Storm of Iron

ONE

As the great wall came crashing down into the ditch, a swelling roar burst from the thousands of Iron Warriors' human soldiers who went over the top of their trenches and charged the citadel. Despite the pleas from his officers, Leonid stood on the rubble at the crest of the breach, his power sword and bolt pistol drawn. His bronze breastplate shone like new and his uniform was freshly pressed and immaculate. Brother-Captain Eshara stood alongside him, twin swords gripped tightly in his gauntlets.

Leonid felt the fury of the enemy soldiers strike him like a blow and its intensity stunned him.

'They hate us so,' he whispered to himself. 'Why?'

'They are heretics and hate all that is good,' stated Eshara in a voice that brooked no argument. The Space Marine captain swung his arms, loosening his shoulder muscles and rotating his neck.

The guns of Mori bastion opened fire and a second later were joined by those in the Primus Ravelin. Hundreds of soldiers were scythed down in the murderous crossfire, their bodies torn apart in a hail of shells and lasers.

The first wave was almost completely annihilated, but thousands more followed, spilling down into the ditch and swarming across the rubble-strewn ground.

The floor of the ditch heaved upwards, obscuring the attackers in fire and shrapnel, as anti-personnel mines exploded and gouged bloody holes in the charging horde. The ditch became a blood-soaked killing ground as soldiers died in their hundreds, blown apart by mines or shot from the walls. A few hardy souls managed to climb to the top of the ravelin where they were brutally hacked down by Guardsmen with long-bladed poleaxes. The noise of gunfire, screams and the clash of steel on steel echoed from the valley sides as the slaughter continued.

More mines exploded. As some bloodied survivors managed to push themselves through to the rubble slopes of the breach, they found themselves facing a barbed and spiked barricade of twisted girders hurled from above.

The attack floundered at the base of the breach, the ditch carpeted with bodies and blood. In the re-entrant angle of the Mori bastion, where the arrowhead shape of the bastion narrowed before rejoining the main wall, Leonid had placed cannons armed with shells filled with ballbearings, bolts and metal fragments. The first cannon fired, the shell bursting apart as it left the muzzle and spraying lethal fragments in an expanding cone. The remaining cannons fired seconds later and the attackers at the base of the breach were snatched away in the bloody storm, torn to ribbons by the guns' discharge.

Leonid shouted a warning to Major Anders in the Primus Ravelin, as the sheer volume of soldiers flooding the ditch finally managed to sweep around the flanks of the V-shaped outwork. But Piet Anders was ready for them, leading his warriors in a furious counter-charge. Battle was joined within the ravelin as the men of the Jouran Dragoons crashed into the disordered mob of soldiers, chopping them down with swords and bludgeoning them with rifle butts. Major Anders hacked a bloody path through the attackers with his blade, the ensigns bearing his colours fighting to keep up with the officer, killing anyone who came near.

The battle for the walls of the ravelin became fiercer as a giant of a man with a huge axe gained its ramparts. Huge and fat, his reach was long and he killed anyone that stood against him. Enemy soldiers bunched around the man, beginning to fan out along the ramparts in a fighting wedge that would allow yet more warriors to climb to the ramparts.

Leonid watched in desperation as the giant slaughtered the ravelin's defenders until a squad of Imperial Fists on the eastern wall counterattacked. A volley of grenades blasted a hole in the wedge and the squad's sergeant shot the axe-wielding giant dead, blasting his head from his shoulders with his plasma pistol. The defenders rallied and pushed the last of the enemy from the walls. Leonid let out the breath he hadn't realised he was holding.

The carnage below was terrible. The scale of such killing in so short a time was incredible. But despite the death-toll, the soldiers in red kept coming at the walls until every square metre of the ditch was covered in blood or bodies.

'They are brave, I'll give them that,' said Leonid, watching as another enemy soldier was shot dead as he clambered across the barricades below.

'No,' snapped Eshara, raising his voice to be heard over the din of battle. 'They are not brave. Do not ever give voice to such thoughts, Castellan. These traitors are heretics and know nothing of notions such as bravery and honour. They keep coming at our walls to die because they fear the wrath of their masters more than us. Push such thoughts from your mind. You must not allow yourself to identify with this scum in any way, lest you find pity staying your hand and pay with your life for that moment of laxity.'

Leonid nodded and returned his gaze to the massacre below. 'What purpose is served here?' he asked. 'They will never gain a foothold on the walls like this. It is madness.'

'They gain a clearer understanding of our defences, explode our minefields and clog the walls with dead.'

'Why don't the Iron Warriors come, damn them?'

'Do not worry, Castellan, you will get your chance to fight the Iron Warriors, but you may soon regret that wish.'

'Perhaps,' said Leonid, watching as a dozen soldiers managed to survive long enough to traverse the barricades below and begin scrambling up the breach. To either side of him, his platoon waited, rifles aimed in a line down the breach. Leonid swept down his sword and shouted, 'Fire!'

Thirty rifles fired in a perfect volley and the enemy were blasted backwards, flopping like boneless puppets as they cartwheeled down the breach.

For a further three bloody hours the enemy threw themselves at the wall before pulling back at some unheard signal, leaving over two and a half thousand men dead in the ditch. Not a single traitor had managed to climb the breach.

A hoarse cheer followed the traitors back to their lines as the weary Guardsmen hurled enemy corpses from the walls of the ravelin, and orderlies rushed from posterns in the Destiny Gate to carry back the wounded.

'Well, we survived,' said Leonid.

'That was just the beginning,' promised Eshara.

Captain Eshaka's words were to prove prophetic, as the soldiers of the Iron Warriors launched another two assaults on the walls. Thousands more died in the nightmare hell of the ditch, shelled to bloody rags, shot or blown apart by mines. On three occasions, the Primus Ravelin almost fell, but Piet Anders and the Space Marines managed to rally the defenders every time and take back the walls just when everything seemed lost.

Flanking fire from the face of the Mori bastion swept the face of the ravelin clear of attackers and as night fell on the first day of the escalade, Leonid guessed that some five thousand enemy soldiers lay dead in the citadel's ditch. The preliminary butcher's bill amongst his own men for today's fighting was estimated to be a hundred and eighty dead, with perhaps twice that seriously wounded. Of these wounded, perhaps a third would not fight again.

The Iron Warriors could afford to suffer such horrendous loss of life without fear, but Leonid could not.

Even if the Jourans could keep up such an impressive kill-ratio, the Iron Warriors would inevitably wear them down. Leonid knew he could not allow this battle to become one of attrition.

Under cover of darkness, he and Eshara descended from the walls, leaving the citadel through the Destiny Gate's postern and making their way to the Primus ravelin. Here they found Major Anders, his face blood and sweat stained, sitting with his men drinking a mug of caffeine.

'You've done well, men,' called Leonid. 'Damn well.'

The soldiers beamed with pride at their commander's words.

'But tomorrow will be just as hard, and I'll need your very best.'

'We won't let you down, sir,' said a soldier from the ramparts above.

Leonid raised his voice and said, 'I know you won't, son. You're doing fine here, and I'm damn proud of you. You've shown these curs what it means to take on the 383rd!'

The soldiers cheered as Leonid turned to Piet Anders and shook his hand.

'Nice work, Piet, but watch your left flank,' he cautioned. 'With the breach on that side, we can't bring enough guns to bear and more of the enemy are getting around it.'

Anders saluted. 'Aye, sir, I'll keep an eye out.'

Leonid nodded, confident in his officer's ability to hold the ravelin. He returned Anders' salute before he and Eshara returned to the citadel.

They visited Vincare bastion, the curtain wall, the breach and Mori bastion, heaping praise on the soldiers and exhorting them with tales of valour from the other sections of the citadel. Each body of men vowed to outdo the others, and by the time Leonid returned to his temporary billet in the gate towers he was exhausted and a little light headed from the amount of amasec his men had forced upon him.

He lay down on his simple pallet bed and fell into a dreamless sleep.

TWO

Jharek Kelmaur climbed the blasted mountain of Tor Christo, picking his way confidently across the rubble, despite the darkness. His head scanned from side to side, as though searching for something, while a red-robed figure followed behind him, hands clasped beneath its robes and head bowed. The robed figure's physique was swollen and disproportionate, with broad shoulders, grossly misshapen arms and a barrel chest.

The sorcerer crested a ridge of jagged rock and scanned the ground before him. His tattooed skull bobbed as he hunted for something within the wreckage of the mountain. Something that, for now, eluded him.

'It should be here,' he muttered to himself, withdrawing a tattered scroll, its gold lettering faded and almost illegible. His frustration was growing and he knew he did not have much time left. His vision had promised him a hidden chamber beneath the rock of Tor Christo, so where was it? He descended into a huge crater of loose stone and scarred rock, his footing sure even through the black night and rough ground.

His silent companion dutifully followed him, its footsteps surprisingly heavy for a being of such mass.

The moonlight pooled around the curious pair, bathing them in vermilion light. Kelmaur circled the crater with increasing desperation. Behind him, the robed figure stopped abruptly and lifted its head to stare directly towards a huge slab of rock, toppled from the mountain and lying flush with the blasted rockface.

Without any word to Kelmaur, the figure strode across the crater towards the rock, halting ten metres from the slab.

Jharek Kelmaur smiled.

'You sense it, don't you?' he whispered and watched as the figure unclasped its arms and extended them towards the slab. The fabric of its robe rippled, as though some monstrous motion disturbed it, and something black and glossy extended from the ends of the sleeves.

The crater was suddenly bathed in light as twin beams of incandescent fire shot from the figure's arms and the rock exploded into fragments. As the dust dissipated, Kelmaur rejoiced at the sight of an ancient, verdigris-stained bronze gate. Again the searing beams stabbed out and the gate exploded into molten chunks, revealing a darkened passageway that led deep into the mountain.

Kelmaur felt his heart race in excitement. Here, he would walk passages that had not known the tread of man for ten thousand years. The robed figure clasped its arms once more and set off towards the revealed passage. Kelmaur followed and the pair made their way through the remains of the gate and into the mountain.

Neither Kelmaur nor his fellow traveller required light to see. The sorcerer marvelled at the precise, geomantic precision of the tunnel as it descended for hundreds of metres into the rock of Tor Christo.

Eventually, the tunnel emerged into a wide, domed chamber, lit by a diffuse glow that radiated from the walls. The floor was a broad disc of solid bronze, almost thirty metres in diameter, with an intricately designed pattern etched onto it. It was familiar to Kelmaur, but he could not remember why. Reluctantly, he tore his senses away from its beguiling pattern.

His wordless companion moved to the chamber's centre, reaching up with glistening, black hands that seemed just a little too large, and pulled back the hood of its robes.

Beneath was a face that had once been human, but was now disfigured beyond all recognition. Adept Etolph Cycerin's face was alive with crawling bio-organic circuitry. Even the augmentations grafted on by the Adeptus Mechanicus had transformed, their mechanical structure hideously altered by the techno-virus. Cycerin turned expectantly to face Kelmaur and raised his other arm, the flesh of the limb running, liquefying and transforming from the shape of a weapon into a hand. The hand pointed at Kelmaur and the sorcerer frowned at such impatience.

Had the transformation obliterated any sense of awe or reverence Cycerin once had?

Kelmaur removed the tattered scroll once more and unravelled it, clearing his throat before chanting a series of guttural and clicking harmonics in a language that had not been spoken in ten millennia. The chant consisted of syllables no human mouth was ever meant to give voice to, sliding between the air, pulling its fragile structure further and further apart.

Whipcord arcs of purple lightning flickered around the circumference of the bronze disc, growing in brightness as Kelmaur's chant continued. The air in the chamber grew dense, like the heavy overpressure before a thunderstorm, and the actinic tang of ozone set his teeth on edge.

The chant neared its end, the lightning arcs whipping upwards and joining in a tensing web of magenta that spun faster and faster around the disc's perimeter.

As the last syllable passed Kelmaur's lips, crackling, whirling lightning exploded, flaring outwards with a powerful coronal discharge. The sorcerer was hurled from his feet and slammed into the cavern wall, slumping to the floor in a bruised pile.

Dazed and in great pain, Kelmaur raised his head and smiled.

The creature he had created from Adept Cycerin had vanished.

A blaze of light flared in the centre of the glowing disc, a dancing crackle of energy swirling around the chamber as the pulsing afterimages slowly faded. Adept Cycerin turned his head left and right, orientating himself with the location he had been transported to. The scent of Jouran incense filled the air, and his altered eyes precisely mapped out the exact trigonometric properties of the chamber he found himself in.

He wondered if he had set foot here in his previous life, but could not remember. He could only remember the imperatives that thundered in his brain, firing along strange, new inorganic dendrites infesting his skull.

The chamber stretched high above him, black and studded with reliquaries. He stood on a floor of bronze, on a disc identical to the one he had just left. Two tonsured priests hurried towards him, their faces lined with frantic worry.

