Argel Tal watched all of this from the cockpit of Rising Sun as the Thunderhawk swooped low, engines howling as they carried it over the warring armies. A host of Word Bearer’s landing craft, the colour of their hulls matching the bleak weather of this cold world, headed for the ravine’s edges.
‘This is far enough. Set down,’ he ordered Malnor, who was piloting.
‘By your word.’
The two crimson gunships among the leaders of the grey pack began their downward drift. The Word Bearers, chosen landing site was close to the spread of terrain used by the Raven Guard in the initial assault, and the flock of regal, granite-grey aircraft touched down alongside their charcoal-black twins.
Affirmation pulses chimed across the beleaguered vox-network as the four Legions’ landers hit their marks. The tide was turned at the eleventh hour. Horus and his rebels broke into full retreat, fleeing back to their fortress.
Argel Tal walked down the gang ramp and into his first filtered breath of Isstvan V’s air. It was cold, cold and coppery, with the rich, earthy smell of churned mud and the ever-present smog of thruster exhaust. A quick scan through his eye lenses showed the panoramic view of the unfolding battle, where the Night Lords corvidish gunships were coming down on one flank, and the Alpha Legion’s war machines on the other. The main Word Bearer force bolstered both of their brother Legions on the Depression’s sides, and for a brief, uplifting moment, Argel Tal saw the flash of grey, ivory and gold that marked out Lorgar among the exalted First Company.
Then the primarch was gone, stolen by distance, smoke and the press of too many gunships between here and there.
The Iron Warriors had claimed the highest ground, taking the loyalist landing site with all the appearance of reinforcing it through the erection of prefabricated plasteel bunkers. Bulk landers dropped the battlefield architecture: dense metal frames fell from the cargo claws of carrier ships at low altitude, and as the platforms crashed and embedded themselves in the ground, the craftsmen-warriors of the IV Legion worked, affixed, bolted and constructed them into hastily-rising firebases. Turrets rose from their protective housing in the hundreds, while hordes of lobotomised servitors trundled from the holds of Iron Warriors troopships, single-minded in their intent to link with the weapons systems’ interfaces.
All the while, Perturabo, Primarch of the IV Legion, watched with passionless pride. He wore layered ceramite that would have looked at home as a tank’s armour plating, and clicking, crunching servos in his joints announced even the smallest shift in his stature.
Occasionally, he would spare a moment’s glance for the representatives from the other Legions among his number: nodding acknowledgement to the Word Bearers and Night Lords captains sharing his defensive bastions. The nod spoke volumes when coupled with the primarch’s bitter eyes: without even the pretence of respect, he acknowledged their presence and warned them to be about their business. Let them remain here as their primarchs had ordered, so long as they did not interfere. The Iron Warriors did not need them getting in the way. All the while, the sounds of warfare’s industry rattled and ground on, and the firebase structures lifted higher, their battlements forming and defensive cannons whirring as they took aim down at the central plain.
Argel Tal and Xaphen led the Gal Vorbak away from their Thunderhawks, through the statuary of landed gunships, and through to the barricades being raised by the metallic forms of the Iron Warriors. The ground trembled gently with the tread of Astartes boots as the Word Bearers seconded to Argel Tal’s command closed ranks and followed. Thousands of warriors awaited his signal, their companies and Chapters marked by banners raised high.
Down the line, past the mounting masses of Iron Warriors battle tanks and assembling Astartes, Argel Tal could make out the cloaked form of First Captain Sevatar and his First Company elite, the Atramentar. Bronze chains wrapped their armour, leashing weapons to fists, as the Night Lords made ready for the coming signal.
‘We are to be the anvil,’ Xaphen voxed to the gathered Word Bearers as they waited by the barricades. ‘We are the anvil, while our brothers form the hammer yet to fall. The enemy will stagger back to us, exhausted, clutching empty bolters and broken blades, believing our presence to be a reprieve. The Iron Hands have damned themselves by remaining in the field, but you see the survivors of two Legions coming to us even now. The Salamanders. The Raven Guard. We must hold them long enough for our brothers to annihilate them from the flanks and the rear.’
Argel Tal had tuned out already. He watched the battle breaking apart, seeing the defiant Iron Hands contingent ringing their primarch at the heart of the battlefield. The righteous indignation that kept them there would see them slain before any others.
The forest-green of Salamander ceramite formed a withdrawing mass scrambling its way back uphill to the Iron Warrior barricades over to the east, while the battered black armour of the Raven Guard warriors came towards the unified Night Lords and Word Bearers force. The loyalists’ shattered unit cohesion was already beginning to reform, reshaping around bannered sergeants as they marched up the incline.
Argel Tal swallowed a mouthful of something that tasted like poisoned blood. He couldn’t keep himself from salivating.
Raum, he said silently, but there was no answer. In a bizarre moment of clarity, he realised he could feel the wind against his skin. Not the focused feeling of pressure from a puncture in his warplate, but all over – a faint breath of wind against his flesh, as if his wargear had grown dull nerves capable of recognising external sensation. His hands began to ache again, and this time the pain brought something new: the sense of swelling, stretching, the torture of his own body-meat rendered as malleable as clay, with the brittle creaking of bone still inside.
Targeting circles that he hadn’t activated started to spin before his eyes, flickering across the blue lenses in search of prey.
Beneath them the Raven Guard in their thousands marched up the rise of land. Not a single one had escaped with his armour unscarred from the battle below. Despite their distance, Argel Tal’s vision was keen enough to make out how individual warriors marched with their bolters slung, out of ammunition, and oaths of moment reduced to burned, flapping parchment rags in the wind.
‘Sixty seconds,’ he growled into the vox.
