He breaks the bearhug and grins at Sullus.
‘Good to see you standing, Teus,’ he says.
‘We march for Macragge,’ Sullus replies stiffly.
‘You march where the hell you like,’ says Sydance. ‘I’m marching straight for Lorgar’s throat today. I’ve seen...’
He hesitates, and wrinkles his mouth in distaste.
‘Men are dead and gone, brothers,’ he says quietly, his smile behind a cloud. ‘I’ll spare you the list for now, but so many. Friends, warriors, heroes. The catalogue of the fallen will make you weep. Weep. The bastards slaughtered us. Unguarded. In our sleep. Surprise attack is an honourable tradition of war, but not from a supposed friend. Ah, I’m sure you saw plenty on your way from the port, Remus.’
‘I did.’
‘I will make an ocean of blood,’ says Sydance. ‘An ocean. I will soak the soil in the blood of these bastards. I will bleed them beyond the limits of their clotting factor. I will leave their heads on spikes.’
‘Vengeance, yes,’ Sullus nods. ‘Quite. We should however formulate a solid theoretical.’
‘Screw theoreticals!’ Sydance growls. ‘This is one occasion when we are excused our usual approach to war as a science. This is war as art. This is war as emotion.’
‘Yes,’ says Sullus. ‘Let us paint our faces and charge the enemy guns. They only outnumber us four-fold, after all. The few of us that remain will die, but at least we’ll have died expressing our anger. So that makes it all right.’
Sydance makes a contemptuous sound.
‘I’m with Sydance,’ says Ventanus, but quickly raises a warning finger before Sullus can object. ‘With one caveat. Given our losses, given our enemy’s numerical and technical superiority, I think our spirit, our rage for vengeance, our furious need for restitution... those things may be the only qualities that give us an advantage. They have made the mistake of hurting us instead of killing us. We are more dangerous. We will use the hurt.’
He looks at Sydance.
‘But there is always a thirteenth eldar.’
Sydance laughs.
Sullus is unable to cover a tiny smile.
‘We must cover our backs,’ Ventanus says. ‘We must channel our rage, and temper it with strategy. We must use every weapon: fury, vengeance, intelligence. Fury is our practical. Intelligence is our theoretical. Neither works alone. We would disgrace Guilliman in this hour if we forgot that. Information is victory.’
He turns to Cyramica.
‘Please, inform the server I wish to begin vox transmissions. I need the best signal encryption she can give me, and any source modifiers. Anything she can do to disguise our position.’
Cyramica nods.
Flanked by Sydance and Sullus, Ventanus walks into the vox-caster room. He takes up the speaker horn.
9
It’s darker above ground than beneath it.
The open air is a poison fog, and the dense blackness moves hard on a wind that pushes through the Ourosene Hills.
Brother Braellen doesn’t believe it’s a natural wind. A natural weather pattern. During a break in the gunfire, he heard Sergeant Domitian speculate that it was atmospheric displacement: major pressure and air patterns thrown into upheaval by orbital bombardment.
There’s certainly a line of firestorm glow around the lip of the southern sky.
6th Company, supported by the Army and stragglers from two other Ultramarines companies at the Ourosene muster, has pulled back from the devastated ground camp areas, and taken up position defending the surface tower of one of the northern arcologies.
Braellen hasn’t seen inside the arcologies, but he knows they are huge sub-ground complexes. Some of them are habs. This one, apparently. There are hundreds of thousands of citizen workers down there, and the 6th is the only thing stopping the enemy from getting at them.
The surface tower is a small fortress, a significant fortified structure that covers and defends the mouth of the arcology system. Its sublevels contain entrances to the main underground arterial, to walkways and cargo-freight systems, and even maglev rail lines, all feeding the huge subterranean complex.
The tower is a good place to make a stand.
The enemy has been coming up the pass all day. Brotherhood cultists at the fore, then Word Bearers, then armour. The cultists seem mindless, frenzied. They are drumming and chanting nonsense. Heedless of their own lives, they rush the walls and gates, and are cut down. Some are wired to explode, and detonate themselves against the walls in the hope of bringing them over.
Braellen is intrigued by their behaviour. The cultists seem willing and eager. That is clear from their chanting and drumming and mindless sacrifice. But it is a group mentality, a hysteria. He has observed Word Bearers at the back of the vast host spurring them on, driving them forward with pain and threats. They are enslaved killers, their hysteria enforced by cruel authority.
Perhaps they have been promised some redemption, some metaphysical reward for their bloody efforts. Perhaps they hope that if they survive devoted service, they might be freed.
Perhaps they know that refusing the XVII is a more unpleasant option.
A fresh wave comes at the tower. Captain Damocles has ordered that the Army provide fusillades for the instrumentation of each repulse. The legionaries must withhold, saving their more precious munitions for Legiones Astartes targets.
The link to the arcology is vital. Significant reserves of standard Army munitions can be raised from arcology silos to supply the human defenders. But the reserves of Legion-specific munitions, including ordnance for their fighting vehicles, is limited to the supplies carried by the battle-brothers, or retrieved from the muster camp before it was abandoned.
Every bolter round must count. Las-bolts and small-arms hard-rounds can be hosed at the waves of screaming knife brothers.
Legion weapons are withheld for more significant targets.
Those targets are coming. Apart from the Word Bearers, who are yet to commit in serious numbers, there are signs of major armour massing down the throat of the pass, perhaps even war-engines.
Braellen both understands and supports his commander’s practical. Tempting though it is, the legionaries must wait until their abilities are the only ones that will do.
He doesn’t understand the enemy.
What has transformed them so? What has turned them? They have all heard Domitian’s stories about the old rivalry and the competition.
So what? Show him two Legions that don’t compete for glory and distinction? The rebuke was just that: a rebuke for impoverished service and performance. And it was more than four decades ago!
What is this now? Are the Word Bearers and their demented master so addled that they can brood for forty years, and finally act with such disproportionate ignominy that the galaxy draws a gasp of surprise?
Braellen can tell that Captain Damocles is wounded by it. He has never seen him so driven or grim. It is the treachery more than the loss of life. The treachery has taken his breath away, and shaken his belief in the sanctity of the Imperial truth.
That’s all before you even begin to consider the transformation of the Word Bearers: their altered schemes and heraldry, their expressed choice to decorate their armour with esoteric and frankly bizarre symbols and modifications. Their willingness to consort with superstitious, heathen zealots.
Have they been consumed by some mass delusion of sorcery?
Or has something darker and more insidious got its poison into their veins and twisted their minds against their kin?
The next wave is coming. Braellen sees them running up the slopes, a mass of swirling black robes and brandished weapons. The knife brothers, thousands of them, stampede over the dead left by the last charge and roll like a river breaking its banks towards the gate and storm walls.