Helsreach

information on his narthecium's screen.

CADOR.

The 36th day. Ambush along enemy-controlled portions of Hel's Highway.

Gene-seed: Recovered.

T

he thirty-sixth

day.

Thirty-six days of gruelling siege. Thirty-six days of retreat, of falling back, of holding positions for as long as we are able until inevitably overwhelmed by the insane, impossible numbers arrayed against us.

The entire city smells of blood. The coppery, stinging scent of human life, and the sickening fungal reek of the foulness purged from orkish veins. Beneath the blood-scent is the stench of burning wood, melted metal, and blasted stone - a city's death in smells. At the last gathering of commanders in the shadow of Colonel Sarren's Baneblade, the

Grey Warrior,

it was estimated that the foe controlled forty-six per cent of the city. That was four nights ago.

Almost half of Helsreach, gone. Lost to smoke and flame in bitter, galling defeat.

I am told we lack the force to take anything back. Reinforcements are not coming from the other hives, and the majority of the Guard and militia that still fight are exhausted remnants of the regiments, forever falling back, time and again, road by road. Hold a junction for a few nights, then withdraw to the next position when it finally falls.

Truly, we are fated to die in the most uninspired crusade ever to blight the name of the Black Templars.

'Reclusiarch,' the vox calls me.

'Not now.' I kneel by Cador's defiled body, seeing the holes in his armour and flesh - some from alien gunfire, two from the ritual surgery of Nerovar's flesh-boring tools.

'Reclusiarch,' the voice comes again. The rune blinking at the edge of my retinal display signifies it as from the

Grey Warrior.

I suspect I am to be begged, again, to fall back to Imperial lines and help in the defence of some meaningless roadway junction.

'I am administering the rites of the fallen to a slain knight. Now is not the time, colonel.'

At first, the colonel had replied to such words with the worthless, polite insistence that he was sorry for my loss. Sarren no longer says such things. The tens of thousands of lives lost in the last four weeks have utterly numbed him to such personal sentiment. That, too, is almost admirable. I see the strength in the way he has changed.

'Reclusiarch,' Sarren's voice betrays how ruined by exhaustion he is. Were I in the room with him, I know I would feel the weariness in his bones like an aura around where he stands. 'When you return from your scouting run, your presence is required in the Forthright Five district.'

Forthright sector. The southernmost docks. '

Why?'

'We are receiving anomalous reports from the Valdez Oil Platforms. The coastal auspex readers are suffering from offshore storms, but there

are

no storms off the coast. We suspect something is happening at sea.'

'We will be there in an hour,' I tell him. 'What anomalies are we speaking of?'

'If I could give you specifics, Reclusiarch, I would. The auspex readers look to be suffering some kind of directed interference. We believe they're being jammed.'

'One hour, colonel.' Then, 'mount up,' I say to my brothers. It is not a short ride down the Hel's Highway, especially when it crawls with the enemy. Scouting teams are more often mounted on motorcycles now - the risk of Thunderhawks being shot down in enemy territory is too great.

'It is strange,' Nero says, cradling Cador's helm in his hands, as if the old warrior merely slept. 'I do not wish to leave him.'

'That is not Cador.' I rise from where I have been kneeling next to the body, anointing the tabard with sacred oils, before tearing it from the war plate. In better times, the tabard would be enshrined on the

Eternal Crusader.

In this time, here and now, I rip it from my brother's body and tie it around my bracer, carrying it with me as a token to honour him. 'Cador is gone. You are leaving nothing behind.'

'You are heartless, brother,' Nero tells me. Standing here, in this annihilated city, with the bodies of so many dead aliens around us, I almost burst out laughing. 'But even for you,' Nero continues, 'even for one who wears the Black, that is a cold thing to say.'

'I loved him as one can love any warrior that fights by your side for two hundred years, boy. The bonds that form from decade upon decade of shared allegiance and united war are not to be ignored. I will miss Cador for the few days that remain to me, before this war kills me, as well. But no, I do not grieve. There is nothing to grieve over when a life has been led in service to the Throne.'

The Apothecary hangs his head. In shame? In thought?

'I see,' he says, apropos of nothing.

'We will speak of this again, Nero. Now mount up, brothers. We ride south.'

H

alf of the

city was a wasteland, one way or the other. Some of it burned, some of it was silent in death now that the xenos had moved onto other sectors, and some of it was simply abandoned. Habitation towers stood under Armageddon's yellow sky, lifeless and deserted. Manufactories no longer churned out weapons of war, or breathed smoke into the heavens.

Packs of orks - the jackal-like stragglers who had fallen behind the main advance - looted through the empty sectors of the city. While there was little of calculated malice in the beasts' minds, what few human civilian survivors remained were slain without mercy when they were found.

Five armoured bikes growled their way down Hel's Highway. Their sloped armour plating was as black as the war plate worn by each rider. Their engines emitted healthy, throaty roars that told of a thirst for promethium fuel. The boltguns mounted on the motorcycles were linked to belt-feeding ammunition boxes contained within the vehicles' main bulks.

Priamus throttled back, falling into formation alongside Nerovar. Neither warrior looked at the other as they rode, weaving through a shattered convoy of motionless, burned-out tank hulls spread across the dark rockcrete of the highway.

'His death,' the swordsman began, his vox-voice crackling from the distortion of the engines. 'Does it trouble you?'

'I do not wish to speak of this, Priamus.'

Priamus banked around the charred skeleton of what had once been a Chimera trooper carrier. His sword, chained to his back, rattled against his armour with the bike's vibrations.

'He did not die well.'

'

I said I have no desire to speak of this, brother. Leave me be.'

'

I only say this because if I were as close to him as you were, it would have grieved me, also. He died badly. An ugly, ugly death.'