The priests stopped at the edge of the disc and shouted at him, the words were unintelligible; part of his previous existence. He could only converse in the machine language of the techno-virus now and the priests' banal, limited form of verbal communication was utterly inimical to him.

He raised his arms, the black surface of his limbs writhing as the virus within him moulded his machine-flesh into a new form. Metallic barrels and hissing muzzles formed from the engorged substance of his arms and Cycerin opened fire with his biomechanical weaponry, blasting the two priests from their feet in a storm of shells.

Dozens of urns in the lower levels of the Ossuary shattered, spreading the bones of former castellans across the floor. Skulls grinned up at Cycerin as he passed, making his way to the Sepulchre's exit.

At the door to the outer chambers, he stopped, lowered his arms and waited.

Jharek Kelmaur picked his way painfully down the rocky slopes, pleased that he had answered the potential of his vision. He did not know what part Adept Cycerin had yet to play in the unfolding drama on Hydra Cordatus, but was satisfied that he had been instrumental in its fulfilment.

As soon as Cycerin had vanished, the pattern etched in the bronze disc in the floor had begun to fade along with the glow in the walls, until any hint that either had existed was gone. The scroll had crumbled to dust and, with it, any means of using the ancient device again. Kelmaur knew it didn't matter: Cycerin was where he needed to be and his involvement with him was over.

He groaned. The expenditure of so much power had left him drained and his bones hurt where Cycerin's explosive teleportation had thrown him against the chamber wall. His ''near-sense'' was weakened and he stumbled several times, losing his footing on the slippery rocks and loose rubble.

As he reached the bottom of the slope he straightened his cloak and set off towards his tent, his strides becoming more confident as he found himself among more familiar surroundings.

Acolytes bowed as he passed, but he ignored them, too intent on rest and recuperation. As he ducked below the low entrance to his abode, painful cramps seized his stomach. Immediately he sensed the Warsmith's presence.

'You were successful,' said the Warsmith. It was a statement, not a question.

Kelmaur bowed extravagantly.

'Yes, my lord. The servant of the machine with but one hand has gone. The secret chamber was below the mountain, just as I had foreseen.'

'Good,' hissed the Warsmith, raising himself up to tower over Kelmaur. The sorcerer turned his head away, unable to look directly at the roiling metamorphosis of the Warsmith's face. The lord of the Iron Warriors reached up and cupped Kelmaur's chin in one massive gauntlet.

Kelmaur gasped in pain at the Warsmith's searing touch, squirming against his grip as black discolouration spread from where his master held him. The tattoos on his skull danced as Kelmaur cried out, his face contorted in agony.

'Now, Jharek, is there anything you wish to tell me? Anything you have kept from your Warsmith?'

Kelmaur shook his head. 'No, my lord!' he wheezed. 'I swear I have told you true every vision I have had.'

'Is that true?' asked the Warsmith, his disbelief plain. No answer was forthcoming and he sighed in feigned regret.

The Warsmith said, 'You achieve nothing by lying to me, Jharek,' and reached out his hand, pressing a burning palm against the sorcerer's temple.

Kelmaur screamed in agony as his flesh hissed and melted, filling the tent with the sickening stench of burned meat.

'You have one chance to live, Jharek,' promised the Warsmith. 'Tell me anything else you have kept from me and I will not kill you.'

'Nothing!' gasped Kelmaur. 'I have kept nothing from you, my lord, I swear! I see nothing more than that which I have told you!'

The Warsmith said, 'Then you are of no more use to me,' and exhaled a foetid breath of dazzling orange and green.

Kelmaur, already hyperventilating in fear, took a huge breath of the Warsmith's corrupt substance and began convulsing.

Kelmaur burned with horrific change and his screams were music to the Warsmith's ears. Evolutionary anarchy ripped through the sorcerer's frame. Kelmaur's body spasmed, grotesque changes warping through his flesh in a tornado of mutation. Tentacles, pincers, wings and other more unnameable organs burst from every part of his rebellious anatomy, his body now unrecognisable as human in the soup of aberrant growths.

Within seconds, all that remained of the sorcerer was a seething pile of pulped meat and bone, too grossly misshapen to survive.

'I promised I would not kill you, did I not?' sneered the Warsmith, turning and leaving the hideously mutated body of Jharek Kelmaur hissing in mindless torpor on the floor of his tent.

Amongst the gibbering ruin of distorted flesh, a single unblinking human eye stared out in horror and incipient madness.

THREE

The attacks on the walls continued for another three days, with thousands of men throwing themselves at the citadel and dying in droves. Casualties amongst the Jourans were lighter than on the first day, the weakest men having fallen in the early assaults.

On the third day, at the height of the attack, the embrasures were removed from the earthwork that ran the length of the third parallel and in a jet of exhaust fumes one hundred and thirteen Vindicator siege tanks moved into position and opened fire with an ear-splitting crack.

The walls of the citadel and bastions disappeared in a rolling bank of grey smoke and fire. Before the echoes had begun to fade, a second volley of shots battered the walls. Soldiers from both forces were pulverised in the massive barrage as shell after shell hammered the walls and breach.

Whole swathes of unstable structure tore free from the breach, hundreds of tonnes of rubble crashing downwards, carrying scores of men to their deaths and burying yet more beneath the falling blocks.

The bombardment continued for two punishing hours, undoing the repair work undertaken by the Imperial Fists and the Jourans to the ramparts. Hundreds died before they were able to take shelter in the bombproof shelters and the screams of the wounded carried as far back as the statue-lined road that led towards the Sepulchre. The face of the Mori bastion crumbled under the onslaught, tonnes of shattered masonry crashing into the ditch and forming a steep, but practicable breach. But by this time, there was no one left alive in the ditch to exploit it.

Broken by the twin blows of the stubborn defence of the Jourans and the betrayal of their masters, the Iron Warriors' soldiery turned and fell back from the walls in disarray.

As the bloodied survivors of the attack stumbled away from the citadel, shell-shocked and insane with terror, they broke and swirled around a giant figure in iron-black armour. A clear space surrounded the giant, who stood as still as a statue amongst the fleeing soldiers of his army.

The Warsmith marched through the mob, the soldiers parting before the bow-wave of corruption that travelled before him. He carried an arrow-headed icon bearing the skull-masked symbol of the Iron Warriors, which he planted in the blood-soaked earth at the edge of the ditch.

Leonid lowered his bloody power sword and watched the giant figure with a terrible sense of foreboding. Who this warrior was, he had no idea, but, instinctively, he feared him.

He turned to Corwin. The Space Marine Librarian's armour was scored with dozens of lasblasts, and blood ran from a gash torn in his upper arm.

'He is their Warsmith, the leader of this army,' said Corwin.

The Warsmith was well within weapons range, yet not one amongst the garrison could raise his gun to open fire.

They watched as the Warsmith pointed to the icon and then towards the fortress. Then he lifted an enormous axe from a shoulder scabbard and, in a rasping voice that carried the weight of ages said, 'You have until tomorrow morning to satisfy your honour and fall upon your swords. After that, your souls belong to me and I promise I will send every man alive within these walls to hell.'

The enemy commander's voice should not have been able to carry across the walls, but every soldier of the Jourans felt the terror of the Warsmith's words lodge like a splinter in his heart.

Leonid watched the Chaos warlord turn and march back through the earthworks, the lingering nausea in his gut fading to a dull ache as the Warsmith vanished from sight.

Night was falling as the Warsmith's champions gathered beneath his intricate pavilion. They knelt before the master of the Iron Warriors, in awe at the changes rippling through his form. Honsou watched as a darkening shadow ghosted behind the Warsmith's body, rippling the air with its passing, like mighty wings beating the air, or at least the suggestion of wings. The roiling souls spinning within his armour were silent, their cries drowned out by the unheard crescendo of change writhing within the Warsmith.

'A time of great moment is upon us, my champions' began the Warsmith.

He turned his gaze towards the hazily lit silhouette of the citadel, barely visible over the lip of the earthwork. Flashes of artillery fire lit the sky as Imperial mortars dropped shells on the Iron Warriors' camp, but it was undirected; and the vehicles and troops were protected from all but direct hits in their reinforced bunkers.

'The future is becoming less tangled now, its paths unravelling and revealing their ultimate destinations to me. It is a wonderful thing to see and to know that Perturabo chose the right path. To see the enemy's palaces in ruins, to see his warriors hung, broken and defeated from stakes lining the roadways from here to the gates of Terra vindicates everything we have done. I have seen this and more, victories and slaughters magnificent in their scale. It is pleasing, and the poor fools we must destroy will not accept this. Like most mortals, the true majesty of Chaos turns them into frightened children. Such limited understanding and vision is to blame for what their Emperor has brought them to.'

Honsou felt his pulse rising in time with the cadence of the Warsmith's voice. Each word dripped with potential. The battle here was almost at an end and the Warsmith was promising them victory. The human soldiers had fulfilled their appointed task and now the honour of taking the citadel would fall to the Iron Warriors. It would be soon, the Warsmith would not, could not, wait any longer.

Any fool could see that.

Even the faintly disturbing presence of Kroeger beside him could not dampen his enthusiasm for the coming fight. Kroeger had not spoken a single word to anyone for several days and while normally Honsou would have been grateful for such a reprieve, his suspicions were aroused. Though he could not see his face beneath his helmet, Honsou's warrior's eye could tell that there was something different about Kroeger. He moved with a confident, easy grace, rather than the bullish swagger he usually affected, more like a fighter than of a simple butcher and Honsou did not like the change one bit.

He glanced over at Forrix, the ancient veteran shifting painfully under the weight of his new bionics. The Chirumeks had worked wonders to reconstruct his body in so short a time, and daemonic sorceries had brought his life back from the brink of the void.

The Warsmith approached them again and Honsou steeled himself for the aching cramps and nausea.

'I now know the truth of the universe,' began the Warsmith. 'Only Chaos endures. The web of action and reaction, cause and effect that has brought us to Hydra Cordatus began many thousands of years ago, though in this universe nothing ever really begins or ends.'

The Warsmith turned and spread his arms before him, encompassing the extent of the citadel.

'Towards the end of the Great Crusade I helped build this citadel, working shoulder to shoulder with the great Perturabo himself. We raised its magnificence towards the heavens for the glory of the Emperor. But Perturabo knew, even then, that the Emperor would one day betray us, and fashioned it with great cunning. What I created, you will now put asunder.'

Honsou was amazed. The Warsmith had built the citadel? Now he began to understand the true genius behind its construction. Had this been any other fortress, it would have fallen much sooner. The finest siege engineers of the day had built it and it would take the finest warriors to tear it down.

'Billions upon billions of potential consequences spread out from the here and the now and each is capable of being massively shaped by the tiniest action,' continued the Warsmith. 'Each of you will play a part in that future and you will not fail me. You will not fail me or you will die, by my hand or the enemy's, it matters not. Some of you will die, and some of you have died already.'

Honsou's brow wrinkled as he pondered the Warsmith's words. Was he going to tell them the outcome of tomorrow's battle? As though hearing his thoughts the Warsmith answered Honsou directly.

'Only the Great Conspirator himself knows the infinite possibilities the future can bring, but I have seen tantalising glimpses of the shape of things to come. The myriad complexities of alternate histories yet to be written lie open to my sight.'

The Warsmith stood before each of his champions and bade them stand with a curt gesture.

'Honsou, you have proven yourself to be a worthy leader and though your blood is polluted beyond redemption with the seed of the very enemy we face, you are a true son of Chaos and I see worlds that will yet burn in your name. Your life hangs by the most slender of threads and it is probable you will die tomorrow. If it is to be so, die well.'

'Forrix, I have fought beside you many times and we have shed the blood of millions together. Whole sectors cursed our names, and legions of the dead await to walk with you on the road to hell. You will be a legend amongst the Iron Warriors.'

'Kroeger… Kroeger, for you I see nothing beyond the slaughter of these walls. You will go places I shall never see, but I do not know whose is the greater loss.'

Honsou could not understand all the Warsmith's words, but knew there was great significance in every one. He had barely heard the words directed at the other captains, so intent was he on fathoming the meaning of those directed at him. Was he to die tomorrow? Would he yet live to make more worlds of the False Emperor bleed?

Such concerns were beyond his ability to comprehend; yet he felt a terrible vindication as he received the Warsmith's acceptance.

His footsteps were loud against the smooth stone steps, but Magos Naicin knew there was no one to hear them. Even had there been, he could easily have explained away his presence here.

The dark tower was a black spear against a garnet sky and Naicin rubbed a gloved hand against the metal of his bronze mask, feeling its edge chafe against the tissue beneath. It would be pleasing to finally be rid of the augmentations enforced by his role and feel air against his true flesh again.

Naicin felt a thrill of anticipation course through his body at the thought of the task before him. Until now his greatest challenge had been to mislead and confuse an already disorientated, barely-human machine priest who grew easier to influence with each passing day. Since the day he had replaced the real Naicin, nearly a century ago on Nixaur Secundus, the threat of discovery had been negligible, and it was a testament to how blindly the dogmatic machine priests could be manipulated and fooled.

