Hellforged, p.13
Hellforged, page 13
‘No army scout has returned from the Bladeleaf Glades for weeks,’ said Heynan. ‘That is less than half a days’ march away from the road to the space port. We know there are Undying in the Glades, definitely their vanguard, maybe their main force.’
‘There is no way,’ said General Slake, another veteran of army command with a deep scar across his lips, ‘that we can get the people down that road to the space port. Mustering the army to greet the newcomers was risk enough. It would take a day at the very least to move the people to the space port, and the Undying could ambush at any time. Your majesty, it would be a massacre.’
‘General Slake’s words come belatedly,’ said Damask grimly, ‘but they are true. Give your people good deaths, your majesty. Do not let them die running.’
Dyrmida rose to her feet.
‘We have all left it too late,’ she said, ‘to do what is right. We were afraid to flee our world, for our fellow Raevenians were standing and fighting, and we would not be the cowards who dared to survive. We feared the ignominy of limping back to our world after the Undying had been fought off, but now that will not happen. The Undying have won, and our world will fall. We have no choice over that, but we can choose whether our sons and daughters, our friends and loved ones, are on Raevenia when it happens. General Damask, I will not believe that any death, while denying the Undying their victory, is a bad death.’
Damask sat back in his chair. Only Heynan had little enough concern for his position to speak up.
‘How, your majesty? How will we buy our people enough time to reach the space port?’
‘Fight the Undying in the city,’ replied Dyrmida. ‘Draw them in. Force them to commit their main force to our streets. And keep them fighting long enough to get the people out.’
A few frustrated exhalations were just audible as the generals digested this. Dyrmida, ignoring them, stood and leaned over the map of Astelok.
‘Here,’ she said. ‘As soon as we know which direction the Undying will take, we barricade the streets, and funnel the Undying into the Cemetery Quarter. Force them to fight us in the avenues between estates and basilicas, where their numbers cannot be brought to bear. Collapse buildings if need be. The good deaths you plead for, Damask, will be given to every soldier in the city, and you are welcome to join them at the barricades. The population will make it out while the Undying are tied up in the city.’
‘Hear, hear!’ said some of the generals, eager to show their loyalty even to the last.
‘You expect much of the army,’ said Heynan.
‘Do you say our men cannot do it?’ demanded Slake.
‘I am saying their deaths may not be enough!’ retorted Heynan. ‘No one knows how many the Undying can bring to bear! Two hundred thousand men held the walls of Krassus City, and it fell overnight!’
‘Then what would you do, Heynan?’ demanded Dyrmida. ‘How would you face the Undying?’
The words died in Heynan’s throat. Any answer he had, withered away under Queen Dyrmida’s gaze.
A commotion sounded at the back of the room. The generals and their officers turned to get a better look. From the dim doorway at the far side of the map room stumbled a soldier, who had been posted there as a guard, clutching his arm. His gun was not in his hand and he lost his balance, scrabbling along the floor.
‘I believe,’ said a voice from the darkness, ‘that the queen’s plan is sound.’
Sarpedon emerged from the shadows, the spotlight surrounding the map table catching on the massive plates of his armour and the glossy chitin of his spider legs. The closest generals started out of their chairs, and weapons were drawn, aides pulling out rifles and pistols.
‘Stay your weapons!’ ordered Dyrmida. She stood up and addressed Sarpedon. ‘You! How did you get in here?’
‘Your men,’ replied Sarpedon calmly, ‘showed more enthusiasm than skill in trying to stop me. Fear not, I haven’t killed anyone yet.’ In one hand he held the rifle he had taken from the guard at the door. He cast it onto the floor. ‘My Soul Drinkers, on the other hand, can do things your soldiers cannot.’
‘Can you hold the city, Lord Sarpedon?’ asked Dyrmida. ‘Can you fight the Undying to a standstill, long enough for my people to escape to the spaceport?’
‘We can.’
‘Then I will ask you again. What do you want from us?’
The two locked stares across the map table for a long moment. The officers had not let their guard down, and a dozen guns were still aimed at Sarpedon.
