Dan Abnett - Know no fear. The Battle of Calth

‘Now it ends,’ says Arook.

Sullus draws his sword.

‘Oh please, skitarii,’ he says, head up. ‘It’s only just beginning.’

4th Company strikes.

The first that the Word Bearers know of it is a savage, serial bombardment of light cannon and field pieces, supported by the immense firepower of a Shadowsword and a handful of other significant machines.

The Word Bearers had forces positioned along Ketar Transit, a main access way that linked the container stores to the northern facilities of Lanshear port. The forces were supposed to ward Hol Beloth’s main army from any counter-attack that came around the eastern sweep of the Shield Wall into Numinus territory.

The forces do not realise that, by occupying the zone around Ketar Transit, they are also effectively guarding the data-engine of the cargo handling guild in the bunker system below the majestic prospect of the guildhall.

It was a majestic prospect. Stippled with shell holes, the guildhall remains an inspiring building, crowned by statues of toiling guild porters and the proud Ultima symbol.

The area has not been razed wholesale. It is not military, it is commercial. Server Hesst chose it very well.

The barrage pummels the roadway, levels three blocks of habs, and scatters the enemy formation. Hundreds of knife brother warriors are killed by the shellfire, dozens of Word Bearers too. Armoured vehicles are destroyed and left burning in the rain. A traitor Warhound engine, suddenly alert and striding forward like an angry moa, hunts for a hot target. A torrent of cannonfire catches it, hammers it, and beats its void shields down with sheer relentless insolence. Then the Shadowsword speaks, and a spear of white light kills the Warhound like the lance of some vengeful god.

Debris showers for hundreds of metres, felling some of the retreating cultists. Others, urged by their raging crimson lords, dig in behind walls and barriers of wreckage, and begin to return fire.

Warp-flask messages chime and shrill across the zone; desperate calls for support.

The Land Raiders spur forward, hulls streaming with rainwater, kicking out spray from the rain-sheeted roadway. They drive down walls, rolling over the rubble, crunching over the knife brothers trapped and killed by the cover they had chosen to use. Sponson-mount lascannons rasp into the blue-white twilight, causing the rain to steam and swirl. Heavy bolters shred the air with their noise and drench the enemy positions with destruction.

Ventanus leads the foot advance behind the Land Raiders, double-time across the broken streets. To his left, the units led by Sydance, Lorchas and Selaton. To his right, the units led by Greavus, Archo and Barkha. Cyramica’s skitarii form a wide right flank, blocking and punishing an attempt by the Jeharwanate to regroup and counter-charge. Sparzi’s infantry mob in behind and to the left of the legionary assault, evicting knife brothers from their strongpoints and foxholes along the north-western end of the massive carriageway.

Word Bearers, a scarlet line in the rain, rise up to block the main charge. Missiles cripple the first of Ventanus’s Land Raiders, leaving it trackless and burning. There is fire from autocannons, the streaks of mass-reactive rounds, both of which drop cobalt-blue figures from the charge.

But the Word Bearers have developed a taste for cutting, an appetite for bladework. Perhaps it has come from their knife brother slave-hosts. Perhaps it is simply to do with the sacrificial symbolism of the sharpened edge.

Concentrated and well-directed firepower might have broken or turned Ventanus’s charge, but it is not used. The Word Bearers simply wait for the clash, relishing the prospect. They draw their blades. They want to test their mettle against the vaunted XIII in a skirmish, the outcome of which cannot possibly influence the final resolution of the Calth War.

The traitors want to prove themselves against the paradigms to which they have been compared so many times.

There is a crashing, hyperkinetic impact. The charging cobalt-blue bodies reach the solid red line. They tear into it. They rip through it, they mangle it, red and blue together, a blur. Blows are traded. Huge power, huge force, huge transhuman strength. Blood squirts in the driving rain. Bodies crash to the ground, spraying up water. Blade grips grow slick with rainwater, oil and blood. Shields chip and break. Armour fractures. There is a spark of ozone and power mechanics, the crackle of electrical discharge.

Ventanus is in the thick of it. Boltgun. Power sword. Standard across his back. He shoots away a head in a cloud of bloodsmoke. He impales. He chops off an arm, and smites a helm in two, diagonally.

He has never felt this strong. This driven.

This justified.

He has never known such an entirely fearless state.

There is nothing the Word Bearers can do to him any more. They have done their worst. They have burned his world, his fleet, his brothers; they have shed his blood and unleashed their daemons.

They can shoot him. They can stab him. They can grab him and tear him down. They can kill him.

It doesn’t matter.

It’s his turn. This is his turn.

This is what happens when you leave an Ultramarine alive. This is what happens when you make the foulest treachery your instrument. This is how it comes back to reward you. This is how Ultramar pays you back.

Carnage. Carnage. Absolute and total slaughter. The visitation of death in the form of a gold and cobalt-blue storm. A Word Bearer, reeling, arms spread, his carapace sliced open to the core, releasing a profusion of blood. Another, hands lost, stumps smouldering, sinking slowly to his knees with a bolter shell blast hole clean through his torso. Another, red helm caved across the left half, the bite of a power sword. Another, jerking and convulsing as mass-reactive shells blow out his body and overwhelm his transhuman redundancies. Another, cleft by a power axe. Another, disarticulated by a Land Raider’s cannons. Another, with the toothmarks of a chainsword.

Another.

Another.

Another. Grunt and spit and curse and gasp and bleed and strike and turn and move and kill and die.

Ventanus reaches the guildhall, leaps the barricades, and lands amongst knife brothers who shriek and flee before him. Red armour comes at him, a sergeant of the XVII, bringing down a thunder hammer. Ventanus dodges the swing, lets it pulverise rockcrete. He lunges and drives his sword, tip-first, through visor, face, skull, brain and the back plate of a helmet.

He snatches the blade out. The sergeant falls, flops over, blood welling up out of his holed visor like oil from a freshly drilled reserve.

The gutter is running with blood. Ventanus smashes down two of the Tzenvar Kaul foolish enough to attack him, and then shoots a Word Bearer who is coming down the shot-chewed front steps at him. The blast blows out the brute’s hip, drops him sideways. Ventanus kills him with his power sword before he can rise again.

Sydance passes Ventanus, ascending the steps. He’s firing his boltgun ahead of him, targeting Word Bearers at the top by the main doors of the guildhall. Shots streak back at him. The Ultramarine beside him, Brother Taeks, ends his service there, brains spilled. Sydance’s bolter shells put Taeks’s killer backwards through the panelled doors.

The first of the XIII are in the building. Ventanus is with them. Blood and rain drips from them onto the marble floor.

‘Back up,’ warns Greavus.

They make space.

A Land Raider drives in through the doors, collapsing them, splintering the wooden bulk of them.

Ventanus and his men cover the side hatch as it opens and skitarii lead Tawren out.