All it required was the correct symbols, a few ritualistic lines of doggerel and they would believe you were one of their own. It was galling to think that an organisation that could be so easily deceived was one of the foundations the cursed Imperium rested upon. The sooner his master destroyed it the better. United under the yoke of Chaos, humanity would be the stronger for its absence.

Naicin reached the top of the slope and looked back upon the wasteland of Hydra Cordatus. The Iron Warriors' attack would come with the dawn, and a storm of iron would engulf the citadel, against whose wrath none could stand. The men struggling on the walls below were fighting bravely, but he wondered if they would fight as hard knowing the truth of what had happened to this world, why it was such a desolate wilderness. Or, indeed, what was happening to their own bodies even now.

He raised his eyes to the opposite flank of the valley, wondering again where the body of that troublesome soldier Hawke lay. His survival had almost alerted Leonid to the truth of how the Adeptus Mechanicus had deceived them all, but Naicin had briefed his underlings well and the colonel had emerged from the Biologis infirmary none the wiser.

He strode towards the doors of the Sepulchre, sputtering torches guttering in their sconces either side of the portal, and pulled them open, smelling the distinctive tang of blood and death the instant he opened the door. This place was a tomb, and thus he was not surprised at the latter stench, but the former was a newcomer to the Sepulchre.

Naicin stepped into the well-lit outer chambers, marvelling at the images on the stained glass windows above him.

Depicting anonymous Space Marines in battle, the utter ruthlessness they displayed was out of all proportion to their enemies; the savagery frightening in its intensity. No loyalist Space Marines these, but a tangible warning of how easy it was for even those raised above all others to fall from grace.

The irony of the windows' subject matter was not lost on Naicin, given that he knew the truth of this place and the true identity of its architects, but he was not here to admire the aesthetics of the Sepulchre, he had a more vital errand.

Thin slivers of red light were making their way across the floor as night released its grip on the valley and the dawn of the Iron Warriors began. It was time.

Gripping the handles of the Ossuary's door, Naicin took a moment to savour the significance of this moment, etching the sensations of each second on his memory before pulling wide the inner doors.

A tall, weirdly baroque leviathan stood on the other side, thick, cable-like arms hanging by its side and clad in robes that rippled with barely concealed motion. Naicin could see the face of the corrupted Adept Cycerin below its hood, the skin of his face alive with writhing mecha-organic circuitry as it wove into new and more evolved patterns in his subcutaneous layer. The colour had drained from Cycerin's face and his skin was a flat, metallic white with crawling mercurial veins. A terrible power radiated from the former machine priest and Naicin felt a suffocating fear rise in his chest at the monstrous creature before him. He stepped back in awe.

Cycerin's arms raised, fluidly morphing into wide barrelled, biomechanical weapons as his eyes tracked Naicin's movements. For a second, Naicin was sure Cycerin was about to destroy him, but some unknown algorithm in the adept's altered brain must have identified that he was not a threat, and the weapon arms lowered.

Naicin gulped away his fear and indicated the doors that led down the mountainside towards the citadel.

He said, 'Adept Cycerin, I have come to take you home.'

FOUR

Dawn was an hour old as Honsou watched spears of light break over the top of the earthworks. His sense of urgency mounted with the sun as the red sunlight spilled over the valley, throwing the shadow of the citadel out across the ditch and making his gunmetal armour shine like bloodstained silver. An artillery duel was underway between the Imperial gunners and the siege tanks of the Iron Warriors, throwing up plumes of earth and smoke. It was an unequal struggle as the siege tanks methodically dismounted the citadel's guns one by one.

Honsou crouched with his warriors behind the siege tanks. The noise was phenomenal and the ground shook with the violence of their firing. In moments he would unleash his warriors over the earthworks and attack the Primus Ravelin, capturing the outwork and preventing its guns from flanking warriors from Forrix and Kroeger's companies to his right. Forrix had been granted the honour of attacking the breach in the curtain wall, while Kroeger and his berserkers were poised to storm the tear blasted in the Mori bastion. But both attacks would surely founder without the fall of the ravelin.

Once the ravelin had fallen, he was to lead his men across the ditch and follow Forrix through the breach. After that, any strategy or plan was irrelevant as the soldiers who had fought through the hell of a storming would be so blood-maddened that almost nothing could stop a rampage of colossal proportions. Honsou looked forward to it.

Forrix and his men gathered in the approach trench that zigzagged its way back from the third parallel, and Honsou could see the veteran captain was becoming more used to his mechanised body with each step. At the far end of the parallel, Kroeger stood motionless before the firing step of the earthwork, staring intently towards the breach he would soon be attacking. Normally Kroeger would be strutting up and down the length of the parallel, boasting of his prowess and heaping scorn upon Honsou, but there was nothing now, merely a sinister silence.

Honsou had approached Kroeger as dawn had broken, sensing the change that had overtaken his nemesis more clearly than ever.

'The Warsmith honours you, Kroeger,' he had said, but Kroeger had not answered him, nor even acknowledged his presence.

'Kroeger?' repeated Honsou, reaching up to grip the edge of Kroeger's shoulder guard.

As soon as Honsou's hand touched the metal of the armour, Kroeger's hand shot up and gripped his wrist, wrenching it away and pushing him back. Honsou snarled, drawing his sword partway from its scabbard, but Kroeger turned, and Honsou was seized by a dire premonition that to attack Kroeger would be to die. A pale nimbus of light played around Kroeger's helmet and, though he couldn't be sure, Honsou thought he could see that same light seeping through the visor of Kroeger's helm. The light carried hints of an ancient malevolence and Honsou had slowly sheathed his sword, turning on his heel and returning to his company.

He shook his head free of the memory, shifting his weight from foot to foot, impatient for the attack to begin. The boom of the Vindicators suddenly ceased and, with a huge revving roar, the siege tanks pulled back from the earthworks. This was the signal he had been waiting for. Honsou rose to his feet, raising his pistol and sword high above him.

'Death to the False Emperor!' he roared and sprinted through the embrasure in the earthwork. He scrambled down its blasted front, his warriors following him through this and other gaps fashioned in the earthwork.

The rubble slope of the ditch was less than ten metres away and Honsou ran towards it as the crack of small arms fire snapped from the crumbling ramparts of the curtain wall and the flanks of both bastions. Shots slashed through the air beside him, bright streamers of las-fire plucking at his armour or vaporising nearby patches of earth. A roar of hate built in Honsou's throat as he slid down the rocky slope into the ditch.

A sea of red bodies, already beginning to rot in the heat, carpeted the trench. He charged across the multitude of corpses, crushing bones and pulverising soft, decaying tissue underfoot as yet more fire was directed at them. The soldiers on the Primus Ravelin had fought hard these last few days, but they had faced only the chaff of the Iron Warriors' army. Now they would fight the best.

Heavier blasts of las-fire speared from the ramparts, blasting craters in the floor of the ditch and tossing severed limbs and gas-bloated corpses high into the air. But Honsou could see the inferior quality of the Imperial soldiers was telling now as the majority of their shots flew high. Without a huge mass of targets to aim at, their shooting was woefully inaccurate and barely a handful of Iron Warriors had fallen.

Honsou reached the blasted foot of the ravelin, its once-smooth face now cracked, broken and easily climbed. He fired at the top of the ravelin and began scrambling his way up the slope. A shot struck the top of his shoulder guard, but he ignored the impact and kept climbing.

Withering hails of bullets and las-bolts from the flank of the Mori bastion hammered the walls of the ravelin. He heard a roar of warriors unleashed far to his right and knew that Forrix and Kroeger were beginning their attack.

Dozens of warriors were clambering up the slopes of the ravelin amid the explosion of grenades and constant snap of lasgun fire. The Iron Warrior beside him lost his grip as a shell burst above him, tearing his head off in a fountain of blood. His heavy corpse smashed half a dozen warriors from the wall as he fell.

Honsou shook his helmet clear of blood, punching his fist deep into the wall and gripping onto a reinforcement bar as he saw a cluster of grenades slither down the wall towards him. He pressed his body flat against the wall as they detonated, blowing clear a chunk of grey rockcrete. Torn ligaments in his arms shrieked as the force of the blast lifted him from the wall, but his grip on the rebar held him firm.

Red runes winked into life on his visor, and he felt blood flowing along his limbs, but he pushed upwards, dragging himself up the wall.

The slope grew less steep as he climbed, reaching the broken sections of the wall pulverised by the siege tanks. Gunfire from below slackened as the Iron Warriors firing at the parapet now holstered their weapons and began climbing.

A face appeared above Honsou. He put a bolt through it and carried on upwards. He risked a glance behind him. Perhaps a dozen Iron Warriors were dead and they had yet to clear the ramparts. Honsou turned in time to see an Imperial Fist swing the crackling edge of a power sword towards his head. He threw himself flat against the wall, feeling the sword blade hack a portion of his shoulder guard away. He rolled as the sword swung again, cutting through the rockcrete and sliding free in a shower of orange sparks as it struck an embedded reinforcement bar.

Honsou dragged his own sword from its scabbard and rolled as he saw the Imperial Fist on the rampart draw back his sword for another strike. Honsou lunged, spearing his foe through the chest with his sword. He hurled himself over the parapet, barrelling into a group of Guardsmen rushing to plug the gap in the walls and landing in a tangle of limbs.

Honsou battered his elbows downward, hearing screams, feeling bones break and skulls cracking open.

He rolled to his knees, slashing low with his sword at a charging Imperial Fist, hacking his legs out from under him. Honsou reversed the grip on his sword and hammered the blade through the Space Marine's helm, dragging it free in time to block the swing of another sword, this time swung by an Imperial officer with a major's star on his chest.

Honsou blocked a clumsy thrust and kicked the man in the groin, shattering his pelvis and dropping him screaming to the ground.

'Iron Warriors to me!' he bellowed, clearing a space around him with wide sweeps of his sword. Bullets and las-bolts ricocheted from his armour.

Another two Iron Warriors climbed over the lip of the parapet, forming a wedge with Honsou at its point. Together, the Iron Warriors hacked a path through the Imperial Guardsmen, splashing their silver armour with blood.

An Imperial Fist sergeant saw the danger and charged towards Honsou, firing his plasma pistol as he ran. Honsou swayed aside, the beam streaking past him and punching through the helmet of an Iron Warrior as he pulled himself over the parapet.

Honsou gripped his sword two-handed and charged to meet the Space Marine, diving forward and rolling beneath the swing of his opponent's blade. He rose to his feet and cut high, decapitating the Space Marine in a single blow.

Perhaps a dozen Iron Warriors had gained the ramparts and more were flooding the walls as Honsou's wedge pushed further into the ravelin, pushing the enemy back before them. Honsou yelled in triumph as his men spread out along the walls, killing everything in their path. The Guardsmen fell back in the face of such savagery and the ramparts were his. The enemy retreat was practically a rout, a few Imperial Fists all that held it from collapsing completely.

Honsou leapt from the ramparts as he saw a reserve of Guardsmen with heavy weapons, commanded by a junior officer, lying in wait in the centre of the ravelin. He hit the ground and rolled, watching the officer gauging the correct moment to fire.

The officer's sword swept down and heavy weapon fire raked the inner faces of the ravelin, pitching four Iron Warriors from the walls. Bolter fire answered them and a handful of men fell, clutching gaping wounds in their bodies.

The crescendo of guns and screaming soldiers was powerful in its intensity as battle was joined across the walls and bastions. Smoke billowed from fires set by shell impacts and gunfire that had ignited the uniforms of the fallen.

More bolter shots tore amongst the Guardsmen as the officer swept his sword down again, but it was too late. Honsou was amongst them, hacking and killing with frenzied abandon. Blood spurted, limbs were severed and entrails spilled as he tore the beating heart from the defence.

Dozens more Iron Warriors were spilling into the ravelin itself. Yellow armoured Space Marines were like tiny islands of stubborn resistance, but Honsou could see they would soon be overwhelmed.

Ahead he could see the massive golden gate of the citadel, flanked by two high towers and topped with battered gun turrets. Without siege tanks it was inviolable, but to the right of the gate was the great breach and Honsou could see fierce fighting raging at its top.

'Iron Warriors, rally to me!' roared Honsou, bellowing to be heard over the din of battle. Raising his bloody sword, he set off at a run towards the breach.

The Primus Ravelin had fallen.

'Forward!' screamed Forrix from below the crest of the breach, his power glove crackling with deadly power. They were so close he could taste victory. His armour was dented and torn open, but he felt nothing, the arcane mechanics of his newly augmented body impervious to pain. He felt another impact against his chest and laughed insanely as the bolt exploded against his breastplate, the shell fragments scoring shallow gashes in his helmet.

The breach was wreathed in the smoke and confusion of battle. Bodies lay strewn about, both friends and foes. Three times they had taken the crest of the breach and three times they had been hurled back by Dorn's lapdogs.

He clambered up, pulling himself forward in great powered strides.

