'I do not know for sure,' said Uriel honestly, 'but I believe daemons only cloak what they need to in lies, wrapping kernels of truth in shrouds of deceit. Part of what it told us is true, I am sure, but which part… well, who knows?'
'So what do we do?' asked Pasanius, trudging after Uriel.
'Whatever we can, my friend,' said Uriel. 'We will act with courage and honour and hope that that is enough.'
'It will need to be,' said Pasanius. 'It is all we have left.'
The hike through the mountains seemed never-ending, their path through the blackened, rocky desolation draining their spirits with every step they took. They saw more of the steam-venting grilles and the acidic reek of the great smoke stacks was their constant companion as they neared the summit of yet another toothed crag of rock.
The further they travelled, the more signs of death they saw. Bleached bones lay strewn all about in the rocks, but Uriel could not discern how they had come to be here. Not a scrap of meat remained on the bones, but it was impossible to tell whether they had been picked clean by scavengers or boiled free of flesh. Toxic clouds of smog and ash hugged the ground: noxious and polluted, lurking in cracks in the rock like predators with coiling tendrils of fog questing through the air like undersea fronds.
Uriel briefly removed his helmet to cough up a mouthful of brackish phlegm, its substance black and stringy. His enhanced metabolism enabled him to survive such pollutants in the air, but didn't make them any less unpleasant.
Several times they had been forced to traverse hissing rivers of molten metal as they flowed along great basalt culverts towards the smelteries and forges on the plains below. The heat of the mountains was growing and great geysers of scalding steam and hot ash spewed from vents and cracks in the rock. Were it not for their blessed power armour and bioengineered physiology, neither Uriel nor Pasanius could possibly have survived the journey.
Again, Uriel thought he caught sight of the reddish things Pasanius believed were following them, but each time they would vanish into the rocks and remain unseen. Flocks of the delirium spectres wheeled far overhead, but Uriel suspected that only the heat of the lava-hot rivers of metal and spouting plumes of boiling water kept them at bay.
As he passed near a zigzagging crack in the ground, a whooshing tower of boiling liquid suddenly erupted from it. Steam billowed around him, blinding him, and he stumbled away as a rain of objects began clattering around him, falling from somewhere above. Coughing and spluttering, feeling the heat scorch his oesophagus, he wiped moisture from his visor and watched a rain of bones fall upon the mountain, ejected from somewhere deep below the earth by the spouting geysers.
'Well, at least we know where the bones are coming from,' said Pasanius.
The strange objects Uriel had seen in the sky before they had discovered the scouring platform came into sight once more as they neared the summit, swollen leathery balloon-like objects with drooping cables that hovered in the sky over something beyond the ridge of black rock. Now that they were nearer, Uriel could see that his initial assumption that these were some form of crude barrage balloon looked to be accurate. Dozens of them floated ahead, their surfaces a patchwork of uneven fabric and, after what they had seen thus far on Medrengard, Uriel did not want to think too hard as to what they had been fashioned from.
The sound of the siege was not so distant now, the rumble of artillery drawing closer with every step they took.
'Whoever is attempting to take that fortress is determined indeed to keep up such a prodigious expenditure of ordnance,' said Uriel as he clambered up another sheer slab of rock. His gauntlets were battered and scarred, the razor-like rocks of Medrengard tearing at them with every handhold.
Pasanius nodded, his breath heaving as he climbed to join Uriel. The massive sergeant removed his helmet and spat the taste of the world from his mouth. 'Yes, I don't think we're the only ones interested in this Heart of Blood.'
'You think that's what the besieger is after?'
'I don't know, but it's certainly one explanation. Like you said, he's determined.'
'The forces of the Dark Powers make war upon one another for their own amusement. It doesn't necessarily mean anything.'
'True, but all I have learned of the Iron Warriors from Librarian Tigurius leads me to believe that they are consumed by bitterness and malice, not given to capricious whims. Whoever is attacking this fortress is doing so for more than their amusement.'
'You could be right,' agreed Uriel. 'Come on, there is only one way to find out. The summit is near.'
Once again they set off, and after what could have been no more than another hour's climb through drifting banks of stinking steam and yet more piles of bones, they crested the summit before them. Uriel had expected the ground to drop away from them, descending to the plains below, but instead the ground flattened into a rubble-strewn plateau of jagged spikes of rock and snaking cracks that drooled a yellowish fog. One of the bloated balloons was almost directly overhead and Uriel now saw that the cables dangling from it were barbed and as thick as a man's thigh, scraping great furrows in the grey powder of the ground as it drifted.
'Listen,' said Uriel, dropping to one knee.
Pasanius was silent, cocking his head and listening for what Uriel had heard.
Amid the bass rumble of artillery fire and the hammering of distant forges, there was a pulsing, mechanical sound, such as might be made by a host of generators. Though it was hard to pick out any one sound from the omnipresent background noise of Medrengard, Uriel was certain it was coming from up ahead and was near.
'What do you think it is?' he asked.
'Engines perhaps?' suggested Pasanius.
'Maybe,' nodded Uriel.
'Maybe something we can steal.'
'My thoughts exactly,' grinned Uriel, pushing himself to his feet and moving cautiously through the rolling banks of stinking fog while hugging the tall pillars of rock. The noises grew louder as they approached, and as the clouds of smog parted, Uriel saw their source.
A sprawling complex of corrugated metal buildings, each the size of a large warehouse, squatted atop the plateau, surrounded by a high fence of razorwire topped with forests of iron spikes. Bodies hung draped from thick lengths of timber along the fence, their flesh desiccated and their limbs twisted at unnatural angles around the spars. Pillars of ashen smoke curled from a building of black brick near the centre of the camp and a low moaning permeated the air. A greasy, fatty residue coated the rocks and Uriel smelled a loathsome stench that reminded him of spoiled meat.
'This place reeks of death,' he whispered.
In the centre of the camp, a tall, armoured tower reared into the sky, thick iron girders and cable stays supporting a monstrous assembly that resembled the head of some gargantuan daemonic creature. Flames spouted from its eyes and nostrils, and its gaping mouth was filled with long gun barrels. Two bunkers guarded the entrance to the camp, their roofs sloped and festooned with spikes. Uriel could see the glint of heavy guns through the firing slits and knew that to approach this death camp, they would need to cross the interlocking fields of fire of both bunkers.
Beyond the razorwire barrier, Uriel could see warriors in iron grey armour patrolling the interior of the camp, and felt his instinctual hatred rise to the surface.
'Iron Warriors!' hissed Pasanius.
'Iron Warriors,' repeated Uriel, gripping the hilt of his sword tightly.
Traitors. Abominations. Chaos Space Marines… was there any other foe so vile?
These warriors sought the ruination of everything Uriel believed in and the destruction of the Emperor's realm. Every aspect of his soul cried out for vengeance.