Word Bearers across much deadlier battlefields on a thousand worlds, transporting them safely
against far worse than these weakling Imperials could muster.
24
A glowing, yellow blister light began to flash, and Kol Badar pulled off the hissing coupling that
held him to his seat and flexed his power talons.
“In the name of the true gods, Lorgar and the Dark Apostle,” he roared. “Anointed! We kill once
more!”
The elite cult warriors roared back, and the assault ramp of the Land Raider slammed down as
the immense tank drew to a sudden halt near the top of the incline, steam hissing out into the cold of
night.
After the muffled dullness within the belly of the Land Raider, the noise of the battlefield was
deafening, as cannons boomed, boltguns thumped rhythmically and the screams of dying Imperials
echoed across the salt plains.
Kol Badar led the Anointed onto the field of war, roaring like a primeval god. His archaic
combi-bolter, its muzzle sculpted to resemble the fanged maw of some fell creature, coughed fiery
death as he strode heavily forwards. His first shots ripped a grey uniformed soldier in half, and
dozens more were torn apart by the gunfire of the Anointed.
The night was lit up as thousands of weapons fired, and Kol Badar could see the immense
enemy bulwark stretching from horizon to horizon. Tens of thousands of uniformed PDF troopers
stood along the defensive line, and hundreds of tanks and armoured units added cannon fire to the
barrage.
He had chosen this place to attack the enemy for it was their most heavily defended point along
the bulwark. A decisive strike that shattered their defences here would demoralise them completely.
Streaming las-fire lit up the night as the Imperials tried desperately to drop even a single one of
the Anointed. The hulking Terminator-armoured figures strode to the top of the bulwark, walking
straight through the frantic gunfire. Their own weapons ripped through the cowering ranks of the
lightly armoured PDF troopers, the protection of their dug-in positions rendered useless.
A score of Land Raiders disgorged more of the Terminators at the top of the earthworks, and the
butchery began in earnest. Kol Badar dropped down heavily over the lip of the corpse-strewn
defensive position and raised his bolter to mow down a team of men working to reload an artillery
piece. They were ripped to pieces, blood spraying.
Reaper autocannons roared along the line of the bulwark, the rapid firing, high-powered
weapons tearing through the lines of reinforcements rushing to stem the breach in their lines. The
high velocity rounds from the potent weapons tore up the defensive line and reached a battery of
artillery pieces. The guns were instantly engulfed in a huge explosion as the armour piercing
autocannon rounds ignited stacks of high-explosive shells. The fireball rose high in the sky, and
further explosions answered it as other Anointed warriors struck further gun batteries.
“Warmonger, lead the Host forward,” growled Kol Badar, opening a comm-channel to the
Dreadnought. “Come join the slaughter, my brother.”
“Sir! we are being massacred! They won’t die! Emperor save us, they just won’t die!”
Captain Drokan of the 23rd Tanakreg PDF cursed and licked his dry lips as he ordered the
comm-channel closed. What could he do? There must be a way to salvage something out of this
disastrous engagement, but he was damned if he knew what it was. He turned to his adjutant, who
looked absolutely terrified, his face pale and his eyes staring.
“Val! Anything from the colonel? From any of the damn officers?”
The pale-faced adjutant shook his head, and Drokan cursed once again.
There had been no warning of the attack. The Emperor alone knew what had happened to the
listening posts that skirted the system: a sudden attack like this just should not have been possible!
But it was happening, and it was all too real. And somehow Drokan had found himself the most
superior ranked officer, cut off from the upper echelons. Him, Anubias Drokan! Never a dedicated
student of tactics or strategy, he had risen to the rank of captain more because of his family’s status
and his own skill with a sword than through any real competence. It was only the PDF, damn it!
25
Father had wanted him to join the ranks to give him a bit of hardness about him, he had said. A few
years of service: he had never expected to be on the front line of a full-scale planetary assault!
Think, man. Think! What should he do? He had four companies of the 23rd with him here
(dying here, he thought), but what other regiments were close by? There was the 9th and the 11th,
but his adjutant had been unable to contact them on the comms. He assumed they had already been
engaged and destroyed by the enemy.
He had to get the other nearby regiments to pull away from the last line, pull back to Shinar.
