Lucius had fewer men, but this battle was all about winning glory and spectacle.
A tank round shot through a window and burst against the ceiling, showering them in fragments and smoke.
Lucius saw streaks of bolter fire from the palace entrance – Tarvitz was drawing Eidolon in and Eidolon had no choice but to dance to his tune. He heard a musical clang and saw the assault ramps of the Land Raiders slam open and Lucius glimpsed the close-packed armoured bodies within.
'Go!' he yelled and the jump packs of the assault units opened up behind him, catapulting the warВriors into battle. Lucius followed in their wake, vaulting through the chapel window. Squad Nasi-cae came after him and the rest of his warriors followed in turn.
Battle: the dance of war. Lucius knew that against an enemy like Eidolon, there would be no time for anything but the most intense applicaВtions of his martial perfection. His consciousness shifted and everything was snapped into wonВdrous focus, every colour becoming bright and dazzling and every sound blaring and discordant along his nerves.
The duellist's dance took him into the enemy as battle erupted in all its perfectly marshalled chaos around him. Heavy fire streaked down from the roof and Land Raiders twisted on their tracks to bring their guns to bear on the Emperor's Children charging from the chapel.
The Space Marines outside the chapel charged at the same instant, and Eidolon's force was attacked from two sides at once.
Lucius ducked blades and bolts, his sword lashВing like a serpent's tongue. Eidolon's force reeled. Squad Quelmondil battled ferociously with the enemy warriors emerging from the nearest Land Raider. He danced past them, savage joy kicking in his heart and he rolled under a spray of bolter fire to come up and stab his blade through the abdomen of an enemy sergeant.
Death was an end in itself, expressing Lucius's superiority through the lives he took, but he had a higher purpose. He knew what he had to do, and his strangely distorted senses sought out the glint of gold or the flutter of a banner, anything indicating the presence of one of Fulgrim's chosen.
Then he saw it; armour trimmed in black instead of gold, a helmet worked into a stern, grimacing skull: Chaplain Charmosian.
The black-armoured warrior stood proud of the top hatch of a Land Raider, directing the battle with sharp chops of his eagle-winged crozius. Lucius grinned manically, setting off through the battle to face Charmosian and slay him in a fight worthy of the Legion's epics.
'Charmosian!' he yelled, his voice sounding like the most vibrant music imaginable. 'Keeper of the Will! I am Lucius, once your brother, now your
nemesis!'
Charmosian turned his skull helmet towards Lucius and said, 'I know who you are!'
The chaplain clambered from the hatch and stood on top of the Land Raider, daring Lucius to approach him. Charmosian was a battlefield leader and to fulfil that role he needed the respect of the Legion, respect that could only be earned fighting from the front.
He would be a worthy foe, but that wasn't why Lucius had sought him out.
Lucius leapt onto the Land Raider's track mountВing and charged up its glacis until he was face to face with Charmosian. Bolter fire flew in all direcВtions, but it was irrelevant.
This was the only battle in Lucius's mind.
'We taught you too much pride,’ said CharВmosian, bringing his lethal crozius around in a strike designed to crush Lucius's chest. He brought
his blade up to deflect the crozius, and the dance entered a new and urgent phase. Charmosian was good, one of the Legion's best, but Lucius had spent many years training for a fight such as this.
The chaplain's crozius was too heavy to block full-on, so the swordsman let it slide from his blade as Charmosian swung at him time and time again, frusВtrating him into putting more strength into his blows. A little longer. A few more moments, and Lucius would have his chance.
He loved the way Charmosian hated him, feeling it as something bright and refreshing.
Lucius could read the pattern of Charmosian's attacks and laughed as he saw the clumsy intent written over every blow. Charmosian wanted to kill Lucius with one almighty stroke, but his crozius rose too far, held too long inert as the chaplain gathered his strength.
Lucius lunged, his sword sweeping out in a high cut that slashed through the chaplain's upraised arms. The crozius tumbled to the ground and CharВmosian roared in pain as his arms from the elbows down fell with it.
The battle raged around the scene and Lucius let the noise and spectacle of it fill his over-stimulated senses. The battle was around him, and his victory was all that mattered.
You know who I am,’ said Lucius. 'Your last thought is of defeat,’
Charmosian tried to speak but before the words were out Lucius spun his sword in a wide arc and
Charmosian's head was sliced neatly from his shoulders.
Crimson sprayed across the gold of the Land Raider's hull. Lucius caught the head as it spun through the air and held it high so the whole batВtlefield could see it.
Around him, thousands of the Emperor's ChilВdren fought to the death as Eidolon's force, hit from two sides, reeled against the palace defences and fell back. Tarvitz led the counter-strike and Eidolon's attack was melting away.
He laughed as he saw Eidolon's command tank, a Land Raider festooned with victory banners, rise up over a knot of rubble as it retteated from the fighting.
The loyalists had won this battle, but Lucius found that he didn't care.
He had won his own battle, and pulling CharВmosian's head from the skull faced helmet and throwing it aside, he knew he had what he needed to ensure that the song of death kept playing for him.
The Warsingers' Chapel was quiet. Hundreds of new bodies lay around it, purple and gold armour scorched and split, runnels of blood gathering between the stained marble tiles. In some places they lay alongside the blackened armour of the World Eaters who had died in the initial assaults on the Choral City.
The palace entrance was heavily barricaded and in the closest dome of the palace, the few
apothecaries in the loyalist force were patching up their wounded.
Tarvitz saw Lucius cleaning his sword, alternating between wiping the blade and using its tip to carve new scars on his. face. A skull-faced helmet sat beside him.
'Is that really necessary?' asked Tarvitz.
Lucius looked up and said, 'I want to remember killing Charmosian.'
Tarvitz knew he should discipline the swordsВman, reprimand him for practices that might be considered barbaric and tribal, but here, amid this betrayal and death, such concerns seemed ridicuВlously petty.
He squatted on the ground next to Lucius, his limbs aching and his armour scarred and dented from the latest battle at the entrance to the palace
'Fair enough,’ he said, jerking his thumb in the direction of the enemy. 'I saw you kill him. It was a fine strike.'
'Fine?' said Lucius. 'It was better than fine. It was art. You never were much for finesse, Saul, so I'm not surprised you didn't appreciate it,’
Lucius smiled as he spoke, but Tarvitz saw a very real flash of annoyance cross the swordsman's feaВtures, a glimpse of hurt pride that he did not like the look of.
Any more movement?' he asked, changing the subject.
'No,’ said Lucius. 'Eidolon won't come back before he's regrouped,’
'Keep watching,' ordered Tarvitz. 'Eidolon could catch us unawares while our guard's down.'
'He won't breach us,' promised Lucius, 'not while I'm here.'
'He doesn't have to,' said Tarvitz, wanting to make sure Lucius understood the reality of their position. 'Every time he attacks, we lose more warriors. If he strikes fast and pulls out, we'll be whittled down until we can't hold everywhere at once. The ambush from the temple cost him more than he'd like, but he still took too many of us down.'