Salamander

'Don't let go,' the Salamander told the boy and launched himself back across, just as the lava flow began eating away at the excavator, until in a few seconds it had consumed it.

The molten stream raging through the cavern, bisecting it with a ribbon of viscous heat, had spilled over the rock span. There was no way back to Pyriel and Dak'ir. Ba'ken could scarcely see them through the smoke and falling debris.

He cried out. 'Brothers!'

A spurt of flame erupted from the earth near where he was standing and Ba'ken stepped away, grimacing.

'Brothers!' he bellowed again, his voice swallowed by the cracking of earth, the roar of fire answering.

The end of Scoria was at hand. There was nothing left for this world now. Maybe there was nothing left for Dak'ir or Pyriel either. Beseeching the Emperor and Vulkan for their safe return, Ba'ken fell back reluctantly.

Va'lin was suffocating; the Salamander heard it in the boy's wheezing breaths, his shuddering chest.

Ba'ken turned and made for the exit.

'Hang on,' he said grimly, racing for the tunnel back to the surface.

I

n the midst

of the fighting, Tsu'gan had thought he'd seen Romulus and Apion return from the emergence hole, a wounded Brother Te'kulcar draped across their shoulders. He couldn't see the fyron ore, but then his view was fleeting in the press of combat.

A full assault was ordered and the Salamanders were pressing the orks with all the flame and fury they could muster. The line was no more; it had given way to probing attacks launched at strategic points throughout the greenskin horde. Witnessed from above, the assaults would have looked bullet trajectories, forcing their way slowly through the dark green flesh of the beast.

Mob leaders, totem carriers, psykers - these were the Salamanders' targets. Cripple the orks' leadership. Show them their mightiest could all fall beneath a Fire-born's flame and blade. Here the Assault squads excelled, Vargo and Gannon conducting raiding attacks on vulnerable positions or leaders exposed by the sudden death or retreat of their brethren.

Thousands of greenskins lay dead for little reply. That said, every Salamander casualty was felt keenly. Fugis had returned to the fight with Brother-Sergeant Agatone. The two fought shoulder- to-shoulder, their courage worthy of even Vulkan's praise. But the Apothecary, as heroic as he was, couldn't minister to all of his fallen brothers. If they survived this fight, there would be much work for Fugis to do in the aftermath.

Tsu'gan had lost sight of them after N'keln's full assault order and he wondered if they fought still.

It was stretched and the ash dunes were like a copper desert now, so stained were they with blood. Tremors wracked the undulating landscape almost constantly and dark lightning ripped strips into the sky as the volcanoes vented. Their voices were a doom-laden refrain to the heavy thunder overhead.

'The world is ending, brother,' roared Tsu'gan. He had not left Praetor's side, although the sergeant's squad had fragmented in the dense melee. Iagon, for instance, was elsewhere on the field of war. Tsu'gan hoped he was still alive.

'A fitting end for us then,' Praetor replied, crashing an ork with a crackling blow from his thunder hammer, 'consumed by smoke and fire. All is ash at the end of days, brother.'

Tsu'gan smiled to himself - it sounded like something Brother Emek would say.

'All is ash,' Tsu'gan agreed and fought on.

Above the rising tumult of Scoria's last storm, just audible over the raging battle, the churning report of metal could be heard echoing from the innards of the iron fortress.

Peaking above the lip of the wall, the stub-nose of the long cannon forged by the Iron Warriors but purified by the Salamanders emerged. Dust and rock was cascading from its metal casing in huge drifts, its pneumatic platform raising it from the depths of the keep to glower imperiously over the surface of Scoria like the metal finger of a dark and vengeful god.

For a moment, a fleeting second only, the fighting slowed as all who beheld the cannon's emergence gaped in awe. Its eye was fixed heavenward as it sought to destroy a black sun.

Fyron-fuelled capacitors charged the air, their throb and pulse emitted as a wave of force as the cannon was empowered and a second later, unleashed.

II Retribution

D

ak'ir's world was

darkening. His arms grew heavy as his vision faded to black and his struggles against Ghor'gan ebbed.

'That's it,' he heard the crackling magma voice say. 'That's it, find peace…'

A trembling in the earth below prevented the Salamander's fall into oblivion. When it shook the very ground, its violent insistence threw the grappling Space Marines apart.

Clutching his neck, Dak'ir coughed and spluttered hot, smoky air back into his lungs. The sensation reminded him of Nocturne and the caves of Ignea - it was like breathing in a panacea.

Ghor'gan was getting to his feet as Dak'ir's vision cleared. The Dragon Warrior braced himself against the rock wall as the entire cavern shook. A huge crack ran up the side of it as geysers of scalding steam and fire roared through the slowly fragmenting ground. In places small chasms and crag-walled pitfalls opened up like yawning mouths, their liquid tongues hot and glowing below. The renegade moved around them, stalking towards Dak'ir, determined to finish what he had begun.

'Relent, little Salamander,' he said, his voice low and weary.

Ghor'gan didn't see the combat blade in Dak'ir's hand until it was too late. The blade was only half a metre long but the Salamander sank it to the hilt in the renegade's chest. The precise blow exploited a gap in the ceramite plates and penetrated armour, bone and flesh.

'A life for a life,' snarled Dak'ir. 'My captain must be avenged.'

Ghor'gan's mouth curled in pain; his eyes narrow slits of agony. Even as Dak'ir twisted the blade, searching out vital organs and soft tissue, the renegade fought on and dug his claws into the Salamander's neck.

Dak'ir cried out, aiming a savage punch to the Dragon Warrior's ear even as he shoved the combat blade harder with his other hand. Ghor'gan shifted his head, and took the blow on his much harder jaw instead, but it jarred enough to force him to release his claw.

Blood was dripping off Ghor'gan's extracted talon when a ball of fire rolled through the wall of heat nearby, wreathed in flames and trailing smoke. From it emerged Pyriel, furled within the protective confines of his drakescale mantle.

Out of the corner of his eye, Dak'ir saw Pyriel move to assist him but the sergeant urged the Librarian on as he kept the bulky Dragon Warrior pinned.