Salamander

I The Beast Comes…

War drums pounded on an arid breeze, increasing in intensity as they signalled another ork assault. The warboss thumped its muscle-slabbed chest with a drawn chainblade, bellowing and roaring its warriors into frenzy. The greenskins' chants built with a rhythmic cadence, reaching a natural peak when they charged again. This time the warboss entered the fray itself and committed all of its tribes to the attack. Like a dark green tsunami, the greenskins rolled off the ridgeline and down into the ash basin. As they hit the bottom, the orks overcame inertia and barrelled headlong towards the wall at speed. They moved as one, the faster trucks and wagons slowing to the pace of the greenskin foot sloggers, denying their urge to go faster in favour of shielding their brethren behind the mobile barricades offered by the vehicles. Even the reckless bikers held their nerve, impelled by the warboss who rode amongst them on a massive, smoke-spewing trike.

Bolter fire barked from the walls, lighting up the gloom of the unnatural eclipse. Missiles sped outwards on streamers of white smoke, whilst the incandescent beams of multi-meltas speared the darkness and caused blossoms of fire to erupt in the shadows. The orks absorbed the terrible punishment and just kept going. Hundreds died in the punitive barrage, but thousands struck the wall and the iron fortress seemed to groan with their sudden weight.

Captain N'keln raised his gore-drenched power sword for all to see. It was a weapon wielded by a hero and a rallying symbol. N'keln understood that now and had accepted his heavy mantle, just as Tu'Shan knew he would.

'Fire-born,' he called across the comm-feed, a few minutes before the orks struck. 'Stand ready. The beast comes. Now we shall remove its head!'

Cheers echoed into the courtyard below, where Tsu'gan waited impatiently at the gate. Techmarine Draedius had repaired it from the orks' earlier assault and a cohort of almost forty Salamanders clustered behind it.

Tsu'gan was on one flank of the Fire Anvil, just behind the Land Raider's deadly side sponson. Though he couldn't see them with the massive assault tank in the way, he knew Praetor and the Firedrakes waited on the opposite side. Tsu'gan could feel the electricity of their thunder hammers charging the air. The scent of ozone prickled his nostrils and he focused on it in order to clear his thoughts. Soon they would be free; free of the traitor bastion's malign influence. For Tsu'gan and his squad, it couldn't come soon enough. Each was as eager as their sergeant to leave its confines and embrace true battle on the field. Only Iagon appeared subdued.

Upon ending contact with Agatone at the Vulkan's Wrath, Captain N'keln had thinned down the troops on the walls.

Tsu'gan's and Typhos's squads were redeployed with the other reserves in the courtyard. Though any details of the plan with Agatone were kept to N'keln himself, it was obvious to Tsu'gan that they would soon be sallying out.

Chaplain Elysius thought so too. He was standing next to Tsu'gan, having joined his squad, and ignited the crozius arcanum clenched in his black, gauntleted fist.

'This day we anoint the ash with greenskin blood,' he snarled, 'and scourge the taint of xenos from Scoria.'

The sounds of close combat filtered down to them from above. The orks had met the wall and were assaulting. Nothing came from the gate, save for the muffled din of explosions and battle cries. Fire Anvil's flamestorm cannons rotated meaningfully before it. Tsu'gan guessed this was the reason for the greenskins eschewing the main route into the fortress.

'You'll still burn,' he hissed beneath his breath, and listened to the static crackle down the comm-feed.

N'keln's order would unleash them into the enemy.

'Come on…' Tsu'gan muttered, gripping his bolter as if it was an ork's neck.

Dak'ir crouched in the darkness of the tunnels. Ahead of him came the echoing screech of the chitin-beasts, followed by the roar of Ba'ken's heavy flamer. The flare of fire lit the Salamander's imposing silhouette, roughly fifty metres in front, as he corralled the creatures with careful bursts.

Illiad hunkered down beside Dak'ir with fifty of his men. He huddled a lasgun close to his chest and watched the driven chitin intently as they became lost in the darkness.

The scent of something sharp and acerbic bit at Dak'ir's enhanced senses. It was pungent, sulphurous and held the trace of a lingering memory. It put him in mind of smoke and cinder…

'How close are we to the mines from here?' he asked Illiad.

Illiad shook his head. 'Not very,' he said. 'The mines are much closer to the core and several kilometres distant.'

'Distant enough so as not to hear the battles above us?'

'Definitely. The rock face is shored up by reinforced struts and metal plating to keep out the chitin. It also insulates the mining chamber against ambient sound. In any case, they are far from here.'

Yet the acerbic tang remained.

Illiad's expression suggested he craved an answer.

Dak'ir wasn't about to give it to him. Instead, he signalled the advance.

