Burias-Drak’shal leapt on the man as he tried to rise. He lifted the trooper into the air, holding him
by the head and the groin, and he brought his hands together sharply. The man was neatly folded,
his back cracking sickeningly under the force.
Other possessed Chaos Marines leapt from the rocks above, crashing down through the rain to
land amongst the enemy hacking and slaughtering, ripping and rending. Blood sprayed the rocks as
the Guardsmen died.
Letting the power of the daemon overcome him, Burias-Drak’shal and his possessed comrades
slew until there were no more foes to kill. He stood, chest heaving for a moment before leaping off
through the darkness on all fours, scenting other enemies nearby. He howled into the night and felt
the rest of his pack spread out to either side of him, to encircle the next gathering of meat.
Heavy bolter fire tore through the Guardsmen, taking down five men in a screaming burst. Their
bodies were ripped apart, bolts tearing through armour as if it were made of paper, and punching
through the soft flesh beneath. Blood sprayed out, and Boerl swung his head to see a massive
armoured shape turning its rapid-firing guns in his direction. It was at least five metres tall and
nearly as wide.
“Emperor above,” swore Boerl as fresh shells fed into the twin-linked heavy bolters of the
Dreadnought, and it unleashed its barrage of deadly fire. He leapt to the side, rolling as the heavy
bolts tore through more of his men, and came to his feet running.
He blasted a Chaos Space Marine in the head with his lasgun as he moved, the shot striking the
warrior’s helmet, rocking him backwards but failing to pierce the powerful armour. Ignoring the
reeling Chaos Space Marine, Boerl charged towards the towering Dreadnought. He reached to his
belt and pulled loose a melta bomb as he neared the hellish machine annihilating his men.
The thing was huge and the ground reverberated with its step, servos whining. Skulls and
helmets, rammed upon black iron spikes, adorned the machine’s shoulders. There were helmets of
loyal Space Marines there as well as dozens of skulls, some human, but many from various xenos
creatures.
The Dreadnought swung a heavy, taloned fist at Boerl, flames gushing out from the underslung
flamer on the massive, armoured arm. Ducking the blow, the colonel hissed as the flames washed
over his back, and he almost fell to the ground as overwhelming pain assailed him. Gritting his
teeth, he flicked the activation switch of the deadly melta-bomb and hurled it onto the armoured
bulk of the machine. It struck a pitted and inscribed armoured shoulder plate above the heavy bolters
that continued to roar, flames spitting from the barrels. It clanked loudly as it stuck fast, the
powerful electro-magnets stuck fast to the metal.
Boerl ducked another swinging arm that would have ripped his head from his shoulders and
leapt away before the melta-bomb did its destructive work. Rolling to see the results of his
handiwork, his heart sank as the Dreadnought picked the grenade off its armoured bulk and flicked
it away with its surprisingly dextrous power claw.
Boerl scrambled to his feet just as the Dreadnought swung its heavy bolters around to bear, and
dozens of shots ripped through his armour. The Dreadnought continued to pump shot after shot into
the colonel long after he was dead, keeping his body dancing in the air for a moment. Colonel
Boerl’s body was finally torn completely in half, and it fell to the ground, bloody and
unrecognizable.
“Death to the False Emperor!” roared the Warmonger as it stepped forwards. It smashed a
mechanical foot down onto the shattered body of the pathetic wretch, grinding it into the wet
ground.
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Where was this battle taking place? The thought swam through what remained of the
Warmonger’s ancient mind. Where was Lorgar? He scanned the battlefield quickly but could see no
sign of the revered primarch. No matter. Here were enemies of his lord, and he would allow them no
quarter.
The Warmonger opened up once again with his heavy bolters, seeing the weakling men before
him ripped apart as he unleashed his deadly salvo. He began to advance once more, death roaring
from his guns. One lightly armoured soldier stumbled too close, and the Dreadnought swept him up
in its massive power claw, lifting the wretch high, so that all his brethren could see his demise. The
Warmonger squeezed, servos in his claw whining, and the man broke. He was hurled to the ground,
a bloody and very dead corpse.
“For the Warmaster!” roared the Dreadnought, and continued to kill.
