Igataron went to wade in, the cloud still creeping down the slope and less than fifty metres away, but Numeon stopped him.
‘We gain nothing by condemning ourselves too,’ he said, then voxed to one of the pilots riding strafing runs across the battlefield. ‘R’kargan, bring your bird in on our position to blow away some of this filth.’
R’kargan replied with a clipped affirmative before seconds later a throbbing engine sound came into sharp focus above. Several of the reconnaissance company looked up at their salvation as R’kargan brought the gunship low. Turbines burring, the Thunderhawk’s downdraught hit the cloud and spread it out, reducing its potency, if not dispersing it completely.
The gunship was rising again, returning to strafing altitude, when a missile caught its left wing and sent it reeling. A whip of black smoke unfurled from its damaged engine, coiling up and then back upon itself as R’kargan was forced to bank. He crashed into the side of the ridge a few moments later, the gunship’s fuselage torn up and burning. Scurrying from their holes, the traitors were quick to fall upon it.
There was no time to mourn. R’kargan had made his sacrifice and saved what was left of the reconnaissance company. Now those that yet lived had to make that worth something.
‘To your brothers!’ roared Vulkan and stormed up the ridge. He let off small gouts of flame from his gauntlet, burning back what pestilence remained to further weaken its effects. The Pyre Guard followed, ploughing into the slowly dissipating cloud, turning the scales back into the Salamanders’ favour and breaking their beleaguered company brothers out of the trap.
Many of the 15th didn’t wear battle-helms, preferring to be unencumbered for the stealth work at which they excelled. These warriors had suffered the worst. Skin sloughed away by virulent acids, ravaged by pustules and choking on vomit, eyes drowning in pus from the dirty bomb, there was almost nothing left of them but half-armoured carcasses. As he drove hard into the few remaining Death Guard who had attacked inside the cloud, Numeon heard something scraping at his leg. He turned, glaive angled to thrust downwards, expecting to face a desperate enemy, but instead saw a dying Reconnaissance Marine. Blood was trickling freely from the ruin of the legionary’s mouth, sticking to his chin and neck in a viscous film. The dying legionary grasped feebly at Numeon’s greave. His fingers had been reduced to stumps, the tips of his gauntlets eaten away, and he left ruddy tracks in the metal. He was trying to say something, but his vocal cords were all but liquefied and the sound that came from his mouth was an agonised gurgle.
‘I’ll grant you peace,’ Numeon murmured and thrust with his glaive to end it.
‘Such horrors…’ said Varrun after he’d just finished off an enemy that was still twitching, and casting around at his plague-eaten battle-brothers. ‘Tell me no such weapons exist in our arsenals.’
Vulkan did not answer. Numeon tried not to meet the gaze of either of them.
‘We’re not done with this yet,’ he said, jutting his armoured chin up the slope where a second Death Guard battalion had converged on the weakened reconnaissance company.
Amidst the carnage, several squads, including Nemetor’s command section, had become separated from the main battalion and were facing off against a superior force.
Despite his company’s mauling, Nemetor was still on his feet. His armour had been badly damaged from the gas attack, entire sections of it eaten through to reveal the seared mesh underneath. It didn’t stop him. With thoughts only of revenge, Nemetor and the survivors charged up at the emerging Death Guard.
Numeon and the others were still finishing off the remnants of the ambushers. The Firedrakes were close but would not be able to intervene. Even Vulkan could not reach the vengeful Salamanders in time.
A fire exchange lit up the slope, casting the acid-ravaged dead in grim monochrome. Where the Death Guard unleashed an indiscriminate bolter hail, the Reconnaissance Marines advanced in a staggered pattern, stopping and sighting with their rifles, shooting and then moving again. They were efficient, cohesive, but taking punishment.
A Salamander went down clutching his shattered gorget. Another spun, a gaping cleft in his torso. A third’s head jerked back, his battle-helm’s eye slit ventilated and a plume of matter bursting out of the back.
One of the oncoming Death Guard took a hit to the shoulder that blew off his pauldron. A second punched through his chest, a third his right leg greave. He grunted, stumbled but kept on coming.
‘Blades!’ yelled Nemetor, stowing his sniper rifle and drawing a chainsword when he realised they were about to engage hand to hand, and saw his men do the same.
A well-drilled phalanx came down at them, roughly ninety warriors against forty, tugging axes and mauls from their belts. There was enough time to roar a challenge, before the clash. Nemetor barrelled into his first opponent, using his bulk to topple the legionary. A second went down to a heavy blow from the Salamander’s chainblade. A third he head-butted, making his enemy crumple. Even Barbarus-born Death Guard couldn’t resist Nemetor’s sheer physical strength.
It struck Numeon as he watched that the honorific of ‘Tank’ was well deserved. But it might also prove the captain’s epitaph, as the numerically superior Death Guard had already overrun the smaller reconnaissance company and were attempting to encircle them.
Vulkan single-handedly prevented that, hitting the overlapping warriors and cutting them apart with his flaming sword. Numeon and the Pyre Guard joined him fractionally later and a dense, chaotic melee erupted.
Further Death Guard reinforcements were entering the fray. They were well drilled and led by a hulking warrior in heavy armour. Numeon caught site of the section leader striding down the slope. Thick plates banded the Terminator’s shoulders, a rounded war-helm sitting like a bolt between them. A metal skirt of horizontal slats protected the warrior’s abdomen and in a gauntleted fist, he clenched a pole arm with an arcing blade at its summit.
His men gave their commander a wide berth, inviting a clutch of Salamanders to attack him. The brute lashed out with the power scythe, and four legionaries fell back with limbs and heads cleaved off. He advanced, an upwards swing bifurcating his next opponent. As he moved on he crushed the stricken Salamander’s head underfoot and left a dark smear in his wake.
This was one of Mortarion’s chosen, his elite cadre. The Salamanders had encountered them before, during the Great Crusade, in the joint campaign to settle the world of Ibsen. They were the Deathshroud, and had no equals amongst the XIV Legion.
Chainsword snarling, Nemetor met the formidable warrior in single combat.
It was a fight the brave captain was unlikely to win.
‘Nemetor!’ Numeon roared, pushing to even greater efforts as he fought to reach his brother-captain.
Death Guard and Salamander exchanged blows, the combat already lasting much longer than any previous engagement of Mortarion’s chosen warrior. It took eight seconds for the Deathshroud to cut Nemetor down. His scythe blade sheared the Salamander’s chainsword in half, the teeth exploding from the still churning belt and embedding in Nemetor’s armour. The backswing raked his chest, opening up ceramite and smashing Nemetor off his feet. He was about to be subjected to the same desultory end as his battle-brother with the crushed skull when Vulkan intervened.
The primarch parried the scythe with his sword blade before reaching inside the Deathshroud’s guard to land a blow with his gauntlet. One of the warrior’s retinal lenses cracked on impact, revealing a bloodshot eye, burning with hate. Half of the legionary’s war-helm was badly dented and a dark fluid was leaking out from under his gorget.