The Salamanders at the Vulkan's Wrath only had four squads at their disposal. The Thunderfire cannons were ill-suited to close assault warfare and so stayed behind in a small concession by Agatone to help protect the crash site. The rest were divided up into combat squads; with injuries some were only four men strong. Settlers accompanied them, both as guides and reinforcements. With their help, the Salamanders had found the chitin burrows swiftly and set about stirring their nests.

As Dak'ir moved, he heard the ruckus of battle above them like muted thunder. It was getting closer all the time.

The wall was in danger of being overrun. Even the Devastators, aloft in the high towers, were coming under pressure. They targeted the orks assailing the fortress directly now, going to their bolters and ignoring the distant wagons and trucks that jostled their way from the back of the horde. Desultory cannon fire from the far off vehicles carrying most of the greenskins' heavy guns occasionally raked the parapet but was mercifully ineffective.

A rocket exploded overhead, showering Tsu'gan's armour with debris. He half-glimpsed snarling ork faces through the tiny fissures in the makeshift gate. Still they refused to assault it. All their efforts were bent against the wall. The pressure there was building to breaking point. Tsu'gan's battle-brothers were holding on tenaciously, heaving orks bodily into the green surf pounding against the foot of the wall below. The bite of chainswords ringed the air in a churning chorus. On the opposite side, the wrecked corpse of a Salamander crashed down into the courtyard. It was Brother Va'tok, his power armour cloven, battle-helm staved in by an ork mace. The dead Salamander's fingers were still twitching in his gauntlets when Fugis rushed forwards to extract Va'tok's geneseed.

Tsu'gan raged at the death. It took all of his willpower not to turn around and climb up to wall to vent his fury.

'Vulkan's blood!' he snarled, forcing as much venom as he could into the invective.

Elysius felt it too, rotating his crozius in small arcs to keep his wrist loose and muttering spleenful litanies under his breath. The Chaplain would wait for the opportune moment to give his canticles of hate full voice.

'Raise shields!' Tsu'gan heard Praetor cry out to the Firedrakes from the other side of the Land Raider. The clank of metal resounded in the courtyard as the Terminators' storm shields met their pauldrons and locked in place.

The order from N'keln was imminent. Crackling static in Tsu'gan's battle-helm gave way to the captain's steely voice. 'Unto the anvil, brothers!'

The gate came down. A long burst from the Fire Anvil's flamestorm cannons burned clear the immediate area beyond it.

Led by Praetor, the Firedrakes were the first out, tramping onto scorched earth, smoking husks of orks crushed in their sudden charge. Thunder hammers filled the air with flashing discharge from their power generators. Trying to respond, the greenskins hurled themselves at the Terminators but found an unyielding rock against which they were smashed.

The Firedrakes were devastating, and Tsu'gan almost found himself agape at their fury. They moved amidst the greenskin horde, pummelling with their shields, crushing skulls with their hammers. Praetor extolled the glories of the vaunted 1st Company as they killed, his sheer presence impelling his warriors to even greater efforts. Tsu'gan saw the veteran sergeant's plan at once. He had his sights set on the ork warboss.

'To the fires of war!' roared Elysius, once the Terminators had cleared the threshold.

Tsu'gan ran with him, closing the gap behind their 1st Company brothers swiftly. Close-ranged bolter fire tore into the orks, as Tsu'gan ordered ''weapons free'', and blasted the greenskins apart.

Expulsed promethium merged with the stink of burning ork flesh as Honorious unleashed his flamer. To the rear of the assault group a combat squad made a staggered advance, allowing M'lek to loose his multi-melta. A brutish greenskin, two heads taller than Tsu'gan, its body an armoured shell of plates and whining servos, had its torso liquidised to visceral slag by the multi-melta's beam. It fell back into a steaming heap, crushing two of its smaller brethren.

Tsu'gan heard the bass tones of Sergeant Typhos as he sang a Promethean battle anthem, describing bloody arcs with the rise and fall of his thunder hammer.

As the three squads slowly converged, forming into a spear shape with Praetor and the Firedrakes as its burning tip, the ork attack on the wall was stymied. Without constant reinforcements, the greenskins already contesting the fortress were left isolated. It allowed the defenders to cleanse the parapets.

Overhead, the warriors of Vargo's Assault squad soared on wings of fire. Plunging down amidst the greenskins, they released bolt and blade with a zealot's fervour, small bursts from the squad's flamer adding to the carnage. They were the last element of the Salamander assault force, and in their wake the Fire Anvil rolled into the breach left behind by the fallen gate. The tank's bulk easily filled the blackened arch. Sporadic spears of flame from its sponson guns kept the orks at bay. When the initial shock of the Salamanders' attack had waned, they found themselves locked in a deadly melee. Ork bodies pressed on every side, raw aggression lending the beasts the impetus they needed to get back on an even footing. Only now, wading in the belligerent sea of green, did Tsu'gan fully appreciate what they were up against. Between bolter bursts, he heard a muffled cry and saw what he thought was one of Vargo's brothers falling into the morass of orks. The Salamander didn't resurface. Another, Typhos's special weapons trooper Urion, took a chainblade to the forehead. The exultant ork was shredded by return fire from the dead Salamander's battle-brothers, and the body was left quivering with the still churning blade that the greenskin had lost its grip on wedged in the wound. Soon Urion was swallowed up by the ork horde too.

