Omar. The Scout managed to get off a couple of bolts from Squad Whip Keturah’s pistol before the beast was upon him. Using the weapon as a knuckleduster, Omar slammed the fury’s gargoylesque head to one side. Its dagger- teeth came straight back at him, and it was all the Excoriator could do to clutch his fingers around its lower jaw and keep it from his face. Omar felt himself instinctively kicking out with legs that weren’t there. After the momentary strain of a struggle, with the daemon’s warp-fuelled strength getting the better of the Excoriator’s bulging arms, Omar clicked the bolt pistol to fully automatic with his thumb and nestled the squat muzzle of the weapon under the beast’s chin. Yanking on the trigger, Omar sent a continuous stream of fire through the monster’s head. Bolt-rounds tore through the fury’s infernal brain and out the top of its gnarled skull. Seconds later, the thing was a deadweight of flesh on top of him – the murderous gleam gone from its eye.
Thumbing a stud, Omar ejected the spent bolt pistol clip. Heaving the beast off his torso, the Excoriator pushed himself onto his chest and, trailing lines and drips, crawled arm-over-arm across to Kush. He stopped momentarily as the fire soul-storm tore out of the fury’s leathery remains and scorched its way up through the belfry. As Omar reached Kush it was obvious that the Scout was dead. His head hung limply from his torso by his spine and a ribbon of flesh.
Omar’s chin dropped. Without Kush, and with his battle-brothers fighting for their lives, the Scout would not be leaving the bell tower. He prised a chunky grenade from Kush’s hand. During his brief struggle with the beast, Kush had snatched it from his belt but never got as far as priming the krak grenade and blowing both himself and the daemon-monster to oblivion. Omar slipped the grenade down into his carapace. Snatching up Kush’s sniper rifle, he grunted. For a neophyte, he wasn’t particularly good with a rifle, close-quarters combat being his chosen specialism. Sliding the weapon along the belfry floor, he made for the hole in the wall made by the daemon’s entrance. Pushing himself up against a balistraria pillar, the Excoriator primed the rifle.
As he was doing so a bright twinkle in the sky drew his attention. At first he thought it must be glimmer of lance-fire in orbit, but as it began to streak down towards Obsequa City and was joined by a busy constellation of other ominous lights, Omar recognised them for what they were. Adeptus Astartes drop-pods. A swarm of them, deployed from some Cholercaust cruiser and raining down like a storm of death.
There was little Omar could do about the audacious enemy assault. His rifle could not hit a rapidly descending insertion craft and would not penetrate its armour even if it did. All the Scout could hope for was that whatever came out of the pods would oblige his questionable marksmanship on the ground.
The Scout aimed the sniper rifle down into the tight alleyways, stepwells and cloisters. Adjusting the magnification on the powerful scope for his eye, Omar nestled the weapon against a bruised shoulder. He brought his finger off the trigger as a fleeing member of the Charnel Guard flashed before the scope, running for his life down a posternway. An armoured beast thundered past, zigzagging its way across the narrow alley, crashing its shoulders into the masonry of bordering buildings. The thing lowered its head, and with a furious charge, gored the unfortunate Guardsman before stomping on. The monster passed out of sight. Leaning into the stone of the belfry wall, Omar felt the tower shudder as the beast collided with the abbey’s foundations.
With dust raining down about him, the Excoriator concentrated on his rifle’s cross hairs and the heretic prey that might pass before them.
The Dreadclaw’s rocket roared its kamikaze delight. The drop-pod was ancient, corrupt of spirit and falling apart. Its nameplate had once read
As another atmospheric stabiliser was ripped from its hull by the raging descent, the craft began to pitch and wobble. The sickening motion tore at the Dreadclaw’s superstructure, and the pod gave a metallic whine of internal agony. Inside the craft, amongst the swaying chains, trembling brass strutage and the stench of old gore, eight sons of Angron strained against their descent cages. Their plate was brazen horror, embellishing the blood-red sheen of gore-speckled ceramite. Spikes – both metal and warped bone – adorned their battle-blessed forms, and their helms were ghastly and extravagant. Weapons ached in their racks for the taste of first blood.
Umbragg of the Brazen Flesh stood with a brain-dashed boot on the long defunct guidance runebank that occupied the centre of the compartment. It mattered little to the Traitor Legionaries that the runebank was dead and silent. The
The World Eater loathed the long sub-light journeys between massacres. The
On the approach to the tiny Ecclesiarchy world, Umbragg had felt the stirring. The Cholercaust’s communal desire to kill. The infighting. The self-slaughter. The flaying of flesh from decapitated skulls. The disciples of the War-Given-Form, at one with their true purpose. The brute simplicity of mass invasion. The slaughterous advantage of strength and number – the Blood God’s potency realising and realised in the tsunami of gore spilt before his warrior-subjects’ blades.
Like magma churning inside the rock prison of a volcano, the exalted rage of the berserker built within Umbragg. He watched the unworthy slave-soldiers of the Blood Crusade fall on the planet in their thousands and thousands – all hate-twisted, battle-hungry and eager to catch the Blood God’s eye. With them went Khorne’s blessings – the daemonic expression of the War-Given-Form’s presence on the field. Carnage-fired beasts, engines, powers and princes, killing shrines to the Skull Lord’s decimate will. With unbearable restraint – his ancient bones literally shaking with the desire to war – Umbragg watched the aspirant champions of the Cholercaust take their place in mob-ranks of common killers. Warlords and butchers, their prodigious taking of life had warmed the Ruinous overlord to them.
Amongst these were bands of tainted Angels. A young and fallen brotherhood. Warriors whose shame it had been not to see the slaughter of the Heresy and the apocalypse wrought on the sacred soil of Ancient Terra: Goremongers, Skulltakers, Angels Apocrypha, the Blood Storm, Thunder Barons. It was only after the renegades – young in the ways of the blade – had thinned out the enemy, leaving only the worthiest skulls for the taking, that the Pilgrim unleashed his warbands of World Eaters.
Ancient, superhuman flesh within Traitor plate, driven by a mind without doubt or fear. The World Eaters were the very living expression of the Blood God’s destructive power. His daemons might be a bloodthirsty essence, tapped directly from Khorne’s primordial fury, but it was thousands of years of bloodshed, committed in the Blood God’s name by the death-defying sons of Angron, that fuelled such ancient power. In this way, daemonkin might be part of the War-Given-Form, but the War-Given-Form was part of Umbragg and his xiith Legion brethren’s desire eternal to see the galaxy burn.
As the Dreadclaw gave another sickening wobble and the fresh screech of lower atmospheric descent assailed the drop-pod’s exterior, Umbragg’s berserker fury broke its banks. The enemy was close. His axes would sing through priest-flesh. The red glory of lives ended would fountain about him in glorious, hateful celebration. A roar built within his cavernous chest – a raw unburdening that was matched by the caged warriors of his warband, the