‘By your word,’ chorused three thousand warriors in the ranks alongside him.
Dagotal sat in his saddle, looking over the barricades. The repulsor drive built into his jetbike’s chassis hummed in sympathy with his movements, whining louder as the rider leaned forward to watch the withdrawing Raven Guard draw nearer.
His task was to skirt the battle’s edges, cutting down any stragglers that sought to escape from the main melee. Although only five of his outriders had survived the transition into the Gal Vorbak so many years before, they sat at his side now, gunning their engines in readiness for what they were committed to do.
He blinked burning sweat from his eyes, breathing in laboured rasps, trying to ignore the voice howling in his mind. The pain in his throat had been building in intensity for hours to the point where swallowing caused excruciating pain. Now, even breathing was a trial. Venom dripped down his chin, bubbling hot, from his overworking saliva glands. The acidic poison dripped over his lower teeth every few seconds, and he could no longer bear to swallow and neutralise it.
‘Thirty seconds,’ came Argel Tal’s order.
Dagotal murmured meaningless syllables with a wet voice, as acid hissed from his helm’s mouth grille.
Torgal thumbed a gear-rune on his chainaxe’s control, shifting settings from soft tissue to armour plating. A thicker second layer of jagged teeth slid forward alongside the first. In truth, a chainbladed weapon would always struggle to do more than strip the paint from layered ceramite, but it would chew through fibre-bundle armour joints or exposed power cables with ease.
He had been weeping blood, without feeling sorrow or any emotion at all, for an hour. Had he been able to remove his helm, Torgal was certain the scarlet tracks would be stained across his cheeks by now, darkening the skin with a tattoo’s permanence. Each time he blinked, his tear ducts flushed more of the watery blood-fluid down his face. When his tongue moved in his mouth, it slid along a maw of jagged teeth that cut his tongue open, and he tasted coppery pain for the few seconds it took the little slice wounds to seal.
Blood, thick and dark, was leaking from the knuckle-joints of his gauntlets, cementing his fingers to the haft of his axe. He couldn’t open his hand. He couldn’t release the weapon, no matter how he tried.
‘Twenty seconds,’ said Argel Tal.
Torgal closed his eyes to blink them clear, but they wouldn’t open again.
Malnor’s breath sawed in an out of his vocaliser grille. A chorus of voices assailed him, and for the briefest moment, he believed he was listening to the sounds of everyone he had ever met in his life. There was a tremor in his bones that he couldn’t suppress.
‘Ten seconds,’ came Argel Tal’s voice. ‘Stand ready.’
Malnor’s twitched head turned to the advancing ranks of the Raven Guard. Distance markers flashed across his retinal display, flickering as it recognised individual squad sigils on their shoulder guards.
Malnor grinned, and clutched his bolter tighter.
‘Brothers,’ the voice crackled. ‘This is Captain Torisian, 29th Company, Raven Guard.’
At the vanguard of the marching Astartes, a cloaked captain raised his hand in greeting. A spent bolter was mag-locked to his thigh, and a gladius glinted in his left hand. The captain’s cloak, once a regal blue, was a ragged ruin. Argel Tal raised his own hand in response, and replied over the vox.
‘This is Argel Tal, Lord of the Gal Vorbak, Word Bearers Legion. How goes the battle, brother?’
The Raven Guard leader laughed as he came closer. ‘The traitorous dogs already flee the field, but they fight like bastards, each and every one. In Terra’s name, it is a blessing to see you. Our primarch has ordered us back for resupply – but Lord Corax is an unselfish man. He would not wish us to steal all the glory on this day of days.’
Argel Tal could hear the smile in the other warrior’s voice as he continued. ‘Good hunting down there, all of you. Glory to the Word Bearers. Glory to the Emperor!’
The commander of the Gal Vorbak didn’t reply. The advancing Raven Guard were almost at the barricades. He felt his muscles bunching and twitching with sick need.
‘Brother?’ asked Torisian. The captain’s armour was an older Mark III Iron-class suit, blocky and heavy, almost primitive compared to the Maximus-class armour worn by the XVII Legion. ‘What are your plans for assault?’
Argel Tal took a breath, and prepared to speak damnation.
Without knowing why, he couldn’t keep from thinking of Lorgar’s words to him, spoken so long ago. ‘You are Argel Tal. You were born on Colchis, in the village of Singh-Rukh, to a carpenter and a seamstress. Your name means ‘the last angel’ in the dialect of the southern steppes tribes.’
He thought, briefly, of his parents – two hundred years dead now. He had never visited their graves. He wasn’t even sure where they might be.
His father had been a quiet man with kind eyes, who had round shoulders from a lifetime of devotion to his craft. His mother was a mouse of a woman, with dark eyes and black hair in the ringlets preferred by the southern tribes. She had smiled a great deal. It was his abiding memory of her.
How far he’d come, in distance and time, from their riverside hut of packed mud and straw. He could almost feel the river water on his hands now, cooling to the touch even as it sparkled in the oppressive Colchisian sun.
He had four older sisters, each as distant and dead as his parents. They had wept when the Legion came for him, though at the time he couldn’t understand why. All he could see was the adventure, the joy, in being chosen by the holy warriors. The youngest – Lakisha, only a year older than he was – had given him a necklace of desert-dog teeth that she’d made herself. He felt it now, tied around his wrist, bound there each dawn upon rising and completing his meditations. The original string had long since rotted away, but he threaded the jackal teeth onto a new cord with the passing of every few years.
His oldest sister, Dumara, had spent every day telling him that he was good for nothing but getting underfoot. But she had no unkind words that day, and instead brought him a blanket of goat’s wool to take with him.