They gained about three hundred metres from the gate when the Fire Anvil's engines stirred into life. The assault tank barrelled into the killing field, barging greenskins aside with its hull or mulching them beneath its grinding tracks.

This was ''hammer'', the second phase of N'keln's assault stratagem. The captain was embarked in the Land Raider with the Inferno Guard and the Tactical squad of Sergeant De'mas. Filling the void left behind by the tank was Clovius and his squad. They would hold the gate, whilst the Devastators, utilising the respite bought by Praetor's and the assault force's bravura, would abandon the towers and defend the walls in the absence of the Tactical squads. Lok assumed command position over the gatehouse and was charged to hold the iron fortress in case N'keln needed to order a retreat.

Even as ork blood spat across his visor, Tsu'gan knew there would no such retreat. The Salamanders were committed now. It was a simple matter of do or die.

A cleaver rang against his pauldron, spitting sparks, and he staggered. The ork assailing him lunged forward, strings of spittle punched from its maw on stinking breath. Tsu'gan rammed his bolter's muzzle into the beast's mouth and pulled the trigger. Blood and brain matter burst out the back of the ork's head, mixing with skull fragments.

Tiberon came in from the left and smashed the greenskin corpse aside, allowing Tsu'gan to drive forward. Iagon and Lazarus followed, maintaining pace with the implacable Firedrakes.

Praetor was battering his way to the ork warboss. Seeing prey and the prospect of a good fight, the immense leader of the greenskins spurred its biker-mounted entourage forwards. A thickening horde of orks still lay between it and the Terminators.

Assault cannon whining, the Fire Anvil scythed down a first rank of orks spilling from the throng with blades raised. More greenskins came in their stead and Tsu'gan met them with a bolter storm from his troopers.

Praetor exploited the slight gap, crushing the dead and wounded underfoot, as something huge lumbered into view. Orks scattered before it, bellowing and roaring for more carnage. A steel-plated machinery loomed. Trunk-bellied, resembling a can festooned with weapons and two razor-edged power claws, the greenskin war machine thundered forward on piston legs. One of the Firedrakes charged into its path, hammer aloft and crackling lightning. The machinery punched the warrior aside. Swinging its power claw, the crude creation clove a storm shield in two, overloading its force field and smashing its bearer to the ground. Buoyed by its own infernal momentum, the machine, with the band of orks following, drove a wedge into the Salamanders' spear formarion. The Firedrakes' tip fragmented apart. Praetor, desperate to close with the war machine, was engulfed by greenskins. Capering gretchin, heedless of death, clung madly to his arms and legs in an effort to slow the hero of Prometheus.

Honorious bathed the sergeant of the Firedrakes with his flamer, burning the diminutive greenskins off him like they were an infestation.

The ork war engine was rampaging still. Its pilot was obviously deranged, so fuelled by the psychic energy of the orks that the machine was almost unstoppable. It turned and fought in every direction, battering at the Firedrakes who surrounded it, but couldn't close.

Tsu'gan went to Praetor's aid, rushing on even as the flames from Honorious were still dying, and forging a bloody path with the rest of his squad. The pressure on the Firedrake sergeant lessened and he broke free, ramming an ork aside with his storm shield as he approached the ork machine that had scattered them.

In the distance, something was happening. A thick cloud of dust spewed into the air and Tsu'gan swore he saw a duster of orks disappear below the earth. Bestial screams followed swiftly as the greenskins reacted to something in their midst. On the opposite side of the battlefield, another dust plume spiralled upwards, then another and another. Grey columns of ash were erupting all across the dunes and orks were sinking down into an unseen mire.

Behind him, the clang of the Fire Anvil's frontal ramp announced N'keln's arrival on the battlefield. Tsu'gan turned briefly to witness the company banner unfurled by Malicant and his captain leading a fresh charge into the enemy with the rest of the Inferno Guard and Brother-Sergeant De'mas.

Turning his attention back on the greenskin machinery, Tsu'gan went in support of Praetor. The Firedrake sergeant faced off against the manic war engine, rebounding a blow from one its power claws with his storm shield. The ork pilot had overreached itself and was off balance. Praetor shattered the claw arm with a blow from his thunder hammer, before stepping in heavily to shoulder barge it. The ork pilot flailed at its controls, emulated by the machine itself. Tsu'gan, blindsiding it, ducked beneath a madly swiping claw and attached a melta-bomb to the war engine's body. Throwing himself backwards, Tsu'gan felt the heat of the explosion wash over his armour as the machine burst apart. Chips of debris fell like steel rain, a steaming pair of ruined legs holding up an abdomen of sloughed metal all that remained of the machinery, collapsing onto the ash.

