It was all a lie – visions implanted in my mind.
Curze removed the wedge from my mouth.
‘Did you expect me to kill him?’ I snarled.
My brother looked profoundly unhappy.
‘You are not noble. You are no better than me,’ he muttered, before killing me again.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Sacrifices
‘You have suffered. I know this. You have come to the abyss, and almost surrendered yourselves to it. That changes now. I am father, general, lord and mentor. I shall teach you if I can, and pass on the knowledge I have gained. Honour, self-sacrifice, self-reliance, brotherhood. It is our Promethean creed and all must adhere to it if we are to prosper. Let this be the first lesson…’
– Primarch Vulkan in his inaugural address
on Terra to the survivors of the XVIII Legion
Numeon didn’t know who had survived the battle. He was lying face down, his armour’s sensors screaming in a rash of red warning icons. Undoubtably, the fall had saved his life. He hoped it had taken others with him. Groaning, he rolled onto his back and fought to bring the physical trauma under control. Pulse was returning to normal. Breathing also. He waited, in silence and in darkness, for his body to repair and his armour systems to reboot and stabilise.
Someone stirred in the darkness next to him.
Shen’ra’s battle-plate was split, gored by blades and shell holes. His cybernetic eye flickered and went dead.
‘Lost the half-track…’ he croaked.
Numeon managed to nod.
‘Lit those traitors up well though, didn’t it?’ said the old Techmarine, smiling as he passed out. His vital signs were holding; Shen’ra yet lived.
There were others too, some less fortunate than Shen’ra. After Leodrakk and Hriak had escaped with the human, Numeon had returned to the manufactorum. Avus was dead, giving up his life so that his kinsmen could get away. He had saved Numeon in the process, then killed the other Word Bearers into the sacrificial bargain. A melta bomb at close range.
The third legionary, another sniper and probably one of those responsible for the shooting of Helon, Uzak and Shaka, had fallen back before the Raptor’s impassioned onslaught. Avus was another kill-notch on his rifle now, the Word Bearer’s disengagement from the fight leaving Numeon impotent to enact vengeance or make his own sacrifice.
By the time he got to the others, the fight had spilled out onto the streets. Domadus was down, Pergellen nowhere to be seen. K’gosi and Shen’ra remained, surrounded by the dead and dying. In desperation, the Techmarine set off a seismic charge, hoping to take their enclosing enemies with them. He succeeded in part, but collapsed the manufactorum’s already weak foundations.
Numeon remembered the ground coming apart beneath him, the sense of weightlessness akin to the last moments of a drop-pod insertion. Debris was coming down on top of him. A chunk ripped off his right pauldron and sent radial fractures up his arm. He clutched the sigil, Vulkan’s sigil, as they touched down in water. A sewer pipe, running fast, carrying them away from the battle, cheating them of the honourable death they had all earned.
Half submerged, the air rank with the stink of effluvia, Numeon stared up at the ceiling as crawling sewer vermin came to inspect the latest offerings from above but found them brittle and tough.
‘K’gosi…’ he breathed.
‘I am here.’
‘Can you move?’
‘Not yet.’
‘Then wait for a time, wait until you can,’ said Numeon.
‘I’m not going anywhere, Pyre captain.’
‘Good,’ Numeon answered, half dazed and drifting in and out of consciousness. ‘That’s good.’
He still clung to the sigil and lifted the hammer icon into a shaft of light lancing through a crack in the wall to inspect it. It was smeared with grime; Numeon used his thumb to clean the sigil and was reminded of when he saw it last on Isstvan.
Isstvan V
The Contemptor lumbered through a pall of smoke, blood flecking its blue-and-white paintwork. Numerous blade and shell scars marred its armour, the true laurels of battle by which all warriors were ultimately judged, or so the XII Legion believed.
Ash-fall from the many thousands of fires was turning the sky grey. It baptised a cohort of warriors, clad to various degrees in ancient gladiatorial trappings and wielding ritual caedere weapons. They were the Rampagers, a deadly breed even amongst the Eaters of Worlds, and a throwback to Angron’s incarceration as a slave-fighter. Bellowing guttural war cries, they charged ahead of the Dreadnought to engage the Salamanders.
Numeon balked at what the battle-maddened World Eaters attempted. He counted no more than thirty men. Just three squads. Yet they charged over a hundred. Several went down to sporadic bolter fire. Some were clipped by shrapnel but kept on coming. Only those too injured to fight, unable to run because of missing limbs or critical wounds were halted. Something urgent and terrible spurred them on. Numeon had read reports of the ferocity of the XII. Even when they were the War Hounds, their reputation in battle, particularly close-quarters, was fearsome. As the reborn World Eaters under Angron, they had become something else. Rumours abounded within the ranks, of arcane devices that manipulated the legionaries’ tempers, simulacra of the ones embedded in Angron’s skull by his slavers.
Now he saw them, ignoring pain and injury, frothing with frenzy, Numeon believed those stories to be true.
A howling berserker, a falx blade in either hand, leapt at the primarch. Vulkan swatted him aside, but the crazed warrior managed to parry a killing stroke and came up fighting as he landed. A second Rampager whirled a chain with a barbed hook around his head. Lashing out, it snared Atanarius and dragged the swordsman into the World Eater’s killing arc.
Numeon had no time to react as he threw himself aside from a massive hammer smashing down at him. Driven by a small rocket-propelled ignition system, it struck the ground with meteoric force and trembled the earth underfoot. Varrun stepped in to engage the warrior but was taken off his feet by the hammer’s backswing. Trying to rush to Varrun’s aid, Numeon found the falx-armed legionary in his path. The Salamander blocked one swing of a curved blade, barely turning it aside as he felt the hook of the other rake his armoured face. One of the lenses cracked and he lost resolution in it. Ganne bore the frenzied legionary down and pummelled him with his storm shield, whilst Igataron crushed the World Eater’s shoulder to disarm him of the falx. The blood-splashed legionary was about to lunge, ignoring the excruciating pain he must be in, when Numeon impaled him through the chest with his glaive.
‘They are insane,’ growled Ganne.
Numeon nodded, and in the brief respite searched for the rest of his Pyre Guard to see how they were faring.
Varrun was still down but at least moving.
Atanarius was on his knees, butcher’s hooks digging into his armour, still snared by the chain. Skatar’var was trying to release him as Leodrakk fought the chain-wielder, but was finding the Rampager’s fury hard to counter. He staggered, on the defensive, and would have fallen if Vulkan hadn’t lifted the World Eater off his feet and rammed him head first into the ground to silence his screaming.
Another hammer-bearer smashed aside three of Heka’tan’s Fire-born, the Fourteenth and Fifth Companies having found a way through the trenches to engage the World Eaters. Gravius’s troops were still catching up. Below them, K’gosi and the Pyroclasts held the trench-works. Elsewhere on the slope, a much larger force of Firedrakes fought Angron’s Devourers to a bloody stalemate.
For once, the Lord of the Red Sands was close to his honour guard. Numeon heard him bellow a challenge, heard Vulkan’s name amongst the guttural syllables of his native tongue. The ash and smoke were thickening; down to one retinal lens, the other a static-veined mess, it was difficult to get a visual. He caught sight of Vulkan.