But they were not invincible.
First one, then two, then a third of Kerne’s brothers went down, swamped by foes that grappled them to the ground before their fellows administered the killing blows.
As the dwindling circle of Hunters was driven in towards the siege guns, so the melee grew ever more tight and murderous. Kerne saw Sergeant Orsus go down, swinging his chainsword to the last. The sergeant carved a tall Chaos champion clear in two and raised the bloody weapon to the sky with a gargle of triumph. Other Punishers closed in on him and bore the big warrior bodily to his knees. He disappeared in a squirming scrum of bodies. Two seconds later a grenade went off where he had been, and the struggling Punishers were blown apart.
The circle still held, but barely. Kerne stepped back from it a moment.
‘Brother Heinos!’
‘The shield is down, captain. I am laying charges in the breeches of the guns.’
‘Make sure of them, Heinos. There will be no second chances today.’
They fought on, half of them down now. The Punishers had to climb over mounds of their own dead to come at them, and the Dark Hunters took another step back and opened up with bolt pistol and flamer at point-blank range.
Elijah Kass held out one hand as though he were handing a gift to the foe, and from the fingers of his gauntlet there streaked blue-white veins of light. These sank into the Punishers in front of him, and the Chaos warriors stopped in their tracks and began to scream and tear at their armour. Smoke rose from cracks that webbed across the metal, and they toppled, stinking like burned meat.
Kerne fired off magazine after magazine from Biron Amadai’s ancient sidearm, the rounds streaking out to blow chunks off the oncoming enemy, red clouds of blood and metal erupting out of the struggling bodies before him. He bared his teeth in a rictus of hatred inside his helm.
All his centuries of training and experience drew together in him and kindled a prowess his foes could not hope to match; he shot the enemy, stabbed him, punched him aside, crushed skulls with the butt of the heavy bolt pistol, lifted his adversaries bodily and hurled them aside. His feet were sinking in a growing mire of muck and blood and other nameless things, and he trod on the bodies of his own brethren unknowing in the thick press of the fight.
He watched the sigils that signified his brothers fighting around him wink out one by one on his helm display. And still the survivors fought on, and kept to their feet, and somehow held the line.
Two massive explosions went off behind him, so close together that they merged into one. For a second his auto-senses shut down entirely to protect him. He was momentarily deaf and blind. The shockwave staggered him, and he felt the heavy blow of metal shards thump his armour.
Then his auto-senses were back online, and he heard Brother Heinos.
‘Charges have been detonated. The guns have been spiked.’
He turned around and saw the Techmarine standing behind him. The servo-arm had been ripped from his back, and loose wires were fizzing and sparking on Heinos’s spine.
‘It is accomplished, captain,’ Heinos said calmly. And then a bolter round smashed into the Techmarine’s head, blasting out the back of his helm. Heinos went to his knees, and then fell onto his side in the bloody muck.
‘Mortai!’ Kerne called out across that deadly space. ‘On me – close on me!’
There were perhaps seven or eight of them still standing. Fornix was there, and Finn March, and Elijah Kass. They fought back to back, grunting with effort, a tiny island in a sea of foes. Kerne was beaten to his knees by a power hammer wielded two-handed, and Fornix broke the shaft of the weapon with a sweep of his power fist and punched its owner into ruin. He helped Kerne to his feet again.
‘Hard work, eh, Jonah? But we’ll rest soon enough.’
Once again, Elijah Kass punched out his fist, and the bright light flickered out of it, a flash that hurled several of the foe backwards. Then he swung his chainsword at them. But slower now; the Librarian seemed almost exhausted.
‘Hold!’
The voice rang out clear across the battlefield, as loud as a clap of thunder.
The ranks of Punishers seemed to shudder. They stopped, and their insane yowling died down to a low rancid muttering.
Incredibly, the mob that surrounded the Space Marines lowered their arms, and the pressure slackened – they backed away. The ring about the Dark Hunters opened up.
The battlefield fell almost silent.
‘What new trick is this?’ Kerne said quietly to Brother Kass.
The Librarian was stooped, breathing hard. ‘He’s here, the leader. He has come.’
‘Excellent,’ Fornix said. ‘Things were becoming a little tedious.’
‘Reload, brothers,’ Jonah Kerne told them. ‘Whatever happens next, we must be ready.’
They changed magazines in their bolt pistols. One of them, Brother Galen of Novus Company, picked up the heavy bolter from the ground and checked the belt. Finn March scavenged for ammunition, and Brother Kass bent slowly and lifted a flamer from the hands of the dead.
The ranks of the Punishers parted in two waves, the warriors jostling each other, still muttering in that low insane tone. There was fear in the noise, but also a kind of expectation, as though they were children about to witness a marvel.
And what came striding up through their opened ranks was, in its own way, a marvel indeed.
It was a Space Marine in shining white, red-chased armour, taller than Jonah Kerne. The armour was of ancient design, a Mark V suit such as had been used during the Great Heresy thousands of years before. It was covered in molecular bonding studs, and the chest of the wearer was ringed with cabling.
The approaching warrior wore no helm. His face was stern, even noble, and his head was shaved save for a single scalp-lock which fell over one ear. As he drew close, they saw upon his cheeks the ritual scars of Mundus Planus, home of the White Scars.
But noble though his countenance was, as the newcomer halted before them, Kerne and his brethren saw that his eyes were entirely black, filled with the darkness of the warp.
‘My brothers,’ he said, and he held out his hands as though to welcome them, ‘how did it come to this?’ His voice was low, melodic, and beguiling.
Elijah Kass gripped the flamer he held until the metal of the weapon creaked in his fists.
‘Abomination,’ he hissed. ‘I know you. I know what you are.’
‘You know nothing, little Elijah. I have tracked your mind since first you came to this world, and I have mapped out every vestige of mediocrity within it. Hold your tongue and let your betters speak.’
Kass swayed. ‘Captain – it is a daemon–’ And then he ground his teeth and shut his eyes.
‘He is mistaken,’ the strange Space Marine said. ‘I am no daemon, captain Jonah Kerne, oh my brother. I am one of you. I was born a White Scar. I fought with my Legion for years uncounted. I was there when that Legion was made into Chapters, and when the Dark Hunters were born I was already old. The genes of mighty Jaghatai are buried in me, as they are in you. We are brethren, captain.’
‘Who are you?’ Kerne asked.
‘I was once called Gull Khan. I have other names now, but there was a time when I, too, commanded a company of Legiones Astartes. Back before my children called to me–’ he spread his arms, smiling, and around him the vast host of the Punishers growled like beasts.
‘And now I am come here to this system, to claim a home for myself and my orphans…’ He looked up at the sky, almost as though he had lost the thread of his thought, and a frown creased the calm imperturbability of that face.