Praetor had withstood the blast and drove on almost instantly, whilst Tsu'gan was still getting to his feet. The intensity of the ork assault was lessening. The guttural cries from those greenskins seemingly swallowed by the dunes were much closer now. At last he saw the cause.

Swarms of enraged chitin were rampaging amongst the horde. The orks hacked away at the carapace bodies of the subterranean creatures, their silt-blood mingling with the ash dunes in a grey soup. Sink holes devoured greenskins by the score, the soft earth, churned up by the chitin, no longer supporting the weight of the orks.

Familiar forms followed in the ash clouds, surging from the emergence holes bolters flaring. Agatone and the Salamanders from the Vulkan's Wrath had joined up with them, driving the chirin before them like cattle to dig their assault tunnels.

Flame bursts spat through the murk, burning down orks in a fire-tinged haze of grey.

Through the dissipating ash cloud and the rampant pull and thrust of warring bodies, Tsu'gan saw an Assault squad crest the edge of a fresh emergence hole. They took to the air immediately, jump packs screaming. Orks were set ablaze in the violent discharge; one stumbled blindly into the gaping chasm made by the chitin and was lost from view.

Then he saw Dak'ir amongst the reinforcements. The Ignean came out fighting, gutting an ork on his chainsword whilst vaporising the snarling head of another with a shot from his plasma pistol. Tsu'gan felt his jaw harden. He was determined not to be outdone. He caught sight of Chaplain Elysius going after Praetor and the Firedrakes. They were headed towards an inexorable confrontation with the ork warboss. Smiling darkly, Tsu'gan followed.

II Be the Anvil. Become the Hammer

Islands of open ground were appearing in the green sea as Dak'ir led his combat squad up to the surface. Orks still thronged the ash dunes, just as Agatone's scouts had reported, but a single mass had become isolated knots. The coherency alloying the greenskins together was breaking. Survival instincts were overthrowing the desire for conquest, and tribal rivalries, once quashed by their overlord's brute menace, had begun to surface. Infighting ravaged groups of orks at the fringes of the battle, sensing the turn in fortunes and staking early claims of leadership.

'Stay with me, Illiad,' shouted Dak'ir, the flare of his plasma pistol dying down as a headless ork crumpled away from him and the humans reached the surface.

Sonnar Illiad merely nodded. His rugged face was pale, his muscles bunched tight as he gripped his lasgun harder than he needed to. The other settlers were the same. To their credit, they were organised and steadfast, but they had obviously never fought in such a conflict before. For a moment, Dak'ir regretted not opposing their role in the battle in front of Agatone. When a lasgun salvo shredded a mob of onrushing orks, he changed his mind. A man fighting for his home will do so to the death and with all of his resolve. Dak'ir wouldn't deny the settlers that.

Even as the orks broke, Dak'ir saw N'keln bringing the disparate forces of the Salamanders together.

Be the anvil. Become the hammer.

The captain's words returned to him.

'Cleanse and burn,' Dak'ir barked into the comm-feed.

Ba'ken was the first forward from his sergeant's right shoulder, spewing a carpet of fire into the greenskins.

A second burst erupted from the heavy flamer of Venerable Brother Amadeus, who had lumbered from the chitin emergence hole behind them.

'Cleanse and burn,' echoed the Salamander Dreadnought. The dully resonance of its vox-emitter boomed above the roar of the conflagration engulfing the orks.

Scorched earth was all that stood between Dak'ir and the Inferno Guard once the flames had died. Ashen husks broke apart under booted feet as the brother-sergeant sought his captain's side. N'keln was cutting his way through the greenskins with his power sword. Behind him, the company banner was providing a glorious backdrop upheld by Malicant behind him. Fire Anvil ground slowly after them, spitting out plumes of fire and stitching orks with explosive rounds from its assault cannon.

Reunited with his captain again, Dak'ir levelled his chainsword as more orks came at them. 'Forward!'

As more Salamanders fought their way to N'keln, a nexus of strength started to gather.

The anvil was slowly forming. Next would be the hammer.

Dak'ir saw its target through a fiery heat haze.

The greenskin warboss ignored the bickering hordes, intent on the ''tin men'' who had just destroyed its orkoid war machine.

Slewing to a halt, barely a hundred metres away from the advancing Salamanders, the beast bellowed out a challenge. Sitting up in the bucket-seat of its wartrike, the warboss thrust its chin at Praetor.

Tsu'gan reached the veteran sergeant's side in time to hear his order to the Firedrakes.

'Kill it,' he growled.

