The vast beak clacks. Thiel sees that secondary snake bodies, dozens of them, form a beard, a frill under the chin of the beak. They writhe like tentacles, like pseudopods. The daemon is a hundred giant snakes fused into one titanic abomination, sharing one beaked head.
Bormarus rakes with his heavy bolter, and Zabo spears scalding flame. The daemon-snake rears back, and then lashes out with its frilled head. The beak catches one of the squad, a battle-brother called Domnis, and shears him in a line from the groin to the left shoulder.
Empion wades in, unflinching, circling his thunder hammer to gather momentum. The daemon-snake strikes at him, and he meets the strike, turning its beak aside with a staggering blow. The impact shakes the chamber and causes a pop of overpressure.
The beak is cracked. Ichor trickles out. Thiel strides in to support the Chapter Master, and when the daemon-snake strikes again it is greeted by the hammer and the electromagnetic longsword.
The hammer connects above the bridge of the massive beak, and deconstructs a brittle, avian eye-socket. Simultaneously, Thiel runs his longsword’s razor edge up the rising belly and throat under the beard of secondary tails. The sword parts white scaled flesh, and opens bright pink meat and transparent bone. Internal pink sacs, swirled with white fat, burst and an alimentary canal ruptures.
The daemon-snake rears, its beak wide. Its secondary snake bodies and vestigial hooves thrash and spasm furiously. Partially digested, dismembered parts of human beings and Space Marines spatter out of the deep, gutting wound Thiel has delivered. The body parts spew wide in an outrush of gastric fluid.
The Ultramarines can all hear a colossal booming noise. It is the daemon’s immense tail end, still coiled in the magazine below, thrashing in pained frenzy against the metal walls of the compartment.
The daemon slides back through the hatch to escape its tormentors.
‘The hatch! Close the hatch!’ Zabo yells. He has a locked string of ten frag grenades in his hand. As Empion punches the hatch control, Zabo arms one and lobs the whole string into the deck hatch.
The hatch is almost shut when the grenades go off. The blast jams the hatch a few centimetres from full closure, and the narrow slit focuses the contained blast pressure into a tight, extreme geyser of flame and debris that jets up and burns out across the chamber ceiling.
The booming stops.
Empion glances at Thiel.
‘Every door, a new horror,’ he says.
‘And every moment a moment lost,’ Thiel replies.
It is not the last time they will echo this call and return.
It is not the last compartment of the flagship they will have to clear a path through.
7
The Word Bearers launch a third wave of Assault Marines at the palace.
Ventanus, Selaton and Greavus have held the defence force together, and kept the gate and the bridge, though the bridge is chewed down to shreds of its former majesty. The second wave almost pushed them out of the gate into the inner yard, but for serious counter-fire from Arook’s skitarii.
The third wave, Ventanus knows, will be the critical phase. He sees it coming: one formation of jump troops swooping for the bitterly contested gate, another veering south to hit the wall further around the perimeter. Their intention will be to break in on Sparzi’s artillery positions.
Remus Ventanus is resolved to endure whatever he must endure, but he knows that resistance must crumble eventually. It is a calculable inevitability. It is a matter of numbers. It is a solid practical.
He clings to one hope. He clings to the whispered, relayed message from his home company. Let it not be a lie or a trick, he thinks. I’ve had enough of tricks this day. If it isn’t a lie, let them be fast enough. Let them be fleet of foot and tread. Let them get here while being here still matters.
He knows the wave is coming. There are precursor signs. The brotherhood cultists swarm yet again at the gate and ditch. The chanting becomes so loud that Ventanus imagines the pulse of it, the massed breath of it, will blow away the fetid smog. The enemy strikes at the walls with more rockets, with mortars, and with medium artillery. Shells punch holes in the old walls, or drop long into the gardens and compounds, scattering gun-crews and reserve positions. Selaton reports hearing tracks clattering in the fog, suggesting that the shelling is coming from enemy tanks or self-propelled guns. Ventanus doesn’t hear anything: his hearing is dulled by the sheer pitch of the intense combat in which he has been locked.
The Assault Marines shriek down. Their jump packs generate rasping, heat-shimmered forks of blue flame. The brotherhood charges crush the bridge barricades. Part of the top arch of the gate explodes and collapses in a slip of dust and loose stones. The defenders brace.
Greavus curses, blood matting his already red hair.
A Baneblade, a crimson behemoth, looms out of the fog on the far side of the earthwork and lines up on the gate and west wall. Brotherhood warriors swarm around the bulk of the massive tank.
The superheavy tank takes aim with its primary siege weapon. The Demolisher cannon clanks into alignment. Its skirts and side-plating are painted with eight-pointed star designs and what appears to be considerable quantities of scrawled handwriting.
A Baneblade.
Ventanus knows the balance has finally and firmly tipped in favour of the Word Bearers.
The close combat has already begun. There’s no time to think about the tank.
He is too busy fighting off a pair of Assault Marines. One has wounded him in the side. The other is laying in with a power axe. The confines of the gate cramp the full measure of the axe-wielder’s swing, but the Word Bearer has already killed two Army troopers and a skitarii.
Selaton covers his captain’s back, turning aside the power axe with a battered combat shield whose surface decoration has been obliterated into a billion raw metals, nicks and scratches. Ventanus and Selaton fight back-to-back. Ventanus clashes his power sword with his opponent’s kinetic mace. Selaton drives a chainsword across the guard of the axe-wielder.
All the while, Ventanus has half an eye on the tank.
Selaton takes a hit. The power axe gets past his combat shield and hacks into his shoulder guard. It doesn’t bite through to the flesh underneath, but the damage is deep, and it jams the articulation of his arm.
Selaton tries to compensate, but his balance is twisted. He stumbles sideways, lurched by the momentum of the axe wrenching out.
His guard is therefore poor as he takes the second swing in the chest.
The wound is bloody. The force of it knocks Selaton down, and it looks as though he has the entire bite of the axe buried in his chest. In truth, his carapace has absorbed the lethal part of the hit, but the flesh is sliced and – until Selaton’s transhuman biology kicks in to staunch it – bleeds copiously.
Ventanus is too committed to protect his fallen sergeant. The Assault Marine with the power axe closes down for the finishing blow.
Greavus punches him in the side of the head with his power fist, compacting his helm like a foil ration tray.
Greavus hauls Selaton back to his feet. They struggle for a second to free the axe from Selaton’s armour.
Ventanus kills his opponent. Fury directs his hand. He plants his blade through the Word Bearer’s helmet, slicing off the right-hand third of it. Something that for all the galaxy resembles an anatomy scholam cross-section is visible as the Assault Marine sags aside.