Marduk chanted from the Epistles of Lorgar as he killed, filling the Word Bearers with fiery hatred
for the weakling foe as they slew. He saw the Guardsmen fall away from him in horror, and he
imagined that in death they heard the truth in his words: that the Emperor was a false deity, a fraud
and a traitor, and that the bearers of the truth were murdering them. They cried out to their
fraudulent god for mercy, but his impotence was clear when no salvation came to save them. In
death they could see that only the gods of Chaos were worthy of worship.
The sheer audacity and arrogance of the foe astounded Marduk. Against any other foe, a
combined assault of air-lifted infantry, supported by heavy weapons and timed to strike in unison
with an elite force dropping from the sky, may have worked. To hammer the foe first with barrages
from the air, these were good tactics against any other foe. Indeed, they were tactics that Kol Badar
made use of frequently.
But to have the misconstrued belief that these tactics would work against the Word Bearers,
Chaos Space Marines, and that these pitiful men could drive them from their positions was beyond
the First Acolyte’s comprehension.
It was true that the enemy were great in number. Hundreds more troops were dropping through
the storm clouds every minute, though they were not as heavily armed or armoured (he scoffed at
this even as he thought it) as were the first to land. These men were regular Imperial Guardsmen.
But numbers meant nothing against Chaos Space Marines, and Marduk was certain that the battle
would soon be over.
The daemon within his chainsword was feeding well. He carved the screaming blade down into
the collarbone of another Guardsman, its teeth biting deep, ripping and tearing through armour, bone
and soft flesh. His strength was behind the blow, and the eagerness of the daemon drove the
whirring teeth deeper. The man fell to the ground, a bloody rent ripped to his sternum.
Marduk swayed to the side and a missile screamed past him. He continued quoting from the
Epistles without pause.
“‘The favoured son of Chaos, Our lord and our mentor, The bearer of truth. He is with us today,
And upon all the battlefields where we strive, Bringing faith to the faithless, And death to the
heedless. Always he watches, and lends us his strength,’” he quoted.
“Hear me, my brothers! Lorgar watches us! Make him proud!” roared Marduk, blasting the head
from an enemy with his bolt pistol and hacking down another with his chainsword.
The Word Bearers fought with a fury and hatred that had been nurtured for thousands of years,
and despite being heavily outnumbered, they were butchering the Imperials that continued to drop
in.
The dark shape of a possessed warrior-brother appeared atop a rocky outcrop, and it leapt
through the air, smashing into a Guardsman plummeting towards the ground, his grav-chute yet to
activate. Other shapes leapt from the rocks to snatch more drop-troopers out of midair, and Jarulek
smiled.
Burias-Drak’shal’s hunt had gone well.
62
CHAPTER TEN
“So, the enemy still holds the high ground. Emperor-knows how many men we lost. A formation of
Marauders is missing, presumed shot down, though Throne only knows how. There are at least forty
Valkyries either destroyed or needing serious repairs,” snarled Brigadier-General Havorn, his tall,
gaunt form trembling with rage. “And to top it all off, Colonel Emmet Boerl of the 72nd was killed
in action.”
Captain Laron stood before the glowering brigadier-general, his gaze fixed forward. Alongside
him were the other captains of the 72nd. Laron was the only one of them to have been engaged in
the failed attempt to take the mountain highlands. Indeed, he was the only captain to have returned
of those who had attacked the mountains, and he felt that most of the brigadier-general’s ire was
directed at him.
“I ought to have the lot of you executed on the spot, care of Commissar Kheler here,” he said
gesturing to a black-clad officer behind him. Laron flicked a glance towards the commissar. The
man returned his stare coldly.
“But I will not, as I find the 72nd has a sudden lack of officers,” said Havorn.
He towered over Laron by half a head, though what the captain lacked in height he made up for
in brawn. The brigadier-general was a lanky man, and he truly was one of the ugliest individuals
that Laron had ever seen.
Where Captain Laron represented physically everything that the Elysians were famed for, the
muscular build, the blond hair and the grey-blue eyes set in a handsome, chiselled face, Brigadier-
General Havorn was the polar opposite. Tall, thin and dark haired, his eyes were as black as sin and
his face was narrow, long and just plain ugly. His hair was clipped to the scalp, and scars riddled his
face and head, curling his lip into a permanent sneer. His one extravagance was the long, grey
moustache hanging to either side of his scowling mouth.