Then he was hurled backwards as a buried mine exploded beneath him, the ground rearing upwards in a pillar of smoke and fire. A chunk of rock smashed into his newly repaired helmet and shattered the visor, cracking it too badly to see through. Forrix rolled a few metres down the breach, before sliding to a halt in the loose rock.

Angrily, he pushed himself to his feet and wrenched off his ruined helmet, hurling it into the smoke above him. He could see dim shapes ahead and opened up with his combi-bolter, spraying the breach with fire. One figure dropped, but the others swung their weapons to bear at him.

A blast of gunfire ripped into the hazy figures, deadly fire from a reaper autocannon that swept them away in a hail of shells. Forrix glanced around him, seeing that his company had suffered fearsome losses to get this far. It would all be for nothing if they should fail now. Iron Warriors climbed past him towards the top of the breach.

He heard a great roar of victory from below and knew that the half-breed had succeeded in capturing the ravelin. But how Kroeger's attack on the eastern bastion was faring, he had no idea. He snarled and resumed his climb, shooting blindly into the smoke above him. Nearly twenty Iron Warriors in Terminator armour climbed with him, firing their weapons into the breach.

Las-bolts and bullets spat from the nubs of wall to either side of him, but Forrix ignored them. The breach was all that mattered.

His powerful strides had almost taken him to the top of the breach when a deafening roar erupted from beyond the crest and the rocks before him exploded, huge chunks of rockcrete blasted to powder by shell impacts. Six Iron Warriors were obliterated in a single, devastating volley as a searing energy beam vaporised another's upper body, leaving his legs standing for a second before they toppled back down the rubble slope. Forrix dropped and crawled towards the edge of the breach, lifting his helmetless head over the rocks.

The beast of legend was before him, not just one, but two of the agile Scout Titans darted back and forth in the gap between the citadel's inner and outer walls. Constantly in motion, the Warhounds loped back and forth like caged beasts, pausing every now and again to spray the breach with murderous fire from their Vulcan bolters.

Forrix's heart sank.

While the Warhounds covered the breach, there was almost no way they could cross it.

The thing that had once been a determined lieutenant in the Jouran 383rd, but was now something infinitely older and more malevolent, pushed its way forwards over the jagged steel and rockcrete of the Mori bastion's breach. The Avatar of Khorne roared in primal lust as it drank deep from the well of hatred supplied by Larana Utorian.

Hatred of the Guard for shelling her.

Hatred of Kroeger for driving her to this.

Hatred of the Emperor for allowing this to happen.

Larana Utorian now had hatred carved upon her heart.

The warriors of Kroeger's company followed the thing they believed to be their leader, fighting their way through the hell of gunfire and explosions, in awe of the ferocity and sheer good fortune he displayed.

Bullets seemed to float around him, lasers passed through him and explosions that should have ripped him in two pattered like rain against his pristine armour. Where they struggled up the steep slope, their leader ascended as effortlessly as if he walked on level ground. The distance between the Avatar and the Iron Warriors widened as it powered ahead to the top in easy, loping strides.

As the Avatar leapt to the top of the breach, its sword sang out in dizzyingly beautiful traceries, and wherever it struck, an enemy died. The Iron Warriors were still some distance behind, and soon Imperial Fists surrounded the Avatar, their swords bright and deadly.

The Avatar cared not. It welcomed this. It needed it. It vaulted over the heads of the lead warriors, decapitating two before it landed behind the others. It kicked out, snapping a warrior's spine and clove another in half with a two-handed sweep. Imperial Fists and Guardsmen clamoured around it, but none could land a blow.

The Avatar pistoned its fist through the skull of a screaming soldier, gripping his uniform jacket and hauling him upwards to allow the jetting spray of blood to drench its gleaming armour. The blood hissed as it landed, seeping within the armour with a monstrous suckling noise.

Yet more foes closed in, and each died at the hands of the Blood God's Avatar.

A rippling haze formed around the Avatar, its form bulging as though unable to contain its sheer vitality. A booming laugh, redolent with the malice of ages echoed across the Mori bastion, and the Imperial defenders quailed before such evil.

The Iron Warriors finally clambered over the lip of the breach, spreading out from behind the Avatar, drawing their weapons and hurling themselves into the fight.

The Avatar watched it all, feeling the waves of hatred and aggression washing through it like a tonic, nourishing its new host with pain and death.

A sharp jolt of cold pain startled the Avatar from its reverie of carnage and the white glare behind its helmet burned with the fire of a sun as it sought out its attacker.

A Space Marine in the spartanly embellished armour of an Imperial Fists Librarian advanced towards it. He carried a crackling force staff and the Avatar laughed as it recognised the power of a psyker. Here was a death worth inflicting.

Glittering haloes of psychic energy flared from the Librarian's helmet, engraved with hexagrammic sigils of great potency and scrimshawed purity seals.

'Abomination!' hissed Librarian Corwin. 'I shall send you back to the hell from which you crawled!'

A beam of coruscating light lanced from the Librarian's force staff and struck the Avatar in the centre of its chest. The Avatar staggered, dropping to its knees as it was bathed in flickering balefires. It bellowed in pain, suddenly thrusting with its sword and impaling an Iron Warrior on its blade.

Blood sprayed along the weapon and the Avatar roared as it fed, rising to its feet as the drained Iron Warrior collapsed to the ground.

Flaring washes of energy erupted from the Avatar's body as the power earthed through its armour. The Avatar laughed again.

'You are deluded,' grated the altered voice of Larana Utorian. 'Do you not realise that Khorne is the bane of psykers?'

The Librarian braced himself against the rocks as the desperate struggle at the top of the breach swirled around them. Neither side was willing to intervene in this battle that was fought in the realm of the spirit.

'The power of the Emperor commands you!' bellowed Corwin, striking the Avatar with another blast of light and driving it to the ground once more. 'Begone, foul daemon!'

Again and again he fired searing bolts of psychic power at the figure of the Avatar, sagging against the side of the breach as his reserves of energy dwindled.

His very soul was being drained as he fought to destroy this monster.

The Avatar spread its arms and gave vent to a shout of hatred that shook the very walls of the bastion with its fury. A rippling whirlwind of raw, red hunger swept from the Avatar's armour, spreading throughout the breach like the pressure wave of an explosion and scything through every warrior within a hundred paces. A lashing storm of hate-fuelled energy whipped around the interior walls of the Mori bastion, and every man touched burst apart in an explosion of red, his blood swept up in the etheric whirlwind as it howled back to the Avatar at its epicentre.

The Avatar swelled to monstrous proportions, its armour creaking and groaning as it sought to master the energies ripped from the deaths it had just caused.

Dry, fleshless husks surrounded it, Iron Warriors, Jourans and Imperial Fists, their vital fluid drained to feed the monster that had killed them. The Avatar rose to its full height, towering in the breach, its armour and weapons blazing with barely-contained power.

Only one figure remained standing: Librarian Corwin, his knees buckled and the sacred sigils on his armour little but faded scorch marks. He supported himself on his staff, swaying unsteadily as the Avatar's pounding footsteps crashed towards him across the breach.

'Not dead yet, psyker?' roared the Avatar, raising its sword. 'Soon you will wish you were.'

Corwin looked up into the blazing eyes of the Avatar and saw death.

The Avatar swung its sword, the passage of the iridescent blade cutting through the fragile veil of reality with a dreadful ripping sound, like tearing meat.

A black gouge torn in the walls separating realities opened, filling the air with sickening static, as though a million noxious flies had flown through from some vile, plague dimension.

Librarian Corwin closed his eyes and died without a sound as the Avatar's blade split him in two, both halves of his body sucked into the black tear opened in space and time.

The Avatar feasted on the slaughter it had caused, sensing the oceans of blood yet to be shed through the gateway its sword, bloated with death, had torn in the world. Galaxies of billions upon billions of souls awaited harvest and feeding to the Blood God. There were realms where the time it had wasted here was but the blink of an eye, where there were slaughters that would perhaps one day assuage Khorne's hunger.

The Avatar laughed, knowing that such a thing could not come to pass: the Blood God's hunger was a depthless ocean and would never be sated. New life and new purpose thundered through the bulging fabric of its armour as the pull of fresh souls suffused it.

Larana Utorian continued to scream inside her mind as she saw the eternity of slaughter that lay before her, and all the deaths to come.

She screamed because she realised that some vile part of her soul desired this.

Without a backward glance, the Avatar abandoned Hydra Cordatus to its fate, stepping through the dark portal to a time and place beyond mortal understanding.

An age of battle awaited, and it had time without end to be part of it.

Honsou scrambled up the slopes of the breach, his blood afire with killing. Iron Warriors gathered at the crest of the breach, the rocks there enveloped in clouds of explosions pierced with stabs of flame from some unseen weapon. Already he could tell that the gunfire had to be coming from a Titan.

Forrix saw him coming and waved him forward, shouting over the din of the sawing fire of the Warhounds' Vulcan bolters.

'We cannot go further!'

'But the guns of the bastion will cut us to pieces if we stay here!' retorted Honsou. 'We must carry the breach!'

Forrix pointed through the smoke to the shadowy outline of the Mori bastion and Honsou suddenly noticed the complete absence of any sounds of battle. No gunshots, no screams of wounded men and no clash of steel on steel. Only then did he notice the slowly shrinking wound torn in the air that hung in the breach, a veil of stars glittering from beyond.

'What in the name of Chaos is that?'

'I do not know, half-breed, but it is where Kroeger has gone.'

'I don't understand,' said Honsou as the shimmering vision faded to nothingness.

'Nor I, but the whereabouts of Kroeger is the least of our worries. We need something to shift these thrice-damned Warhounds.'

As if in response to Forrix's demand, the thunder of something impossibly vast slamming against the earth shook the ground, loosening giant rocks from the breach. The massive vibration hammered through the ground again and Honsou turned as he felt the presence of something ancient and fearsome approaching.

More rocks tumbled downwards from the breach as the tempo of the thunderous impacts grew.

The smoke parted and the Dies Irae limped from the smoke and strode towards the citadel.

High in the command bridge of the Warlord Titan, Honoris Causa, Princeps Daekian heard the excitement in Princeps Carlsen's voice even over the vox, and smiled with grim resignation.

'It's the Dies Irae, it's mobile again. Emperor knows how, but it's coming straight for Vincare bastion, princeps!'

Carlsen's warning was unnecessary; Daekian's forward observers had already reported the appearance of the corrupted Emperor Titan. He could sense the unspoken desire of Carlsen to come and join the fight against the Dies Irae, but even a cursory glance at the tactical plot told Daekian that Carlsen's Warhounds were best employed covering the breach.

'Hold fast, Princeps Carlsen. Stay where you are,' he ordered.

'Aye, princeps,' replied Carlsen, his disappointment plain.

Daekian expertly walked his Warlord through the gateway of the inner wall, ducking the Titan's massive head to avoid losing its carapace weapons. The two Reavers that followed him, the Armis juvat and the Pax Imperator, were smaller and passed below the gate without trouble. All three Titans had undergone hurried repairs after their first engagement, but none was yet fully operational.

Daekian had faith in his crews and the fighting spirit of the Honoris Causa, but he had made his peace with the Emperor before climbing to the bridge of his Titan. He had long known that it would come to this and though he was sure it would mean his death, he was honoured that it would fall to him to avenge Princeps Fierach.

Already he could see the effect the Dies Irae was having on the battle. Imperial troops were streaming back in terror from the gargantuan apparition that had emerged from the smoke. The Imperial Fists fell back in good order, even the Space Marines realising the futility of standing before this beast. Their ramparts were no protection against such a towering monster, able to cross the bastion with a single step, able to obliterate the walls with a shot.

Daekian cursed as the troops fled beneath him, unable to step forward for fear of crushing whole platoons beneath his tread. The Dies Irae had reached the third parallel and was barely seconds away from reaching the walls.

'Moderati Issar, take down that abomination's shields!' he yelled, raising the massive foot of his Titan and praying that the men below would get out of his way.

'Engineering deck, give me slow striding speed.'

He watched as flaming traceries of staccato gunfire pumped from his carapace-mounted Catling blaster, the high velocity shells ripping across the body of the Dies Irae. Bright pulses flared as void shields collapsed, but Daekian knew that it would take more than the gatling blaster to finish this beast off.

The Armis Juvat and Pax Imperator spread out to his flanks, firing as they went, as he gracefully manoeuvred the Honoris Causa through the mass of fleeing troops. A massive explosion threw up chunks of rockcrete as the enemy Titan's plasma annihilator opened fire and vaporised a corner gun tower on Vincare bastion, melting the rockcrete of the walls and causing them to sag under the intolerable heat.

Daekian grunted as he felt shields collapsing under the weight of fire from the Dies Irae, cursing as he swung his Titan left into the bastion, stepping over the lines of entrenchments.

His monstrous foe was before him, and a cold, lead weight settled in the pit of his stomach as he clearly saw the terrifying form of the Dies Irae over the jagged top of the broken ramparts. Its body was blackened and scorched by fire and its head was a molten, dented mass, green fire blazing from behind its single remaining eye. Gunfire blazed from its weapon mounts, sawing through the ramparts and hammering the Titans of his battle group.