Praetor was a hero, a veteran of countless battles and campaigns. His personal roll of honour in the Firedrakes was long and distinguished with many kill markings. But he was also a pragmatist and not given to grand gestures. Vainglory simply didn't appeal to him. Let the scribes and remembrancers write what they would. Praetor just wanted the green bastard dead. So, he'd level everything he had at it.

The Firedrakes came forward as one, an imposing wall of armour.

Annoyed that the tin man wasn't responding to its goading, the warboss sent its biker squadrons ahead of it. A mob of its own clan orks followed, more heavily armoured and better disciplined that the other tribes.

Tsu'gan's world shrank to a single combat - his squad with Elysius and the Firedrakes versus the warboss and his brood.

'Take them down!' he roared. The onrushing bikers were engulfed in a bolter storm.

Jagged white daggers seared behind Dak'ir's eyes and he felt blood on the side of his head. He'd lost his battle-helm. Maybe he'd wrenched it loose, he couldn't remember. The ork swung at him again. He could smell the stink of blood on its cleaver as it missed his face by centimetres. Swiping low, Dak'ir chewed up the beast's leg with his chainsword. Brother Zo'tan put a bolt through its brain before it struck the ground.

Three more greenskins came howling at them from the side. A wave of heat rippled there for a few seconds as Ba'ken torched them with his heavy flamer. Dak'ir gave a curt nod of thanks and drove on.

The battle was far from over.

Orks were everywhere, and though many had died in the shock assault or were fleeing, fighting amongst themselves or finishing off the chitin, there were hundreds of others still intent on killing the Salamanders.

Illiad's settlers had taken the worst of it so far. Easy meat, the orks must have decided. Of the fifty that had joined Dak'ir's squad, only twenty-three remained. The Salamanders had tried to shield them, but with foes coming at them from every direction it was an impossible task.

Blood and death were ubiquitous on the killing field. As a Space Marine, Dak'ir was able to assess and regulate every combat, carefully compartmentalise it and, in his enhanced battle state, prosecute the Emperor's justice with efficiency and focused fury. The humans had no such resource and simply fought what they could and tried to stay alive.

'Stay with the captain!' Robbed of the comm-feed in his battle-helm, Dak'ir was forced to shout the order to his combat squad.

N'keln was several paces ahead of them, long strides taking him into the thick of the greenskins where his power sword flashed like an angel of judgement. The lead only increased as he killed, slaying the orks with utter impunity. The spirit of Vulkan was with him now, the indomitable will and matchless strength of the primarch. Even the Inferno Guard, his retinue, were struggling to keep up.

Dak'ir saw Fugis lagged the farthest behind. He was cradling Brother L'sen, one of Dak'ir's troopers, part of the second combat squad - he hadn't even witnessed him fall. Badly wounded, his chest opened up by an ork cleaver, but still alive, L'sen fired his bolter one-handed and shot the legs out from under a charging greenskin, whilst Fugis, bolt pistol bucking violently in his grasp, destroyed the face of another.

Illiad and the humans stayed with them as Dak'ir's group caught up. They adopted a circle formation and issued a standing fusillade of las-fire into the approaching orks.

Dak'ir couldn't protect them any longer. He saw the warboss looming in the distance. The Firedrakes were about to engage it.

N'keln would reach the warboss after them. Dak'ir upped his pace, determined he would face the beast at his captain's side.

Torquing the throttle of his wartrike, the ork warboss tore across the dunes and straight at the Firedrakes.

The spoiling force the ork had sent ahead was all but destroyed. Bikers lay in mangled heaps, entwined with the wreckage of their mechanical steeds. The Terminators had hit them like a battering ram. Any orks that survived the suicidal run, through either fluke or cowardice, were cut up by Tsu'gan's and his squad's bolters.

Chaplain Elysius took great pleasure in despatching the riders, scything them down as they sped past, screams of glee turning to horror and ultimately agony as he shattered bones and severed heads with his crozius. Every ork death was punctuated with a different tirade. The clan orks still endured though and they barrelled after their leader in a raging mob as the warboss surged ahead of them.

Meaty fists clenched around the fat triggers of the trike's chainguns, the warboss cackled, the throaty sound emulating the cracking report of the front-mounts. White muzzle flashes lit up the beast's snarling visage as the cannons barked loudly.

A hail of slugs rattled against the armour of the Terminators ineffectually, little more deterrent than an insect swarm. Hastily, Praetor ordered them to form a shield wall to block the ork's charge. The Firedrakes locked together and presented a stout barrier of ceramite.

This only seemed to drive the beast into a greater frenzy, hooting and bellowing as the hot air rushed past it, spittle drooling from the corner of its mouth in a long stream.

Tsu'gan smiled grimly when he saw the warboss commit to the charge. It'll be smashed into oblivion.

