C. Goto - Dawn of War

Macha lowered her arms and stood quietly between the Swordwind of Biel-Tan and the walls of Lloovre Marr. Nobody moved. Her army stood perfectly motionless behind her, only the banners of the Biel-Tan fluttered in the wind that swept through the valley: crisp white flags bearing a golden rune, Treraum, and a crimson heart.

In the main line, the Storm squad and Defender squads shone in pristine white psycho-plastic armour, with elongated green helmets glinting in the sun. Behind them were the wraithguard, towering over their living brethren in inverted colours: green, wraithbone armour and white helmets. And in front were the Aspect Warriors, resplendent in the brightly coloured uniforms of various shrines. At various points throughout the formation were the sleek, deep green Falcon tanks and a few Vyper weapons platforms, each flanked by a couple of jetbikes.

On the city wall, the Guardsmen gradually realised that something was expected of them. Shaking their heads to clear their minds of the sweet invasion, they glanced up and down the battlements, looking to each other for ideas. None dared be the first to move. All of the senior officers had already left the city, and the soldiers needed their leadership more than ever.

Then, simultaneously, two different decisions were made. One Guardsman, Bobryn, started to work the release mechanism for the gate, reasoning that Tartarus was already doomed and therefore not worth dying for at this late stage. And another, Hredel, opened fire from his autocannon platform.

As the first shots rang out through the valley, Macha turned and walked back into the midst of her army. She shook her head sadly: humans, she thought, both the hope and the bane of the galaxy.

From their vantage point, high in the walls of the Lloovre valley, Chaos Lord Bale and the sorcerer Sindri watched the eldar force assemble at the gates of the capital city. Their own force of Alpha Legionaries was collected into the deep cave in the cliffs, where the Chaos Marines fumed in frustrated silence. Great fires had been lit, and swirls of noxious smoke filled the close air of the cavern, smothering the oxygen with a blanket of burning flesh.

The broken remains of eldar warriors were strewn over the cave floor, their armour cracked open and their flesh scooped out like giant shellfish. The thin, slender bodies of the eldar were broken and cast into the fires; there was precious little meat on them and they tasted disgusting, but they made pungent firewood.

“The eldar will take the city quickly, sorcerer,” said Bale, emerging out of the smoky cave to join Sindri on the ledge outside. The smoke and the corpses in the cavern had put his soul at ease, but fury remained bubbling beneath the surface of his composure.

Sindri nodded without looking round. His eyes were fixed on the distant scene to the north. The white walls of the city shimmered slightly in the sunlight, but the Biel-Tan army was a blaze of reflections and star-bursts before them. The rumble of cannon fire had already started, and Sindri was sure that he had caught the scent of a voice in the air before it had all begun. Tiny bursts of fire were visible in the walls as the heavy weapons platforms flared with activity, and the eldar lines had begun to swim with motion. And, unless his eyes were deceiving him, the great gates of Lloovre Marr were lying open in the centre of the wall.

“Yes, my lord. The eldar will take the city. But it is of no concern to us. We need not race against our guides, Lord Bale,” said Sindri smoothly.

“You’d better be right about this, sorcerer,” replied Bale, his voice tinged with his natural disgust for scheming and his frustration about watching combat without being able to reap the carnage himself.

“We do not need to be there yet. But when the time comes, we will move swiftly,” said Sindri calmly. “Then you will have your bloodletting.”

Bale inspected the territory between their cave and the city walls. Even for Chaos Marines the distance was too large for a swift attack. It would take them several hours to traverse the valley, and they would be clearly visible to the guards on the city wall-especially if those guards were eldar rangers. Launching a rapid strike would not be possible from this position, and the Alpha Legion would be humiliated yet again by Sindri’s meddling schemes.

“I do not like this, sorcerer. I do not place my faith in the hesitant or the probable-it is better to feel the certainty of my scythe than the inconsistency of your reassurances.” The effects of the smoke were wearing off, and Bale’s temper was rising yet again.

“Patience, my lord,” soothed Sindri. “We do not have to cross the valley.” He turned back towards the cave and pointed vaguely towards the entrance. A thick blanket of smoke hung across it like a curtain, but only the smallest wisps were escaping into the air outside.

“Where do you think all of that smoke is going?” asked Sindri coaxingly.

“I don’t have time for your games, sorcerer. And neither do you,” menaced Bale, unamused by Sindri’s rhetoric.

“The smoke is being drawn further into the cave, my lord, because there is a network of tunnels beyond. A network that leads right into the heart of Loovre Marr-I was given a map many years ago, by a… friend in the governor’s office. When the time comes, the Alpha Legion will already be in the city. There will be no storming through the valley and no cumbersome siege of the city walls… At least not by us,” added Sindri cryptically.

Looking from Sindri to the battle and then back again, Bale snorted an agitated acknowledgment. It did sound like a good plan, but Bale would believe it when he saw it happen. Until then, the sorcerer lived on borrowed time. Turning suddenly, Bale strode back through the curtain of smoke and disappeared into the interior of the cave.

The script on the menhir was different from that on the altar in the crater: it contained the characteristic angles and runic curves of an eldar tongue. Isador had searched the stone for a long time before he had found it, for it was not literally on the surface of the rock at all. Rather, the markings swam just underneath the surface, all but invisible to the eyes of men. They had been etched into the essence of the menhir itself, not hacked and carved into the mundane rock like the clumsy scribblings of cultists.

The Librarian had pressed himself against the rock and felt the residue of a soul oscillating deep within, as though the eldar artisan had left a fragment of herself to imbue the stone with meaning and life. As his mind tuned in to the gentle pulsing of the rock’s rhythm, the script had begun to flicker into life, glowing with an unearthly blue somewhere inside. It was as though the material of the huge rock had gradually shifted into translucence, revealing a liquid heart in which an ancient message swam like the memory of stars.

The message itself was straightforward enough, belied by the breathtaking beauty of its form. There was something about a curved blade-some sort of key. And there was a string of co-ordinates, coded in an elaborate manner than made Isador’s head spin; the figures spiralled and shifted until his mind discovered their secret, bringing them under control and settling them into a firm pattern.

When the eldar hid their secrets, they placed them in full view of all, knowing that only the rarest of individuals would be able to see them, let alone decipher them. The problem was not a linguistic one-the runes were simple enough for an educated Blood Raven to understand-rather, the problem was psychic. Only the most gifted of human psykers would taste even a hint of the presence of the runic script in the first place.

Stepping back from the menhir, Isador looked at it with fresh eyes. He could see now that it was a blaze of runes and twisting lines of script. The psychic etchings snaked and spiralled around the smooth form, flowing and coalescing like mountain streams, mixing their meanings together into transient poetry and garbled gibberish in equal measures. The tiny section on which his mind had focussed was merely the most miniscule fragment of a grand, sweeping narrative.