The Armis Juvat staggered, a round from the enemy Titan's hellstorm cannon defeating its shields and clipping the knee joint of its left leg.

'Armis Juvat and Pax Imperator, brace for firing!' shouted Daekian as he increased speed and thundered towards the bastion's flank.

The princeps of the Reavers planted their Titans' feet squarely on the ground and unleashed a deadly volley of fire at the Dies Irae. The enemy Titan returned fire as it continued to advance. Daekian initialised the linear accelerators that powered the Volcano cannon and took command of the weapon himself. Not that he did not trust and respect the Moderati who controlled the weapon, but if there was to be a kill shot, he would be the one to make it.

Another shot from the Dies Irae's plasma annihilator blew apart a further section of the wall as it stepped down into the ditch, crushing hundreds of corpses with every ponderous tread. He flinched as a flare of bright light to his side briefly illuminated the bridge and he craned his neck to see what had exploded.

The Armis Juvat toppled backwards, the top half of its upper body blown away. Geysers of plasma fire spilled from the ruptured reactor as the slain Reaver crashed to the ground. The Pax Imperator was suffering under the barrage of fire from the daemon Titan, but was still fighting.

'Void shields failing, princeps!' shouted Moderati Issar as a volley of shells struck the Honoris Causa.

'Full speed! We must close with the monster before we suffer a similar fate!' replied Daekian.

Less than a hundred metres separated them now and Daekian could make out the terrible damage Princeps Fierach had managed to inflict on this warp-spawned beast before being dragged to his death. Huge steel plates were crudely welded across the Dies Irae's midsection and all manner of auxiliary mechanisms had been grafted to its legs to allow it to move.

Fire from the gatling blaster blasted off more of its void shields and as Daekian saw a single shell explode against its upper bastions, he knew that the beast was stripped of its infernal protection.

He pushed the Honoris Causa forward and raised the volcano cannon.

'This is for Princeps Fierach,' he snarled and fired.

He watched the searing beam of unimaginably powerful energy streak towards the Dies Irae's head, knowing, even as he fired, that the shot was true.

His triumph turned to disbelief as the beam struck on a void shield, repaired at the last second before impact. The Dies Irae ground its torso towards him, the white-hot barrel of its plasma weapon aimed directly at him.

'Evasive manoeuvres!' he bellowed, even as he knew it would be too late.

The Honoris Causa lurched sideways as the plasma bolt fired.

Princeps Daekian was almost quick enough. Almost.

The shot impacted on the Warlord's volcano cannon, instantaneously vaporising the weapon in a seething ball of plasma. The explosion ripped up the Titan's arm, the adamantium structure flashing molten in a heartbeat.

Daekian screamed in agony, convulsing as the flashback from his arm's destruction flared along the mind impulse link. Blood streamed from his nose and ears, but he kept true to his course, striding towards the hazy outline of the Dies Irae through the smoke filling the command bridge.

He reached the walls at the same instant as the Dies Irae, the raised ground inside Vincare bastion bringing him level with his foe's head. The Pax Imperator circled around to his right, its carapace running with plasma fire and limping as its leg joints trailed streamers of white sparks.

Daekian lashed out with the Honoris Causa's one remaining arm, his battle claw slamming against the Dies Irae's chest. The massive Titan rocked back under the powerful blow, swinging its arm against the lip of the bastion and smashing through the rockcrete and hammering into the Honoris Causa's upper leg.

Daekian felt the leg crack and heard the screams over the vox from the engineering decks. He had moments at best.

He swiped again at his gigantic foe, ripping the armour plating away from the Dies Irae's belly as it pummelled his wounded flank with its arms. It lurched backwards, attempting to protect its now vulnerable reactor.

The horrendously damaged Pax Imperator charged into the fight, its chain fist ripping through the upper bastions of the Dies hae, its blade shrieking as it tore downwards towards the war machine's bridge.

The Dies Irae's barbed tail swung and pulverised the knee joint of the Pax Imperator, shaking loose its chain fist and staggering the mighty god-machine.

Daekian watched the Dies hae turn and hammer the barrel of its plasma annihilator into the bridge of the Pax Imperator and fire at point-blank range.

The upper half of the Reaver vanished in a searing blast, enveloping the two battling Titans with liquid fire. The remains of the Pax Imperator crashed over the walls of the bastion into the ditch, huge plumes of black smoke trailing from its burning hulk.

But its death had given Daekian the opening he needed.

He rammed his battle claw against the heat-softened midsection of the Dies Irae's reactor chamber, through the wound first opened by Princeps Fierach. He roared as he punched through into his foe's guts, gripping its nuclear heart in his iron grip and crushing it with all his might.

Honsou watched the battle between the enormous war machines through the drifting haze of smoke, willing the majestic form of the Dies Irae to smash its inferior foes to scrap metal. He sheltered in the lee of the breach, his armour dusty and bloodstained.

His frustration grew with every explosion above him. They could not force the breach like this.

He watched as the leviathans struggled on the far bastion, their battle shaking the ground as though a powerful earthquake gripped the world. 'Forrix!' he yelled over the din of shells exploding at the crest of the breach. 'One way or another, this battle will soon be over. It is time to withdraw!'

Forrix shook his head, sneering. 'I should have known your cowardice would finally come to the fore! We stay and take this breach.'

Honsou felt his anger flare and gripped Forrix's armour, shouting. 'We have to go! The attack has lost its momentum and the enemy will be regrouping behind the walls. We only reinforce failure if we stay. There will be another time!'

For a second, Honsou thought Forrix was about to rebuke him again, but the fury drained from his eyes and he nodded, turning without a word and scrambling down the breach.

Honsou followed him and the Iron Warriors retreated from the walls, falling back to the ditch in disciplined groups. As he clambered over an iron-bar-studded chunk of rockcrete, the day was lit by a terrible brightness. The sky was bleached of colour and everything before him was bathed in the blinding light of a star.

The Dies Irae was enveloped in a dazzling ball of incandescent fire, huge sprays of plasma gouting from its belly. The enemy Titan with the burning white eyes had its fist buried in its guts, tearing and destroying the magnificent daemon machine. Locked together, the two Titans wrestled to escape each other's grip, the ground heaving with their battle.

As Honsou watched, a terrible groaning rent the air as the two machines rocked past their combined centre of gravity and slowly began to fall towards them into the ditch.

'Run!' he shouted, all thought of a disciplined retreat forgotten in the face of this new danger. He sprinted past the ravelin and leapt up the rubble slopes of the ditch as the two war machines slammed into the outer face of the curtain wall between Vincare bastion and the gate. Their massive bodies scraped down its face, trailing flaming sheets of burning plasma and ripping another great tear in the walls.

Honsou scrambled over the lip of the ditch, desperate to reach the safety of the earthworks. Forrix ran alongside him, his new bionics enhancing his speed, despite the Terminator armour he wore.

The two Titans slammed into the ground, the impact throwing Honsou from his feet and hurling him forward. He smashed into the top of the earthwork, rolling over its top as a river of plasma spilled from the ruptured reactors of the Titans.

Burning plasma flooded the ditch, incinerating the corpses that filled it in an instant. The Primus Ravelin was destroyed, crushed beneath thousands of tonnes of armaplas and ceramite. Huge flames and geysers of magma-hot steam ripped along the ditch, vitrifying the rocks throughout its length.

Razor sharp chunks of white-hot debris rained down inside the citadel, one shard from the Honoris Causa's bridge section hammering through a section of ramparts less than five metres from Castellan Leonid.

Both war machines thrashed weakly in the molten soup that filled the ditch, grappling to the last as the searing fires consumed them.

The first attack had failed.

FIVE

Castellan Leonid poured himself a glass of amasec and drained his glass in a single swallow. He set down the glass on his desk and sat on the edge of his bed, his entire body aching. He winced as stitches from a dozen shallow cuts pulled tight across his arms and legs, rubbing his temples in an attempt to ease the pain of the last few days.

Such a miracle was beyond his powers. He poured himself another glass, looking through the armoured loophole in the tower's wall. A dim glow still radiated from the dying plasma fires in the ditch where the two Titans had fallen and he raised his glass to the light. 'Here's to you, Princeps Daekian. May the Emperor watch over your soul.'

He drank the fiery spirit and briefly considered pouring another. He decided against it, knowing he had much to organise before morning. He rubbed a calloused hand through his hair when a knock came at his door.

'Come in.'

Brother-Captain Eshara ducked his head as he entered the room, pulling up a sturdy chair from beside Leonid's desk and sitting opposite the citadel's castellan.

The pair sat in a companionable silence before Eshara said, 'Your men fought bravely today. They are a credit to Joura, and your kin would be proud of you all.'

Seeing Leonid's sadness, he added, 'I was grieved to hear of Major Anders's death.'

Leonid nodded, remembering the awful sight of an Iron Warrior casually butchering his brave friend in the Primus Ravelin.

'As did yours, captain. We all feel Brother Corwin's loss.'

Eshara's face was lined with sorrow, 'I do not pretend to understand what happened in that bastion, but I believe he gave his life to save us all.'

'As do I,' replied Leonid.

Reports of the battle in the Mori bastion were confused to say the least. The infirmary building was awash with soldier's ravings, telling of a giant warrior killing everything in the bastion by his voice alone and a whirlwind that fed on blood. Luckily, Leonid had been able to scotch these wild tales before they had reached the remainder of the garrison.

'Tomorrow will be the last day will it not?' asked Leonid.

Eshara didn't answer and Leonid thought he was avoiding the question, but the Space Marine had merely been considering his answer.

'If we do not pull back to the citadel's inner wall, then, yes, it will be. We have less than four thousand men, virtually no heavy guns and three breaches. The wall is too long and we cannot hold everywhere at once. We will make it a thankless, bloody battle for our enemies, but, ultimately, the citadel will fall.'

'Then we will give up the outer wall and fall back to the inner citadel. The wall there is unbroken and, despite its irregular coverage, we still have the protection of the energy shield.'

Eshara nodded. 'Aye. The sacrifice made by Princeps Daekian has bought us some time to regroup, and it would be best if we begin now.'

'I will issue the orders immediately,' stated Leonid pouring himself a last glass of amasec and taking out his vial of detox pills.

He swallowed one and shook his head at the dreadful taste, placing the vial on the desk.

'I have observed your men taking these pills as well,' noted Eshara. 'Might I enquire as to what they are?'

'What, the detox pills? Oh, of course, you do not need these do you? Well, I don't suppose any of us will need them any more really.'

Eshara looked puzzled and said, 'Need them for what?'

'Well, it's the air here,' explained Leonid, waving his hand around him, 'It's poisonous. The Magos Biologis of the Adeptus Mechanicus provide these pills to keep the men from getting sick from the toxins in the air.'

Eshara leaned closer and lifted the vial. He shook out a handful of pills and took what seemed, to Leonid, an unnecessarily deep breath.

'Castellan Leonid, are you aware of an organ unique to the physiology of the Space Marines known as the neuroglottis?'

Leonid shook his head as Eshara continued. 'It is situated at the back of the throat and is capable of analysing the chemical content of anything we ingest or breathe. If need be, it can shift the pattern of my breathing to divert my trachea to a genetically altered lung better able to process the toxins in any given atmosphere.'

Eshara replaced the vial on Leonid's desk and said, 'I am afraid you have been misled, my friend, because I can assure you that the air on this planet is quite harmless. Unpleasant to breathe, yes, but poisonous? Most definitely not.'

Leonid let his anger grow with each step that took him towards the Machine Temple, situated deep beneath the citadel. He clutched the vial of detox pills in his left hand, his laspistol in his right, as he made his way along the antiseptic corridors that led to the lair of Arch Magos Amaethon. Captain Eshara was beside him and his honour guard of carapace-armoured Guardsmen marched in step behind him.

Now he knew why Hawke had not sickened and died on the mountains. Now he knew why the men stationed here were afflicted with headaches and constant nausea.

Now he knew why there were so many flags and regimental plaques around the briefing chamber. With these ''detox'' pills, it was only a matter of time until the citadel would need another garrison.

Eshara had sampled one of the pills, allowing the chemicals to swill around his mouth before spitting them into an empty water jug.

'Poison,' he declared at last. 'Slow-acting to be sure, and subtle in its effects, but poison nonetheless. There are many chemicals present in this tablet I know to be highly carcinogenic. It is my guess that after a few years of taking these, the victim would be suffering from one or more highly virulent cancers.'

Leonid was horrified and stared in revulsion at the vial of pills before the cold realisation of how long he had been taking them struck him. 'How virulent?' he whispered.

Eshara frowned. 'Debilitating after maybe six or seven years and fatal soon after that.'

Leonid was speechless with rage. The magnitude of the betrayal was unbelievable. That the Adeptus Mechanicus could have perpetuated such a lie upon their own people was staggering. Thinking of the hundreds of regimental flags in the briefing chamber, he tried to calculate how many men the Adeptus Mechanicus had murdered, but gave up, appalled, as the numbers spiralled into the millions.

