Salamander

glory of the Chapter!'

Praetor's stentorian timbre thundered across the comm-feed like a rallying bow wave. The Firedrakes had filled the breach.

'In Vulkan's name!' echoed N'keln, standing tall amidst the dying flames wreathing the battlements before him. Brother Malicant was down, but the captain held aloft the company banner in his stead. The coiling drake depicted on the sacred cloth snapped and snarled in the wind as if alive within the fabric. The edges of it were burned and blackened, but that only added to its belligerent allure. N'keln became a beacon, forged as steel upon the anvil of war at last.

'None shall pass,' he roared, and the firedrake upon the banner seemed to roar with him.

Tsu'gan found a smile was curling his lip.

The orks were doomed.

In desperation, the last of the tribal chieftains had assaulted the wall up one of the wrecked wagon towers. It gained the battlements, bloodied but unbowed.

Elysius, just finished dispensing with one of its lessers at the end of his bolt pistol, rammed his crozius through the foul beast's chest as it appeared. It snarled, only for the Chaplain to head- butt it with his battle-helm, shattering a tusk and then snapping off the other with a savage pistol-whip from his still-smoking sidearm. He tossed the weapon aside, seizing the dying chieftain in his gauntlet, the other hand gripped tightly around the haft of the crackling crozius, and lifted the ork into the air.

In a stunning feat of strength, or faith, Elysius raised the flailing ork above his head and flung it, screaming, onto the ground far below.

'I cast thee out, abomination!'

Coupled with the

Fire Anvil's

fury and the wrath of Praetor's Terminators, it proved a decisive blow.

The orks fled en masse, back across the killing field and up to the ridge.

Their warboss took their capitulation badly. Every one of the fleeing greenskins was slaughtered by the hordes that still remained.

A strange lull descended. It was punctuated by a deep throbbing in the back of Tsu'gan's skull, like the Salamander could feel the ork warboss's rage. So potent was the beast's fury that it had manifested physically, a distinctive pulse in the greenskins' natural psychic overspill.

In the absence of battle, the sense of despair from earlier returned. Tsu'gan lurched forward to grip the lip of the battlement for support.

'Sire?' hissed Iagon, leaning conspiratorially towards his sergeant.

Tsu'gan held up his hand to show he was all right. He gripped his bolter for reassurance. Guilt flooded his body pervasively like a cancer, and he longed for the brander-priest's rod and the pain that dulled the ache inside him.

'There is evil here…' he heard himself slurring, as low as a whisper.

It was eking out of the stones. In his delirium, Tsu'gan almost imagined he could see it: a thin, trailing mist of utter black.

'Hold together, brothers,' Elysius girded him, 'and we shall smite the alien.'

The baleful effects of the iron fortress ebbed. It was not yet strong enough to overcome the Chaplain's fervour. Tsu'gan straightened again, gritting his teeth.

'Let's finish this.'

The warboss bellowed, reasserting his dominance. The orks charged again.

D

ak'ir emerged from

the chasm to a different world than the one which he'd left previously. An eldritch darkness blanketed the ash dunes now. A black shape, like a moon or planetoid, smothered whatever celestial body of Scoria should have held prominence in the night sky. This then was the black rock of which Illiad had spoken; the carrier for the orks. Its orbit had brought it close enough to the ashen world for the greenskins to launch an assault. As time passed, Dak'ir knew it would only bring them closer.

The strange milieu brought other sensations with it, too - the sounds and smells of battle. The bulk of the

Vulkan's Wrath,

still high as an Imperial bastion's defence tower even though it was partly sunken into the desert, obscured Dak'ir's view but he could still see a warm orange glow tinting the darkling sky. There was something serene and beautiful about it, despite the distant

crump

of explosions and the whiff of smoke and promethium wafted on a hot breeze.

The comm-feed in his battle-helm crackled, like life breathed back into a corpse, and he heard the voice of Brother-Sergeant Agatone.

'Marshal your forces, brother,' he snapped, clearly perturbed that they'd been out of vox contact for so long. The inquest would come later. 'We are about to be under attack.'

Dak'ir didn't question it. Instead, he ran around the half-submerged prow of the

Vulkan's Wrath

and climbed up to the summit of a small dune. What he saw there quickened his heart to a state of combat readiness.

'Pyriel,' said Dak'ir. The Librarian had been right behind the sergeant and followed him up the shallow dune. 'When you said there were no oceans on Scoria…'

Before their eyes, still distant but closing, there boiled a belligerent green sea.

'I was wrong,' Pyriel replied simply.

The voice of Illiad intruded.

'Swine-tusks…' he uttered, hoarsely.

The rest of the combat squad had positioned themselves around him in battle formation. They'd all heard Agatone over the comm-feed.

'The swine-tusks have returned,' rasped Illiad, gaping in terrified awe at the grotesque spectacle swarming the dunes. 'The slayers of your brothers are back to kill us all.' Dak'ir hadn't heard fear in the human before… until now.

The main swell of the greenskin horde was far off at the iron fortress, yet still their masses could be seen by the defenders of the

Vulkan's Wrath,

spreading across the land like a dark stain. A tributary had peeled off from the major force and was surging towards the stricken strike cruiser.

Do you feel them, Dak'ir?

Pyriel asked psychically.

Dak'ir nodded slowly. Yes, he felt it.

'Such rage…' he muttered.

The orks were not that far away now. Dak'ir could make out the crude and jagged forms of their vehicles and see their brutish weapons as they discharged them into the air. He discerned the snarled visage of the barbarous greenskin and his fist clenched. These were the spore of those beasts that virtually wiped out his ancient brothers. Here, upon the same ashen fields, the battle would be refought - Salamander versus greenskins. Dak'ir was adamant that this time, the orks would not be back.

The comm-feed spat static for a few seconds and then cleared again.