Macharius clambered onto the side of our Baneblade, and looking at him I remembered the speech he had given what seemed like so long ago when we had first arrived on Karsk and thought about how much had changed since then. There was a light about him now it seemed. It might have just been a trick of the light or some eddy current of the strange sorceries that were being woven around us, but he looked like something greater than human.
This time there was no technical engine of the Adeptus Mechanicus to amplify his voice and form. This time there was just him. He stood there, chainsword raised in his fist, and he addressed us. He had that trick of being able to speak as powerfully as a great actor filling an amphitheatre even with his own voice.
‘This is the hour,’ he said. ‘The forces of evil and heresy threaten to engulf this world. We will not let them!
‘We will show these daemon worshippers how men can fight and if need be how men can die!’
His voice had a rasping metallic ring to it now. Every man there strained to hear.
‘Above us, false men seek to summon a false god! They have been deluded by their own evil and their own lies. If they succeed, they will bring only darkness and inevitable retribution and death to all who dwell here. We shall not let them succeed. We shall climb into the very heavens if need be and tear down their false idol and overthrow the dark thing they worship and we shall bring the light of the Emperor’s Truth to this benighted world.’
He believed every word of it and in that moment so did we. We felt the righteousness of our cause and the necessity of our victory.
‘Onwards, men! For the Emperor. Smite the heretic! Follow me. To victory!’
There was nothing else for it but to follow him into the depths of the cathedral. We would have followed him then if he was leading us towards the depths of hell. It was just as well really, for that was exactly where we were going.
Step by weary step we fought our way upwards. Rivers of blood flowed down the stairs, turning them into crimson waterfalls. Burned meat and ruined flesh formed barricades built of corpses.
The heretics opposed our every footfall. They died in their thousands, throwing themselves in our way, being burned down by las-fire or blown asunder by frag grenades. They took their toll on our men, killing almost as many as they lost. More and more of our lads flooded in behind us. I could only pray that enough of them had made it to the city to keep the flow of reinforcements coming.
The air shimmered and one of those rainbow whirlpools appeared. Out of it erupted a horde of the pink-skinned Horrors we had encountered earlier, blasting flame out of their enormous fanged mouths, tearing men asunder with long, clawed fingers. The psykers around Drake responded with a surge of power and the vortex swirled shut. The daemons became marginally less stable-looking, one or two of them seemed to turn sideways on and vanish. The rest we swarmed into, shooting and stabbing. The storm troopers around Drake blasted with those heavy guns of theirs. A Horror bounded right up to me and opened its mouth to incinerate me. I stuck the shotgun in and pulled the trigger. Its rubbery flesh seemed to resist the shot. It expanded like a balloon for a moment under the force of the shot and only once it had become almost half again the size it had been did it burst. I half-expected it to explode but it did not. It mostly vanished leaving only traces of slime and a foul smell and a hail of shotgun pellets falling suddenly to earth.
Macharius swept past me along with Anton and Ivan and a group of square-jawed troopers. I raced to catch up and dived once more into the maelstrom of battle.
I was glad that there were no priests facing us. Then I thought about where they must be and what they were doing and my gladness gave way to fear.
The temperature was rising. My throat felt parched. My skin felt as if it might crack. It was a by-product of the evil magic swirling around us.
One of the psykers blasted a swathe of heretics aside with some sort of mystical bolt. Drake shouted, ‘Save your strength! We shall have better use of it soon!’
The psyker nodded abashed. It was the last help of that sort we saw. It was all down to the main strength of the Imperial Guard now.
Macharius led us, speaking calmly, exhorting us to greater efforts, blasting with his bolt pistol and slashing any enemy who got within reach with his chainsword. He was worth a company of men alone just for his physical prowess. The inspiration the sight of him brought was worth much more.
Striding towards a manifesting daemon, he looked certain of his righteousness and utterly confident of victory. He moved through the combat as if nothing could touch him, and nothing did. I have often wondered if Drake wove some sort of spell around him that day to prevent heretic fire from harming him. It seems like the only explanation to me. I have never seen any man walk as boldly across a battlefield. Macharius marched as if he believed he was invincible and we followed him as if he was.
Under his Lion banner and the banners of our regiments we fought and died. Metre by bloody metre, step by bloody step we made our way up the inlaid marble steps into the heart of the cathedral and the horror waiting for us there.
Ahead of us I could hear what sounded like a choir of possessed angels. The hymn was beautiful, haunting and terrifying. The words echoed inside my skull, singing the praises of the Angel of Fire, telling of his glories and the way he would reward his worshippers and punish those who opposed him. It should have sounded like an evil parody of Imperial liturgy but it did not. It sounded as if the singers believed utterly in the truth of the words, which I suppose they did.
It was all in dire contrast to the bloody work we were doing as we fought our way into the inner sanctum. It was in a space so packed with bodies that we were reduced to hand-to-hand fighting. The heretics fought with all the fanaticism of zealots defending sacred soil. We smashed them down in the name of Macharius and the Emperor.
The Sons of the Flame fought us every metre of the way. I clubbed one down with the butt of my shotgun, cleared another few packed metres of space by pulling the trigger and sending some more heretics to hell. Macharius chopped down more with his chainsword.
And then we were within the sanctum itself. It had been repaired from our previous visitation but not completely. Scorch marks covered the walls and floors. The lectern was still there though, as was that massive statue of the Angel in all its glory but it was no longer the focus of attention.
Ahead of us were massed ranks of priests chanting and singing their awful hymn. In front of them stood their High Priest, the focus of the whole devilish ritual. It was not he who commanded our sight though. It was the Angel. It had already manifested under the vast vaulted roof. The hanging banners already smoked and burned in contact with its burning wings. Around it everything seemed to shimmer.
It towered above us, seemingly a hundred times the height of a man. It looked bigger, as if something infinite were compressing itself into the tiny space available in our world. It came from somewhere else where its size had no limit or meaning. In my mind I imagined it larger than a planet, able to hold a whole world in its beautiful clawed hand. Its skin was the colour of bronze. Its robe was shimmering white. Its face was beautiful. Its eyes were filled with fire. Its wings billowed from its back in a cloud of gaseous plasma. It seemed immense but not yet solid. All of the flames in the temple twisted towards it, dancing worshippers genuflecting to their god.