“Captain Laron, I am instating you as acting colonel of the 72nd,” said the brigadier-general.
Laron felt a flutter of pride rise within him, but he tried hard to make sure it didn’t reach his face.
“With an emphasis on the word acting,” continued the brigadier-general. “You are only in that
position because there is no one better, for the time being. Once we are done with this cursed planet
and return to the main crusade fleet, I will request a more suitable replacement for Colonel Boerl.”
The taller man leant down and forward so that he was looking directly into Laron’s eyes, his
hooked nose only centimetres from the captain’s face.
“I don’t know you well, Laron, but Colonel Boerl rated you highly. Do not dishonour his
memory,” said the brigadier-general quietly, before turning away.
“I am assigning Commissar Kheler to keep watch over you. He has been a trusted advisor of
mine for over a decade. His grasp of tactics and morale is strong. If there is ever a moment when it
looks as if your arrogance or your pride are going to make you do something stupid that will get
good men killed, the good commissar here will take steps to rectify the situation, with a bullet
through your head.
“Do I make myself clear, acting Colonel Laron of the 72nd Elysians?”
The muscles in Laron’s jaw clenched and he felt his cheeks redden.
“Yes, brigadier-general, I understand your meaning perfectly, sir.”
“Good,” said the tall man, turning and walking around his desk before sinking into his leather
chair.
63
“You are dismissed, officers of the 72nd. Not you, acting colonel.”
His face burning, Laron stood motionless as the other men filed out of the room.
“Now,” said the brigadier-general, “we need to establish how to get a victory after your
devastatingly average attack against the highlands.”
They had awoken him and the other surviving members of his worker team from their allocated twohour
rest break by throwing a bucket of warm water over them. Or, at least Varnus had thought it
was water at first, until he tasted it on his tongue: it was blood, fresh and human. The overseers
coughed vilely, what passed for laughter amongst them, and jerked at slaves’ neck chains to get
them to their feet.
The dreams were getting worse. The blaring of the Discord never ceased, and he heard it as he
slept, the hideous sound seeping into his brain like a vile parasite, twisting and corrupting within
him. It was no release from torment when he closed his eyes and fell into fitful sleep. No, if
anything, his dreams were worse than his waking life. He saw a world utterly consumed by Chaos,
its sky a roiling miasma of fire and lava. The land was not truly rock or soil, but a pile of skinless,
moaning bodies that stretched as far as the eye could see in all directions. For all he knew, the planet
was made entirely from these mewling, bloody wretches. Every one of them had a metal star of
Chaos bolted to its forehead, the same mark that he also bore. Endless, monotonous chanting filled
his head, intoning words of worship and praise. He saw this place every time he closed his eyes, not
just when he slept, but every time he even blinked his eyes against the sulphurous, polluted air.
Praise ye the glory of Chaos screamed the Discord in his mind, blurred with hateful screams,
words and bellows. Kill him! they said. Traitor!
Varnus stumbled along with the other slaves. He looked around in confusion as they turned off
the well-worn path leading towards the tower that rose nearly a hundred metres into the air and
headed off in a different direction. He saw his confusion mirrored in Pierlo’s wild eyes, his only true
companion here in this living hell.
Someone is here already, he said to himself. He could feel it in the air. Liberation was at hand.
He prayed to the Emperor, curse his name, that his hated captors would soon be blasted from the
face of the planet by the force of the Imperium.
He grinned stupidly at the thought.
Dully, he came to his senses to find that the line of slaves had stopped.
“On your knees, dogs,” said an overseer in his grating voice, the translator box over its mouth
vibrating.
Without thought, he dropped to his knees. The overseers produced long, rusted metal spikes, and
walked behind the line of slaves. They pulled the chains backwards violently, dropping the slaves
onto their backs. Standing on the chains to either side of each slave, they hammered the heavy
chains to the ground with the thick spikes.
Within moments, Varnus heard screaming from other slaves, but from his position he could not
see what was happening. All he could see were the slaves directly to either side of him. On one side,
a man cried, his eyes tightly closed as he mouthed the silent words of a prayer. The star upon his
forehead was clearly visible, and steam seemed to rise from the skin around it, forming blisters. The
