I dived flat behind a boulder and moments later I was joined by Ivan and Anton. Anton still clutched his sniper rifle in his left hand. He had paused in the middle of bailing out to grab it and had somehow managed to get it through the escape hatch. There was dedication. Or idiocy. Most likely the latter.
‘You showed a clean pair of heels,’ Anton said. ‘Looked like you were trying for the regimental running championships. I’ve never seen anybody flee so fast. I thought there was a dust cloud rising behind you.’
‘You seemed to have kept up,’ I said.
‘Never fancied going up in a brewed-up tank,’ Anton said.
A huge explosion rocked the dark from off to our left. It was not a shell from one of the turrets. Ivan stood up, his lanky form casting a long shadow in the light of its burning.
‘Yep, there she goes,’ he bellowed.
‘Get down, idiot boy,’ I said.
Shrapnel clattered off the rock.
‘Why?’ he asked. ‘They are not shooting at me.’
‘No,’ I said, ‘but those guys might start.’
Moving downslope was a mass of heretic infantrymen. They had bayonets attached to their lasguns and they looked anything but friendly.
‘Good point,’ Anton said. He brought the rifle up to his shoulder, aimed through the sight, snapped off a shot and dropped back into cover all before I could tell him not to. We were isolated on the slopes of Richter’s citadel with no help in sight and facing off against a regiment of heretics and, of course, he had to draw their attention to us.
‘You had to draw their attention to us, didn’t you?’ I said.
He showed me his idiot grin. ‘Suppressor on the sniper rifle makes it difficult to see, and if they could hear me shooting over this racket they have better hearing than an Anatarean devilhound.’
Something about his confidence made me smile. ‘Sometimes I suspect you might not be as stupid as I thought.’
‘I am touched,’ he said.
‘Sometimes I think you are even stupider.’ He nodded, stood up and took another shot then another and then another. I stood up and risked a glance. In the flickering darkness, at range and without a sniper-scope, it was difficult to see what he was shooting at. It was not difficult to see the enemy though.
A horde of them was out there, thousands upon thousands, armed with every form of man-portable weapon I could think of. They moved to the beat of great solemn drums, with the mindless collective will of insects swarming to defend their hive. I thought of the walking dead we had fought and the truth is I could not see much difference between them and these living soldiers. The heretics might still be breathing but they seemed just as mindless and just as insanely brave.
Of course, that is not necessarily an advantage on the field of battle. There is a time for bravery as there is a time for turning tail and fleeing. The heretics were moving into position to face a battle-line of Leman Russ battle tanks. The tanks’ weapons blazed and cut them down.
‘This is madness,’ Ivan shouted. I thought about it for a second. He was right. Even if the heretics had just a small hope of taking out a Leman Russ, it did not stop some of them advancing and trying to use grenades. ‘They don’t have a chance.’
From above us, the enemy field artillery kept shooting and I realised what was going on. ‘They’re not meant to have a chance. Richter, or whoever is in command here, does not need to keep them alive. They are a distraction. They’re there to keep our lads’ attention focused on killing them while the enemy artillery does its job.’
‘A masterly summation, Lemuel,’ said Macharius. He and Drake and a group of Drake’s bodyguards dropped into the shell-holes around us. How had the inquisitor summoned them, I wondered? They must have been close by, to have found us in the chaos.
‘Surely you can order our tanks to return fire.’
‘I have,’ said Macharius, ‘but if they do that the infantry will swarm over them. In their numbers, with grenades and melta bombs, they will inflict heavy casualties.’
He was right and there was something he was not saying, which was that no matter how well disciplined a tank crew might be, they were not going to ignore an immediate threat to their own safety in order to concentrate on those distant batteries. Whoever had ordered this suicide attack had known what he was doing. ‘What are we going to do then?’ Drake asked.
‘Whatever we can,’ said Macharius. ‘But our first order of priority must be to silence those guns.’
All around us artillery spoke in voices of thunder and tanks replied by spitting spears of fire. The earth shook. The cold air swirled. The chanting of the heretics throbbed. Macharius continued to speak into the comm-net. I saw figures begin to converge out of the gloom. They wore the green of the Lion Guard, but their uniforms were torn and bloodied. Many of them had been wounded, but they were prepared to fight alongside their commander. If we were lucky there was perhaps a company of us. The Emperor alone knew how many men waited for us up at those gun emplacements.
That was at the moment though. I felt sure we were going to find out.
Macharius gave it five minutes for the crews of the destroyed tanks to converge on our position along with infantry from the brewed-up Chimeras. They came out of the shadows in twos and threes, moving cautiously along the ground, using every scrap of cover. Their caution was warranted. The enemy had other things to do, but if they had noticed those stragglers they would have taken the few seconds required to wipe them from the face of the planet.
We assembled on the edge of a blast crater, and Macharius spoke. His voice carried over the cacophony of the battlefield, clear, precise and thrilling. ‘Our comrades are pinned down and under assault by the foul heretics on the hill,’ he said. ‘We are going to do something about that and then we are going to enter that hive and put an end to this war once and for all.’
His voice held no doubts, only absolute certainty of victory, and I could tell from the faces of the men around me that they all believed him. No matter what doubts they might have had back on Acheron, they had none here. They could not afford to have them. They were under fire and facing superior numbers. They needed to have faith in the man leading them if they were going to come through.
‘We are going to wipe out those heretics in the name of the Emperor, and we are going to cleanse this world of all evil.’ He made it sound so easy. We were just going to march up there and settle the matter. No matter that we were outnumbered ten thousand to one.
‘You are all chosen men – picked by me, selected for your courage and your skill in soldiering. Those deranged madmen up there are no match for true soldiers of the Imperium. And we are going to show them that.’
And we were. All of the men stood taller, breathed more deeply, held their weapons ready to fight. Macharius continued giving out orders and we listened and made ready to obey.
When he gave the command we moved out.
Macharius had read the battlefield as if it were a map. Our route along the flanks of the rising ridgelines kept us away from the bulk of the enemy horde and out of line of sight of the guns. Even if we had been noticed, we would not have seemed like much of a threat to the heretics. They were concentrating all of their attention on the Leman Russ below us. Most of the tanks had withdrawn to use what cover the ridgelines provided. Their lack of mobility would soon leave them easy targets for the oncoming infantry. At close range, grenades could smash the drive-cogs of the tanks. Filter covers could be wrenched away and explosives dropped down the pipes. At very close range a tank without infantry support becomes extremely vulnerable.