Uriel continued to stare at the grisly spectacle below with morbid fascination, watching as the Unfleshed ripped their way through the ruins of the warehouses, tossing aside massive girders like matchwood and gorging on the scorched meat within. Horrific sounds of snapping bone and tearing flesh sounded from below as the Unfleshed fell upon the prisoners who had remained outside the camp when the renegades had first attacked.
Most died in the first instants of the attack, torn to pieces in a frenzy by the Unfleshed. Others were devoured alive, limbs and slabs of meat flying as the monsters fought for every morsel, their terrible roars of loathsome appetite echoing from the mountains.
Pasanius gripped his arm and said, 'We have to go, Uriel!'
'We let them die,' said Uriel darkly. 'We abandoned them. We might as well have killed them ourselves.'
'We couldn't have saved them, but we can avenge them.'
'How?' said Uriel.
'By living,' answered Pasanius.
Uriel nodded and turned away from the hideous spectacle below, shutting out the roaring feasting and orgiastic howls of pleasure, and feeling a part of his heart grow colder and harder as he left these people to die.
Khalan-Ghol was in flames. Its spires were in ruins and its bastions pounded to dust by the relentless bombardment. Square kilometres burned in the fires of Berossus's shelling, but it was still the merest fraction of the scale of the fortress. Unnatural darkness swathed the fortress, black clouds of lightning-shot smoke hanging low and blotting out the dead whiteness of the sky for leagues around. Snaking kilometres of trenches topped with razorwire surrounded the darkened peak, newly constructed redoubts, bunkers, pillboxes and towers whose mighty guns deafeningly shelled Honsou's fastness, strobing the landscape with their red fire.
Belching manufactorum had been erected on the plains and the pounding clang of industry was a constant refrain in the air. Glowing, orange-lit forges constantly churned out shells, guns and the materiel of war, and Honsou knew that their production rates would put the finest Imperial forge world to shame. He saw the huge silhouettes of Titans on the horizon, their diabolical forms dwarfing everything around them. They could do little but act as gun platforms for now, the leviathans unable to climb the mountainous slopes of Khalan-Ghol until the massive ramp Berossus was building was complete.
He and a hand-picked cadre of his finest warriors clambered down the jagged slopes towards the forces arrayed below them. Honsou slid down a fallen pile of broken boulders, rotted, skeletal arms jutting from the cracks between them, but whether they belonged to one of his warriors or one of his foes he neither knew nor cared.
Berossus had been nothing if not thorough in his attentions: the lower bastions were gone, shelled until it was as though they had never existed, and the outer ring of forts had fallen before his onslaught.
Tens of thousands had already died in the battle, but Berossus had not been so stupid as to waste his best warriors in the battle thus far. Chaff, slaves and rabble bound to the service of Chaos, had charged his walls only to be met and hurled back by fire and steel.
Combined with the soldiery of Toramino's grand company, the two warsmiths had enough manpower to drag down the walls of Khalan-Ghol eventually: it was simply a matter of time.
Time Honsou did not intend to give them.
'Berossus is a fool,' he had said, when broaching the plan that now saw him cautiously approaching the sentry lines of the enemy's furthest advanced trenches. 'We will take the fight to him.'
'Beyond the walls?' asked Obax Zakayo.
'Aye,' replied Honsou. 'Right to the very heart of his army.'
'Madness,' said Zakayo.
'Exactly,' grinned Honsou. 'Which is why Berossus will never expect it. You know Berossus! To him, sieges are simply a matter of logistics. As a former vassal of Forrix, I would have thought you would have appreciated that, Zakayo.'
'I do, but to leave the protection of our walls…'
'Berossus is a slave to the mechanics of a siege. This course of action results in that result - that's how he thinks. He is too hidebound by the grand tradition of battle from the ancient days to think beyond the purity of an escalade, to expect the unexpected.' .
'It has not failed him before,' pointed out Obax Zakayo.
'He hasn't fought me before,' said Honsou.
The trenches ahead were lit by drumfires, and the clang of digging shovels and the rumble of earth-moving machines was all but obscured by the thunder of guns.
'Onyx,' whispered Honsou, unsheathing his black bladed axe. 'Go.'
Onyx nodded, a fluid shadow and all but invisible in the darkness, slithering on his belly towards the trenchline, his outline blurring and merging with the night. Obax Zakayo said, 'If he is discovered, we will all die here.'
'Then we die,' snarled Honsou. 'Now be silent or I will kill you myself.'
Suitably chastened, Obax Zakayo said nothing more as he heard the sound of gurgling cries and slashing blades from ahead. Honsou saw a fountain of blood spurt above the line of the trench and knew that it was now safe to approach.
He crawled to where Onyx had cut a path through the razorwire and dropped into the trench. A score of corpses filled the trench and adjacent dugout, blood, glistening and oily in the firelight, coating the walls and seeping between the well laid duckboards. Each body lay sprawled at an unnatural angle, as though every bone had been broken. Each bore a long gash up the centre of their backs where their spinal column had been ripped out. Onyx himself stood immobile in the centre of the trench, slowly sheathing bronze claws into the grey flesh of his hands as the silver fire of his veins burned even brighter than normal. The daemon within him revelled in the slaughter and allowed the human part of him to return to the surface once more.
'Good kills,' said Honsou as his Iron Warriors dropped into the trench, spreading out and securing their entry point. He ran over to the communications trench at the back of this widened area and ducked his head around the corner. Just as he had expected, he could only see partway along it, the trench following a standard zigzagging course. Further down its length, he could see red-liveried soldiers and slaves.
'Have you no imagination, Berossus?' he chuckled to himself. 'You make this too easy.'
He turned away and gathered his warriors about him. 'It is time. Let's go, and remember, as far as anyone here knows, we are loyal Iron Warriors of Berossus. Let no one challenge that.'
His warriors nodded and, with Honsou in the lead, they set off down the communication trench. They walked with the confident, easy swagger of warriors who know they are without equal, and all the human and mutant labourers of Berossus abased themselves before them as they passed.
They passed dugouts filled with twisted mutant creatures gathered in chanting groups around shrines to the Dark Gods, their mutterings overseen by sorcerers in golden robes. None questioned them, none had any reason to, honoured to have ancient warriors of Chaos pass by. Honsou saw bright arc lights suspended on baroque towers of iron that reared into the night and were hung with all manner of bloody trophies. Chanting groups of robed figures surrounded them, Honsou stopped and asked, 'Zakayo, what are these towers? This doesn't look like something Berossus would do.'
'I am not sure,' replied Obax Zakayo. 'I have never seen their like.'
'They seek to break the walls of Khalan-Ghol with sorcery,' said Onyx. 'The towers are saturated with mystical energy. I can feel it, and the daemon within me bathes in it.'