Then he noticed the mass of incendiaries packed around the trike. His smile turned into a horrified grimace. Sticks of dynamite were strapped around the frame, other more volatile explosives piled up in lashed-together canisters and dull grey packets.

The wartrike was a giant, moving bomb.

Insane chuckling from the warboss preceded a gout of fire erupting from hidden boosters below. As the beast was launched into the air, Tsu'gan noticed the crude endeavours of orkish science; the warboss's legs were largely mechanical and a single-shot rocket burst was fashioned into them that lifted it free of the trike, igniting the incendiaries at the same time.

The sergeant didn't even have time to shout a warning as the explosives went up in a huge mushroom cloud, tearing the trike apart in a maelstrom of fire and frag. The blast wave alone smashed Tsu'gan off his feet. He and his squad were flattened by it. Pain, like white fire, engulfed them.

Even the hardy Terminators staggered, appearing as vague silhouettes through the dirty cloud that expanded outwards voraciously.

Several orks died in the blast, those at the head of the charging mob. They were spun into the air like sticks and landed gracelessly in broken heaps. Amidst this orkoid rain, the warboss came down too. It landed heavily, a tremor rippling outwards from its impact on the densely-packed ash dunes, as the rocket fuel in its boosters bled away to extinction.

Though still groggy from the explosion, Brother Namor of the Firedrakes came at the landed warboss, thunder hammer swinging. He'd lost his storm shield, severed in two halves by the destroyed ork war engine. The warboss laughed, and smacked Namor's blow aside, before tearing a hole through his Terminator armour with its power claw. Despite all its proofs, the venerable suit was badly rent, and Namor with it. The Firedrake was spilling blood and intestine as he fell forwards into the ash and lay still.

Brother Clyten charged in from the opposite flank, hoping to catch the beast off-guard. Reacting to the destruction at different speeds, the Firedrakes were attacking piecemeal. The oath of vengeance on Clyten's lips died abruptly when the warboss lunged forward and head-butted him. The blow was so powerful it cracked open the Firedrake's helmet and he too fell.

A cry of anguish ripped from Praetor's mouth when he saw his brothers falling. He tried to marshal his remaining warriors and close with the beast but by now the ork mob had caught up. Greenskin bodies swamped them, a multitude of crude blades, cudgels and chains flashing out at the Firedrakes. It was like using a rubber hammer to bring down a bastion wall. But then the orks were not necessarily intending to kill, only to delay.

All the while, the warboss laughed loudly, revelling in the carnage it was wreaking.

Brother Elysius aimed to sour the beast's ebullient mood. Stepping into a void in the aftermath of the explosion, he brandished his crozius. Lightning crackled over the surface of the weapon, emulating the Chaplain's hatred. The bile-filled litany was already half-formed as it passed his lips.

'…and the perfidy of the alien shall be met with cleansing fire and burning blade. Its form, reviled and repugnant, shall be cast down into the pit of damnation.'

Elysius swung his crozius in a short arc, making a jagged trail of sparking energy that hung for a few seconds in the air. It was meant as a goad.

'Face me, xenos filth,' he snarled.

Recognising another challenger, the warboss beat its chest in anticipation of a good fight.

Tsu'gan was still getting to his feet when he saw Elysius facing off against the beast. The Chaplain, ordinarily imposing, looked small against the sheer bulk of the massive ork. It was easily several heads taller, and almost twice as wide. Tsu'gan felt dazed; his ears were still ringing from the blast and black clouds circled menacingly at the periphery of his vision. He shook them away through force of will.

He must have been thrown from the blast. A skid furrow in the ash in the shape of his body, several metres long, bore testament to the sergeant's supposition.

Putting his foot forward, Tsu'gan realised he was bleeding. He felt it, wet heat behind his battle-plate, and bit back a rush of agony.

'To the Chaplain,' he croaked, tasting copper in his mouth and forged towards where man and beast faced off in uneven contest.

N'keln was becoming a distant figure. Dak'ir slew a greenskin at almost every stroke, his chainsword clogged with churned flesh, but still the captain bested him. A bloody path, ragged and limb-strewn, described his passage through the orks. It made following him easier, and as the carnage wore on, fewer and fewer greenskins filled the void left in N'keln's wake.

The Inferno Guard were closest, Shen'kar cutting down swathes of orks with his flamer, whilst Malicant held the company banner aloft. Fugis, Dak'ir had lost from sight. He had been left behind, ministering to the fallen even as he killed the enemy, the ultimate dichotomy of life and death expressed through an individual.

Dak'ir judged he was roughly four paces behind the Inferno Guard, and they four paces behind N'keln. The brother-sergeant had Emek at his side with Apion and Romulus. Ba'ken had opted to lag back and try to protect the settlers. Dak'ir lauded his heroism, but wished the bulky trooper was with him now.

Shattering an orkoid clavicle with a blow from his chainsword before burning a hole through its torso with his plasma pistol, Dak'ir saw the black armour of Chaplain Elysius in the gap left by the greenskin's falling body.

