Krank fumbles with his rifle. He’s not going to get it aimed in time. One of the killers sees him, and fires. The rounds whine into the brickwork beside them, and spatter them with grit and slime. Krank fires back, but Rane is tangled with him, and his aim is rubbish. His shots go wide.
The knife brothers rush them.
Krank hits one in the chest with a clean shot, point blank, and drops him on his back. Then he gets a rifle-butt in the face and collapses, his nose and mouth a bloody mash. The other two cultists grab Rane and twist his arms. One drags Rane’s head back by the hair.
‘This one first,’ says the one who stock-smashed Krank. He stoops over his chosen victim, dagger drawn. Krank is moaning, clutching his nose. The man turns Krank’s head by the chin, and aims the point of his dagger at Krank’s wide left eye.
Rane goes berserk. He kicks one of his captors in the balls, then tears free and punches the other in the throat. As both of them stumble backwards, Rane hurls himself headlong at the bastard with the knife and tackles him clear of Krank.
They roll together. They writhe. Rane is nothing like strong enough. He’s just a kid. The cultist is big and rangy, thin and hard. His limbs are long, and he is as tough as a wild animal.
The other two rush back in to help him, cursing. Krank reaches for his rifle, but he gets kicked down. One of them puts a pistol to his head.
The gun goes off. Krank feels surprisingly little pain considering he’s been shot through the forehead. Blood runs down his face. It’s hot. But there’s no pain. There’s not even any recoil or blowback.
The man with the pistol falls over. It’s his blood decorating Krank’s face. The side of the cultist’s skull has been shot off. It’s all matted hair and white bone shards and leaking pink.
Another man stands on the roadway. He’s got a lasrifle. He fires it again, and snaps the second cultist over on his back. Headshot. A really clean headshot. Marksman standard.
Krank blinks. Where did this guy come from? He’s Army. Krank can’t tell which unit. The shooter clambers off the street to join them.
Rane and the other cultist have stopped fighting. Rane rolls the dead cultist off him. The big, rangy freak has got a dagger wedged in his heart. Somehow, in the frenzy, Rane managed to stick the bastard with his own knife.
‘Probably an accident,’ Rane says, sitting up, saying what Krank was thinking. Krank laughs, despite the fact that absolutely fugging nothing in the world is funny.
They look up at the shooter.
‘Thanks,’ says Krank.
‘You needed help,’ says the man. He’s a veteran. His face is lined and his kit is faded. He’s got silver in his hair.
‘We all need help today, friend,’ says Krank.
‘True words,’ says the man, offering his hand. He pulls Krank to his feet.
‘I’m Krank. The kid is Rane. Bale Rane. We’re Numinus 61st. Well, we were. For whatever that counts.’
‘Ollanius Persson, retired,’ says the man. ‘I’m trying to fight my way out of this shit hole. You boys want to come along?’
Krank nods.
‘Safety in numbers,’ he says.
‘Or company in death,’ replies the old guy. ‘But I’ll take either. Grab your guns.’
Persson looks at Bale Rane.
‘You all right, boy?’ he asks.
‘Yes,’ replies Rane.
‘He had a shake-up,’ says Krank. ‘He thought he saw his bride. His little wife. But it wasn’t her. It wasn’t human.’
‘I saw her,’ Rane insists.
‘Nothing looks like what it’s supposed to today,’ says Persson. ‘You can’t trust your eyes. The warp’s at work, and it’s cursing us all.’
‘But–’ Rane begins.
‘Your friend is right,’ says Persson. ‘It wasn’t your wife.’
‘How do you know so much about it?’ asks Rane.
‘I got old,’ says Persson. ‘I saw plenty.’
‘You’re not that old,’ says Rane.
‘Not compared to some, I suppose,’ says Persson.
He crouches down, and plucks the ritual knife out of the cultist’s blood-soaked chest. It’s a black stone blade with a hand-wound wire handle, home-made. An athame. It reminds Oll Persson of something, but it’s not quite right. He tosses the wretched thing away.
‘Come and meet the others,’ he says to the two troopers.
‘Others?’ asks Krank.
5
The enemy comes at Leptius Numinus. It’s hard to assess numbers because of the terrible visibility, but Ventanus estimates at least six thousand. The core of the force is made up of Army units auxiliary to the XVII, the so-called brotherhoods. They look more like ritual fanatics than soldiers to Ventanus, typical of that zealot XVII mindset. Ventanus is certain that the root of many of the day’s ills lies there: the fanaticism of the Word Bearers. They were always borderline and unstable, always of a religious inclination. They worshipped the Imperium as a creed and the Emperor as a god. That’s why they were rebuked in the first place. That’s why the Emperor used the XIII, surely his most rational warriors, to do the job.
It should have been enough. It should have ended the Word Bearers’ wayward thinking, and brought them and their spurned primarch back into the common fold.
Evidently, it did not.
The Word Bearers have been fomenting dissent since that day. Reaching some crisis of faith, some epistemological crossroads, they have turned. They have turned against the Emperor they once adored.
But for what, Ventanus wonders? What do you replace your notion of god with?
Ventanus fears that the Calth Conjunction was an opportunity seized by the XVII to demonstrate their new alignment. The choice of Calth cannot have been chance. This was an opportunity to hurt and shame the Legion that chastised them all those years ago. By being the instrument of the savage reprimand on Monarchia forty-four years earlier, the Ultramarines made themselves a target. They made all of Ultramar’s Five Hundred Worlds targets.
There are still too many questions for Ventanus’s comfort. What force or concept has usurped the Emperor as the Word Bearers’ all-consuming cause? What, apart from malicious vengeance, are they hoping to achieve in the Veridian system? If they crush the Ultramarines at Calth, what is their next step?
Just how many of them are there out there in the fog?
The enemy leaders press the cultists forward in serious numbers. The brotherhood warriors, swathed in black, are chanting, and Ventanus can hear drumming too. The Word Bearers are holding back, driving the cultists forward as shock troops into the earthwork ditch and against the gate.
Sparzi’s gun crews have been shelling into the enemy line for about twenty minutes. They’ve done some serious damage considering the comparatively light nature of the field pieces. The ground beyond the earthwork is peppered with craters and littered with dead. Shot callers on the palace walls are directing the gunners in on the moving mass. Shells fall into the ranged lines, lifting tattered bodies into the air with blasts of flaming debris.
Still they come, wave after wave.
‘Small-arms!’ Ventanus instructs the defenders at the gate and wall. His practical is to let the Army bear the brunt of this, because the legionaries need to spare their boltguns and heavier munitions for the Word Bearers.
The Army force seems content with this. Greavus and some of the other legionaries have co-opted spare lasrifles and other weapons, and are joining the line. Others stand, blades ready, to meet any strength that reaches the gate.
Only Sullus seems distracted. His boltgun is drawn and ready. He wants to act, to fight. He’s angry and frustrated, and it’s fuelling his impatience.