev was sure he’d made the right choice. If anyone could get Brammon Gusseff across the ork
line, it would be the big scout.
“Vostroya!” shouted Colonel Kabanov as he charged, firing at the closest orks with his powerful
antique hellpistol. Adrenaline and desperation had overcome his ill health, at least for the moment.
His every blazing shot sent another smoking ork corpse down under the feet of its fellows, but there
were just too many. Ten kills, twenty, thirty, it seemed to make little real difference to the wall of
green bodies.
“For Vostroya!” yelled the men, pouring fire ahead of them as the distance closed. The buildings
on either side of the street lit up with the intensity of the Vostroyan las-fire. The air echoed with
cracks, and became thick with the smell of scorched ork flesh. Troopers Mitko and Pankratov, both
of whom wielded plasma guns, loosed devastating rounds that were almost too bright to look at. The
orks were packed so close that every blast of superheated plasma obliterated dozens of them.
Troopers Kovo, Grishna and Tzunikov sent burning streams of promethium out towards the
enemy, scorching scores of them to death and forcing the others back. But the press of bodies was so
tight that the greenskins had nowhere to go. In those first few seconds of the battle, the toll taken by
the flamers was gratifyingly heavy.
Fifth Company had already lost most of their heavy bolters on the journey. Only a single man
armed with such a weapon remained among them. Trooper Kashr strafed the orks with deadly
explosive shells, killing scores of them as he ran forward. The weapon’s rate of fire was incredible
but, all too quickly, his ammunition was spent. He dropped the heavy gun to the ground and pulled
his sidearm from its holster, drawing his knife at the same time.
117
A part of Sebastev’s mind processed all of these details, assessing where best to place his own
shots, and where the ork line was thinning, if at all. His bolt pistol barked again and again, and thick
ork skulls detonated with sprays of blood, brain matter and bone fragments. But it was Sebastev’s
power sabre, gripped tightly in his right hand, that he knew would do the most damage.
As orks and men crashed together with bone crunching force, Sebastev launched himself into a
sweeping series of strokes from the twenty-third form of the ossbohk-vyar. The Vostroyan combat
art had taught him to target his enemy’s extremities first, removing their offensive capabilities at the
first opportunity. The orks that came towards him swinging their crude weapons quickly lost their
hands. They fought on, attempting to kick out at him, or batter him with the bleeding stumps of their
wrists. That was the nature of orks. They seldom fell from anything but a lethal strike to the brain or
to certain vital organs, but by stripping them of their weapons, he rendered them far less of an
immediate threat. Disarmed in this way, the orks in question could be dispatched far more easily,
though they were still frustratingly tough.
As Colonel Kabanov’s fighting wedge bit deep into the ork line, the colonel called out for his
men to change formation, to form a tight circle with their backs to the centre.
With the orks closing around them, the Vostroyans arranged themselves into a bristling wall of
bayonets and power sabres. They fired las-bolt after las-bolt into the faces of the orks that pressed
forward, but they were truly surrounded, and in the most desperate fight of their lives.
The manhole cover was frozen shut. It may as well have been welded shut given the incredible hold
the ice had on it. Even the powerful figure of Sergeant Grodolkin couldn’t push it off, though he
slammed his armoured shoulder against it again and again. After a moment, Commissar Karif called
the man back down to the bottom of the ladder.
“Is there a flamer in your squad, sergeant?”
“There was, commissar,” said Grodolkin with obvious remorse, “but he stayed behind to cover
our escape.”
“Well, I suppose there are a few other options available to us. The one that immediately springs
to mind would be lasguns.”
“Lasguns, commissar?”
“They won’t damage the manhole cover itself, but if we fire enough las-bolts at its underside, I
think they should provide more than enough heat to melt the ice that’s fixing it in place, don’t you?”
“Easy enough to find out,” said Grodolkin. He called three of his men forward and ordered them
to stand at the bottom of the ladder, firing vertically at the disk of black metal above their heads.
After a moment, Karif called for them to stop.
“That ought to do it,” he said as he gripped the first of the rungs and hauled himself up towards
the exit. At the top of the ladder, he reached out a gloved hand and checked the temperature of the
cover’s underside. It was still warm, but no longer scalding hot. He braced his shoulder against it
and pushed.
As the cover lifted, the pale light of the winter afternoon washed over him. The cold wind
rushed past him and down into the tunnel. With his head above ground again, his left ear
immediately filled with a stream of vox-chatter. There were reports of Leman Russ tanks being
crippled by ork anti-vehicle squads. Platoons across the city were desperately trying to fall back
towards the bridge, but the orks had already cut them off in many places. Some of the vox-traffic
consisted of little more than screams that cut off sharply.
Karif pushed one more time and heaved the heavy manhole cover from his back. As he pulled
himself out of the hole, he listened hard for any mention of Fifth Company. To his incredible relief,
he managed to catch the voice of Colonel Kabanov ordering his men to fight hard for the glory of
Vostroya and the Imperium.
They’re still alive, he thought. There’s still time to help them.
“Quickly,” he called down to Grodolkin’s squad. “Follow me up.”
118
Something very sharp and cold slid into position by his jugular. Karif suppressed his reflex to
turn.
“Who the khek are you?” asked a harsh voice from behind him. The owner of the voice kept the
edge of his blade pressed tight to Karif’s neck.
“I am Commissar Daridh Ahl Karif of the Emperor’s own Commissariat. I’m attached to the
Vostroyan Sixty-Eighth Infantry Regiment’s Fifth Company. And, while I applaud you for both
your vigilance and your suspicious nature, if you don’t get that bloody bayonet away from my neck,
I’ll use it in your execution. Is that understood, trooper?”
The blade withdrew from his neck immediately.
“That’s better,” said Karif as he stood and turned. “Now move back while my men exit the
