Salamander

'B

ring him out.'

The Chaplain's severed arm was swathed in a bloody sling, and he hugged it close to his body subconsciously as he issued the curt order.

The chirurgeon-interrogators responded dutifully. The excrutiator frame and its incarcerated Iron Warrior Warsmith were dragged into the eldritch day.

The prisoner had been secured within the hold of one of the company's Rhinos. The idea was to keep him away from the Salamanders on the walls and prevent him spewing any Chaotic dogma in an effort to dissuade them from their purpose.

A small group looked on in the courtyard of the iron fortress as the traitor was wheeled into view. Dak'ir was amongst the party that also included N'keln, Praetor and Pyriel. True to recent form, the Librarian was never far away from him now and glanced at the brother-sergeant studiously from time to time. Dak'ir did not know what was happening to him, nor what Pyriel made of it. If Scoria was to prove the 3rd Company's final battlefield, he might never find out. He knew it was getting stronger however, and despite all of his experience, training and hypno-conditioning, he was afraid of it.

Elysius was leading the interrogation, refusing any further medical assistance besides the bandaged layer of gauze beneath the sling used to bind his grievous wound.

Fugis had expected nothing less. There was little love lost between them, operating as they did at opposite ends of the war spectrum. Dak'ir assumed the Apothecary was busied elsewhere, tending to the injured, extracting the geneseed of the dead. The brother-sergeant guessed that Fugis did so in the troop compartment of

Fire Anvil.

N'keln had declared that the keep of the iron fortress remain sealed. True, the intensity of the ill-feeling and baleful emanations coming from the very stone and metal it was forged of, had, in the absence of the orks' natural psychic effusion, ebbed, but whatever lurked in the bowels of that place, corporeal or not, needed to stay there, locked away.

The Land Raider was a good enough substitute in lieu of a more expansive makeshift Apothecarion. Many injured Salamanders, even human settlers, gathered around the periphery of the assault tank awaiting an Apothecary's ministrations.

Dak'ir had seen Tsu'gan enter a half hour ago, annoyed that he would not bear witness to the interrogation but ordered by N'keln to be assessed and made ready for battle again as soon as possible. In the light of his apparent reneging over contesting the captaincy of 3rd Company, Dak'ir resolved to meet with him and settle a few things before the orks came.

The rest of the Salamanders, those whose wounds were not severe or requiring Fugis's attention, were arrayed around the battlements in front of the gate.

Together, they watched the skies and dunes. Overhead, the black rock loomed like a curse. A few hours were all that remained before the greenskins made landfall, the sky blotted with the orks' raking ships.

'Speak, traitor, and your death will be swift,' declared Elysius, summoning up his hatred despite his pain and discomfort.

The Iron Warrior failed to speak out loud, but there was a muttered sound emanating from his covered mouth.

'Louder, craven worshipper of the false gods,' spat Elysius. 'True servants of the Emperor do not cower behind whispers.'

Dak'ir caught the susurrus of words as the Iron Warrior turned to face the Chaplain and raised his voice.

'Iron Within. Iron Without,' he chanted, like a mantra.

A lightning flash pre-empted Elysius's cudgelling of the traitor across the chest with his crozius. The weapon was at low power, so it didn't kill the prisoner. The scar of scorched flesh was visible on his body, though, and infected the breeze with its noisome odour.

Dak'ir noticed that the Chaplain wasn't using his chirurgeon-interrogators to question the Iron Warrior, preferring, uncharacteristically, to do the work himself. He was obviously angry at the ork's mauling of him and levelled that anger at the traitor.

'No riddles,' he snarled, stowing his crozius to draw out his bolt pistol. He pressed the cold muzzle against the Iron Warrior's forehead. 'Speak.'

'Iron Within. Iron Without,' replied the prisoner, continuing to be uncooperative.

'I will not ask a third time,' Elysius promised, pressing the bolt pistol hard against the Iron Warrior's head. 'Tell me now how you defeated the greenskins. How were you able to survive? Is the cannon in the bowels of your foetid bastion something to do with it? What is its purpose? Speak quickly!'

'Iron Wi—' the traitor began, before stopping abruptly. The shadow of the falling splinters from the black rock had shrouded the courtyard. 'Doomed,' he rasped.

Elysius followed his gaze, along with Dak'ir and the others. They all knew what was coming.

Earlier, on the return journey from the killing fields beyond the fortress, Dak'ir had described to N'keln the nature of the black rock as told to him by the human settler, Illiad. It was akin to a planetoid, rotating on a horseshoe orbit around Scoria; a planetoid inhabited solely by orks. Every few years it would come close enough to Scoria for the orks to launch their crude atmospheric craft to make war on those that inhabited the planet - for orks love war. Prior to the Salamanders' arrival that war had been waged against the Iron Warriors, constructing their fortress and seismic cannon for some unknown purpose. Dak'ir suspected he knew part of the reason, but the rest of it was shrouded from him.

'Doomed,' the Warsmith repeated. 'Our numbers were vastly in excess of yours, Emperor's lapdogs, and still the greenskin fought us to near oblivion. You cannot prevail.'

'Is that why you were building the weapon?' Elysius asked, pressing his bolt pistol harder against the Iron Warrior's temple. '

You

were planning to use it against the orks, tip the balance back into your favour.'

An amused, metallic rasp issued from behind the closed helm of the traitor.

'You cannot see,' he snorted. 'It will save you. It is your destruction that we wrought here. The doom of the sons of Vulkan is at hand! Your doo—'

The wash of blood and matter against Elysius's black armour was an epilogue to the barking retort of his bolt pistol as he shot the Iron Warrior through the head.

A slight tremor registered on Captain N'keln's face, the only clue to his shock or displeasure at the suddenness of the execution.

'He was an empty vessel, devoid of further use,' explained the Chaplain. 'Let him rot in the fires of the warp. The pit will claim him.'

'The traitor was right, though,' said Pyriel.

Elysius whirled to confront him. The body language of the Chaplain suggested he had just cast aspersions on his loyalty and faith, such was the fervour in it.

'We cannot prevail against the orks,' Pyriel affirmed. Elysius backed down before his cerulean glare. The Librarian turned his attentions to N'keln. 'The black rock draws closer. Soon it will be at its optimum range. The skies are already thronged with greenskins. A planetoid of orks, my lord,' he said, 'possibly in their

millions.

Even with the greatest strategy, perhaps even with the entire Chapter and Lord Tu'Shan at our side, we would likely lose such a fight.'

'I'm not sure I like where this line of reasoning leads us, Brother-Librarian,' said N'keln.

'I have spoken to Techmarine Draedius—' this Dak'ir was surprised to learn, he had been with Pyriel almost all of the time prior to and before the battle '—and he believes the weapon forged by