The stench of the war reached Koorland through his helmet grille, the humid mix of rotting vegetation, burnt fyceline and spilled blood. In the distance, barely audible over the clamour of the battle, the saurian carnivores of Caldera snarled their fury. They were displaced. Predators far worse than they were at war.
A battlewagon reared over the bodies of infantry. Smashing the living and the dead beneath its wheels and treads, it thundered towards the front line of the Last Wall. Koorland and Daylight ran at it, splitting left and right. Its gunner swung the cannon after Koorland. The shell exploded behind him, and then he was too close. Orks leaned out of hatches, hammering his armour with shots. He turned towards the vehicle’s front at the last second, leaping up to grab the top of its siege shield. He clung with one hand and threw a frag grenade through the driver’s slit in the armour. On the right, Daylight slapped a krak to the side.
The slit spat flame and the battlewagon veered wildly. Koorland jumped away from the shield as the krak grenade went off, melting through the rear treads and the hull. The vehicle’s fuel ignited and the blossom of fire lifted the back of the wagon as it slewed. It rolled, crushing the orks in its turrets. It became a tumbling mass of shredding metal and flame, killing the orks still in its path. The Last Wall parted to let it pass.
On the flanks, the Sydonian Dragoons moved up, racing forwards on their Ironstriders. The legs of their bipedal steeds were long enough that they could have stepped effortlessly over the heads of the enemy. Instead, they smashed greenskins down with each stride. The dragoons held their taser lances pointed low. With the Ironstriders moving at full gallop, the lances stitched lines of chained incinerations.
And the rifle fire was unstinting. There was no standing against the Imperial storm. The counter-charges were brief and shattered before they could begin. There was only one direction the orks could go. They took it.
They fled.
‘The enemy is in retreat,’ Koorland shouted. ‘Drive it into the ground!’
The Imperial machine pursued. The speed of the orks surprised Koorland. Even allowing for the gap in their ranks created by the artillery, they had seemed too densely packed.
‘Hemisphere,’ he voxed, ‘tell me what you see.’
It took a moment for the pilot to answer. Koorland heard him grunt and a background burst of energy. Further ahead, the orks were still lashing at the aircraft. ‘There’s a gap between the bulk of the horde and the struggle involving the front lines. I couldn’t see it before. I think they only slowed down when we began the assault. But they’re catching up quickly now.’
Unease gnawed at the edge of triumph. But the odd greenskin strategy changed nothing. Koorland led the pursuit without pause, chewing up the rear ranks of the enemy, the cannons pounding the centre of the horde.
The jungle thinned, then ended. The ground became rockier. The terrain sloped upwards, turning into craggy foothills in advance of the two volcanoes. The horde retreated even faster. The mounted mass abandoned the slower infantry. The orks fought to climb aboard the trucks and the tops of battlewagons. Bikes and overloaded vehicles roared up the slope. The gap between the two armies widened.
Unease became alarm.
‘Stop their flight!’ Koorland ordered. ‘Land Speeders to the fore. Dominus Arouar, we need your fastest troops!’
And Hemisphere was shouting in his ear. ‘They’re not retreating! They have camouflaged positions. They—’
A new thunder of cannons drowned Hemisphere out. The orks’ heavy tanks burst from their concealment. The walkers, damaged but still fighting, turned away from the harassing aircraft and aimed their massive guns downhill. From the heights, they dropped the sky down on the Imperial forces. Koorland heard the shriek of high-explosive shells, and then he was in the air, lifted off his feet as the ground hurtled skywards. His battle-brothers and the rest of the strike force vanished in the flare of crimson and coruscating green.
He landed on his back, cracking stone. He rolled and surged to his feet.
‘Force them back!’ he voxed. ‘Artillery, take out the tanks! Our cannons outnumber theirs.’
Through the smoke and blasts, he saw the Last Wall and the Fists Exemplar climbing with him. The formation was ragged, but the fire still constant.
And the ork infantry had stopped retreating. It was digging in, returning the Imperial salvoes with a vengeance.
‘Keep advancing,’ he heard Thane order the Fists Exemplar. ‘Keep the initiative.’
Wreckage everywhere: Ironstriders twisted and smoking, mortals turned into meat, their uniforms so burned and soaked in blood there was no identifying their regiment. Through the dead and through the meteor storm of the ork barrage, the Imperial forces advanced.
Keep the initiative.
We never had it, Koorland thought.
The shadow of Ardamantua fell on him. Though he marched up the slope, though he weathered the shots scoring and pitting his armour, though he led an attack that was still disciplined, still coherent, still powerful, he felt the sickening knowledge of imminent disaster.
It was Hemisphere who first saw what was coming. It was his voice that became the messenger of doom.
‘Chapter Master! Major ork forces closing from the east and west!’
Uphill, the ork cannons paused for a moment. Wind cleared the smoke, and Koorland could see the scale of the counter-attack.
No, not a counter-attack. A trap.
To the left and to the right, armies fully as large as the one to the north closed in.
An ocean of savagery came to drown the Imperial machine.
Six
Smoke. Fire. Volcanic rock turned into a shrapnel whirlwind. Crashing waves of xenos muscle, blades and rifle fire. The slope caught in a hurricane of war. Directions becoming meaningless. The world disintegrating, reduced to the clamour of violent death. The vox a torrent from all the elements of the strike force.
‘Heavy weapons hitting us from the west…’
‘… the east, the east, the east…’
‘… suppressive fire on those tanks…’
‘… pushing us back…’
‘… maintain formation or I’ll shoot you myself…’
‘… consolidate Dunecrawler line…’
‘… lost…’
‘… close that gap, by the Throne, close—’
The screams of dying mortals. Chattering binharic dissolving into feedback whines. The grim calm of battle-brothers falling into sudden silence.
The choir of disaster.
The Last Wall closed ranks. The company became a ceramite barrier. Bolter shells and streams of flaming promethium slammed against the orks, exploding and incinerating flesh. At the northernmost tip of the Imperial advance, Koorland’s veterans held the ork infantry at bay.
‘They will not pass, Chapter Master,’ Eternity promised.
‘It is we who must pass,’ Koorland said. ‘Artillery,’ he voxed, ‘sustained fire to the north. All other forces, protect the artillery. We must advance!’ Their goal was almost in sight, beyond a few more ridges.
But the upper slope was hidden by ceaseless explosions. The fury of the Imperial guns thinned the ork infantry. The small-arms fire coming from the heights diminished. But the salvoes of the ork cannons were unceasing. Greenskin heavy support from the east and west now bombarded the slopes.
On the Imperial flanks, the ork infantry crashed against the Imperial forces. They broke the charge of the dragoons. Lumbering monsters in thick plate armour hurled their bulk against the legs of the Ironstriders. They toppled the steeds, then fell on the riders with power claws and killsaws, crushing metal, tearing flesh.