'Why would they do such a thing?'

'I do not know. What is it that this citadel defends? Is it so valuable that not even its defenders can be allowed to tell what they know?'

Leonid shook his head. 'No, well, maybe, I don't know for sure. As far as I know, this place is some sort of way-station for xeno artefacts discovered in the sector. I was told that the facility was built upon a ruin from the Dark Age of Technology—'

'Again, I feel you have been misled. I do not believe the Adeptus Mechanicus would stoop to such base behaviour simply to protect recovered xeno artefacts. There is a secret hidden within this citadel that is worth the life of every man who serves here.'

Leonid vowed he would find out what that secret was, even if he had to wring Naicin's neck or threaten to put a las-bolt through whatever machine kept the remains of Amaethon alive. It might already be too late for the 383rd Jouran Dragoons, but Leonid would make damn sure the Adeptus Mechanicus were made to pay for their crimes.

Several corridors branched off the main one, but Leonid unerringly followed the path towards the Machine Temple.

'Someone is ahead of us,' whispered Eshara, drawing and cocking his bolt pistol.

Leonid followed suit as his honour guard raised their rifles and moved to surround him.

The armed party rounded a bend in the corridor as it widened into a vaulted chamber, with latticed iron girders lacing above them to form a web-like dome. Glow-globes floated in suspensor fields, the walls were inscribed with cog symbols and all manner of metal crates and bulky machines lay scattered around the room. Worker servitors and indentured labourers moved mechanically around the wide room, oblivious to the goings on around them.

At the far end of the chamber, a wide, semicircular cog-toothed door sat half open, a small group of people clustered around it.

Leonid immediately recognised Magos Naicin and the ungainly form of two Praetorian battle-servitors. Servitors were surgically altered slaves utilised by the Adeptus Mechanicus for a variety of manual tasks. Praetorians fulfilled the adepts need for heavy defence, featuring an augmented slave body atop a mechanised track unit, with a variety of lethal weapon combinations implanted in the servitors' arms.

The last figure was unknown to Leonid, but he was astonished at the hideous bulk of the man that not even his shapeless robes could conceal. His skin was the colour of black steel, his face more dead than alive.

Naicin saw them coming and darted through the door, dragging the enormous robed figure after him.

Leonid growled in anger and set off towards the closing door as the two battle-servitors rumbled forwards. Leonid was too intent on the door to pay them any heed. Nothing would prevent him from reaching Naicin and killing him.

The first Praetorian raised its weapon arms as Leonid's honour guard rushed after him, realising his danger. The fastest man of the team dived for his commander, knocking him to the ground as the Praetorian opened fire, the rhythmic thumping of a massive bolter filling the chamber as it hosed the chamber with shells.

The shells passed over Leonid, but the men behind were not so lucky. Three were thrown back, huge holes blasted in their chests. Leonid and his rescuer rolled into the cover offered by a huge tracked drilling rig as more shots filled the chamber, heavier auto cannon shells blasting metal chunks from the machine.

A flurry of las-blasts struck the Praetorian, which rocked back, bloody craters torn across its body. The battle-servitor didn't slow, it merely adjusted its aim and ripped apart yet more of Leonid's guard with deadly accurate gunfire, bullets spewing from the gun at a furious rate.

The man who'd saved Leonid's life spun from the cover of the drilling rig, taking careful aim at the Praetorian's head. He dropped as he was struck in the head and chest, blown apart by the mass reactive bolter shells as they detonated within his flesh.

Leonid scrambled away as the heavy bolter and auto cannon began tearing up the chamber. Glass, plastic and blood erupted all around, showering them with sparks as soldiers and worker-servitors went down, panels and glow-globes shattering.

The lobotomised worker-servitors were not programmed to react to such external stimuli and continued working at their posts. They died silently as the Praetorians walked the shells into them, raking their fire left and right, servo assisted muscles easily absorbing their guns' huge recoil.

Emergency lights flickered on as fluorescent panels were shot out and Leonid slithered towards Eshara, who had drawn his crackling power sword.

Human workers scrambled to disconnect themselves from their stations and seek shelter as the battle-servitors slowly advanced towards them. One dropped to his knees, begging for mercy.

The Praetorian shot him in the face.

The rest died in three controlled bursts of fire.

Leonid surged from behind the drilling rig as the wounded Praetorian finished the slaughter of the technicians. He squeezed off two rounds and the servitor staggered, two massive holes blasted in its skull. It raised the heavy bolter and fired as Leonid's third shot took it in the throat, blowing its head clean off.

It fell backwards, firing the gun as it toppled, stitching a line of bullets towards Leonid and clipping his shoulder. He yelled in pain, the impact spinning him to the floor.

The second Praetorian trained its auto cannons on Leonid, the firing mechanisms whining as they built up speed to fire.

Before it could shoot, Eshara leapt from the cover of the crate and slashed his sword through the barrels in a bright explosion of sparks. He spun on his heel, hammering his elbow into the battle-servitor's face and smashing its skull from its shoulders in a welter of blood. His reverse stroke hacked the organic top half of the Praetorian's body from the track unit. The whine of its weapons motor sputtered and died.

Leonid picked himself up from the ground, clutching his wounded shoulder, and nodded his thanks to Eshara before turning the closed door behind which Naicin and his unknown accomplice had vanished.

'Damn!' he swore. 'How in the name of Joura are we going to get through that?'

Eshara looked over Leonid's shoulder and indicated something behind him.

Leonid frowned and turned to see what the Space Marine was pointing at. And grinned.

The door to the Machine Temple was thirty centimetres thick and composed of solid steel, but it crumpled like tinfoil when the eighty-tonne drilling rig slammed into it. The roof section was torn free by the low clearance of the door as it came screeching through, spewing torn scraps of steel and sparks all across the inner sanctum of the Machine Temple. The giant tracked machine slewed around as Eshara lost control for a second, the enormous rig smashing into a bank of monitors and control panels. The amber-lit chamber was filled with pulsating machinery and barely had the drilling rig skidded to a squealing halt than Leonid, Eshara and the four surviving members of his honour guard leapt from the rambling machine.

Leonid grunted in pain as he landed, trying to make sense of the scene before him.

Magos Naicin stood with his head bowed beside a squat, rhomboid structure topped with a shattered vat of draining fluid. In one gloved hand he held his bronze facemask and, in the other, what looked like a glistening slab of wet meat. He tossed it aside and Leonid was horrified to see the slack features of Arch Magos Amaethon staring up at him from the floor. After centuries of service, the organic remains of the arch magos were finally dead.

The bulky figure that had accompanied Naicin stood atop the rhomboid, its wide, misshapen arms spread wide. Bulging motion undulated beneath its robes as though a collection of snakes writhed beneath them. Even as he watched, the robes split and fell from its body, revealing a massive, iron-black musculature that rippled in a horrific amalgamation of organic and biomechanical components. Was this creature machine or man, or some horrific symbiosis of the two?

'Naicin!' shouted Leonid. 'What have you done?'

The magos lifted his face and Leonid gasped in horror as he saw Naicin's true features, a swirling mass of thin, wormlike tentacles that glistened and writhed together to form the mass of his head. A cluster of milky and distended eyes bulged in the centre of his features, above a sphincter-like mouth, ringed with needle teeth.

'Mutant,' spat Eshara, raising his pistol.

The four Guardsmen were transfixed in horrified wonder at the bizarre sight before them. And their perverse fascination killed them.

The figure atop the rhomboid raised its arms, its flesh writhing as they transformed into two massive-barrelled weapons. A roaring crescendo of fire erupted from the weapons, blasting through Leonid's honour guard and disintegrating them in a heartbeat. Leonid once more dived for cover behind the drilling rig as Eshara charged towards the giant figure at the chamber's centre.

Magos Naicin hissed and leapt to intercept him, moving with inhuman speed, his arms whipping out and toothed proboscis erupting from his fingertips to smash Eshara from his feet. Hissing ichor splashed Eshara's shoulder guard, the ceramite plates of his armour rapidly dissolving beneath it. The Space Marine captain rolled beneath the questing mouths as Naicin came at him again, hissing acids spraying from his lashing, whip-like hands.

Leonid took advantage of the distraction to rest his pistol against the track guard of the drilling rig and take aim at the monstrous figure that had killed his men.

The gun arms had changed again, morphing into long, ribbed cables that waved like serpents. As he squinted down the barrel, the figure's ribs cracked wide open, spreading apart like some ancient moss-covered gateway. A dozen grooved tentacles of dripping green metal snaked from his chest cavity and spiralled through the air as though searching for something.

Leonid squeezed the trigger, the las-blast striking the figure in the head.

But a blaze of green light flared and Leonid saw his target was unharmed.

Leonid fired again and again, but his shots were wasted. The thing on the platform was invulnerable. The metallic tentacles continued to lengthen, hooking into the banks of machines around the chamber's centre. More tentacles sprouted from the writhing mass of biomechanical intestines, slipping through the air like branches of a tree and attaching themselves to the life-preserving mechanics of the Machine Temple and the regulatory systems of the citadel.

Alarm bells chimed and warning lights flashed around the chamber's circumference.

Leonid knew he could do nothing to stop the vile creature without Eshara and rushed towards the Space Marine, who was fighting the abhorrent mutant.

Eshara swung his sword at Naicin, but the thing moved with blinding speed, its dripping proboscises swaying aside from his every blow. The captain's bolt pistol was a molten pile on the floor and Leonid could see Eshara's armour was pierced by several smoking round holes where Naicin's corrosive proboscis had struck. He raised his pistol.

'Step back, Brother-Captain,' ordered Leonid.

Eshara dodged a blow aimed at his heart and rapidly backed away from the disgusting mutant. Naicin drew back to the base of the rhomboid platform as the chamber's omnipresent amber light dimmed, changing to a sickly green. Leonid drew a bead on the mutant's head.

Naicin chuckled, the sound somewhere between slurping and gurgling. 'Fools! You cannot win. You can kill me, but my masters will trample your bones within the day.'

'Why, Naicin?' asked Leonid.

'I could ask you the same question,' spat Naicin. 'You do not even know what you fight to protect.'

'We fight to protect a world of the Emperor, mutant,' snapped Eshara.

Naicin laughed, a horrible retching noise. 'You think your Emperor cares about this world? Look around you, it is a wasteland! A wasteland created by human hands. This was once a fertile and bountiful world until the Adeptus Mechanicus sought to make it their own. Virus bombs killed every living thing on the surface of this world and rendered it uninhabitable for centuries.'

'You lie. Why should the Adeptus Mechanicus do such a thing?'

'They wanted to make sure no one ever desired this world. So that when they built their geno-labs here, they would be undisturbed and forgotten. You stand in one of the most hallowed places of the Adeptus Mechanicus and you don't even know it. The gene-seed you prize so highly, the future of the Space Marines… this is one of only two places in the galaxy where it is created and stored.'

Seeing the look of horrified shock on Eshara's face, Naicin laughed. 'Yes, captain, when the Warsmith and the Despoiler have your gene-seed they will use it to create Legions of Space Marines loyal to the glory of Chaos!'

'But you won't be around to see it,' snarled Eshara plucking the pistol from Leonid's hand and pulling the trigger.

Naicin's head exploded, showering the platform with stinking yellow fluid and scraps of rubbery, tentacled flesh. The corpse slumped to the ground as Eshara pumped another four shots into the body.

Eshara wordlessly handed the pistol back to Leonid as alarms began shrieking throughout the chamber. Both men looked up as the figure on the platform was lifted from its feet, its arms spreading wide in a cruciform pattern. More and more cabled tentacles sprouted from its body, the green haze that filled the chamber pulsing from deep within its chest.

Explosions of jade sparks burst from the edges of the room, flickering lines of lethal electricity arcing from machine to machine as the corruption of the techno-virus spread to every system of the citadel.

A lashing tongue of electrical discharge licked the ground beside Leonid and Eshara, and the two warriors stumbled away from the monster in front of them. Explosions filled the chamber and a crackling storm of lightning blazed through the Machine Temple. Eshara gathered Leonid into the shelter of his body as he sprinted for the ragged hole of the door. Spears of emerald lightning flashed around the chamber. A bolt struck Eshara's back and he grunted in pain, diving through the doorway as forks of green fire blasted behind him.

Eshara rolled aside as the unnatural lightning danced across the door to the Machine Temple, forming a crackling electrical web that completely blocked the entrance.

The two scrambled away from the pulsing green light, breathless and groaning in pain.

Eshara pushed himself to his feet and offered his hand to Leonid, who gripped his wounded shoulder and pulled himself upright. Before either man could speak, the vox-bead in Eshara's helmet crackled and the captain listened intently to the message he was receiving.

Leonid could tell the news was not good.

'Well?' he asked, expecting the worst.

'It has begun. The shield has gone down and the enemy are attacking once more.'

Leonid nodded and looked back into the sealed green hell of the Machine Temple.

