The top of the breach was close now, he could make out individual forms through the smoke. He saw a Guardsman rigging another demolition charge and waited until the man stood up, ready to heave the explosives over the lip of the breach, before shooting him in the head. Blood sprayed from the stump of his neck and the man tumbled backwards, the primed demo charge falling from his dead fingers.
Honsou dropped flat as the rocks above him were swept clear of defenders by the massive explosion. Screams and desperate orders sounded from above. He leapt to his feet, drawing his sword and sprinting for all he was worth towards the billowing pillar of black smoke that wreathed the crest of the breach.
He collided with a pair of figures dressed in sky blue uniforms, and swept his sword across their chests, dropping them screaming to the ground. He could see more soldiers rushing to plug the sudden gap in their defence and shouted, 'Iron Warriors, with me!'
But Honsou was alone. He turned to face the nearest Guardsmen as they charged him. He killed the first men easily, but soon more and more clustered around him, entangling his blade with their bodies and restricting his movements with their corpses. He kicked out, spinning in a bloody arc as he clove his sword through his enemies. Shots and blades rang against his armour.
Where were the rest of his men?
He glanced down the sloping face of the breach. Below was a hell of lasers and bullets, enfilading fire from the flanking bastion ripping great holes in the ranks of the human soldiers as they struggled up the rocks. Hundreds had fallen, their bodies shredded by automatic weapons or burned by las-fire. The northern bastion had escaped relatively unscathed thus far. A few shells burst overhead, but the main shelling had been directed against this bastion, and the men assaulting it were now paying the price for that decision.
More enemies closed in around him as he shot, cut, stabbed, kicked and punched a red ruin through the defenders, roaring in triumph as the warriors of his company climbed onto the walls, sweeping left and right along the ramparts. Bolters fired again and again and men died in droves as the Iron Warriors took the ramparts of Kane bastion in blood and steel.
Silhouetted in the flames of the defenders' rout, Honsou leapt for the courtyard below, the stonework cracking under his weight. Enemy soldiers streamed towards the narrow neck of the bastion, Iron Warriors in hot pursuit. The momentum of the charge must not be lost. Despite this success, there were sure to be thousands more soldiers in the bastions either side of this one.
Honsou ran through the confusion of the battle, firing as he ran and cutting down those soldiers not quick enough to escape. At the neck of the bastion he saw the Imperial troopers were heading for a wide trench, crossed by a narrow bridge. Troops bottlenecked on the crossing despite the desperate shouts of officers for them not to. As Honsou watched, the bridge collapsed into the trench, crushing those unfortunate to be trapped beneath it. Some soldiers dropped into the trench, turning to fire on the Iron Warriors, but many more were streaming in panic to the main esplanade where a squat, round tower crouched at the base of the steep escarpment.
Black coated officers in skull-embossed peaked caps bellowed orders for their men to stand firm, enforcing these orders with bullets. Honsou let them shoot their own men, blasting holes in those enemy soldiers who weren't running. A swelling roar of hate filled the night as the Iron Warriors' indentured soldiery swarmed over the walls, fanning out towards the stairs or simply jumping into the courtyard. The bastion was theirs, now they just had to break out of it.
Stuttering volleys of las-fire blasted from the trench, but it was too little, too late as Honsou dropped into the prepared position and killed with wanton abandon. His sword chopped through a terrified Guardsman, the reverse stroke disembowelling another. He worked his way down the trench, hacking a bloody path through the defenders who fell back in horror from his deadly blade. As Honsou killed the Guardsmen, he revelled in his superiority, and could well understand the attraction of Khorne's path.
The Iron Warriors swept over the trench killing everything in it with the fury of those who had fought their way through hell and lived to tell the tale, butchering anything that came within reach.
From inside the keep of Tor Christo, Major Gunnar Tedeski watched the slaughter with a desperate heart. His men were dying and there was nothing he could do to stop it. He'd gambled with the lower guns, trusting that they would be able to stop the relentless advance of the Iron Warriors, but they had second guessed him, and now the fortress was as good as theirs.
He had failed and while Tor Christo's fate had never really been in doubt, it was galling for it to have fallen so quickly. The attackers had not yet broken out of Kane bastion, but they would surely overrun the entrenchments behind the bastion soon. He knew the images he was seeing on the remote pict-viewers did not capture the horror and carnage taking place outside. Thousands of men were streaming over the walls and it would only be a matter of time until the Mars and Dragon bastions came under attack from their vulnerable rears. If he let them, the men there would fight bravely, but they would die, and Tedeski would have no more deaths on his conscience.
'Poulsen!' sighed Tedeski, wiping dust and sweat from his brow.
'Sir?'
'Send the "Heaven's Fall" signal to all company commanders and Castellan Vauban.'
'"Heaven's Fall", sir?' queried Poulsen.
'Yes, damn you!' snapped Tedeski. 'Quickly, man!'
'Y-yes, sir,' nodded Poulsen hurriedly and ran off to pass the evacuation code to the vox operators.
Tedeski turned from his aide-de-camp and straightened his duty uniform jacket before addressing the remaining men and officers standing with him in the Christo's command centre.
'Gentlemen, it is time you left this place. It grieves me to say that Tor Christo is about to fall. As the commanding officer, I am ordering you to lead as many men as you can into the tunnels and make your way to the citadel. Castellan Vauban will need every man on the walls in the coming days and I will not deny him those men by sacrificing them needlessly here.'
Silence greeted his words until a junior officer asked, 'Will you not accompany us, sir?'
'No. I will stay to overload the reactor and deny our foes this fortress.'
Tedeski raised his arm as objections were shouted. 'I have made up my mind and will not be argued with. Now go! Time is of the essence!'
'The Heaven's Fall signal has been sent from Tor Christo, arch magos,' reported Magos Naicin, staring at the encrypted vox-thief before him.
'So soon?' hissed Amaethon, and though his flesh had lost any true emotive qualities, Naicin saw a passable approximation of genuine alarm cross the face of the arch magos.
'It appears that the men of the Guard are weaker than even I feared,' said Naicin sadly.
'We must protect ourselves! The citadel must not fall!'
'It must not,' agreed Naicin. 'What would you have me do, arch magos?'
'Blow the tunnel, Naicin! Do it now!'
Captain Poulsen hurried down the carved steps, clutching bundles of paper folders and an armful of data-slates. The fear was unlike anything he had felt before. He'd never been on the front line before, his talents in organisation and logistics making him much more valuable to the command echelons behind the line.