That’s what his superiors would do, he thought. Shinar, the palace, the governor; they were what
needed protecting. Feeling slightly buoyed, Drokan turned to his adjutant once more.
“Put out a blanket message to all Shinar PDF regiments. Tell them to pull back to the city. The
23rd will hold them here for as long as we can. We will buy them as much time as possible.”
The adjutant gaped. “We are to hold here? That’s suicide!”
“Pass the damn message! Shinar is more important than the 23rd!”
With shaking hands, the adjutant began to relay the message. The captain shouted to the driver
of the Chimera to head towards the battle. The man gunned the engines and the vehicle roared
across the salt plains.
The men of the 23rd had never seen active service. War had never come to Tanakreg, and the
only time the PDF had been required to use live ammunition had been to quell a minor insurgency
within Shinar some four decades earlier. Most of the PDF soldiers had never fired on a live target.
Still, Drokan felt clear-headed suddenly. Yes, he would hold the enemy here. He pulled his
laspistol from its holster. Just like his men, he had honed his skills on the target field, though he had
never fired a shot in anger or defence. But I am a renowned swordsman, he told himself, patting the
ornate chainsword at his hip. He had fought in countless tourneys, and had won several medals.
“Ca… Captain Drokan?” said his adjutant. “The other regiments… they are not responding. Not
one of them. I… I think we may be the last regiment within a thousand kilometres of Shinar.”
The captain frowned. “Ah,” he said, “I see.” He felt strangely calm. “Well, pick up my family
standard. We go to fight alongside the men.”
The adjutant gaped at the captain.
“Come on, boy!” urged Drokan. The younger man unclipped his safety harness and scrambled
across to the other side of the command Chimera. He opened a stowage compartment, and removed
a long black case. He straggled with the ornate clasps, but finally popped them open, and pulled out
the captain’s family standard. It was furled tightly around a telescopic pole. With a nod, the captain
leant back in his seat as his Chimera took them into the maelstrom of battle.
Kol Badar strode along the fortified line, gunning down dozens of terrified PDF troopers, their puny
bodies torn apart by the force of his combi-bolter. Reaching an enclosed bunker emplacement, he
ripped the sealed blast door from its hinges and stooped to enter. It housed half a dozen men and
three, rapid firing heavy bolters that were pumping fire into the advancing lines of the Host.
Kol Badar gunned them all down, the walls of the emplacement splashing with their blood as he
raked them with fire. Ripping another blast door from its housing, Kol Badar exited the
emplacement and began killing once more.
Looking down over the plains beyond the last defensive line, he saw scores of APCs moving
forwards in a desperate last-ditch attempt to hold back the Word Bearers. Salt dust kicked up behind
the approaching vehicles, and lascannon fire and krak missiles streamed towards the Imperial
vehicles from the heavy weapon teams that had gained the bulwark. Several of the advancing
vehicles exploded spectacularly, spinning end over end as fuel lines were penetrated.
The Chimera APCs roared to a halt, and over a thousand PDF reserve troopers emerged, las-fire
stabbing towards the Word Bearers. Smiling, Kol Badar strode down to meet them.
26
He knew that subtlety and strategy were not needed, just killing and more killing. It was what
his warriors excelled at.
He strode onwards through the hail of gunfire, spraying boltrounds left and right. The salt plains
were turning a deep red colour as the porous granules soaked up the gore.
“Tanakreg 23RD!” shouted PDF Captain Drokan. “Drive them back!” The soldiers screamed as they
ran, their lasguns firing and bayonets readied. The captain’s adjutant found himself shouting along
with them. Hefting the captain’s unfurled banner in one hand he began firing his laspistol, even
though he could not yet see the foe.
Suddenly he saw the enemy, and he wished that he had not. They were huge, making the PDF
soldiers look like children.
They were all going to die, he realised.
Kol Badar raised an eyebrow within his fully enclosed helm as he saw the soldiers running towards
him, an officer at their forefront brandishing a roaring chain blade. The towering warlord didn’t
even bother to raise his combi-bolter, and he began stalking towards the fools running at him and his
Anointed warriors. Las-rounds thudded uselessly into him as the distance closed. The officer lifted
his chainsword high, his face defiant. Kol Badar almost laughed out loud.