'Then our place is on the walls,' he said grimly.

The remaining two Titans of the Legio Mortis advanced on the citadel accompanied by a wave of Vindicator tanks and forty-two screaming Dreadnoughts. Nearly six thousand battered soldiers in red uniforms sprinted amongst this armoured thrust and dropped into the ditch, its surfaces smooth and vitrified by the plasma fire from the downed Titans.

Sunfire shells streaked into the darkness as alarms rang from the citadel and scattered shots lanced out to the charging horde.

Honsou watched from the bastions mounted atop the shoulders of the Pater Mortis, nearly thirty metres above the ground. He saw the Vindicators pull into their firing revetments along the third parallel and pound the weakened walls of the citadel, bringing down vast quantities of masonry as the Dreadnoughts made for the ditch. He gripped the edge of the bastion's iron pallisading as the Titan stepped down into the ditch, the rubble claws fitted over its massive feet keeping its stride sure.

Sixty-two Iron Warriors, all that remained of his company, filled the bastions either side of the Titan's head, ready to be unleashed upon the ramparts of the inner wall of the citadel. The Imperial defenders had abandoned the outer wall and the shield was down. They would never get a better chance than this.

The fire against the bastions and curtain wall slackened as the Titans closed with the walls, now little more than shattered piles of rubble. Honsou raised his sword in salute to the Dies Irae as they passed over its molten remains.

Honsou glanced to his right, making out the shadow of the Legio's other remaining Titan, its bastions crammed with Forrix's warriors. This was the last assault and it could not afford to fail. He braced himself as the mighty war machine battered its way through the breach torn by the death of the Dies Irae and felt the rumbling roar of fury build from within the daemon Titan. Powerful blasts of gunfire ripped from both war machines, blowing great chunks from the inner wall and demolishing whole sections of rampart.

The gap between the inner and outer wall was empty of foes; the Warhounds that had frustrated the first assault wisely having withdrawn behind the inner wall. Soldiers on the wall opened fire, but the Titans' shields were proof against such pinpricks. Flickering green fires played around the wall-mounted guns. Flonsou could not understand why they were not firing, but gave thanks to the dark gods for their silence.

As the two Titans thundered forwards, the Vindicators churned over the breaches in the outer wall. The walls shook with thunderous impacts from the siege tanks, the inner gate pounded by shell after shell. The Dreadnoughts added their own weight of fire to the barrage. Three of the insane war machines, gripped in the frenzy of battle, lumbered forward to attack the gate with their massive hammer arms, only to be caught in the Vindicators' fire and blown apart.

The gap closed with every step of the Pater Mortis, and Honsou could clearly see the faces of the men lining the walls. Las-fire slashed towards him, but he laughed, feeling utterly invincible. He swayed forward as the Titan's arms pistoned into the walls, bracing hooks punching deep within the rockcrete.

Seconds later, the battle drawbridges slammed down from the shoulder bastions, crushing the rampart beneath them as they dropped.

Honsou raised his sword and charged onto the walls, shouting, 'This place is ours! Show no mercy!'

He jumped onto the rampart, hacking a trio of Guardsmen to death with one blow and firing his bolt pistol down the line of the walls. Hundreds of warriors were arrayed against them, but Honsou faced them all without fear, killing with preternatural skill.

Iron Warriors fanned out from the Titan's shoulder bastions, slaughtering the defenders and hurling them back. The noise was tremendous as the ramparts became slick with blood and entrails. Each time the Iron Warriors came close to breaking through the defenders' lines, the Imperial Fists would lead a desperate counterattack and push them back and hold the line together. Honsou killed another Guardsman and risked a glance to where Forrix led his warriors. Here too, the Iron Warriors were confronted with the incredible tenacity and stubborn defiance of the citadel's defenders.

They were holding, but only just, and Honsou saw they were close to breaking.

Honsou blocked a blow aimed at his neck and disembowelled his attacker as a monstrous, black shadow, darker than the blackest night fell across the walls. For the briefest second, the fighting slowed as heads craned upwards to see what new devilment had been unleashed.

With a thunder that cracked the walls, the Warsmith crashed down on the rampart, the newborn darkness of powerful wings spread behind him. Guardsmen around him dropped, vomiting blood and convulsing. His arms swept out, his taloned hand and mighty axe killing everything within reach. The darkness enfolding the Warsmith's head billowed and spat bolts of dark light that dissolved everything it struck.

Screams of terror spread along the walls and horrified soldiers turned and fled before this diabolical apparition. The Warsmith reared up to his full height, his armour stretching and swelling, the keening faces bound within his armour straining and wailing a banshee's choir.

Shaking off his amazement, Honsou bellowed, 'We have them now!'

He charged after the fleeing mass of soldiers, hacking them down with his sword. The Imperial front line collapsed and not even the Imperial Fists could halt the rout.

He could see Forrix slaughtering fleeing Guardsmen by the dozen. A terrific crash echoed from below, and Honsou knew the citadel's inner gate had fallen. The Warsmith took to the air once more as the carnage on the walls continued, casting his pall of corruption and change throughout the ramparts.

Honsou kicked down the iron door to one of the giant towers that flanked the gate and dived through, firing as he rolled. The soldiers within the tower screamed in terror as he rose to his feet. They were no threat, but he killed them anyway.

He swiftly made his way down the stairs, his blood afire and singing with the promise of victory.

'Iron Warriors! With me! The citadel is ours!'

Forrix thundered down the stairs of the tower, firing as he went. The stair spiralled downwards to the left, bolter shells whining and ricocheting from the walls. On two levels there were defensible landings, but the furious assault of the Iron Warriors could not be stopped. Forrix and his Terminators smashed each one aside with ease.

Even as he killed, he marvelled at the appearance of the Warsmith. Their leader stood at the very cusp of daemon-hood, the changes wracking his body becoming more manifest. Surely his final ascension was at hand? Forrix had sensed a terrible urgency to the Warsmith, and knew that he was fighting to hold his form coherent. One wrong move now and the Warsmith could just as easily explode into the thrashing riot of anatomies of a Chaos spawn, doomed for an eternal life of mindless mutation.

The base of the tower levelled into a wide killing zone, but it had been designed to defend against attacks from outside, not inside, and the defenders had nothing to shelter behind. Las-fire raked the walls beside Forrix. He swept his combi-bolter around the room, slaughtering Guardsmen with every pull of the trigger.

Terminators spilled down after him, their horned helmets carved in the masks of snarling beasts of prey. The image was not inappropriate, thought Forrix. Narrow doors led from the tower, too small to allow a Terminator through, but Forrix slammed his power fist into the stonework, shattering the lintel and punching his way through. The Terminators followed him outside into the citadel's interior.

Forrix grinned as he watched the Warsmith swooping high above the battlefield. The wings at his back were becoming more substantial and his form rippled and blurred, as though in a constant state of flux. Across the ruined gateway, he could see Honsou leading his warriors from the opposite tower, hacking down a mob of fleeing Guardsmen.

Ahead, across a wide cobbled esplanade, he could make out a cluster of ruined buildings, their windows gaping like blackened, empty eyesockets. Human soldiers, Vindicators, Dreadnoughts and Defilers poured through the blazing remains of the gate, gunning their engines as they spread out to avoid the return fire coming from the ruins.

Amidst the flames, sporadic volleys of las-fire pierced the night, but it was disorganised and undirected. Smoke billowed in thick, black plumes from the ruins and Forrix heard the crash of massive power claws tearing at the curtain wall behind him as the two Titans of the Legio Mortis ripped it down, eager to be part of the slaughter.

The smoke parted and the high-pitched blasts of Vulcan bolter fire ripped up the esplanade in a line towards the gate. Three Vindicators exploded and a Dreadnought toppled, thrashing its arms in frenzy as it tried to right itself.

Forrix charged across the courtyard as he caught sight of the Warhound he had marked for himself earlier. The beast darted through the smoke, pausing only long enough to draw a bead on the charging Iron Warriors. But in the open, its gunfire was nowhere near as effective as it had been in the breach.

'Spread out!' yelled Forrix as he gathered his Terminators to him and set off towards the Warhounds.

'You escaped me once, beast, but this time I have you,' he promised his prey.

'Mark your targets!' yelled Leonid as volleys of las-fire lashed the Iron Warriors charging from burning building to burning building. Smoke filled every street. None of their attackers were falling, and Leonid knew they must make every shot count. The Warhound Defensor Fidei walked backwards behind his men as they fell back from this assault, firing into the mass of the enemy as they pursued the Jourans.

Through gaps in the smoke pouring from shelled buildings, he could see massive chunks of rockcrete being torn from the wall by the Titan siege towers, and knew they had only minutes until these gargantuan war machines joined the battle. Tanks and grotesque, multi-limbed constructs, with turrets adorned with hateful runes, poured through the smashed gate, and fear was visible in every bloodied face.

Brother-Captain Eshara had regrouped the survivors of his company, thirty Space Marines, and fought alongside him, firing his bolter with every grudging step backwards.

Suddenly, a dozen of the Iron Warriors' damnable red clad soldiery charged through the smoke to their side. Shots from crude rifles felled five of his men before they could react. Leonid knelt, jamming his rifle to his shoulder and opening up on full auto, spraying the smoke-filled street with bright lasbolts. Three enemy soldiers dropped and Eshara killed another four with deadly accurate bolter fire. The remainder drew a bead on Leonid, but before they could shoot, the ground rocked and a massive adamantium foot slammed down, crushing them to death.

The Jure Divinu sprayed the building across from Leonid with turbo laser fire and he saw six enemy soldiers tumble from it, burning debris crashing down as its already unstable structure finally gave way.

From the smoke, Leonid saw a warrior in Terminator armour charging straight for the Jure Divinu, bright hunger etched on his face. His dead features spoke of ancient malice and bitter hatred.

Leonid had no time to think. Eshara grabbed his arm and hustled him back through the burning ruins towards the northern wall of the citadel. Space Marines ran alongside them, the men of the Guard having already passed through the Valedictor Gate and descended into the caverns.

Built flush against the flank of the mountain with two armoured blockhouses to either side of it, the Valedictor Gate was intended to bar the route into the underground caverns, but with Naicin's betrayal in the Machine Temple, it remained treacherously open.

Explosions ripped through the buildings behind Leonid and smashed him to the ground.

Eshara dragged him to his feet as the thirty Imperial Fists formed a semi-circle around the Valedictor Gate, facing outwards.

The Space Marine captain lowered his dented and blackened helm level with Leonid's and said, 'Castellan, you must get below and destroy the gene-seed.'

'How?' gasped Leonid breathlessly. 'The Machine Temple's gone, there's no way to do it.'

Eshara gripped his arm tighter. 'Do what you must, find flamer units, plasma gunners, anything, but do not let even a scrap of gene-seed fall into the enemy's hands. It is better that it all be destroyed than have the foe claim it. Do you understand?'

'We will need time to destroy it all, my friend. Can you hold them here for long enough?' asked Leonid, fully aware of the price that time would be bought with.

The two warriors locked eyes then shook hands in the warrior's grip, wrist to wrist.

'We will hold them for long enough,' nodded Eshara as he dropped his empty bolter and drew both his power swords.

Leonid said, 'Good luck, Brother-Captain Eshara.'

'And to you, Castellan Leonid.'

Without another word, Leonid turned and sprinted through the Valedictor Gate.

Forrix watched the beast stagger as a shell from a Vindicator burst against its leg. The Warhound lurched, its weapon mount shearing off as it slammed into a ruined building. They had it now, backed into a corner and stripped of its protection.

There was another Warhound nearby, but the billowing smoke and thump of explosions obscured its whereabouts.

'It is time for a reckoning, beast!' he yelled as he crashed forward. More gunfire hammered the armoured carapace of the Warhound, its legs buckling under the weight of fire. The pilot's compartment swung low to the ground, the green of its eyes locking with Forrix and he laughed, knowing that the beast's life was forfeit. He had it now.

He and his Terminators closed on the struggling machine, power fists raised to deliver the killing blow. Forrix clambered onto its massive foot and hammered his power fist into the ankle joint of the Warhound's leg again and again.

The war machine lifted its leg, realising the danger and stepped backwards, swaying drunkenly and smashing into the building across the street, causing it to collapse.

Forrix held on for dear life as the Warhound sought to dislodge him, hammering his fist against its ankle. The Titan's leg swept round, slamming down on a jagged section of rubble. Forrix was thrown clear as the full weight of the Warhound came down awkwardly on its pulverised ankle.

The joint sheared off in an explosion of flame and the Warhound toppled, smashing backwards through the burning building and slamming into the ground in a cascade of rockcrete blocks. The pilot's compartment cracked open under the impact and Forrix scrambled across the flaming wreckage to finish the beast.

Shadowed forms struggled weakly within as Forrix emptied his combi-bolter into the Warhound's bridge, slaughtering its crew in a storm of bolts.

Forrix laughed as he slew the crew of the Jure Divinu, racking the arming slide of his underslung melta gun.

