Angron's face was murder itself, his thick features scarred and bloody. Dark iron glinted on his scalp where cerebral cortex implants punctured his skull to amplify his already fearsome aggression. The implants had been grafted to Angron's brain when he had been a slave, centuries before, and though the technology to remove them was available, he had never wanted them removed.
The bloody primarch marched past, glancing over at the men of 10th Company as he led his warriors towards the bloodletting. Loken shivered at the sight of him, seeing only death in his heavy-lidded eyes, and he wondered what terrible thoughts must fill Angron's violated skull.
No sooner had the Primarch of the World Eaters passed than the bombardment began, the guns of the Legio Mortis launching rippling salvoes of rockets and shells into the breach.
Loken watched as Angron delivered his assault orders with curt chops of his glaive, and felt a momentary pity
for the Brotherhood warriors within the citadel. Though they were his sworn enemies, he did not envy them the prospect of fighting such a living avatar of blood and death.
A terrifying war cry sounded from the World Eaters, and Loken watched as Angron led his company in a crude ritual of scarification. The warriors removed their left gauntlets and slashed their axes across their palms, smearing the blood across the faceplates of their helmets as they chanted canticles of death and bloodshed.
'I almost feel sorry for the poor bastards in the citadel,' said Vipus, echoing Loken's earlier thoughts.
'Pass the word to stand ready,' he ordered. We move out when the World Eaters reach the crest of the breach.'
He held out his hand to Nero Vipus and said, 'Kill for the living, Nero,’
'Kill for die dead,’ answered Vipus.
The assault began in a flurry of smoke as the World Eaters surged up the lower slopes of the breach with roaring blasts of their jump packs. The wall head and die breach itself were wreathed in explosions from the Titans' bombardment, and the idea that somediing could live through such a storm of shot and shell seemed impossible to Loken.
As the World Eaters powered up the slopes of rubble, Loken and his warriors clambered over the twisted, blackened spars of iron that had been blasted from die walls above. They moved and fired, adding tiieir own volleys of gunfire into the breach before the assaulters reached their targets.
The slope was steep, but eminendy climbable, and mey were making steady progress. Occasional shots and las blasts ricocheted from die rocks or their armour, but at diis range, nodiing could wound diem.
Five hundred metres to his left, Loken saw Torgaddon leading Second Company up the slopes in the wake of
the World Eaters, both forces of the Sons of Horus protecting the vulnerable flanks of the assaulters and ready with heavier weapons to secure the breach.
Behind the Astartes, the soldiers of Hektor Varvarus's Byzant Janizars – wearing long cream greatcoats with gold frogging – followed in disciplined ranks. To march into battle in ceremonial dress uniforms seemed ridiculous to Loken, but Varvaras had declared that he and his men were not going to enter the citadel looking less than their best.
Loken turned from the splendid sight of the marching soldiers as he heard a deep, bass rumbling that seemed to come from the ground itself. Powdered rubble and rocks danced as the vibrations grew stronger still and Loken knew that something was terribly wrong. Ahead, he could see Angron and the World Eaters reaching the crest of the breach. Blazing columns of smoke surrounded Angron, and Loken heard the mighty primarch's bellowing cry of triumph even over the thunderous explosions of battle.
The rumbling grew louder and more violent, and Loken had to grip onto a rusted spar of rebar to hold himself in place as the ground continued to shake as though in the grip of a mighty earthquake. Great cracks split the ground and plumes of fire shot from them.
What's happening?' he shouted over the noise.
No one answered and Loken fell as the top of the breach suddenly exploded in a sheet of flame that reached hundreds of metres into the air. Rocks and metal were hurled skywards as the top of the wall vanished in a massive seismic detonation.
Like the bunkers in the cities, the Brotherhood destroyed what they could not hold, and Loken's reactive senses shut down briefly with the overload of light and noise. Twisted rubble and wreckage slammed down around them, and Loken heard screams of pain and the
crack of splintering armour as scores of his men were pulverised by the storm of boulders.
Dust and matter filled the air, and when Loken felt safe enough to move, he saw in horror that the entire crest of the breach had been destroyed.
Angron and the World Eaters were gone, buried beneath the wreckage of a mountain.
Torgaddon saw the same thing, and picked himself up from the ground. He shouted at his warriors to get to their feet and charged towards the ruin of the breach. Filthy, dust-covered warriors clambered from the wreckage and followed their captain as he led them onwards and upwards to what might be their deaths. Torgaddon knew that such a course of action was probably suicidal, but he had seen Angron buried beneath the mountain, and retreating was not an option.
He activated the blade of his chainsword and scrambled up the slopes with the feral cry of the Sons of Horus bursting from his lips.
'Lupercal! Lupercal!' he screamed as he charged.
Loken watched his brother rise from the aftermath of the explosion like a true hero, and began his own charge towards the breach. He knew that there was every chance a second seismic mine was buried in the breach, but the sight of a primarch brought low by the Brotherhood obliterated all thoughts of any tactical response, except charging.
'Warriors of the Tenth!' he roared. 'With me! Lupercal!'
Loken's surviving warriors pulled themselves from the rubble and followed Loken with the Warmaster's name echoing from the mountains. Loken sprang from rock to rock, clambering uphill faster than he would have believed possible, his anger hot and bright. He was ready
to wreak vengeance upon the Brotherhood for what they had done in the name of spite, and nothing was going to stop him.
Loken knew that he had to reach the breach before the Brotherhood realised that its strategy had not killed all the attackers, and he kept moving upwards at a fast pace, using all the increased muscle power his armour afforded him. A storm of gunfire flashed from above: las shots and solid rounds spanging from the rocks and metal rabble. A heavy shell clipped his shoulder guard, spinning him around, but Loken shrugged off the impact and charged on.
The roaring tide of Astartes warriors climbed the breach, the last rays of the morning's sun glinting from the brilliant green of their armour. To see so many warriors in battle was magnificent, an unstoppable wave of death that would sweep away all resistance in a storm of gunfire and blades.
All tactics were moot now, the sight of Angron's fall robbing each and every warrior of any sense of restraint. Loken could see the gleaming silver armour of Brotherhood warriors as they climbed to what was left of the breach, dragging bipod-mounted heavy weapons with them.
'Bolters!' he shouted. 'Open fire!'
The crest of the breach vanished as a spray of bolter rounds impacted. Sparks and chunks of flesh flew as Astartes rounds found homes in flesh, and though many were firing from the hip, most were deadly accurate.
The noise was incredible, hundreds of bolter rounds ripping enemy warriors to shreds and skirling wolf howls ringing in his ears as the Astartes swept over the breach and reverted once again to
