Kerne fell to his knees, blood ribboning out from his severed stump. Around them, the Chaos host yowled and shrieked with pleasure, firing their bolters into the sky. Fornix howled with them, but in despair and grief. Finn March held him back as Mortai’s first sergeant tried to lunge forward.
Kerne looked up at the Punisher warlord, and his eyes were clear. He smiled.
‘At least I die true to my Lord and my faith,’ he said, gasping. ‘You are nothing but traitorous scum, and your god is an abomination.’
For the first time, Gull Khan’s face changed. Anger flooded it. His mouth opened in a snarl, and as it did it seemed his features altered, blurred, revealing something else behind them. There was a glimpse of a contorted, bestial countenance in which broken fangs sprouted and snapped. Then the Punisher closed in, sword raised.
Kerne threw his chainsword at his adversary. It struck the power sword and knocked it askew even as Khan loomed in. Then he drew Biron Amadai’s bolt pistol from his side, and let himself fall flat. He rolled under Gull Khan’s legs, and raising the pistol he fired as fast as his failing strength could pull the trigger.
The rounds pounded up into Gull Khan’s armour, and the Punisher warlord shuddered with their impact. He stumbled, lurched to one side, and as he did Kerne followed him with the muzzle of the ancient bolt pistol. He put the last three rounds of the magazine into Gull Khan’s head, the muzzle of the weapon so close to his foe’s skull that it blackened the skin.
The Punisher’s skull disintegrated, blown apart. The black eyes were destroyed, blown from their sockets, and the lower jaw fell open with nothing above it but broken bone and mangled meat.
Jonah Kerne collapsed, chest heaving, beside the white-armoured corpse of his enemy. He lay on his back, listening as the stunned, disbelieving silence of the Punishers gave way to a vast roar of baffled fury.
He looked up at the sky. It is a good day to die, he thought.
With his fading sight he watched the bright vault of Ras Hanem’s sky become ever brighter, as though there were other suns up there beyond the blue.
And things falling in that brightness, dark shapes plummeting to earth and trailing vivid streams of smoke in their wake, a dazzling sight, mystifying.
‘Jonah – Jonah, can you hear me?’
The fighting was beginning again. The roar of bolter fire shook the air, and in it were larger echoing booms. He felt the very earth under his back tremble and shake.
‘Jonah, look at me.’
It was Fornix, his helm off, his red eye gleaming. He was cradling his captain in his arms.
Kerne could not speak. Even his enhanced biological systems could not cope with the massive loss of tissue. The power sword had taken off his arm at the shoulder and continued deep into the side of his chest, ruining a lung, clipping one of his two mighty hearts. He was drowning in his own blood.
Fornix levered his captain into a sitting position.
‘Do you see them, Jonah? Watch with me, my brother. They have come – our brethren have come, and others with them. They’re dropping into the city in their thousands. Do you see them, Jonah?’
He did. They were the last thing he saw, a glorious sight. Hundreds of drop pods were landing all around in the ruins, and out of them stormed a mighty host of the Adeptus Astartes, in Hunters blue and the livery of the other six Chapters. The Dark Sons were there, having left the Wendakhen campaign in obedience to their oath. And he could see the badges of the Brazen Fists, the Doomsayers, the Shadowhawks, and yet more.
Hundreds of Space Marines were pouring across the ravaged face of the city, slaughtering the leaderless and bewildered foe. And in the skies above them, Thunderhawks appeared, dozens of squadrons spitting fire, burning the enemy into the ground.
Thus did the Dark Hunters and their allies return to purge the world of Ras Hanem, in the Kargad system, in the nine hundred and eighty-second year of the fortieth millennium.
TWENTY-FOUR
Valediction
‘He did not die,’ Kharne Al Murzim said, the sorrow heavy in his voice. ‘He should have died that day.’
The Chapter Master of the Dark Hunters looked down from the heights of the tower to the wide flagged courtyard at the heart of Mors Angnar below. It was blowing hard from the mountains, flurries of snow speeding on the bitter wind, and the Argahasts were tall, looming titans on the horizon, blinding bright at the brim of the world. The fleeting sun was passing over them, and under it the ragged shadows of clouds sped before the gale, like banners on a battlefield.
‘It would have been better,’ the Reclusiarch said, settling his hands deep in the folds of his black habit. ‘With his survival, he tainted the victory. And now a captain of the Chapter is to be…’ he trailed off.
‘The Inquisition had no choice, Brother Malchai. Once what he had done became common knowledge, it was inevitable.’
‘I agree. His decision baffled me at the time, and yet it may have saved the planet. Without the help of the eldar it is possible we might not have held on as long as we did.’
‘That sounds very strange coming from a Reclusiarch of the Adeptus Astartes, Brother Malchai.’
‘I know. I have thought on this and prayed on it many times in the last year, my lord, and I cannot come to any other conclusion. Jonah Kerne committed heresy, yet by doing so, he preserved Ras Hanem long enough for you to pull it back from the brink. We must give him credit for that, at least.’
‘Indeed. But it was Diez and the Arbion who brought us word of the second invasion, let us not forget. Preparations for the relief were already well under way when Brother Vennan received the message from the eldar. Jonah Kerne was outwitted, betrayed by the xenos he chose to help. He kept his word, but theirs was never worth anything.’
‘They paid for it,’ Malchai said with a snarl.
‘We executed their leader, all those who stayed behind. But the artefact which was the cause of it all has escaped us. For that, Captain Kerne must pay a heavy price.’ Kharne Al Murzim shut his eyes a moment, his face gnarled in pain.
Then he collected himself. ‘Your reports were invaluable – they have all been forwarded to the Inquisition of course. Not that it will do any good. His guilt has always been undeniable.’
Al Murzim paused, and sighed. ‘There he is.’
Below them, a solitary figure in a midnight-blue habit was walking across the flagstones of the courtyard. Its hood was up, and the wind tugged at the robe. The figure came to a halt near the centre of the open square, and looked up.
Al Murzim turned away from the sight, walking across his chamber with his head bowed.
‘He should have died,’ the Chapter Master whispered.
Jonah Kerne was gazing upon the towering heights of the Argahast Mountains which loomed over Mors Angnar. They had caught the sun, and were bright as silver in the rare brilliance of the light. He smiled. He was glad he had been able to see them like this one last time.
Footsteps on the flagstones made him turn around. It was Fornix, his hood thrown back and his bionic eye bright as a glede in the cold sunlight.
‘You shouldn’t be here, brother,’ Kerne told him.
‘I had to come,’ Fornix said simply.
‘You are captain of Mortai now. You cannot allow yourself to be tainted by my misdeeds.’
‘Let them go to hell, if they think I will let you make the walk out of here alone, Jonah.’
Kerne reached out a hand. It was metallic, a composite of alloys and wires and cabling. Fornix took it in the warrior grip.