The wall behind the slain beast collapsed, showering him with rock and smoke, momentarily obscuring his vision.

As it cleared he felt his pleasure at the kill drain from him as he found himself staring into the baleful eyes of the second Warhound.

'No!' hissed Forrix.

Its weapons whined, building power to fire.

Forrix raised his weapon and pulled the trigger as both the turbo lasers and Vulcan bolters fired.

Forrix had the briefest sensation of pain and frustration before the Defensor Fidei's guns utterly destroyed him.

Honsou jogged through the fallen citadel, elated beyond words at the slaughter around him. The warriors of both his and Forrix's company followed him through the streets of their enemy's fastness, cheering his name to the dark gods.

Loud gunfire roared from somewhere to his left and he angled his advance towards it, rounding a corner in time to see a wrecked Warhound topple to the ground and Forrix charging towards the war machine's head.

Honsou saw the wall before Forrix collapse and the furious form of the Warhound's twin emerge from the smoke. He saw it raise its weapons and blast Forrix from the ruins in an explosion of blood and mechanised body parts.

As he watched Forrix die, Honsou felt nothing but triumph. Kroeger had vanished and Forrix was dead: truly the gods of Chaos favoured him this night.

The Warhound's victory was short-lived as the might of the Pater Mortis, its crashing footsteps collapsing buildings all around them, emerged from behind Honsou and fired its weapons. The Scout Titan vanished in a flurry of bright explosions, its few void shields and light armour no match for the power of the Warlord Titan.

It reeled under the impacts and, for an incredible moment, Honsou believed it had survived, but a massive explosion engulfed its head and the Warhound fell, its crew compartment a blazing rain.

Honsou snarled in satisfaction and set off once more.

Everywhere the enemy was defeated, broken and fleeing before them.

He emerged into a wide square, at the far end of which he saw a pitiful ring of the Imperial Fists. They stood, swords bared at the entrance to caverns gouged into the mountains, their faces proud and defiant.

Honsou laughed as he marched at the head of his company, the Warsmith descending from the hot darkness above him. The master of the Iron Warriors landed hard, the cobbles hissing molten with his step, as though the ground itself rebelled against the chaos writhing within him. His body rippled with change, as though a million forms sought to be birthed from his unquiet anatomy. The black wings at his back quivered and his armour was becoming glossier, more organic looking, like the carapace of an insect.

The Warsmith nodded to Honsou, a gesture of respect between warriors.

'It is time we finished this,' rasped the Warsmith, his voice thickened and coarse.

'Aye,' agreed Honsou, marching towards the Imperial Fists as the Iron Warriors spread out to surround them, weapons raised.

A stillness fell as the ancient foes faced one another in the glare of the burning citadel and a massive shadow fell across the square as the Pater Mortis strode from the ruins.

A warrior stepped from the ring of Space Marines and removed his helmet. Honsou could feel the hatred this warrior had for him as he spat, 'I am Brother-Captain Eshara of the Imperial Fists, proud son of Rogal Dorn, soldier of the Emperor and scourge of deviants. Face me and die, traitor.'

The Warsmith faced Eshara and Honsou grinned as he saw the effect his presence had upon the Space Marine. As the captain's face twisted in sudden pain, the Warsmith leapt forward, his mighty axe sweeping down to cleave Eshara in two.

Eshara crossed his swords above his head, blocking the blow, the impact driving him to his knees. He grunted and spun low, slashing a blade across the Warsmith's flank. Black blood gouted from the wound. The Warsmith smashed his fist against Eshara's chest, cracking his breastplate open.

As Eshara fell, the Imperial Fists charged, the name of Rogal Dorn on their lips.

Gunfire erupted from the Iron Warriors, cutting them down as battle was joined.

But it was an unequal struggle and though the Imperial Fists fought hard, the outcome was never in doubt.

Honsou drove his sword through an Imperial Fist, watching in amazement as Eshara groggily rose to his feet, coughing thick wads of blood. The Warsmith roared and hammered his axe down upon Eshara's shoulder guard, cleaving him from collarbone to pelvis, the blade shearing through his armour like paper.

Eshara crumpled, but weakly raised his head as the Warsmith sheathed his massive axe and stooped to lift him from the ground.

'Know this, son of Dorn,' hissed the Warsmith. 'I will gorge myself on your gene-seed and I shall make you and all your kind extinct.'

The Warsmith lifted Eshara's dying body to his head where there was a monstrous cracking, sucking noise. Blood splashed the steaming ground at the Warsmith's feet and he bellowed in orgiastic pleasure, dropping Eshara's mutilated corpse.

Even Honsou was shocked as he saw the Space Marine's entire chest cavity had been bitten through, the organs within sucked from his body and devoured by the Warsmith.

Honsou dismissed the incident from his mind and set off after the Warsmith as he charged through the gateway that led into the mountains and their ultimate goal.

Leonid hammered his rifle butt through the glass of an incubation tank and stood back as the amniotic fluid spilled out along with its foetal cargo. He used brute force because his lasgun's power cell had long since drained. He moved onto the next capsule, staring in awed wonder at the sheer scale of the cavern stretching before him. Its end was lost in shadows, the vastness broken up by wide avenues of incubation capsules. Thousands of tanks ran in ordered lines into the darkness, their clear surfaces frosted and cold to the touch.

Now Leonid understood the danger inherent in this place. If what Naicin had told them was even partly true, there was enough genetic material stored here to create untold thousands of twisted warriors of Chaos. The very thought of such creations being birthed from here was truly horrifying.

Worker-servitors with shoulder-mounted illuminators were spots of light in the darkness, moving silently through the echoing cavern as they tended to their biological charges. Hundreds of his soldiers rampaged through the cavern, shooting, burning and smashing everything they could. But Leonid knew it was a hopeless task, the sheer scale of the facility here would defeat them. There was no way they could destroy it all before the Iron Warriors came to kill them.

But they would try. It was all they had left.

Honsou and the Iron Warriors followed the Warsmith as he sped down through the corridors beneath the mountains. There was a desperate hunger to the Warsmith now, like a fleshhound with the scent of blood in its jaws. His body pulsed like a heart in the throes of a massive seizure, as though containing a whirlwind of potentiality that strained to be born.

Ahead, Honsou heard sounds of destruction and knew they were approaching the prize the citadel had jealously guarded. As the passageway widened and levelled out, he saw a massive set of gold doors, green lightning dancing across their surfaces, and a cavern beyond.

Shouts and the sound of shattering glass quickly turned to cries of alarm as the humans saw the charging Iron Warriors. A few brave souls attempted to stand before the Warsmith, but quickly crumpled as he neared them, screaming and spasming in agony.

The Iron Warriors plunged into the cavern, gunfire echoing from the walls as they slaughtered the last defenders of the citadel.

The Warsmith halted beside a shattered incubation capsule and dragged out a limp rag of pink flesh, sodden and only vaguely humanoid. The Warsmith feasted upon the genetic host matter, feeding on the soft, boneless tissue and Honsou felt his skin crawl as though a powerful electric charge was building.

The Warsmith moved to the next capsule and fed once more. He turned to Honsou and rasped, 'Finish them all.'

Leonid worked his way back to the cavern's entrance, his power sword gripped tightly and his face set with grim resolve. There was no more they could do here to make a difference and he felt their failure as a bitter weight in the pit of his stomach. If this was to be their end, they would meet it head on, not hiding. His men had no ammunition left and the sounds of battle around him were brutal and short lived.

He and perhaps fifty soldiers followed a revolting sucking, guzzling noise, determined to sell their lives as dearly as possible now that the end was inevitable.

Leonid rounded a corner of dripping capsules and recoiled at the sight before him.

The Warsmith cast his arms to the cavern roof as he felt the power of the gene-seed coursing through him, though he realised that its power was largely symbolic. He had succeeded and the power of the dark gods poured into their chosen vessel, ripping him from his mortal flesh and gifting him with the boon of immortality.

His armour sloughed from his body, its material form no longer appropriate for such a magnificent creature of Chaos. A spiralling vortex of dark energy surrounded him, cracks exploding in the rockcrete floor as power flared from his limbs.

As the psychic energy built up, the Warsmith swelled, roaring as he felt his power magnifying.

His chest hiked convulsively as the might of Chaos poured through him. He was aware of his warriors and the Imperial soldiers, but he needed all his concentration to direct the incomprehensible energies that remoulded his new daemonic flesh.

The Warsmith roared in ecstasy and agony as unprecedented power engulfed him. His body swelled hugely, bloated by the maelstrom of energy that cycloned within.

A ridged horn burst from his forehead in a welter of blood and tissue. The mottled spike writhed like a living thing, swelling and wrapping itself around his head. His skin darkened, taking on a loathsome scaled texture. His spine cracked and he screamed as it elongated and thickened, roaring as the shadows at his back solidified and the dark wings spread wide and flapped powerfully.

The newly elevated Daemon Prince was lifted from the ground, hanging suspended before the horrified witnesses to its birth as the last of the psychic energy drained from its body in an explosive wash of power.

Though he knew it meant death, Leonid raced towards the floating daemon, his sword raised to strike it down.

The winged daemon turned its gaze upon him and he dropped to his knees as the sickening aura of the creature overcame him. Its monstrous form was utterly black, the nightmare depths of its form glittering with far-off galaxies and stars. He felt revolted just looking at the beast and rolled onto his side as debilitating cramps seized him.

He vomited, feeling his guts contract again and dry-heaved, having nothing more to expel. He vainly tried to push himself to his feet, but the pain was too great, like a red-hot knife twisting in his belly. His men were also on the floor, their bodily functions rebelling in the presence of such horrific power.

Leonid wept in pain, hearing the terrible, booming laughter of the daemon prince above him, the discordant noise sending jagged bolts of pain down his spine.

He felt unconsciousness rising to claim him and tried to fight it.

But he could not resist its balm and slipped into darkness.

The fires still burned throughout the citadel as the first rays of morning crested the mountains and columns of tracked tankers rumbled through the molten remains of the Destiny Gate. Each tanker had been specially built for this moment, insulated and rigged with blast freezing mechanisms to preserve the precious gene-seed on its journey through the immaterium towards the Eye of Terror and Abaddon the Despoiler.

The fallen Iron Warriors were already aboard the ships in orbit, the Chirumeks dissecting them even now to harvest their organs for implantation into the next generation of Iron Warriors.

There had not been enough of Forrix to bring back and while stripping down the siege works, a party of slaves had found a rotting corpse in Kroeger's dugout. It was clearly that of an Iron Warrior, but if the body was Kroeger's, who had led the assault on the eastern bastion?

It was a mystery that Honsou guessed he would never know the answer to, though in that, he was very wrong.

Honsou watched the tankers as they made the slow journey through the blasted landscape of the plain before the citadel. The satisfaction of victory was tempered with a hollow emptiness from knowing that the foe was defeated and there were no more battles to be fought here.

When the Warsmith had ascended to daemonhood, Honsou had prostrated himself before the daemon prince, prayers of devotion spilling from his lips.

'Stand, Honsou,' commanded the daemon.

Hurriedly Honsou obeyed as the daemon continued, 'You have pleased me mightily these last centuries, my son. I have groomed your hatred well and you have the seed of greatness within you.'

'I live only to serve, my master,' stammered Honsou.

'I know you do. But I know of your hunger to lead, to tread the path I have taken. It is clear to me now the course the future must take.'

The daemon Warsmith drifted towards Honsou, its massive form towering above the Iron Warrior.

'You shall be my successor, Honsou. Only you hold true to the vision of Chaos, of the final destruction of the false Imperium. Forrix had lost that vision of our ultimate destiny and Kroeger, well, he cast it aside long ago. I shall not name you captain, I shall name you Warsmith.'

Before Honsou could answer, the Warsmith folded his midnight wings around his body, his form a sliver of impenetrable darkness.

'The power of the warp calls me, Honsou, and it is a call I cannot refuse. Where I go, you cannot follow… yet.'

The Warsmith's outline shimmered as he faded from the material realm into places beyond Honsou's understanding.

He still couldn't believe it. Honsou the half-breed. Now Honsou the Warsmith.

He turned from the wreckage of the citadel and made his way back towards the ridge that led down to the spaceport, passing a wretched column of blue-coated prisoners marching towards the prison hulks and a life of slavery. Honsou caught sight of a prisoner in a bronze breastplate with the shoulder boards of a lieutenant colonel, his battered features cast down in crushed resignation, and laughed.

He quickly outpaced the prisoners, marching through the masterful contravallations Forrix had constructed around the spaceport, past the heavy, transport shuttles that were returning the surviving tanks and artillery pieces to the cargo hulks.

The landing platforms were awash with men and machines preparing to depart Hydra Cordatus.

He crossed the runways towards a shuttle idling on a far landing platform.

An honour guard of Iron Warriors stood before the cavernous entrance to the vessel.

'Your shuttle is ready, Warsmith,' said a bowing Iron Warrior.

Honsou smiled and stepped aboard the shuttle without a backward glance.