Leonid saluted him and said, 'We will fight alongside you, Captain Ventris. We're dying anyway and if we can kill Iron Warriors before that happens, then so much the better.'
Uriel smiled and accepted Leonid's hand. 'You are a brave man, colonel.'
'Perhaps,' said Leonid, 'or a man with nothing to lose.'
'I thank you both anyway,' said Uriel as Brother Seraphys also came forward to join them.
'I will come with you, Uriel,' said Seraphys. 'If I can learn more of the machinations of the Ruinous Powers then that can only be for the good.'
Uriel nodded his thanks as first one Space Marine, then others came forward to join him. They came in ones and twos, until every one of the renegade Space Marines stood beside Uriel and Pasanius save Ardaric Vaanes.
The former Raven Guards Space Marine chuckled to himself and said, 'You have a way with words, Ventris, I'll give you that.'
'Join us, Vaanes!' urged Uriel. 'Take this chance for honour. Remember who you are, what you were created to do!'
Vaanes rose and approached Uriel. 'I know that well enough, Ventris.'
'Then join us!'
The renegade sighed, casting his gaze around the ruined bunker complex he had called home and the Space Marines who now stood with Uriel.
'Very well, I will help you get into the fortress, but I'm not getting killed to help you carry out your death oath. So long as you understand that.'
'I understand that,' assured Uriel.
Vaanes suddenly grinned and shook his head. 'Damn, but I knew you were trouble…'
CHAPTER NINE
The warrior band gathered up their weapons and equipment, filled with a new sense of purpose as they prepared to leave the sanctuary. Uriel cleaned his armour as best he could and knelt to give thanks to his battle gear, placing his gun and sword before him and asking them to help him do the Emperor's bidding.
Pasanius filled his flamer with the last of his promethium and though it pained him, he knew he was going to have to leave it behind soon. A weapon with no ammunition was no weapon at all.
At last the warriors were ready and Uriel proudly led the ragtag band of Space Marines away from the crumbling bunkers towards the mouth of the shadowed valley Ardaric Vaanes marched alongside him and said, 'You realise you're probably going to get every one of us killed.'
'That is a distinct possibility,' admitted Uriel.
'Good, I just wanted to make sure you understood that.'
The sky darkened when they finally reached the end of the valley an unnatural darkness of low, threatening smoke clouds. Briefly Uriel wondered if there were such a thing as weather on Medrengard, but dismissed the notion. What need had the Iron Warriors of weather? Nothing grew here or needed nourishment from the heavens.
Ahead was their ultimate destination, and now that Uriel could see it clearly, he understood Vaanes's assertion that to attempt to penetrate the defences of such a fastness was a suicide mission.
The fortress of Honsou was a nightmarish black fang against the sky, ebony towers of dark, bloodstained stone piercing the clouds of ash and crackling with dark lightning. The towers and arched halls of the fortress were surrounded by scarred bastions with walls hundreds of metres tall. The upper levels stood inviolate against the besieging army below, but the lower reaches were a cratered hell of flames and war. A haze of powerful energies surrounded the fortress as though it were not quite real. Uriel had to blink away stinging moisture from his eyes if he gazed too long at its lunatic architecture.
The world itself echoed to the snarl of mighty machines, and the rhythmic drumming of hammers sounded like the beat of some monstrous mechanical heart. Like a malignant fungus, the armies of Honsou's attackers were spread around the fortress in jagged lines of circumvallation, zigzagging approach saps snaking through the lower foothills of the fortress and ending in heavily fortified parallels, studded with enormous bunkers and redoubts. Blooms of explosions swathed the fortress and the plains before it flickered and flashed with the constant muzzle flares of monstrous cannons and howitzers.
A huge ramp was under construction from kilometres back that would allow heavy tanks and Titans access to the upper levels of the fortress and Uriel could see that the plain was teeming with millions of warriors. Sprawling camps and entire cities had been built to barrack these soldiers, and how they were going to successfully get through so many enemies to reach the fortress was beyond him.
'Having second thoughts?' asked Vaanes.
'No,' said Uriel.
'Sure?'
'I'm sure, Vaanes. We can do this. It will not be easy, but we can do it.'
Vaanes looked unconvinced, but pointed to where the plateau narrowed to become a near-vertical shear in the rock that carved a path down the flank of the mountain, 'That's the way down that leads to the plains below. It's steep, very steep, and if you fall you're dead.'
'How the hell are we meant to get down that?' breathed Leonid.
'Very carefully,' said Vaanes. 'So don't fall.'
'It's all right for you,' said Ellard, slinging his lasgun and making his way towards the path. 'If you fall you have a jump pack!'
'What? You want me to announce our presence here?' returned Vaanes.
Uriel followed the renegade and was seized by a dizzying lurch of vertigo as he saw the route they must take.
The plain was thousands of metres below them, steaming waterfalls of molten metal splashing along basalt channels towards lakes of glowing orange below.
'You need to go down facing the rock,' explained Vaanes, edging onto the path, barely half a metre across and gripping onto cracks in the rock for handholds. Gingerly, he edged out onto the path, leaning into the rockface and sliding sideways along and down.
Uriel went next, gripping the rockface and easing himself out onto the narrow path. He kept his weight forward, knowing that to overbalance even a little would send him plummeting thousands of metres to his death. Cold wind whipped at him and he felt his heartbeats hammering in his chest.
He edged out, following Vaanes's example and utilising the same handholds wherever he could. Within the space of a few hours, his muscles ached, his fingers burned with fatigue and they were barely halfway down. His breath came in short, hard gasps and it was all he could do to not look down.
Hand over hand followed hand over hand and shuffling step to the side followed shuffling step to the side until they reached a point where the slope became shallower and it was possible to climb directly downwards for a short distance.
As Uriel climbed down to a narrow ledge, he flexed his fingers, the textured pads of his gauntlets torn and useless. His arms were leaden weights and he hoped he had the strength to make it to the bottom. With a little more room to manoeuvre on the ledge he carefully eased round and gazed at the terrifying scale of the siegeworks below.
What had brought this siege about anyway? Was it some internecine conflict or was there some other, darker purpose to the slaughter going on below?
Did the attackers have some knowledge of the Heart of Blood or the daemonculaba?
He supposed it didn't matter why the followers of the Dark Powers made war upon one another: the more they killed each other, the fewer were left to attack the Emperor's realm.
A startled cry from above snapped him from his reverie and he looked up in time to see a hail of stones skitter down the slope, closely followed by Colonel Leonid, who screamed in terror as he tumbled downwards.
Uriel pressed himself flat against the rockface and leaned dangerously to one side to snatch at Leonid as he plummeted past.
His fingers closed on Leonid's uniform jacket and he gritted his teeth, gripping the rocks tightly as the colonel's weight threatened to pull them both from the ledge. Under normal circumstances, Uriel would have had no problem with catching Leonid like this, but off balance on the edge of a crumbling corbel of rock he felt himself being pulled from the cliff as his agonised fingers slipped from their transient handhold.