‘Fuel,’ said Sarpedon.
‘Then you are stranded here,’ said Dyrmida, ‘and if you fight, you hope we will give it to you.’
‘That is correct, your majesty.’
‘Then why not simply take it by force?’
‘Because,’ said Sarpedon, ‘we are not invaders. We are not murderers or thieves. We have our honour, too.’
‘Good,’ said Dyrmida, ‘because if you had decided to simply take it, you would have incinerated yourselves trying to get through the defences. When my people are safe in the space port and the first ships are leaving, then we will give you the codes. Is that satisfactory?’
By way of an answer, Sarpedon walked closer to the table to get a better look at the map of Astelok. Having seen the city from orbit, the cemetery hills, spire-topped palaces and southern slums were familiar to him, not as works of architecture or places to live, but as playing pieces in the strategic game that would ensue if the city was invaded.
‘A sound plan, your majesty,’ said Sarpedon. ‘These Undying will have to commit a massive force to break a determined force in the city’s centre. Without my Space Marines, it will not work. With them, your people have a chance of deliverance.’
‘Then you will fight?’ asked General Heynan. ‘You will help us?’
Sarpedon looked at him. Heynan shied away from the Space Marine’s gaze.
‘Both sides will help themselves,’ said Sarpedon. ‘We have the same objective, to escape this planet. The Undying stand in our way. Fighting them together is the only course that makes sense.’
‘Then I have made my decision,’ said Dyrmida. ‘The Undying will be fought in the city, and held there so that the civilian population can be evacuated. Are there any further objections, my generals?’
A few of the generals exchanged looks. Most of them, however, kept their eyes on the mutant Space Marine that dwarfed them all.
‘Good,’ said Dyrmida. ‘To your duties, men. Your queen has spoken.’
‘What is fear? Fear is the absence of duty. Fear is what fills our minds unbidden when our thoughts turn from our obligations to the human race.’
Daenyathos, Hammer of the Heretics
CHAPTER NINE
‘Perhaps I always knew,’ said Queen Dyrmida, ‘that it would happen during my reign.’
The entire city was visible from the graveyard upon the hill. Sarpedon saw how it had been built nestling between the hills at first, a fortified town whose walls still existed amid the palaces and monuments at its heart. Astelok had grown large and prosperous since. In the pre-dawn light, the movement of people was obvious, draining like blood through the veins of the city towards the gates to the south.
Queen Dyrmida sat on an old grave slab, some of her retainers and courtiers waiting a short distance away. She had called Sarpedon up here to organise the last few details of the coming battle.
‘How could you be sure?’ asked Sarpedon.
‘Every monarch before me has believed the same thing. We must always be prepared for the death of that for which we are responsible. It is our way.’
‘I have seen worlds die,’ said Sarpedon. ‘Too many people for me to imagine. Not one of them really believed that death would come for them. I do not think you can ever be truly prepared to see such destruction.’
‘That, Commander Sarpedon, is because you were not born on Raevenia,’ said the queen. ‘A man’s life does not mean anything if it is not married to a death of equal merit. A hero can be rendered a nothing and buried in a pit outside the walls, if he does not die a hero’s death. A poor and worthless man can be buried up here, amid all its finery, if he dies well enough.’
‘And a queen?’
Queen Dyrmida considered this.
‘It is unlikely that I will be buried at all,’ she said. ‘That is a bad death indeed. Only if I am remembered can I expect to be anyone in death.’
‘Dying on Raevenia must be an exacting task,’ said Sarpedon.
‘What of your people? How do they die?’
‘In great numbers and ignorance.’
‘They sound like bad deaths,’ said the queen with a shake of her head.
‘They are. That is why the Soul Drinkers no longer fight for the Imperium.’
Dyrmida looked out across the city. Units of Raevenian troops held several crossroads, ready to slow down the advance of the Undying. The Soul Drinkers were concentrated around the centre of the city, where the relatively open spaces of parks and forums would funnel the Undying towards them.
