To Eidolon, the survivors of the first wave were ignorant and mindless, deserving only death, but
they had reckoned without Lucius. He licked his lips at the thought of once again facing the warriors of his Legion; warriors worthy of the name. EneВmies he could respect. Or earn the respect of…
Lucius could practically see the enemy squads deploying with such rapid confidence that they looked more like players in a complex parade-ground move than soldiers at war.
He could taste the moment when the battle would really begin.
He wanted it right there and then, but he also knew how much more delicious the taste of battle was when the timing was perfect.
Windows shattered as fire from the tanks ripped through the chapel, kicking up shards of marble and glass.
'Hold!' ordered Lucius. Despite everything, his Astartes were still Emperor's Children and they would not break ranks like undisciplined World Eaters.
He risked a glance through the splintered glass to see the Land Raiders churning up the marble of the plaza. Predator battle tanks followed them, . acting as mobile gun platforms that blew great shuddering chunks from the chapel's battlements. Lascannon fire streaked back and forth, Kaitheron's men attempting to cripple the advancВing vehicles and the Land Raiders' sponson-mounted weapons trying to pick off the Astartes on the roof.
A Predator tank slewed to a halt as its track was blown off and another vehicle burst into multiВcoloured flames. Purple-armoured bodies tumbled past the window; corpses served as an appetiser to the great feast of death.
Lucius drew his sword, feeling the music build inside him until he felt he could no longer contain it. The familiar hum of his sword's energy field became part of the rhythm and he felt himself slipВping into the duellist's dance, the weaving stream of savagery he had perfected over centuries of killing. How many men were in the assault? Certainly a large chunk of Eidolon's command.
Lucius had fewer men, but this battle was all about winning glory and spectacle.
A tank round shot through a window and burst against the ceiling, showering them in fragments and smoke.
Lucius saw streaks of bolter fire from the palace entrance – Tarvitz was drawing Eidolon in and Eidolon had no choice but to dance to his tune. He heard a musical clang and saw the assault ramps of the Land Raiders slam open and Lucius glimpsed the close-packed armoured bodies within.
'Go!' he yelled and the jump packs of the assault units opened up behind him, catapulting the warВriors into battle. Lucius followed in their wake, vaulting through the chapel window. Squad Nasi-cae came after him and the rest of his warriors followed in turn.
Battle: the dance of war. Lucius knew that against an enemy like Eidolon, there would be no time for anything but the most intense applicaВtions of his martial perfection. His consciousness shifted and everything was snapped into wonВdrous focus, every colour becoming bright and dazzling and every sound blaring and discordant along his nerves.
The duellist's dance took him into the enemy as battle erupted in all its perfectly marshalled chaos around him. Heavy fire streaked down from the roof and Land Raiders twisted on their tracks to bring their guns to bear on the Emperor's Children charging from the chapel.
The Space Marines outside the chapel charged at the same instant, and Eidolon's force was attacked from two sides at once.
Lucius ducked blades and bolts, his sword lashВing like a serpent's tongue. Eidolon's force reeled. Squad Quelmondil battled ferociously with the enemy warriors emerging from the nearest Land Raider. He danced past them, savage joy kicking in his heart and he rolled under a spray of bolter fire to come up and stab his blade through the abdomen of an enemy sergeant.
Death was an end in itself, expressing Lucius's superiority through the lives he took, but he had a higher purpose. He knew what he had to do, and his strangely distorted senses sought out the glint of gold or the flutter of a banner, anything indicating the presence of one of Fulgrim's chosen.
Then he saw it; armour trimmed in black instead of gold, a helmet worked into a stern, grimacing skulclass="underline" Chaplain Charmosian.
The black-armoured warrior stood proud of the top hatch of a Land Raider, directing the battle with sharp chops of his eagle-winged crozius. Lucius grinned manically, setting off through the battle to face Charmosian and slay him in a fight worthy of the Legion's epics.
'Charmosian!' he yelled, his voice sounding like the most vibrant music imaginable. 'Keeper of the Will! I am Lucius, once your brother, now your
nemesis!'
Charmosian turned his skull helmet towards Lucius and said, 'I know who you are!'
The chaplain clambered from the hatch and stood on top of the Land Raider, daring Lucius to approach him. Charmosian was a battlefield leader and to fulfil that role he needed the respect of the Legion, respect that could only be earned fighting from the front.
He would be a worthy foe, but that wasn't why Lucius had sought him out.
Lucius leapt onto the Land Raider's track mountВing and charged up its glacis until he was face to face with Charmosian. Bolter fire flew in all direcВtions, but it was irrelevant.
This was the only battle in Lucius's mind.
'We taught you too much pride,’ said CharВmosian, bringing his lethal crozius around in a strike designed to crush Lucius's chest. He brought
his blade up to deflect the crozius, and the dance entered a new and urgent phase. Charmosian was good, one of the Legion's best, but Lucius had spent many years training for a fight such as this.
The chaplain's crozius was too heavy to block full-on, so the swordsman let it slide from his blade as Charmosian swung at him time and time again, frusВtrating him into putting more strength into his blows. A little longer. A few more moments, and Lucius would have his chance.
He loved the way Charmosian hated him, feeling it as something bright and refreshing.
Lucius could read the pattern of Charmosian's attacks and laughed as he saw the clumsy intent written over every blow. Charmosian wanted to kill Lucius with one almighty stroke, but his crozius rose too far, held too long inert as the chaplain gathered his strength.
Lucius lunged, his sword sweeping out in a high cut that slashed through the chaplain's upraised arms. The crozius tumbled to the ground and CharВmosian roared in pain as his arms from the elbows down fell with it.
The battle raged around the scene and Lucius let the noise and spectacle of it fill his over-stimulated senses. The battle was around him, and his victory was all that mattered.
You know who I am,’ said Lucius. 'Your last thought is of defeat,’
Charmosian tried to speak but before the words were out Lucius spun his sword in a wide arc and
Charmosian's head was sliced neatly from his shoulders.
Crimson sprayed across the gold of the Land Raider's hull. Lucius caught the head as it spun through the air and held it high so the whole batВtlefield could see it.
Around him, thousands of the Emperor's ChilВdren fought to the death as Eidolon's force, hit from two sides, reeled against the palace defences and fell back. Tarvitz led the counter-strike and Eidolon's attack was melting away.
He laughed as he saw Eidolon's command tank, a Land Raider festooned with victory banners, rise up over a knot of rubble as it retteated from the fighting.
The loyalists had won this battle, but Lucius found that he didn't care.
He had won his own battle, and pulling CharВmosian's head from the skull faced helmet and throwing it aside, he knew he had what he needed to ensure that the song of death kept playing for him.
The Warsingers' Chapel was quiet. Hundreds of new bodies lay around it, purple and gold armour scorched and split, runnels of blood gathering between the stained marble tiles. In some places they lay alongside the blackened armour of the World Eaters who had died in the initial assaults on the Choral City.