Though the eldar were an androgynous race, Heka’tan could tell that this one was male. He wore no helm but sported an array of sigilic tattoos upon his pale and imperious face. His long hair was swept back, tied up with a runic clasp that ran around his temples in two half-hemispheres that each terminated with a ruby-like gemstone at his forehead. It had the effect of a crown and once again the Salamander was struck by the sheer decadence and arrogance of the aliens.
Unlike the others, he wore viridian robes shot through with cerulean blue. He parted the ensemble to draw forth a glittering runesword of unimaginable beauty. The weapon was psychically linked to its bearer and the blade crackled actinically as witch-fire filled the eldar’s eyes.
A growing void expanded slowly around him as the other aliens backed away.
Heka’tan soon found himself with clear ground between him and the warlock.
Kaitar, Luminor and the rest of the command squad were in sync with their sergeant’s orders before they were even given.
“In Vulkan’s name, kill that thing!”
They charged together. The warlock watched them come, his blade held in a swordsman’s guard position. He wore the leggings and tunic of a warrior-ascetic, festooned with runic iconography and arcana. Moments before the clash he tipped his head in what might have been a salute.
Heka’tan’s first blow cut air and fouled in the ground, churning earth as the warlock weaved aside. Kaitar fared better but his gladius was repelled by the flat of the eldar’s sword. Luminor snapped off a half-clip from his bolt pistol but the shells detonated harmlessly from a kine-shield impelled by the warlock’s open palm. A blast of force put the Apothecary on his back, and Brother Tu’var threw himself in the way of the eldar’s sword to save him from the subsequent sword strike. The runic blade penetrated the Salamander’s guard easily, snapping Tu’var’s gladius, cleaving into his armour and sinking up to the hilt in his chest.
Tearing the blade free, the warlock spun and cut open Angvenon’s plastron and fed a jag of lightning into the blow, spinning the Salamander and launching him off his feet. Battle-plate smoking, Angvenon tried to rise, but fell onto his front and stayed down.
“Break him!” snarled Heka’tan, taking another swing. His world had condensed to this one fight, the rest of the battle a dim and bloody blur around him. This was the anvil, he realised, the moment when he would overcome and rise or capitulate and fall.
It was like three warrior-knights fighting a dancer as the eldar dodged their clumsy blows whilst attacking with rapid thrusts of his rune sword.
Heka’tan refused to give in.
I am Legion. I am a warrior born.
The warlock had reduced three of the Emperor’s Angels to oafs wielding lumps of noisy metal and that rankled at Heka’tan. He swung again but cut at shadows. Bringing up his pistol he pulled the trigger, but was hit by a barrage of lightning from the warlock’s clenched fist. Warning icons sprang into life instantly across the captain’s retinal display. Pain suppressors went to work in the same bio-mechanical reaction, keeping him on his feet. The bolt pistol was overloaded and exploded in his fist, showering Heka’tan with hot shrapnel. He was only dimly aware of the spasms jolting his muscles but knew he was injured when his vision started clouding.
“Fire-born!” It was as much a yell of defiance as it was a cry for reinforcement to the others.
Kaitar and Luminor closed in, robbing the warlock of a killing blow. The view was narrowing, made worse by his battle-helm, so Heka’tan tore at the release clamps to discard it.
It clattered to the ground and the smells, sights and sounds of the alien jungle staggered him before his genhanced senses could compensate. He still carried his chainsword, buzzing belligerently in his hand. One of Bannon’s ex-flamer division appeared in Heka’tan’s peripheral vision and he shouted to him above the din.
“Legionary! Hell and flame!”
A swathe of burning promethium swept over the combatants.
Kaitar fell, buffeted by the blast and on fire, while Luminor shielded himself with his forearm. The warlock thwarted the flame storm with another kine-shield, but as he threw up one defence he lowered another. Heka’tan leapt through the blaze with his chainsword in a two-handed grip and brought it down savagely as he landed.
A feeble, choking sound emanated from the eldar’s gullet as he swallowed a metre of churning blade. All the wards and sigils protecting the alien were broken, his preternatural swiftness undone in a single brutal moment. He glared at Heka’tan who glared back, his eyes alive with a vengeful crimson glow. Pain should have slowed him, taken him out of the fight, but the sons of Vulkan were tenacious, just as their father had taught them to be.
He came in close, teeth locked together in half grimace and half snarl. “Salamanders fight as one!”
A gobbet of acid spit seared the ashen cheek of the eldar as Heka’tan visited a final insult upon him before the light in the alien’s eyes dimmed and he died. Wrenching his blade from the corpse, Heka’tan prepared to fight on.
Ahead of the Salamanders was the node, but the warlock had bought the others in his coven enough time to tap into its power. A coruscation of energy was rippling between the three witches as if the stone was feeding and enhancing their abilities.
Heka’tan had time to lift his chainblade in a rallying gesture before a lightning whip struck out from the node. The eldar coven channelled it, a bending crackling bolt of energy that ripped Dreadnoughts off their feet and flattened Salamanders. It swept across the Legion in a wave, leaving electrified and scorched battle-plate behind it. The eldar still engaged in the melee were struck too, the shimmering beam was undiscriminating, and Heka’tan realised then just what they were willing to sacrifice to protect the node. Mercifully he and his command squad had been spared from the first bolt but a second was already building.
Unleashed in a matter of seconds, the bolt would easily outstrip him for pace. It hurt like hellfire but still Heka’tan ran with all the fading strength in his body.
ENGINES SCREAMING, the Stormbird drew closer to the lightning storm. A flash lit the darkened interior of the hold, revealing the forbidding form of Vulkan standing by the open side-hatch. It was drawn as wide as it would go and the wind whipped within the gunship, buffeting the oaths of moment pinned to the warriors’ armour. Vulkan was stooped, eyes narrowed as he focused on the node. Its pointed tip was the focal point for the storm and the runes along its surface glowed in sympathetic union with the lightning. Even from above and at distance, it was monolithic. Destroying it would not be easy. The grip Vulkan had around his hammer’s haft tightened.
Behind him, the Pyre Guard waited with barely fettered aggression.
Unleash us…
The primarch could sense what they desired as surely as he felt it in his own blood.
A crack of lightning surged past the side of the ship, clipping one of its wings, and the hold shuddered and pitched. Smoke trailed from the wound in the armour plate. It wasn’t serious enough for the Stormbird to withdraw but they’d come about as far as they could without risking a crash.
Vulkan didn’t even reach for a handhold. His body was utterly still, his intensity unbroken.
Slowly, the pilot brought them back on course and the node loomed again, several metres below and wreathed with crackling power. The witch coven at its foundation was ready to siphon its energy into another bolt. The devastation wrought by the first must have been egregious to witness on the ground and from above its destructive trail was all too plain to see.
It seemed strange for the eldar to protect the edifice with such vehemence when their tactics suggested an entirely different method of warfare. Here, by holding onto the obelisk, they exposed all of their weakness and mitigated their strengths. The suspicion of something unseen and unknown entered the primarch’s mind, but for now he could not affect it, whatever it was. Instead, he concentrated on the thing he could do something about.