‘Your Soul Drinkers will bear the brunt of the battle,’ said the queen. ‘The majority of my army must secure the route to the space port.’
‘Those are the kind of battles we were created to fight, your majesty.’
‘You have not returned to your spaceship and abandoned us,’ continued Dyrmida. ‘You could have done so at any moment. I am not ignorant of that fact.’
‘Being becalmed here is not an option for us. If you require us to fight if we are to escape, then we will fight.’
‘There is more than that, Soul Drinker. The galaxy has failed us. It has failed you, too, and made you renegades. You claim to fight only for survival, but I think you are trying to prove something, too, even if only to yourself.’
‘Do not be so certain, your majesty. We learned what happens when we fight to better the lot of the Imperium, and it did not end well for us.’
A messenger rode up on a horse, carrying a sheaf of reports. ‘Your majesty. Dawn breaks and Imnis has sounded the forlorn hope.’
‘Very good,’ said Dyrmida. ‘Commander, to your positions. I must deliver my people.’
Dyrmida was rapidly surrounded by her retainers for the short journey to the south gate, where tens of thousands of people were now thronging. Sarpedon turned towards the north, and the battle for Astelok began.
The northern gates of Astelok were opened just before dawn. They were shod with brass that had withstood sieges before, scarred by cannon and battering rams. They would not withstand this one.
The Queen’s Own Cavalry galloped out. Led by General Imnis, they were splendid with banners and mirror-polished armour. Favours streamed from the banner each wore on his back, embroidered with each man’s personal heraldry. They were composed of fifty volunteers. Far more had come forward for the duty, but this death was denied to most of them.
Imnis stopped his horse and raised his sabre, bellowing a challenge to the trees and undergrowth covering the hills outside the city.
There only answer was wind and birdsong.
Imnis shouted again, cursing the cowardice of the Undying and promising them dismal, forgotten deaths that would condemn them to nothingness.
He heard nothing in return. Imnis galloped up to the tree line, spitting curses.
A lance of emerald light leapt from the hillside and skinned him alive in a split second. His flesh was pared off him, layer by layer, leaving the front half of his body a wet red mess stripped down to the skeleton. He toppled from his saddle, and his horse, a good chunk of its flank stripped away too, galloped wild in pain.
A shape rose from the trees. It was an Undying warrior, but it was not like the skeletal creatures the Raevenians had witnessed before. Its lower half was a slab of metal thrumming as it kept the warrior aloft. The warrior had one arm, the other, a cannon glittering with emerald fire. It fired again, and this time the beam punched right through the horse of one of the cavalrymen. The horse fell, dead before it hit the ground, and pinned the rider’s leg under it.
More of the flying warriors rose above the trees, criss-crossing the clearing in front of the gates with blasts of green energy. Warriors stalked out of the tree line, a silent rank of them matching step as they advanced.
The cavalry charged, those at the front lowering their lances and those behind snapping off rifle shots. A warrior fell, face ruined. After a moment, it stood up again, falling back into step.
The first riders clashed with the warriors. Blue light burst where the power blades of their lances made contact, the energy fields tearing through metal. Automatic fire rattled into the Undying, and cascades of bullet casings rained down around the horses’ hooves. An Undying warrior was carried up into the air, impaled on a lance, green fire bleeding from its chest. Others were trampled under hooves. A power sabre lashed out and cut a machine’s head from its shoulders.
Green fire flashed. Men and horses fell, stripped to the bone so quickly that their bodies took a moment to start bleeding.
The ground shook. The charge faltered. The trees on the hillside began to fall, toppling as a great bulk forced its way through them.
One of the cavalrymen, in command after Imnis’s death, called out for the sons of Raevenia to rejoice and die well.
A hundred Undying stepped in eerily perfect formation from the trees, grinning skulls reflecting the glowing power fields of the cavalry’s lances. Bullets rained down into them, but fallen Undying simply stood again, and, those that did not, disappeared, replaced a moment later by another metallic warrior striding into the open.
