Helsreach

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He found himself offering his hand. A moment's tension followed the gesture, as the towering warrior remained unmoving. Then, with care, the Salamander held the colonel's small, human hand in a shake. The joints of the sergeant's power armour hummed with the minor movement.

'The honour was ours, V'reth. Hunt well in the wastelands, and give my thanks to your lord.'

The Reclusiarch watched this in silence. No one knew what expression was masked by his relic helm.

O

nce the discussion

is done,

I

walk from the gathered humans. V'reth remains with me, shadowing my movements. Away from the pitted and cracked hull of Sarren's Baneblade,

I

slow in my stride to allow him to catch up. Does V'reth not have his own orders to obey? Does the Hemlock not call? Curious that he chooses to remain.

'What do you want, Salamander?'

As we walk along the Hel's Highway, I cannot help but stare at the city below. The platformed road rises above the habitation blocks here, once allowing traffic to rattle through the heart of the city between the spires of its tall residential towers. Now it remains aloft - a rockcrete wave riding above urban devastation. The buildings here are flattened, reduced to rubble by the enemy's scrap-Titans and shelling from our own forces.

Across the city, the Highway has come down in several places. Fortunate that it has not done so here, as well.

'To speak, if you are willing, Reclusiarch.'

'

I

would be honoured,'

I

tell him, but this is a lie. We have spent a week fighting together, side by side, and although his presence was invaluable, his warriors are not knights. Too often, they fell back to guard civilian shelters rather than press the attack and prevent the enemy from escaping. Too often they withstood repeated assaults rather than strike first and eliminate any need of further retaliation.

Priamus loathes them, but I do not. Their ways are not our ways. It is not cowardice that drives them to these tactics, but rather tradition. Yet still, their valour is as alien to me as the disgusting savagery of the orks.

It is difficult to hold my tongue. I wish him to leave before honesty stains the deeds we have achieved together, and before truth spoken too brutally threatens the alliance between our respective Chapters.

'My brothers and I came to this city without the illuminating guidance of our Chaplain. We would offer reverent thanks if you would lead us in prayer before we quit the city and rejoin our Chapter by the shores of the Hemlock.'

'I know little of your Chapter's cult and creed, Salamander.'

'We know this, Reclusiarch. Still, we would offer sincere thanks.'

It is a magnificent and bold gesture, and I know it honours me far more than it would honour them if I agreed. To lead brothers from another Chapter in prayer is beyond merely rare. It is almost unheard of. In my life, I can recall only one such instance, and that was with our gene-brothers and fellow sons of Dorn, the Crimson Fists, when the Declates system burned.

'Think of the battle last night,' I tell him. 'Think of the rooftop battle in the Nergal district. There was one moment in the chaos that still preys upon my mind. It casts a shadow over us now, like an enemy's spear threatening to fall.'

He hesitates. This is clearly not the way he thought his request would be answered. 'What aspect of the battle troubles you, Reclusiarch?'

A fine question.

* * *

The beast falls from my hands, its skull broken, to die at my feet.

I hear the burning hiss of Priamus's blade tearing through alien flesh. I hear the strained snarls of meat-clogged chainblades. I hear the yelling of panicked humans as they cower in the storm shelter, their fear reaching my senses through the armour plated walls.

Another creature snarls in my face, spitting thick saliva over my faceplate. It dies as Artarion's bolter kicks once from a few metres away, shearing its malformed head off in a burst of gore.

'Focus,' he grunts over the vox.

I

return the favour a moment later, my maul pounding into a beast that sought to leap at him from behind.

The battle is close, down to pistols, blades and the crashing beat of fists into faces. In the centre of the expansive plaza, the thickly-armoured storm shelter endures siege from close to two hundred of the enemy.

Footing is treacherous. Our boots are stamping down on pools of cooling blood and the bodies of dead dockworkers. The Salamanders are…

Curse them all…

Priamus blocked a cut from the closest ork, the beast's chopping sword deflected with a shower of sparks from the brief blade contact.

He killed it with the riposte - an ugly strike he felt no pride for, slipping past the creature's non-existent guard and ramming the blade's point into the beast's exposed neck.

The brute's axe slammed with clanging force against the side of his helm. His vision receptors showed angry static for two seconds.

Not deep enough. The swordsman yanked back with the blade, and on the second plunge he hilted it in the ork's collarbone. The beast collapsed in a heap of dead limbs.

Priamus resisted the urge to laugh.

The next ork to leap at him came with two of its brothers. The first fell to Priamus's blade lashing out to carve through its torso, the energised blade going through meat and bone like soft clay. The second and third would have had a fair chance at overpowering him, had they not been battered to the ground by a sweep of the Reclusiarch's maul.

'Where are the Salamanders?' he voxed, his breath coming in ragged gasps.

'They're holding.'

'They're what?'

Bostilan's fist vibrated with the crashing judder of his bolter. Streaks of alien blood painted his battered armour yet again.

Recriminations spilled out over the vox. The Salamanders weren't advancing with the Templars. The Templars were pushing ahead too far, too fast.

'Follow us, in the name of the Throne!' Bastilan added his voice to the vox-chatter.

'Fall back,' came the staid voice of Sergeant V'reth. 'Fall back to the eastern platform and be ready to engage the second wave.'

'Advance! If we strike now, there will be no second wave. We're at the warlord's throat!'

'Salamanders! V'reth spoke calmly, 'Hold and be ready. Cut down