He faced off against the ork warboss. The shadow of its horrifying stature eclipsed him. Others were rushing in support; Dak'ir saw Praetor and two of his Firedrakes free themselves from a swarm of greenskins. Tsu'gan, too, was staggering towards him, his squad belatedly in tow.

Even from distance, Dak'ir could tell they would not reach Elysius in time. The Chaplain would have to fight the beast alone.

An ork truck exploded somewhere off to Tsu'gan's right, a roiling smoke cloud obscuring his vision as he lost Elysius from view.

By the time it cleared, he saw the Chaplain was bent down to one knee. The beast loomed above him, pressing Elysius down into the ash by grinding his chainblade against the Chaplain's upraised crozius. There was a dark welt above the ork's left eye and an angry black scorch mark where the crozius had stung him.

Elysius was buckling.

Tsu'gan struggled to reach him, pain anchoring his legs and weighing them down. He watched, almost transfixed, as the Chaplain aimed his bolt pistol through a gap in the crackling arcs thrown off by the crozius, only for the warboss to lash down with its power claw.

The ground trembled as another tremor wracked Scoria. Elysius screamed in unison with it, and his anguish seemed to shake the world. His arm was severed at the elbow. Blood was gushing from the wound, creating an ugly red mire around the Chaplain's feet and bended knee. Elysius seemed to sink into it, the beast pressing down relentlessly as it stepped forward to crush the severed forearm into paste in a wanton act of mutilation.

He was only a few metres away, but Tsu'gan could taste the death blow coming, feel it like a change in the wind or a lurch in his stomach.

The Chaplain was about to die, and there was nothing Tsu'gan could do to prevent it. Another hero of the company slain, just like—

Then N'keln was there, drakescale cloak billowing with the rush of his charge, twin-bladed power sword gleaming, and fate was reversed. Bellowing Vulkan's name, he rammed the master-crafted sword into the ork's neck and drew it out in a welter of dark blood. The beast roared; a ragged cry emitted from its ruined throat where the gore was pumping readily. Elysius was forgotten and the Chaplain collapsed from shock and blood loss. N'keln took a blow from the ork's power claw against the flat of his blade and the air around them became electrified.

Tsu'gan tasted the ozone. It numbed his lips and tanged his tongue as if it were on fire. Despite the pain, he was running. His bolter was out, the promethium canister for the flamer attachment long spent too, so he drew his spatha.

The earth shook again, in eerie synergy with the titanic battle unfolding upon it. The ork warboss rained down blows upon the Salamander captain like an angry giant. Each was like a comet, skull-bound and destined to kill before N'keln's sword skill diffused or deflected it. A dark and viscous tabard of blood coated the ork's chest now, a second mouth cut by N'keln's power sword in its neck frothing crimson. Digging furrows in the ground, the Salamander captain was pushed back by the ork's fury, finding no purchase in ash.

Slow exsanguination was making the warboss sluggish. Its movements were heavier; its prodigious strength fading. The more it exerted itself, the faster its blood spilled from its body. N'keln knew it and based his combat strategy on attrition - it was a gloriously Promethean way to slay an enemy. None could match a Salamander for sheer tenacity. Fire-born never knew when they were beaten.

The warboss slipped, its intended death blow failing to connect, and N'keln took his chance. Having dodged the downward swipe of the ork's power claw, he stepped into its fighting arc and cut off the wrist holding the chainblade. N'keln then reversed the cut and brought it up into the beast's exposed flank. The mono-molecular edge of the power-charged blades melted metal and overloaded the narrow-field force generator rippling energy across the greenskins armour. It howled as the sword bit into hide then flesh and finally bone.

The stink of cooking meat assailed Tsu'gan's nostrils as he came at the ork from its blind side, ramming his spatha into an exposed patch of green skin between the plates and the chain links.

N'keln drove his sword deeper, searching for organs and grisly ways to ruin this monster from within. The beast lifted its power claw, a heavy burden, in attempted retaliation. Praetor smashed it down again with a blow from his thunder hammer, the sergeant and his warriors having joined the battle at last. One of his Firedrakes, Brother Ma'nubian, rammed the edge of his storm shield into the ork's screaming maw.

Still it refused to die, its tiny eyes like malevolent red suns making false promises of retribution. The warboss bowed, the weight of its body dragging it downwards. A plasma blast seared its shoulder, Dak'ir shooting through a gap in the melee.

A dark figure loomed before the near-dead ork.

It was Elysius. He was bent-backed too, agony creasing his features behind the skull-faced grimace of his battle-helm. The cleaved forearm had clotted almost, the Larraman cells working hard to staunch the wound. A fine drizzle of blood issued from the ragged stump where at first there had been a torrent, and the Chaplain cradled it close to his body protectively. Despite his passing out, he had maintained his grip on his crozius arcanum.