The ranks of Undying opened fire as one. The cavalry disappeared in a mess of flayed flesh and bone. Horses, stripped in half, screamed out their final breaths as organs spilled out onto the bloody ground. Men died before they hit the ground, insides scooped out, reduced to fluttering scraps of skin and uniform.
Given the circumstances, they had died the best deaths they could hope for. The Raevenians watching from the walls took comfort in that.
Thousands of Undying followed the front ranks out of the trees. More flying warriors flanked them, and glittering scarabs scuttled through the grass around their feet. A great crashing could be heard, and trees fell, scoring a deep line through the forest canopy, as something huge and powerful made its own path towards the northern gate.
Astelok prepared to die well.
‘The northern gate just fell,’ said Phol’s voice over the vox. ‘The Undying have massive infantry strength, thousands of them. They have flying support units, too, and something big with them, maybe a siege engine. The cavalry didn’t even slow them down.’
Sarpedon glanced up. The Soul Drinkers’ Thunderhawks were in the air, among them the one piloted by Brother Phol, acting as the Soul Drinkers’ eyes as well as lending fire support.
Sarpedon was stationed with the majority of his Soul Drinkers towards the centre of the city. He was holding an intersection of two of Astelok’s grandest streets, lined on each side by mansions and monuments like a canyon of marble. The Soul Drinkers were set up behind makeshift barricades in the street, or in the windows of the buildings. Sarpedon’s post was in a semicircular war memorial, inscribed with thousands of names lost in some war between the cities of Raevenia, and crowned with statues of weary soldiers, on the corner of the two streets.
‘Tell me when you can see this xenos machine,’ voxed Sarpedon, ‘and keep me appraised when you have a clear idea of their numbers.’
‘Yes, commander. I’ll stay over your position. By the hand of Dorn!’
‘Trust in your bullets and blades, Brother Phol!’ Sarpedon took stock of his command position. Squad Luko had taken up firing positions between the doleful statues, and the rest of the squad crouched in cover nearby, behind makeshift barricades across the street or in the doorways of mansions.
‘What do they want with this city?’ asked Scamander, who was stationed with Squad Luko where the short-range firepower he kept in his head had the best chance of coming into play. ‘What is there on this planet they can’t have got enough of?’
‘They are machines, Brother Scamander,’ said Sarpedon. ‘They do not want anything, not as we do. They just conquer.’
Scamander was inexperienced, and he had stained his honour by siding with Eumenes in the Second Chapter War, but he had a quick mind, and he had dedicated his efforts to redeeming himself with the Chapter. His armour carried the gilded insignia of the Chapter Librarium; Scamander was a psyker, and Sarpedon could see his potential as living artillery.
‘Targets in the city!’ said Phol’s voice over the vox. ‘The first barricades are falling! The Raevenians are retreating to their second lines. The Undying are pouring in.’
‘Lend your guns, Brother Phol, but do not risk the gunship. Soul Drinkers! The enemy is within the gates!’
A pall of smoke was gathering to the north: gun-smoke, burning buildings and the dust of collapsing buildings. Explosions rumbled as booby traps erupted among the abandoned buildings around the gate.
To Sarpedon, the sounds of war were as familiar as his own breathing, but he had never before heard thousands of footsteps, metal against cobbles, stamping through the city in perfect time.
Tens of the thousands of Undying made it through the Raevenian fire from the walls. They streamed through the northern gateway into Astelok. The crossfire that met them was terrific, thousands of Raevenian rifles and machine guns opening up as one. The first ranks of Undying were shredded beyond even their capacity to self-repair, but the Undying did not care about losses. More marched forwards, choking the gate with wreckage. A few moments later, the Undying war machine breached the walls.
It was shaped like a titanic metal-shod beetle, pulling itself along on its belly with thousands of legs that writhed along its sides. Its head was a huge maw, ringed with steel teeth, with power glowing in its throat. Scarabs crawled all over its surface, and behind its long segmented tail it left a deep furrow in the ground as it drove forwards, flanked by the march of the Undying.
