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The sky was barely light. Cadia's purple-red radiation clouds split open as a new wave of plasma engine trails carved through them.
The Chaos coalition had rested. Now it attacked in full.
The assault spearhead wasn't aid at Kasr Kraf's main shield control room.
Urkanthos, Daemon Prince and one of the Despoiler's four Chosen, personally led the Hounds of Abaddon and the elite of a dozen warbands in a straight drive toward the western salient.
The defense line was balanced on a knife's edge. The other forces hamring the fortress were diversions. The real killing blow was buried in that bulge of contested ground.
Every eye was being pulled there.
The Phoenix Infantry Regint — rated unremarkable in every pre-war assessnt, was holding that ground. A captain nad Kaelen and his two Ogryn bodyguards were all that stood between it and collapse.
Astra Militarum, Astartes, Battle Sisters, all of them were quietly praying the mortal company could hold a little longer. Anyone who understood the situation knew exactly how insane that hope was.
On the bridge of the towering command spire, Lord Castellan Creed lowered his magnoculars. Instinct told Cadia's helmsman one thing: as long as those two fras, both taller than any human had a right to be, kept standing in the mud, the heretic charge would break.
Amplifier static crackled on the wind.
A backwater-sector accent, one that sat wrong in every Cadian ear, rose above the distant thunder of artillery.
"We are facing an enemy that wields the power of destruction." Kaelen's voice rolled outward through the high-powered loudspeakers in waves. "They want to grind this planet to dust and take everything the Imperium of Man has left along with it. I won't pretend we're not at a disadvantage out here. But look at the soldiers beside you. Look at these warriors, loyal to the Imperium and the Emperor of Mankind, and you'll understand sothing."
"The enemy is savage. Brutal. rciless. But their indiscipline is rotted into their bones. They don't die for their comrades. They don't know what coordination even ans. We are the opposite of everything they are."
The loudspeaker shrieked briefly. Then the volu climbed.
"So of us will die. But if we hold onto the fact that we are one whole — if we refuse to bow to despair, and every single one of us swears to complete their duty — then we can make these bastards choke on it. They'll rage. They'll make mistakes. And that is the key to victory."
"For Cadia! For the Emperor of Mankind! And when this is over, if your soul finds its way back to the Golden Throne, you can stand tall and tell Him: I fought in the Defense of Cadia. And the Emperor of Mankind will put a hand on your shoulder and say: well done, warrior."
The cheer ca without warning. It tore through the gray haze hanging over the surrounding positions like a physical force.
The Astra Militarum line erupted.
"That's Captain Kaelen." Adjutant Kell kept his voice low.
"I know." Creed's eyes crinkled at the corners. "That kid's propaganda instincts would make him a chief director in the Departnto Munitorum. Better technique than the Ecclesiarchy's own Sisters."
The fear and confusion draining from the soldiers' eyes was visible even from the spire. Sothing harder was filling the space it left, a resolve that moved upward from the ranks, not down from command.
In the rear formation of Battle Sisters, a few senior mbers wore expressions of quiet discomfort.
Depicting the sacred Emperor of Mankind as a mortal who patted shoulders and made small talk, doctrinally, it was sloppy at best.
But the great enemy was at the gates. Arguing over scripture was a luxury no one could afford. Morale was a tool, and tools were judged by what they accomplished.
The engagent resud. Both sides fed flesh and blood into the grinder, driven by fanaticism and loyalty in equal asure.
Urkanthos, blessed of the Brazen Throne, moved inside a rolling stench of blood and violence. The sheer brutality of the fighting pleased Khorne. The Warp veil tore thin under the pressure of so much slaughter, and the god answered with gifts, swarms of Bloodletters and Brass Bulls punched through the boundary between real and unreal, spilling into the material universe to join the harvest.
Eastern defense line. Knights of House Krast advanced to et the enemy's Titans. Dark Angels, Space Wolves, and the surviving Space Marines reorganized on the fly and held against the grinding advance. Marshal Amalrich pulled the Black Templars back from the Wall of Martyrs.
The sons of Dorn had been moving to reinforce the western salient. Creed's orders redirected them to the flanks of Kasr Kraf.
Western salient. The battle hit white heat.
Kaelen worked from behind cover, directing fire. The Phoenix Infantry Regint's heavy bolters wove a kill zone across the approaches. The counter-charge itself fell entirely to the Wolf Shepherd and the old knight of the First Legion.
Two transhuman bodies wrapped in canvas cloaks, operating with a precision and ferocity that put the Imperium's finest machinery to sha. Khorne's devotees lived for close-quarters killing. The berserker Astartes and the daemons ignored the mortal rifles behind them entirely, roaring as they threw themselves at the most dangerous obstacles in their path.
