Lightning leapt between its towers and the clanking of great engines and machines echoed like thunder from beyond its walls.
Pillars of smoke and fire leapt from the walls where explosions blossomed against them, hurling great chunks of black stone from the colossal fortress. The distant rumble of artillery crashed and boomed, bright muzzle flares of innumerable great howitzers and siege guns firing upon the fastness from the jagged rocks below.
The primal battle cries of thousands, tens of thousands of warriors - perhaps even more - were carried on the wind from the distant battle, together with the smell of burnt iron and war.
Clouds of ash and smoke from the blazing pyres surrounding the fortress flickered and twitched with the fury of the siege below, and Uriel felt his soul blacken in the face of such savagery.
Nothing could reach that fortress and live.
But that was exactly what they had to do.
PART TWO
BENEATH A BLACK SUN
CHAPTER FIVE
A blast of superheated air whooshed between the stumps of the merlons, hurling Honsou from his feet and vaporising the top half of one of his Iron Warriors. He rolled to one side as the smoking legs collapsed beside him and leapt to his feet, leaning over the ragged remains of the fortress wall and waving his mighty toothed axe.
'Come on, Berossus, you will need to do better than that!' he shouted.
Far below, the metallic coughs of massed artillery fire echoed from the dark mountains, shelling the lower bastions of Khalan-Ghol to oblivion. The screams of dying men drifted up towards him, but Honsou paid them no mind. They were but slaves and those too badly injured for skinning in the flesh camps, and there were plenty more of them to expend.
He wiped dust from his armour as more Iron Warriors marched forward to plug the gap the stray shot had blasted in the upper levels of his fortress. It had been a lucky impact and Honsou felt a thrill of adrenaline course through his body at the near miss. Ever since the siege on Hydra Cordatus, he had craved the fire and thunder of battle once more. The fighting on Perdictor II upon his return to the Eye of Terror had been desultory and unsatisfying, the warriors of the Despoiler proving no match for his advance forces.
But now his ''fellow'' warsmiths were attacking him, and this was sure to be a battle worthy of the name. Once again he was forced to prove his mettle to those who thought him no better than the Imperial dogs they fought the Long War against. The bile rose in his throat at the thought that even though his predecessor had named him warsmith, he was still not considered their equal.
'Lord Berossus is thorough in his attentions,' said Obax Zakayo, his grating, static-laced voice snapping Honsou from his bitter reverie. 'The lower bastions will be nothing but dust and bones soon.'
Honsou turned to face his lieutenant, a huge, wide-shouldered Iron Warrior with yellow and black chevrons edging the plates of his dented power armour. Hissing pipes wheezed from every joint, leaking stinking black fluids and venting puffs of steam with his every step. Like Honsou, he carried a fearsome war-axe, but he also wielded a crackling energy whip, writhing on the end of a mechanised claw attached to his back.
'If Berossus thinks he is achieving anything by killing such chaff, then he is even stupider than I believed,' sneered Honsou, wiping grey dust from his visor with his glossy black augmetic arm. His former master had gifted the mechanical arm to him after his own had been hewn from his body by the late castellan of Hydra Cordatus. It had once belonged to Kortrish, a mighty champion of ancient days and had been a physical indication of his master's favour.
'What he lacks in imagination, he makes up for with determination,' said Honsou's personal champion, a tall, slender warrior in power armour so dark and non-reflective that he moved like a liquid shadow. His voice was a ghostly monotone, his face a crawling mass of bio-organic circuitry that ran like mercurial fire beneath his dead skin and made his eyes shine with a lifeless, silver sheen.
'Berossus is irrelevant, Onyx. He'll shell the lower bastions to rubble and not be able to move his artillery up. No, it is Toramino that we must keep a careful watch on,' replied Honsou, turning from the battlements as fresh explosions and the roars of charging warriors rippled up from below.
'Agreed,' said Onyx, long bronze talons unsheathing from the grey flesh of his hands. 'Do you wish me to destroy him?'
Honsou had seen some of the most hideous things in this galaxy - having perpetrated a great many of them himself - but even he was unsettled by the malefic presence of Onyx. The Iron Warrior, if he could even still be called such, was a shunned figure, the daemonic presence within him making him outcast even amongst his own warriors. Though his human side still held sway in the symbiotic relationship with the daemon bound to his flesh, its diabolical presence was unmistakable.
'No,' said Honsou. 'Not yet, anyway. I'm going to break these vermin against my walls first. I can defeat Berossus easily enough, but I want Toramino to see this half-breed beat him, to know that the warsmith was right to name me his successor. Then you can kill him.'
'As you wish,' said Onyx, a barely-perceptible haze of power surrounding him.
When the creature had bound itself to Honsou's service, as master of Khalan-Ghol, it had spoken its true name as a sign of its fealty, but its pronunciation had been beyond Honsou, so he had settled for the closest approximation of the part he had been able to understand: Onyx. Honsou had seen, first hand, just how lethal Onyx could be when the warp-spawned part of him rose to the surface and he unleashed the full terror of his inner daemon.
Onyx was his dark shadow, his protector, and he could think of no better a creature to be his champion and bodyguard.
'Berossus is proud though,' said Obax Zakayo, 'and not to be underestimated. He has great strength and many warriors in his grand company.'
'Let them come,' said Honsou.
'They already do,' pointed out Obax Zakayo, gesturing over the edge of the wall.
Honsou followed Obax Zakayo's pointing gauntlet and grinned with feral anticipation.
Tens of thousands of soldiers swarmed across the smoking, cratered hell of the lower bastions, screaming like beasts as they slaughtered the few, mangled survivors of the shelling. Their victims begged for mercy, but their attackers had none to give and the carnage was on a truly grand scale.
Banners with the devotional heraldry of Berossus were raised high and sacred standards that proclaimed the glory of Chaos in its most raw, visceral aspect were planted in the bloody soil. Within minutes, disembowelling racks were set up and the soldiers who were still alive were ritually butchered before the walls to taunt those who watched from above.
'So like Berossus,' scoffed Honsou, shaking his head and watching as another hundred screaming soldiers had their entrails dragged from their bellies and looped around rotating drum mechanisms.
'What?' asked Obax Zakayo.
'He doesn't even have the wit to allow some of his prisoners to live to show his honourable mercy.'
'I fought with Lord Forrix at the side of Lord Berossus before,' said Obax Zakayo wistfully, 'and I know there is no such quality left within him.'
'You know that and I know that, Zakayo, but if Berossus had any sense, he'd try and convince the soldiers of Khalan-Ghol that he does.'
'Why?'
'Because if our soldiers could be made to believe that Berossus would be merciful, the thought of surrender might enter their heads,' answered Onyx. 'But since they now know that only hideous death awaits them should they be taken alive, they will fight all the harder.'