'Death to the ork!' he rasped, bringing the crackling mace down and staving in the beast's skull.

It was to prove the final blow in the greenskins' defeat. Without their warboss to unify them, the clans broke apart fully. Ill-disciplined, fighting amongst themselves, the orks were soon destroyed. Many fled across the dunes into oblivion in the face of the Salamanders' victory.

The beast's own clan fought to the end, but the Firedrakes and the newly arrived squads of Dak'ir and Tsu'gan, together with other reinforcements, quickly vanquished them. The Inferno Guard went to their lord's side. Brother Malicant passed the company banner to N'keln who thrust it into the gloaming sky and roared.

'Glory to Prometheus! Glory to Vulkan and the Emperor!'

The Salamanders cheered, as did the human settlers, though they didn't know what they were cheering about, only that they were alive and the swine-tusks were dead.

Ba'ken caught up to Dak'ir and the rest, the slumped carcass of the ork warboss cooling slowly in front of them.

'The greenskins have broken,' he announced.

Dak'ir saw Illiad following behind him and was glad the human had survived. Seventeen other settlers accompanied him.

'They gave their lives for their home,' said Illiad as he approached, guessing the Salamander sergeant's thoughts. 'It is what they and their families would have wanted.' His mood was defiant, but sombre and grim too. The grief would come later.

'Akuma?' Dak'ir asked of the only other settler he knew the name of that had fought in the battle.

'He died with honour,' Ba'ken told him, and was struck by the sadness in his voice. 'He is resting now, before I take him to the pyreum to join the other heroes who fell today.'

A sombre quietude followed, broken by the arrival of the captain.

'Well met, brothers,' said N'keln, handing the banner back to Malicant and going to stand amongst them.

The assembled Salamanders bowed slightly, humbled by their captain's courage and prowess.

Dak'ir felt emboldened by it and was gladdened that N'keln had found his strength through the fires of battle. The anvil had tested him and he had emerged reforged. His optimism was abruptly crushed when he caught the baleful gaze of Tsu'gan regarding him. The glow in the brother-sergeant's eyes was dimmed as he moved awkwardly. Fresh scars crosshatched his face, the honour markings of a battle well fought. Others would be added in recognition of this day by the brander-priests. Tsu'gan's look of ire was fleeting as he passed from Dak'ir to N'keln. Dak'ir was heartened to see respect there and surprised to admit to himself that perhaps Tsu'gan's concerns were legitimate at first, that he desired what was best for the company and not some grab for glory. If his brother-sergeant could acknowledge his mistake in hasty judgement, then perhaps Dak'ir should do so also concerning Tsu'gan's motives. It didn't mean the enmity between them had lessened, though.

'Apothecary Fugis will tend to that,' N'keln told Elysius, his tone brooking no argument from the Chaplain.

Dak'ir was astounded the Chaplain was still standing given the severity of the wound, even for one as robust as an Astartes.

Elysius merely nodded. The adrenaline was leaving his body now, and he had to focus all of his efforts on staying on his feet and conscious.

'What now, my lord?' asked Praetor, carrying scars of his own. His gaze flicked briefly to the distance where Namor and Clyten had fallen. Two of their battle-brothers had dragged them together in readiness for Fugis's reductor. Sadness shadowed Praetor's face for a moment before the sternness returned. 'The orks are defeated, but the Vulkan's Wrath is grounded still and we are no closer to discovering why the Tome of Fire led us here.'

'And the tremors worsen by the hour,' said Tsu'gan, his voice a strained rasp. 'How much longer before this world cracks apart and is sundered to galactic dust?'

A nerve trembled in Illiad's cheek, just below his left eye, at Tsu'gan's callous remark. The brother-sergeant neither appreciated or noticed the effect his referral to the imminent demise of Scoria had upon the human native.

Dak'ir stepped forward humbly, bowing his head in respect to Praetor and N'keln.

'I may have an answer to the second question,' he said.

'For now, it must wait,' Elysius interrupted. Fugis was now at his side and attending to the Chaplain's severed arm.

With his other hand, Elysius gestured to the sky.

The Salamanders around N'keln followed his gaze to where the black rock throbbed like a malignant tumour. It seemed larger than before. The sun was now totally engulfed by it. Not even a ring of light remained, just blackness, empty and consumptive. Splinters were breaking off from it, like jagged, purposeful hail homing in on the planet.

Ork ships. Many more than before.

Despite the victory, the Salamanders were weakened. Though united, they had fought and paid much to defeat the greenskins. There were no further reinforcements, no way to replenish their numbers. All that they had was there before them, tired and battered upon the bloodied ash dunes.

'How long?' asked N'keln, his voice was deep and forbidding.

'A few hours,' answered Elysius. 'That is all the time we have left.'