He raised himself triumphant on the warsmith of the attacking army and brought his axe down again and again on the grinning skull-faced sarcophagus, finally splitting it apart with his fifth blow.
The sounds of battle faded and, for the first time in months, the fighting stopped as the battling Iron Warriors paused to watch the unfolding drama being played out before them.
Honsou knelt atop Berossus's sarcophagus and punched his pristine silver arm into the dreadnought. With a grunt and wrench, he ripped something clear in a welter of black blood and amniotic fluids.
He held up his arm and shouted, 'Your warsmith is dead!'
In his hand he held a monstrously swollen skull and dripping spinal column, fused wires like veins dangling from the last mortal remains of Warsmith Berossus.
The tension was palpable and Honsou knew he had to cow the scores of enemy warriors or risk this slaughter becoming a battle of mutually assured destruction. With a roar of hate, he swung the spinal column like a club and smashed Berossus's skull to splinters of bone against the ruptured iron shell that had once housed it.
'Your warsmith is dead!' he repeated, hurling away the remains. 'But you do not need to die! Berossus is gone and by right of conquest I offer any warrior who wants it a place in my army. You have proved yourselves warriors of courage, and I have need of such men.'
No one moved, and for the briefest second Honsou thought he had made a grave error.
But then a warrior in heavily tooled armour of burnished iron and sporting a burnt and tattered back banner of gold and black stepped forwards.
The warrior's armour was bloody and scored from the hard fighting. He removed his cracked helmet, revealing scarred and pitted features topped with a close-cropped mohawk.
'Why should we join you, half-breed?' he shouted. 'You may have defeated Berossus, but Toramino will wipe you and your fortress from the face of Medrengard.'
'What is your name, warrior?' said Honsou, jumping from the broken carcass of the dreadnought and marching purposefully towards the Iron Warrior.
'I am Cadaras Grendel, Captain of Arms of Lord Berossus.'
Honsou stood before the bloody warrior, seeing the defiance in his eyes.
'Aye,' agreed Honsou, raising his voice so that all the warriors gathered in the ruins of his fortress could hear him. 'You may be right, Cadaras Grendel. Toramino has the strength of arms to destroy me, I cannot argue with that. But ask yourself this… why has he not blooded his warriors yet?'
Honsou turned to address the rest of the assembled warriors, raising his arms and punctuating his words by punching the air with his axe. 'Where was Toramino while you all fought and bled to get here? You know who built this place and you know that only the bravest of warriors could take it. Where was Toramino while you were dying in your hundreds to storm this fortress?'
He could see his words were having the desired effect. Honsou felt a hot rash of adrenaline race around his body as he saw that he had correctly anticipated the rancour these brave Iron Warriors must have felt at the bloody work they did while Toramino's warriors watched them die.
'Toramino hung you out to dry and laughed while he did it. Even if you had succeeded here, do you think the spoils of Khalan-Ghol would be yours to plunder? Toramino has betrayed you, just as the Emperor betrayed the Iron Warriors in the ancient days. Will you be used like that or are you men of iron?'
'We are men of iron!' shouted Cadaras Grendel, the shout taken up by his surviving warriors.
'Then join me!' bellowed Honsou, gripping Grendel's shoulder guards. 'Join me and avenge this betrayal!'
Months of bitterness at the deaths of his men rose to the surface on Grendel's face and he nodded. 'Aye. Toramino will pay for this. My warriors and I are yours to command!'
Honsou turned and with Cadaras Grendel beside him roared, 'Iron within!'
'Iron without!' came the answering bellow from every Iron Warrior, shouted over and over again.
And Honsou knew he had them.
Uriel watched the two Titans collapse and, amazingly, heard the sounds of battle fade away. Had Khalan-Ghol fallen or had Honsou defeated the escalade? It was impossible to tell, and they would only know when they reached the top.
Their ascent up the cliff-face had been heart-poundingly fraught, as the Unfleshed had carried them swiftly up slopes Uriel would have sworn were unclimbable. Their strength was prodigious and their endurance phenomenal.
In the sudden silence, Uriel could hear the crackling flames from the burning vehicles at the foot of the mountain and the occasional explosion from a shell as it detonated in the heat. The infrastructure of Berossus's army burned and as the quietness stretched on, Uriel guessed that die attack had failed to take the fortress. Warriors who had fought their way through a breach were so fuelled on adrenaline and rage that looting and slaughter usually followed in the wake of a successful storming.
But silence… that was new to Uriel.
The Lord of the Unfleshed clambered over an overhanging splinter of rock, swinging his massive body up and over the lip of the plateau and Uriel had his first look at the bloody ruin of the final assault.
'Emperor preserve us!' breathed Pasanius as he joined Uriel.
'Even the storm of the citadel was nothing compared to this…' added Leonid as the fused twins deposited him next to the Space Marines.
The wreckage of a destroyed army lay strewn before the shattered remains of the spire's defensive wall, itself no more than jagged stumps of black stone jutting from the ground like rotten teeth in a diseased gum. Blazing tanks and bodies were strewn about the plateau: some crushed flat, others hollowed out by explosions. Pyres of ammunition sparked and blew, and the remains of the Titans burned with a bright glare of plasma.
Gun barrels the size of cooling towers lay cracked and useless amid the debris and even had anyone been keeping watch on the battlefield, the smoke and flames would conceal them from detection.
'Who won?' asked Leonid.
'I'm not sure…' said Pasanius, following Uriel through the corpse-choked rubble.
He bent to retrieve a fallen bolter with his remaining hand and checked its load before saying, 'Find yourself a weapon, colonel, and scavenge as much ammunition as you can carry.'
Leonid nodded and scooped up a battered, but serviceable lasgun, some charged clips and a bandolier of grenades. As he did so, his chest hiked in pain and he was bent double by a coughing fit. He wiped his hand across his mouth, seeing brackish, matter-flecked blood coat his palm before wiping it clear on what remained of his dusty, sky-blue uniform jacket.
The Unfleshed capered across the battlefield, stooping to feed amid the cadavers, tearing limbs from bodies and devouring the still-warm meat straight from the bone. The Lord of the Unfleshed lifted the limbless corpse of an Iron Warrior and tore off its breastplate, biting into the chest and tearing off a great mouthful of flesh.
Even though it was the body of an enemy, Uriel was appalled and said, 'No, do not eat this meat.'
The Lord of the Unfleshed turned, his face alight with horrid appetite and savage glee at this chance to feast on an Iron Warrior. 'Is meat. Fresh.'
'No!' said Uriel, more forcefully.
'No?' replied the Lord of the Unfleshed. 'Why?'
'It is corrupt.'
Seeing the creature's incomprehension, he said, 'It is bad.'
'No… is good,' said the Lord of the Unfleshed, holding out the opened corpse of the Iron Warrior. The ribcage had been bitten through and the warrior's internal organs were laid bare.