Pain jolted him as the needles of the overseers plunged into his flesh, but he didn't care. His muscles bulged as he hauled on the chains one final time before the searing pain the overseers delivered made him collapse, twitching and convulsing, to the stone alongside Pierlo.
In his mind's eye he saw the sky running red with blood. He knew that Gehemehnet was pleased.
He smiled as he looked into the dead eyes of the traitor.
The earth shook, and as Marduk ripped his chainsword from the guts of a Guardsman he raised his head to pierce the gloom. Rain still lashed the bloody battlefield, but he sensed, as much as he felt, something approaching, something huge.
Lightning flashed, silhouetting a shape that Marduk had initially mistaken for a mountain. This was no mountain though, for it moved inexorably forwards, and the earth shook as it took another laborious step.
With a curse on his lips, Marduk's gaze rose as the immense shape of the Titan was revealed.
It was like some ancient, primeval god from an antediluvian age that continued to stalk the lands long after its kin had passed into myth and legend.
Its metal hide was pitted and scored by wounds that it had suffered during the battles it had waged over its ten thousand year lifetime. It's leering, dull metal face was fire scorched and scarred, though its eyes still burned with red light. Within that metallic cranium sat the Princeps and his Moderati, psychically linked to the Titan. They felt its pain as their own and experienced savage joy as the behemoth laid waste to everything before it.
Advancing through the press of soldiers and tanks, it dwarfed everything in its path. A multi-towered bastion the size of a walled stronghold sat atop its massive, armoured carapace shell. Siege ordnance and battle cannons, of such size that a small tank could drive through the barrels, were housed within this massive structure, and the pennants and banners that adorned it whipped around in the gale. Scores of symbols were emblazoned on the ancient kill banners that hung from the pair of monstrous main guns that the Imperator Titan wielded in place of arms, marking the enemy Titans and super-heavy vehicles that it had destroyed throughout its long history. The air around the giant war machine shimmered with the power of its void shields.
The siege cannons upon the hulking shoulders of the Imperator thumped as they launched their first salvo, and the air was filled with screaming shells that erupted amongst the Word Bearers. Warrior-brothers were thrown through the air and tanks smashed asunder beneath the barrage, but that was as nothing compared to the awesome destruction that was to come. Super-heated plasma fed into the annihilator cannon on the beast's right arm, filling the air with potent hissing that hurt the unprotected ears of the Guardsmen, and the massive barrels of the deadly hellstorm cannon began to rotate, the wind beating fiercely as it picked up speed.
The hellstorm cannon let loose with a torrent of fire from the spinning barrels that tore along the line of Word Bearers, cutting from one side of the valley to the other, ripping through warriors and vehicles alike. The plasma annihilator cannon flared with the power of a contained sun and a gout of white-hot energy roared from its barrel, engulfing a handful of tanks that were instantly returned to their molten base elements.
The destruction that the Imperator wrought was awe inspiring, and a roar rose from the ranks of Imperial Guardsmen as their god-machine unleashed the power of its weapon systems upon the hated foe.
Marduk bared his sharp teeth, hissing up at the monstrous, unstoppable beast. Stabbing beams of energy flashed from the mountainside as the lascannons of the havoc squads positioned there targeted the Imperator. The powerful blasts looked like little more than pin-pricks of light as they strobed towards the Titan. Scores of predator tanks, Land Raiders, Dreadnoughts and daemon engines added their fire to that of the havoc squads as they directed their heavy weapons fire towards the towering behemoth. Missiles, lascannon beams, heavy ordnance shells and streaming plasma speared towards the Titan. Its void shields flashed as they absorbed the incoming firepower, leaving the deadly machine unscathed, and it returned fire with dozens of battle cannons situated in the leg bastions.
The ranks of the Imperial Guard renewed their attack, bolstered by the arrival of the Titan that unleashed the power of its plasma Annihilator once more, firing up into the darkness and blasting away a ridge top, causing salt rock, debris and daemon engines to crash down the sheer cliff in a mass avalanche. Its hellstorm cannons smoked as they spun, tearing along the ridge. Rain turned to steam as it lashed against the super-heated barrels of the mega-weapon. Barrages of ordnance continued to pound at the void shields atop the carapace of the Titan, and they flashed with a myriad of colours as they deflected the incoming fire.
Marduk swore again and fired into the press of bodies around him, feeling the shifting tide of the battle turn against his Legion. There was just not enough firepower to take down the Imperator's shields, let alone damage the Titan, not while they were already engaged with the Guard and Skitarii forces.
But to fail in their duty to hold the valley was to face a fate far worse than death. If it was necessary, every Word Bearers Space Marine would willingly give his life in this battle at his word. Though it was Kol Badar's place as Coryphaus and strategos to organise the complex, interwoven battle lines, the carefully planned advance, fire support and overlapping fields of fire, it was Marduk's place, in the absence of the Dark Apostle, to be responsible for the Host's spiritual leadership. If he gave the order to stay and fight to the death, for that was what the gods of Chaos wished, then his word would be obeyed without question. The warrior-brothers would sell their lives dearly but willingly, taking as many of the enemy with them as they could, before their own life essences were freed from their earthly forms.
But Marduk could not see how a noble sacrifice could be made against this ancient war god. No, there could be no proud last stand. There would be only death and destruction, swift and ignoble. They would not be able to buy the time that the Dark Apostle needed to complete the construction of the Gehemehnet, and that was paramount. If the building work was interrupted then the whole attack against the planet was rendered pointless, and the Council of Dark Apostles upon Sicarus would be most displeased. That was truly something to be feared, for even in death, the Council would reach into the abyss of the Immaterium and seek out the souls of those who had failed them. The endless torment that they would orchestrate was too horrific to even contemplate.
He felt anger build within him and hacked around in a fury, shattering bones and slicing through flesh as he fought in the rising water. Many of the enemy were wading almost to their stomachs through the fast moving flow, and the corpses of the slain floated face down, their blood leaking out like an oil slick. Another blast from the Imperator obliterated a section of the battlefield with the power of its weaponry, and the whooshing sound of water instantly turning to steam was mixed with the roars of the dying and the detonations of the fuel lines and ammo-banks of vehicles.
'We must pull back, First Acolyte.' Kol Badar growled over the vox.
'The great war leader Kol Badar, ordering a retreat from Imperial Guard,' remarked Marduk. 'I can hear them laughing at us already.'
'Let them laugh. They won't have the chance to savour their victory for long.'
'For them to be able to savour any sort of victory against the Legion of Lorgar shames us all,' snarled Marduk.
'You wish to die here, whelp? I will joyfully oblige you if that is what you truly desire. And nobody will save you this time.'