Artillery pieces parked in the gleaming canyons of the city pointed their barrels westwards, set to pound any invaders into the ground before they reached the trenches. The warriors of the Choral City would then slaughter any that survived in careВfully prepared crossfire.
The defences had been meticulously planned, protecting the city from attack from the west, the only direction in which an invasion could be launched.
Or so the soldiers manning the defences had been told.
The first omen was a fire in the sky that came with the dawn.
A scattering of falling stars streaked through the blood-red dawn, burning through the sky like fiery tears.
The sentries in the trenches saw them falling in bright spears of fire, the first burning object
smashing into the trenches amid a plume of mud and flame.
At the speed of thought, the word raced around the Choral City that the Lost Children had returned, that the prophecies of myth were coming true,
They were proven right when the drop-pods burst open and the Astartes of the Death Guard Legion emerged.
And the killing began.
PART TWO
THE CHORAL CITY
EIGHT
Soldiers from hell
Butchery
Betrayal
Thirty seconds!' yelled Vipus, his voice barely audible over the screaming jets as the drop-pod sliced through Isstvan Ill's atmosphere. The Astartes of Locasta were bathed in red light and for a moment Loken imagined what they would look like to the people of the Choral City when the assault began – warriors from another world, solВdiers from hell.
'What's our landing point looking like?' shouted Loken.
Vipus glanced at the readout on a pict-screen mounted above his head. 'Drifting! We'll hit the target, but off-centre. I hate these things. Give me a stormbird any day!'
Loken didn't bother replying, barely able to hear Nero as the atmosphere thickened beneath the
drop-pod and the jets on its underside kicked in. The drop-pod shuddered and began heating up as the enormous forces pushing against it turned to fire and noise.
He sat through the last few minutes while everyВthing around him was noise, unable to see the enemy he was about to fight and relinquishing conВtrol over his fate until the drop-pod hit.
Nero had been right when he said he had preВferred an assault delivered by stormbird, the precise, surgical nature of an airborne assault far preferable to a warrior than this hurtling descent from above.
But the Warmaster had decided that the speartip would be deployed by drop-pod, reasoning –rightly, Loken admitted – that thousands of Astartes smashing into the defenders' midst without warnВing would be more psychologically devastating. Loken ran through the moment the drop-pod would hit in his mind, preparing himself for when the hatch charges would blow open.
He gripped his bolter tightly, and checked for the tenth time that his chainsword was in its scabbard at his side. Loken was ready.
'Ten seconds, Locasta,’ shouted Vipus.
Barely a second later, the drop-pod impacted with such force that Loken's head snapped back and sudВdenly the noise was gone and everything went black.
sti
Lucius killed his first foe without even breaking stride.
The dead man's armour was like glass, shimmerВing and iridescent, and his halberd's blade was fashioned from the same reflective substance. A mask of stained glass covered his face, the mouth represented by leading and filled with teeth of gemВlike triangles.
Lucius slid his sword clear, blood smoking from its edge, as the soldier slumped to the floor. A curved arch of marble shone red in the dawn's early light above him and a swirl of dust and debris drifted around the drop-pod he had just leapt from.
The Precentor's Palace stood before him, vast and astonishing, a stone flower with the spire at its cenВtre like a spectacular twist of overlapping granite petals.
More drop-pods hammered into the ground behind him, the plaza around the palace's north entrances the main objective of the Emperor's ChilВdren. A nearby drop-pod blew open and Ancient Rylanor stepped from its red-lit interior, his assault cannon already cycling and tracking for targets. 'Nasicae!' yelled Lucius. To me!' Lucius saw a flash of coloured glass from inside the palace, movement beyond the sweeping stone panels of the entrance hall.
More palace guards reacted to the sudden, shockВing assault, but contrary to what Lucius had been expecting, they weren't screaming or begging for
mercy. They weren't even fleeing, or standing stock still, numb with shock.
With a terrible war cry the palace guard charged and Lucius laughed, glad to be facing a foe with some backbone. He levelled his sword and ran towards them, Squad Nasicae following behind him, weapons at the ready.
A hundred palace guardians ran at them, resplenВdent in their glass armour. They formed a line before the Astartes, levelled their halberds, and opened fire.
Searing needles of silver filled the air around Lucius, gouging the armour of his shoulder guard and leg. Lucius lifted his sword arm to shield his head and the needles spat from the glowing blade of his sword. Where they hit the stone around the entrance it bubbled and hissed like acid.
One of Nasicae fell beside Lucius, one arm molten and his abdomen bubbling.
'Perfection and death!' cried Lucius, running through the white-hot silver needles. The Emperor's Children and the Palace Guard clashed with a sound like a million windows breaking the terrible screamВing of the halberd-guns giving way to the clash of blade against armour and point-blank bolter fire
Lucius's first sword blow hacked through a halВberd shaft and tore through the throat of the man before him. Sightless glass eyes glared back at him, blood pumping from the guard's ruined throat, and Lucius tore the helm from his foe's head to better savour the sensation of his death.
A plasma pistol spat a tongue of liquid fire that wreathed an enemy soldier from head to foot, but the man kept fighting, sweeping his halberd down to cut deep into one of Lucius's men before another Astartes ripped off his head with a chainsword.
Lucius pivoted on one foot from a halberd strike and hammered the hilt of his sword into his oppoВnent's face, feeling a tight anger that the faceplate held. The guard staggered away from him and Lucius reversed his grip and thrust the blade through the gap between the glass plates at the guard's waist, feeling the blade's energy field burnВing through abdomen and spine.
These guards were slowing the Emperor's ChilВdren down, buying precious moments with their lives for something deeper in the palace. As much as Lucius was revelling in the sensations of the slaughter, the smell of the blood, the searing stink of flesh as the heat of his blade scorched it and the pounding of blood in veins, he knew he could not afford to give the defenders such moments.
Lucius ran onwards, slicing his blade through limbs and throats as he ran. He fought as though following the steps of an elaborate dance, a dance where he played the part of the victor and the enemy were there only to die. The Palace Guard were dying around him and his armour was drenched with their blood. He laughed in sheer joy. Warriors still fought behind him, but Lucius had to press on before the palace guard was able to stall their advance with more men in front of them.
'Squad Quemondil! Rethaerin! Kill these and then follow me!'
Fire sawed from every direction as the Emperor's Children forced their way towards the junction Lucius had reached. The swordsman darted his head past the corner, seeing a vast indoor seascape. A plume of water cascaded through a hole in the centre of a colossal granite dome, and a shaft of pink light fell alongside the water, sending brilliant rainbows of colour between the arches formed by the petals of the dome's surface.