It was a clean tactical trap. The two drew every high-value target onto themselves while the mortal company stood behind them and shot at their leisure. Heads dropped steadily. Severed limbs built up in the mud until they ford small mounds.
A dull crack rang out. Horus had snapped a Brass Bull's neck with his bare hands, vertebrae and all.
A low, sustained horn blast swallowed the artillery.
A wave of heat rolled outward.
A massive figure crushed the wreckage of a Chira underfoot. Bones, trophies from a hundred defeated champions, hung from every surface of its fra.
The Daemon Prince Urkanthos had arrived. His stature matched a primarch's. Horrifying recurved bone spurs jutted from his back. Skulls of the long-defeated covered him like armor. Dark red blood ran in steady streams through the gaps in his battleplate.
A roaring greatsword ca up. The blade leveled at the tallest cloaked figure on the field.
At that exact mont, a priority alert scread in from the core of Kasr Kraf.
A full-strength Chaos Raptor warband had ridden the aftershock of a Warp jump, lit their jump packs, and dropped straight down from altitude. They punched through the Battle Sisters' line by force. Several senior Sisters died without heads.
The boarding spearhead was driving directly for the command platform. Lord Castellan Creed was the target.
Crisis from above. Everything on the edge of ending.
Before a bunker that high-explosive shells had reduced to rubble, a young Battle Sister knelt in the dirt. Armor-piercing shrapnel had punched through her lung. A Chaos Space Marine stood over her with a power axe raised for the finishing blow.
She didn't close her eyes. Her bloodstained lips moved, and she chanted her prayer aloud.
Golden light broke through the scorched clouds.
Radiance that had no business existing in a radiation-choked sky punched straight through the barrier shrouding Cadia.
Exalted hymns rang inside every skull on the battlefield. In the instant the light converged, the traitor with the raised axe made no sound at all. His head and his fallen soul were vaporized together by sacred fire.
"To fall into despair is to surrender yourself to the dark. Believe truly in the Master of Mankind, and no matter how dark the road beneath your feet, you will walk it in His light."
The Sister coughed up a mouthful of clotted blood. She raised her head. She was smiling.
Her prayers had been answered.
The Living Saint, Celestine, had descended.
Wings spread wide. She drove into the enemy without hesitation.
A firestorm rose from the stone foundations and scattered the besieging heretics by force. Her longsword swept in silver arcs through the smoke. Daemons broke and fled before the blade, burned out of existence.
Exhausted bodies found strength again. Guardians who had given up on hope returned to the line. Faith beca sothing you could feel pressing against your skin like armor.
The Emperor of Mankind had sent His ssenger. To retreat now was blasphemy. Even Creed was caught in the wave, he shoved the threat of the Blackstone Fortress's hanging blade out of his mind, drew his pistol, and pushed forward alongside his soldiers.
The outer periter of Kasr Kraf steadied. Celestine didn't stay.
Her wings beat hard. She shot across the sky trailing a long golden wake and drove straight for the western salient.
There was nothing casual about her flight. The urgency in every wingbeat said she wasn't simply reinforcing a position. Soone of extre importance was at that end of the line.
Air currents churned. Her feet touched the mud-soaked wasteland.
What she saw made her slow.
The mud had been driven half a ter deep by the weight of what was happening in it.
Urkanthos's entire musculature had swollen to grotesque proportions. His bone spurs and sinews cracked and popped under the strain of his own movents.
The enormous chain-axe was revved to its limit. It whipped up a blood-red hurricane and ca straight down at the head of the tallest cloaked figure on the field.
No defense. No feint. Pure violence aid at mutual annihilation.
"BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD!"
The roar shattered the armored glass on nearby vehicles. Eardrums ached.
"SKULLS FOR THE SKULL THRONE!"
The chain-axe trailed a blood-red afterimage, carrying enough force to split a mountain, and drove straight for the Wolf Shepherd's face.
Kaelen's heart hit his throat.
Then a simple, unadorned grab caught the blow.
Horus twisted at the waist. His hip drove forward.
His clenched right fist broke the sound barrier and rocketed into the Daemon Prince's face.
The force of it blew the canvas hood clean off his head.
That face, bald, unseen for 10,000 years, resolute as forged iron, hit Urkanthos's eyes without a shred of cover.
"Ho—"
Incomprehensible terror flooded the Daemon Prince's twisted face.
The fist landed.
BOOM!
Like a cannon shell hitting a waterlon.
Urkanthos's entire head, the upper half of his breastplate, and the na he never finished screaming, all of it detonated into a mist of pulped flesh and blood that scattered across the sky in every direction.
The Wolf Shepherd shoved the massive corpse aside like garbage. In the Phoenix Infantry Regint's trenches, every warrior still breathing erupted.
Horus pulled his hood back on.
➤ Next: The Living Saint's Audience
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