'I'll take the chapel and Lucius can take the ground level,’ continued Tarvitz, turning back to Loken. 'I swear that sometimes I think Lucius is actually enjoying this,’
'A little too much, if you ask me,’ replied Loken. 'You need to keep an eye on him,’
A familiar dull explosion sounded and a tower of rubble and smoke burst from the Choral City's torВtured cityscape to the north of the palace.
Amazing,’ said Tarvitz, 'that there are any Death Guard left alive over there,’
'Death Guard are tough to kill,’ replied Loken, heading for the makeshift ladder that led down to the remains of the gallery dome.
Despite his words, he knew that it really was amazing. Mortarion, never one to do things with finesse, had simply landed one of his fleet's largest orbital landers on the edge of the western trenches and saturated the defences with turret fire while his Death Guard deployed.
That had been the last anyone had heard of the Death Guard in the Choral City.
Though from the haphazardly aimed artillery shells that landed daily in the traitors' camps, it was
clear that some loyal Death Guard still resisted Mortarion's efforts to exterminate them.
'I only hope we live as long,' said Tarvitz. We're running low on supplies and ammunition. Soon we'll start running low on Astartes,’
'As long as one is alive, captain, we'll fight,' promised Loken. 'Horus picked some unfortunate enemies in you and me. We'll make him regret ever taking us on.'
'Then we'll speak again after Angron's been sent scurrying,’ said Tarvitz.
'Until then.'
Loken dropped down into the dome, leaving Tarvitz alone for a moment to look across the blasted city. How long had it been since he had been surrounded by anything other than the nightВmarish place the Choral City had become? Two months? Three?
Ashen skies and smouldering ruins surrounded the palace for as far as the eye could see in all direcВtions, the city resembling the kind of hell the Isstvanians themselves might once have believed in.
Tarvitz shook the thought from his mind.
'There are no hells, no gods, no eternal rewards or punishments,’ he told himself.
Lucius could hear the killing. He could read die sound of it as though it were written down before him like sheet music. He knew the difference between the war-cries of a World Eater and those of
a Son of Horus, and the variance between the tonal quality of a volley of bolter fire launched to support an attack or to defend an obstacle.
The chapel Saul had tasked him widi defending was a strange place to be the site of the Great CruВsade's last stand. Not so long ago it had been the nerve centre of an enemy regime, but now its makeshift defences were the only thing holding off the far superior traitor forces.
'Sounds like a nasty one,’ said Brother Solathen of Squad Nasicae, hunched down by the sill of the chapel window. 'They might break through,’
'Our friend Loken can handle fhem,’ sneered Lucius. Angron wants to get some more kills. That's all he wants. Listen? Can you hear that?'
Solathen cocked his head as he listened. Astartes hearing, like most of their senses, was finely honed, but Solathen didn't seem to recognise Lucius's point. 'Hear what, captain?'
'Chainaxes. But they're not cutting into ceramite or other chainblades; they're cutting into stone and steel. The World Eaters can't get to grips with the Sons of Horus over there, so they're trying to hack through the barricades,’
Solathen nodded and said, 'Captain Tarvitz knows what he's doing. The World Eaters only know one way to fight. We can use that to our advantage,’
Lucius frowned at Solathen's praise of Saul Tarvitz, aggrieved mat his own contributions to the defences appeared to have been overlooked. Hadn't
he killed Vardus Praal? Hadn't he managed to get his men to safety when the vims bombs and the firestorm had hit?
He turned his bitter expression away and stared through the chapel window across the plaza still stained dark with charred ruins. Amazingly the chapel window was still intact, although its panes had been distorted by the heat of the firestorm, bulging and discoloured with vein-like streaks that reminded Lucius of an enormous insectoid eye.
The chapel itself was more bizarre inside than out, constructed from curved blocks of green stone in looming biological shapes that looked as though a cloud of noxious-looking fumes had suddenly petrified as it billowed upwards. The altar was a great spreading membrane of paler purple stone, like a complex internal organ opened up and pinned for study against the far wall.
The World Eaters aren't the ones you should be worried about, brother,’ continued Lucius idly. 'It's us.' 'Us, captain?'
'The Emperor's Children,’ said Lucius. 'You know how our Legion fights. They're the dangerous ones
out there,’
Most of the surviving loyalist Emperor's Children were holding the chapel. Tarvitz had taken a force to cover the nearest gate, but several squads were arrayed among the odd organ-like protrusions on the floor below. Squad Nasicae had only four memВbers left, including Lucius himself, and they headed
the assault element of the survivors' force alone with Squads Quemondil and Raetherin.
Tarvitz had deployed Sergeant Kaitheron on the roof of the chapel with his support squad as well as the majority of the Emperor's Children's remaining heavy weapons. Astartes from the tactical squads were at the chapel windows or in cover further inside. The rest of Lucius's troops were stationed in cover outside the chapel, among the barricades of fallen stone slabs they had set up in the early days of the siege.
Two thousand Space Marines, enough for an entire battle zone of the Great Crusade, were defending a single approach to the palace with the Warsingers' Chapel as the lynchpin of their line
Movement caught Lucius's eye and he peered through the distorted window into the blackened buildings across from him. There! A glimpse of gold.
He smiled, knowing full well how the Emperor's Children fought.
'Contact!' he announced to the rest of his force. Third block west, second floor,’
'On it,’ replied Sergeant Kaitheron, a no-nonsense weapons officer who treated war as a mathematical problem to be solved with angles and weight of fire. Lucius heard the squads moving on the roof, trainВing weapons on the area he had indicated.
'West front, make ready!' ordered Lucius. Several of the tactical squads hurried into firing positions along Lucius's side of the chapel.
The tension was delicious, and Lucius felt a surge of ecstatic sensation crawling along his veins as he heard the song of death building in his blood. A raw, toe-to-toe conflict meant opportunities to exerВcise perfection in war, but to make it truly memorable it needed these moments of feverish anticipation when the full weight of potential death and glory surged around his body.
'Got them,’ called Kaitheron from the chapel roof. 'Emperor's Children. Major force over several floors. Armour too. Land Raiders and Predators. Lascannon, to the fore! Heavy bolters, cover the open ground mid-range and overlap!'
'Eidolon,’ said Lucius.
Lucius could see them now, hundreds of Astartes in the purple and gold of the Legion he idolised, gathering in the dead eyes of ruined structures.
'They'll get the support into position first,’ said Lucius. 'Then they'll use the Land Raiders to bring the troops in. Mid– to close-range the infantry will move in. Hold your fire until then,’
Tracks rumbled as the Land Raiders, resplendent with gilded eagle's wings and frescoes of war on their armour-plated sides, ground through the shatВtered ruins of the Choral City. Each was full of Emperor's Children, the galaxy's elite, primed by Eidolon and Fulgrim to treat the men they had once called brothers as foes worthy only of exterВmination.