The warlord swatted the blade away dismissively with the back of his power-talon, breaking the
man’s arm in the process, and clubbed the officer down into the ground with a blow from his combibolter.
He stamped down heavily on the mewling wretch, and the man’s skull shattered like a
pulverised egg.
The Anointed cleaved into the PDF troopers, ripping limbs from sockets, tearing heads from
bodies. The Coryphaus saw Bokkar drive his chainfist into the body of the diminutive PDF standard
bearer, lifting him up into the air before the whirring blades cut the boy in half. The Anointed
warrior turned his heavy flamer on the fallen standard, the fabric consumed instantly under the
intense heat.
Las-fire sprayed across his back, and he hissed in pain and anger as one of the beams caught him
in the back of his knee-joint. He turned and gunned down one of the PDF troopers before they
disappeared beneath an inferno of flames, screaming horribly. Kol Badar nodded his head towards
the Anointed warrior Bokkar, who acknowledged the Coryphaus with a nod of his own, before his
heavy flamer roared again, engulfing another group of soldiers.
Heavy footsteps made the ground tremble, and Kol Badar turned towards the huge form of the
Warmonger, the Dreadnought dwarfing even him as it walked through the carnage, potent cannons
pumping fire towards enemy vehicles in the distance.
“It is good to crush the enemy on the field of war once more, but this is no battle, Kol Badar,”
the ancient war machine boomed. There were few within the Host that would dare call the warlord
by his name, but the Warmonger was amongst them. They had fought at each other’s sides for
millennia. Indeed, Kol Badar had been the Warmonger’s Coryphaus when the warrior had been
Dark Apostle.
“The enemy is weak,” agreed Kol Badar. “How I yearn to face a worthy foe,” he added, turning
his gaze up into the void of the heavens.
“You think Astartes will come?” boomed the Warmonger hungrily.
“No, I think not,” sighed Kol Badar. “As much as I wish to face them once more. The Dark
Apostle has said that in none of his dream-visions did he see any Astartes come to this world to do
battle with us.”
“But minions of the Corpse Emperor will come, will they not? They will come to do battle?”
“Oh, they will come, my friend. They will be marshalling their forces even now.”
“But not Astartes?”
27
“No, not Astartes.”
“Bah,” snorted the Warmonger. “It will be just mortals then.”
“Yes, mortals,” said Kol Badar, still staring up into the night sky, as if he could pierce the
heavens with his angry gaze. “One can only hope that they will come in force. At least then there
may be a worthy battle.”
The Warmonger stomped off, its cannons firing once more. He saw the daemon engines clawing
over the bulwark, multi-legged and spitting great gouts of flame from their maws, while others
busied themselves tearing apart enemy tanks with contemptuous ease.
Kol Badar began to follow the Warmonger, to rejoin the battle once again. No, he reminded
himself, this was not battle. This was a slaughter.
Varnus coughed, causing a searing, sharp pain in his side. Smoke was all around him, and bodies.
No, not just bodies: body parts. He pushed himself to his feet, gasping at the pain that seemed to
erupt all over his body, and his head reeled. He put a hand to his forehead and felt wet blood there,
but the worst pain was in his side. It was slick with blood, and he winced as he loosened the clips
holding his chest-plate in place. He hissed as he pulled out a long shard of metal that had pushed up
under the body armour and into his side. He dropped the bloody shard to the floor. Still, he was
alive, which was more than could be said for the others splayed out on the chamber floor.
The blast had ripped through the palace, and smoke and dust rose from piles of rubble. The walls
were blackened in part, and ancient wall hangings were ablaze. Many of the bloody bodies strewn
around him were also on fire, and the stink of burning flesh and fat almost made him retch. Varnus
coughed painfully and he felt the floor beneath his feet shake as another blast somewhere else in the
palace detonated.
The sound of shouting reached him, and he staggered towards it, away from the inferno that was
blazing behind him. A trio of palace guards ran past along an adjoining corridor, and he hurried
along in their wake. He felt another explosion rock the floor beneath his feet and increased his pace,
wincing against the pain. He had to get out of this part of the palace.
Staggering along through the smoke that seemed to be thickening around him, he followed the
direction that he thought the guards had taken. He limped through a half open door, entering a
service corridor usually closed to those frequenting the palace. He passed a palace guard lying dead
