Dan Abnett - Know no fear. The Battle of Calth

Braellen is intrigued by their behaviour. The cultists seem willing and eager. That is clear from their chanting and drumming and mindless sacrifice. But it is a group mentality, a hysteria. He has observed Word Bearers at the back of the vast host spurring them on, driving them forward with pain and threats. They are enslaved killers, their hysteria enforced by cruel authority.

Perhaps they have been promised some redemption, some metaphysical reward for their bloody efforts. Perhaps they hope that if they survive devoted service, they might be freed.

Perhaps they know that refusing the XVII is a more unpleasant option.

A fresh wave comes at the tower. Captain Damocles has ordered that the Army provide fusillades for the instrumentation of each repulse. The legionaries must withhold, saving their more precious munitions for Legiones Astartes targets.

The link to the arcology is vital. Significant reserves of standard Army munitions can be raised from arcology silos to supply the human defenders. But the reserves of Legion-specific munitions, including ordnance for their fighting vehicles, is limited to the supplies carried by the battle-brothers, or retrieved from the muster camp before it was abandoned.

Every bolter round must count. Las-bolts and small-arms hard-rounds can be hosed at the waves of screaming knife brothers.

Legion weapons are withheld for more significant targets.

Those targets are coming. Apart from the Word Bearers, who are yet to commit in serious numbers, there are signs of major armour massing down the throat of the pass, perhaps even war-engines.

Braellen both understands and supports his commander’s practical. Tempting though it is, the legionaries must wait until their abilities are the only ones that will do.

He doesn’t understand the enemy.

What has transformed them so? What has turned them? They have all heard Domitian’s stories about the old rivalry and the competition.

So what? Show him two Legions that don’t compete for glory and distinction? The rebuke was just that: a rebuke for impoverished service and performance. And it was more than four decades ago!

What is this now? Are the Word Bearers and their demented master so addled that they can brood for forty years, and finally act with such disproportionate ignominy that the galaxy draws a gasp of surprise?

Braellen can tell that Captain Damocles is wounded by it. He has never seen him so driven or grim. It is the treachery more than the loss of life. The treachery has taken his breath away, and shaken his belief in the sanctity of the Imperial truth.

That’s all before you even begin to consider the transformation of the Word Bearers: their altered schemes and heraldry, their expressed choice to decorate their armour with esoteric and frankly bizarre symbols and modifications. Their willingness to consort with superstitious, heathen zealots.

Have they been consumed by some mass delusion of sorcery?

Or has something darker and more insidious got its poison into their veins and twisted their minds against their kin?

The next wave is coming. Braellen sees them running up the slopes, a mass of swirling black robes and brandished weapons. The knife brothers, thousands of them, stampede over the dead left by the last charge and roll like a river breaking its banks towards the gate and storm walls.

The Army – 19th Numinus, 21st Numinus, 6th Neride ‘Westerners’ and 2nd Erud Ultima – opens fire. Lasrifles volley, light support guns and crew-serveds chatter, grenade launchers clunk and pop. Heavier autocannon emplacements crank up, chewing into the moving lines.

Another slaughter. Black figures are mown down. Some explode in shooting fireballs as they die, slaying the men round them.

Braellen clutches his bolter, fighting back the urge to shoot.

‘Captain! Captain!’

Sergeant Domitian moves through the back of the line. Men turn as he passes.

Domitian reaches Captain Damocles.

‘Sir,’ he says. ‘The damn vox just lit.’

Sergeant Anchise turns sharply.

‘What did you say?’ he asks.

They’re on the fringes of Sharud Province, moving at best speed ahead of the conflagration that’s consuming the forests. They are the pitiful remnants of the 111th and the 112th.

Anchise has taken command now that the company captains are gone. He’s trying to rally something out of the men, but there’s no time to stand still. Pursuit is right there, constantly pressing them: Titans, Titans of the traitor Mechanicum, plus heavy armour columns.

The Word Bearers are in the burning woods, and every kilometre further means greater losses inflicted.

Warhorns, deep, lingering, mournful, echo through the blackness of the forest, summoning the Ultramarines to their doom.

‘We’re detecting a sporadic pulse code on the vox, sir,’ says Cantis, who’s been carrying the only caster set they dragged out of Barrtor with them.

‘Is it on the helm pick-ups?’ Anchise asks.

‘Too weak,’ says Cantis. ‘I really need to set this down, erect the portable mast.’

Anchise doesn’t have to tell him why he can’t. Three or four mass-reactive rounds spit through the canopy above them like game birds bolting for freedom, and punch into a mature quaren. The bole splinters in a spray of fire, and the head limbs of the tree come tearing down through the canopy spread in a blizzard of sparks.

‘Move! Move it!’ Anchise yells. Damn they’re close! He can hear whirring, the chug of treads. That’s a damn Whirlwind, or maybe one of the Sabre tank hunters.

There is simply no let up. They are going to be hounded until the last of them are dead.

Two Word Bearers rush the clearing. The trees are stark black, backlit by fierce fires that have erupted close by. Anchise can smell woodsmoke, burning brush, sparks, the burnwash of explosives.

The first of the XVII brutes fires his storm bolter, and kills Brother Ferthun with a hit to the lower back that blows out his spine and hips. The other is hefting a lascannon. He braces it and lets rip, flattening trees and retreating Space Marines with bright spears of las-energy.

Anchise decides to face his death. He goes at them, boltgun blasting in one fist, kinetic mace in the other. The mace belonged to his captain, Phrastorex. The captain never even got the chance to unlock it from its case this morning.

Anchise’s bolts blow the face off the Word Bearer with the cannon. The visor of the man’s helmet explodes, and he falls back, hard. The other clips Anchise on the shoulder, and then makes a cleaner hit to his left leg. The detonation of the mass-reactive shell hurls Anchise onto the loamy ground. Rolling, he swings the mace, and breaks both of the Word Bearer’s legs. The warrior goes down. Anchise finishes the job with another mace swing.

His own leg is broken. He can feel the bone trying to reknit, but the damage may be too great.

He looks around in time to see that the other Word Bearer is not dead.

He’s getting up. Anchise’s shots shredded his helmet, his gorget and part of his upper chest plate. The Word Bearer’s head and face are exposed.

It may just be injury: burns, contusions, swelling. The warrior has, of course, just taken substantial damage from a boltgun.

But the horror doesn’t look like that to Anchise. The flesh is puffed taut, like the necrotised swelling of a venom bite. The mouth is misaligned, but it looks as though it has grown that way, not been brutally configured by kinetic shockwaves. Blood streams down the side of the Word Bearer’s face and neck.

There are yellow scutes on his brow that look disturbingly like budding horns.

He throws himself at Anchise, a combat blade in his right hand. The dagger looks as though it’s made of obsidian or polished black rock. Its grip is wound with fine chains. Is it some kind of trophy?