Further back, a twisted creature with a withered twin fused to its back carried Leonid, the stunted sibling clutching the grimacing colonel tightly in its embrace. And further back yet came Ardaric Vaanes and his two surviving Space Marine renegades.
When the rapture of the Emperor's coming to life before the Unfleshed had died down, the creatures had embraced Uriel's cause with all the zeal and fervour of a crusade, mustering those who could hunt and fight to join them. It had made Uriel want to weep at the holy joy that infused every one of them and made his deception of them even harder to bear.
As he had gained his feet before the Lord of the Unfleshed, it had beckoned to one of its tribe, and another of the beasts loped towards him. Uriel saw that it was the creature he had fought in the outflow pool, his sword still jammed in its belly.
'Take blade,' said the Lord of the Unfleshed and Uriel nodded, gingerly gripping the hilt of the weapon. He had pulled, muscles straining as he fought the suction of flesh, bracing his feet on the floor of the manufactorum to gain better purchase. The sword was wedged tightly in the beast's body and he was forced to twist the blade to allow it to move. At last, it slid grudgingly from its sheath of flesh, the creature remaining stolidly silent throughout. As it came free, the giant beast moved to join the remainder of its awed brethren.
'Thank you,' said Uriel.
The Unfleshed nodded respectfully and Uriel had felt a glowing ember of hope fan to life in his heart.
But his initial relief and elation at such a turn of events had soon turned sour when he had been reunited with his comrades and Ardaric Vaanes spoke to him.
'They will kill you when they discover you have lied to them,' said the renegade as the Unfleshed had girt themselves for war, gathering crude iron cudgels. Most needed no weapons however, their horrific mutations equipping them for killing without the need for such things.
'Have I?' Uriel had said, guardedly. 'I do the Emperor's work, and so now do they.'
'The Unfleshed?' said Vaanes, aghast. 'You think the Emperor would work through such beasts? Look at them, they're monsters. How can you think that such creatures are capable of being instruments of His will? They are evil!'
'They carry the flesh of the Emperor within them,' snapped Uriel. 'The blood of ancient heroes flows in their veins and I will not fail them.'
'Don't think you can fool me, Ventris,' sneered Vaanes. 'You are no messenger of the Emperor, and I can see in your eyes that you know you're not either.'
'It does not matter what I believe any more,' said Uriel. 'What do you believe?'
'I believe that I was right about you.'
'What does that mean?'
'That I knew you were trouble the moment I saw you,' shrugged Vaanes. 'It doesn't matter anyway. As soon as we get to the surface, myself and the others will leave you and your motley band.'
'You are really going to turn your back on us? After all that has happened, all the blood spilt, the death and the pain? Can you really do that?'
'I can and I will,' snarled Vaanes. 'And who would blame me? Look around you, look at these monsters. They are all going to be dead soon, and their blood will be on your hands. Think about it, you're going to try and storm a besieged fortress with a tribe of cannibalistic mutants, a dying Guard colonel and a sergeant with one arm. I am a warrior, Ventris, plain and simple, and there is nothing left to me except survival. To go back to Khalan-Ghol is madness, and attacking that fortress isn't my idea of courage, it's more like suicide.'
Vaanes gripped Uriel's shoulder and said, 'You don't have to die here. Why don't you and Pasanius come with me. You're pretty handy in a fight and I could use a warrior like you.'
Uriel shrugged off the renegade's arm and said, 'You are a fine warrior, Ardaric Vaanes, but I was wrong to have thought you might regain your honour. You have courage, but I am glad that I do not go into battle with you again.'
Hatred flared in the renegade's eyes and his expression became hard as stone.
Without another word, Vaanes stalked away.
Uriel put the renegade from his mind as he saw a patch of bright light coming from ahead and realised that the noise of battle was swelling in volume as well. With renewed vigour, he climbed after the Lord of the Unfleshed and emerged, blinking into the harsh while light of Medrengard.
The noise of the battles raging around Honsou's fortress was tremendous, and Uriel saw that the secret paths of the Unfleshed had brought them out into the rocky uplands near the base of Khalan-Ghol itself, the plains before the fortress hundreds of metres below them.
High above, the ramparts of the fortress were wreathed in the fires of battle, and Uriel saw that they were going to have to ascend into the very heart of the maelstrom raging above them.
Many kilometres away, the clang of picks and shovels echoed in the hot, lamp-lit confines of the mineworks beneath the great ramp. A wide gallery had been excavated, some nine hundred metres wide and with a gently sloping floor. A warrior in stained iron armour watched as hundreds of slaves and overseers hauled vast flatbed wagons bearing drums of explosives and fuel to be packed into the length of the excavations.
The long gallery was almost full, packed with enough explosives to level the mountain itself, knew Corias Keagh, Master of Ordnance to Lord Berossus himself. The tunnels to reach the underside of Khalan-Ghol would be his masterwork. It had been hard, slow work and cost the lives of thousands, but he had succeeded in getting the complex web of tunnels to exactly the right spot. It was almost a shame to blow such a perfect example of siege mining apart.
Thirty metres above him - if his calculations were correct, and he had no reason to doubt them, for Obax Zakayo had been very precise in his treachery - were the catacombs of the fortress, where the revenants of previous masters of Khalan-Ghol were said to haunt its depths. Keagh knew that such tales were probably nonsense, but in the Eye of Terror it never paid to scoff at such things too openly.
But word of these tales had filtered back to the thousands of human soldiers who had spent the last few months billeted in the garrison tunnels he had constructed within the body of the great ramp, and he had heard ill-favoured mutterings concerning this attack. He had ritually flayed these doomsayers, but a pervasive sense of dread had already taken hold.
Despite this, all the soldiers were armed and ready to begin the assault upon the opening of Khalan-Ghol's belly, and Keagh was eager to finally get to grips with the foe.
His armour thrummed in the heat, its internal systems struggling to keep his body temperature even.
The heat in the tunnels was fearsome - more than Keagh would have expected at such a depth - but he paid it no mind, too intent on the spectacle of destruction he was about to unleash.
The battlements were aflame, gunfire and steel scything through men and stone in devastating fusillades of heavy calibre shells. Mobile howitzers moving in the midst of the armoured column approaching the top of the ramp rained high explosive shells within the last line of bastions, filling the air with spinning fragments of red-hot metal.
Men died in their hundreds, ripped apart in the devastating volleys or flamed from the wall by incendiary shells fired from the upper bastions of the approaching Titans.
But Berossus was not going to take Khalan-Ghol without a fight and Honsou's Titans and revetted artillery positions had laid-in targeting information and punished the approaching column terribly. Tanks exploded as armour-penetrating shells slashed down from above and tore through their lighter upper armour. Such casualties were bulldozed aside without mercy, tumbling down the steep sides of the ramp to smash to pieces on the rocks below. But no matter how many Honsou's gunners killed, the column continued its relentless advance.