He looked up through the murk in time to see a massive shadow moving through the darkness and saw with a thrill of fear that one of the Titans was making for them. The ground shook to its tread, the footsteps of an angry god of war come to destroy them.
'Come on!' he shouted to Obax Zakayo. 'One more shot, then it's time we were gone!'
Obax Zakayo nodded, casting fearful glances over the gunner's mantlet with each booming footstep of the approaching Titan. Once again the mighty daemon gun fired, this time striking the barrack block beside the pavilion and reducing it to flaming rubble.
'Everyone out!' shouted Honsou, leaping from the gun and running towards the ladders that led from the artillery pit. Honsou wrenched open the iron door to the magazine as he passed and lobbed a handful of grenades inside. He leapt for the ladder as a huge shadow enveloped the artillery pit and looked up in time to see the massive, clawed foot of the Titan descending upon him.
He scrambled up the ladder and rolled aside as its thunderous footstep slammed down, obliterating the daemonic gun in a heartbeat and missing him by less than a metre. He rolled away and lurched to his feet, still dazed from the concussive impact of the Titan's foot when the grenades he had dropped into the magazine detonated.
The ground heaved and bellowed, huge geysers of flame and smoke ripping from the ground as hundreds of tonnes of buried ordnance exploded in a terrifyingly powerful conflagration. Honsou was lifted into the air and swatted for a hundred metres or more by the blast, slamming into an earthen rampart and rolling into a pile of excavated soil.
He picked himself up, coughing and reeling from the impact to take stock of his surroundings. He turned as he heard a groaning sound and saw the Titan that had destroyed the gun pit sway like a drunk, its leg destroyed from the knee down by the magazine's explosion. Sparks and plasma fire vented from shattered conduits and sparking cables. Even as he watched, the massive daemon engine began to slowly topple over, its piston-driven arms flailing for balance as it fell.
He turned away, laughing as dismayed soldiers and horrified Iron Warriors watched one of their mightiest daemon machines destroyed before their very eyes. The ground shook as the Titan hit the ground and was smashed asunder, but Honsou was already making his way back to Khalan-Ghol. He had no way of knowing what had become of the rest of his warriors, but trusted that they were experienced and resourceful enough to get back to Khalan-Ghol on their own in all this confusion.
A dark form emerged from the smoke beside him and he recognised the sinuous form of Onyx. The daemonic symbiote's claws were unsheathed and bloody, the glittering fire of his eyes shining with a deathly lustre. He had hunted well.
'A successful foray,' said Onyx with typical understatement.
'Aye,' agreed Honsou. 'Not bad. Not bad at all.'
The sanctuary Ardaric Vaanes had spoken of turned out to be secreted in a shadowed valley overlooking the plains before the mighty fortress shrouded in dark clouds and explosions. The sounds of battle still raged from below and Uriel could see a tremendous blaze deep in the besieger's camp. Their flight from the Unfleshed had been a helter-skelter journey of false trails and looping attempts to prevent the beasts from following their tracks. Uriel could not shake the sound of the Unfleshed feasting on the prisoners, but was surprised at how little it bothered him now. Perhaps Vaanes had been right, there was nothing anyone could have done for those poor unfortunates, and death was the best thing for them.
The renegades had split up once clear of the death camp and now returned to their base in ones and twos, climbing down the valley sides or hiking up from below.
'Our sanctuary,' said Vaanes, pointing towards a series of crumbling bunkers and blockhouses that had fallen into disrepair and had clearly seen better days. Partially filled-in trenches and rusted coils of razorwire were angled before the dilapidated constructions, but Uriel's practiced eye could see that this place was not without its defences. Barely visible gun nests overlooked the approaches and he doubted that anyone could approach without some warning being given.
'What was this place used for?' asked Pasanius.
Vaanes shrugged. 'An old ammunition store, a barracks, a construction exercise? Who knows? All I know is that when we found this place it was abandoned and no one ever came near it. That's good enough for me.'
Uriel nodded as they crossed a trench via a series of iron sheets and Vaanes moved ahead of them towards the blockhouse beyond the bunkers.
Pasanius leaned close to Uriel and whispered, 'What are we doing? These Space Marines are renegades! Are we to damn ourselves even more in the sight of the Emperor?'
'I know,' said Uriel bitterly, 'but what choice do we have?'
'We can strike out on our own.'
'Aye, and maybe we will, but they have been here longer than us and we may learn something of this world and its dangers.'
Pasanius looked unconvinced, but said nothing more as they reached the armoured doors to the blockhouse. Whatever mechanism had once opened and closed them obviously no longer operated and Vaanes hauled them open with brute strength before disappearing within and indicating that they should follow.
Uriel ducked inside the blockhouse, the interior surprisingly well-lit by numerous holes pierced in the roof. Shafts of dead white light pooled on the rockcrete floor and reflected from the peeling, flakboard walls.
'I realise that this might be a little more luxury than you're used to as Ultramarines, but it's the nearest thing we have to a home just now,' grinned Vaanes as he walked ahead of them into the blockhouse's main chamber.
Light streamed in through the firing slits and Uriel could see that the chamber was full of the same Space Marines who had attacked the camp earlier. Most were engaged in cleaning their weapons or repairing their armour and Uriel was shocked at the sheer number of different Chapter symbols he saw on display.
Howling Griffons, White Consuls, Wolf Brothers, Crimson Fists and many others he did not recognise.
But most surprising of all were two figures crouched in the corner of the main chamber cleaning lasrifles. Dressed in the battered fatigues and torn uniform jackets of the Imperial Guard, they looked up as Uriel and Pasanius entered. Both men were so filthy and dishevelled that it was impossible to tell what regiment they had belonged to, but both wore expressions of tired, proud courage.
'Two new warriors for our band!' called Vaanes before slumping against one wall and removing his helmet.
Uriel refrained from qualifying that statement as the leaner of the two Guardsmen rose to his feet and limped towards Uriel. His skin was pale and wasted looking blotchy and unhealthy, his eyes bloodshot.
The man extended a palsied hand and said, 'Lieutenant Colonel Mikhail Leonid of the 383rd Jouran Dragoons.'
'Uriel Ventris, and this is Pasanius Lysane.'
'What kind of Space Marines are you?' asked Leonid, stifling a cough. 'I don't see any markings.'
'We are Ultramarines,' replied Uriel. 'Sent from our Chapter to fulfill a death oath.'
Leonid shrugged. 'A better reason than most for being here.'
'Perhaps,' nodded Uriel. 'And how is it that a colonel of the Imperial Guard comes to be here?'
'That,' said Leonid, 'is a long story…'
CHAPTER EIGHT
Leonid and Sergeant Ellard, the softly spoken companion of the colonel, spent the next hour and a half regaling Uriel and Pasanius of how they had ended up in slavery on the bleak daemon world of Medrengard, beginning with the devastating assault of the Iron Warriors on the world of Hydra Cordatus just prior to the Despoiler's invasion through the Cadian Gate.