Svyatgoroye

‘Why?’ was all Ehrlen could ask.

‘I don’t know,’ said Tarvitz, wishing he had more to tell the World Eater.

‘This wasn’t the Isstvanians, was it?’ asked Ehrlen.

Tarvitz wanted to lie, but he knew that the World Eater would see through him instantly.

‘No,’ he said. ‘It wasn’t.’

‘We are betrayed?’

Tarvitz nodded.

‘Why?’ repeated Ehrlen.

‘I have no answers for you, brother, but if they hoped to kill us all in one fell swoop, then they have failed.’

‘And the World Eaters will make them pay for that failure,’ swore Ehrlen, as a new sound rose over the crackle of burning buildings and tumbling masonry.

Tarvitz heard it too and looked up in time to see a flock of World Eaters’ gunships streaking towards their position from the outskirts of the city. Gunfire came down in a burning spray, punching through the ruins around them, boring holes in the black marble of the ground.

‘Hold!’ shouted Ehrlen.

Heavy fire thudded down among the World Eaters as the gunships roared overhead. Tarvitz crouched at a smashed window opening beside Ehrlen, hearing one of the World Eaters grunt in pain as a shell found its mark. The gunships passed and soared up into the sky, looping around above the shattered palace before angling down for another run.

‘Heavy weapons! Get some fire up there!’ yelled Ehrlen. Gunfire stuttered up from the gaps in partially collapsed roofs, chattering heavy bolters and the occasional ruby flare of a lascannon blast. Tarvitz ducked back from the window as return fire thundered down, stitching lines of explosions through the World Eaters. More of them fell, blown off their feet or blasted apart. One World Eater slumped down beside Tarvitz, the back of his head a pulsing red mass. The gunships banked, spraying fire down at their position.

Tarvitz could see the World Eaters zeroing in on them as they flew back towards their position. Return fire lanced upwards and one gunship fell, its engine spewing flames, to smash to pieces against a burning ruin. Tarvitz could see dozens of gunships, surely the whole of the World Eaters’ arsenal. The lead Thunderhawk dropped through the ruins, hovering a few metres above the ground with its assault ramp down and bolter fire sparking around the opening.

Ehrlen turned towards Tarvitz.

‘This isn’t your fight,’ he yelled over the gunfire. ‘Get out of here!’

‘Emperor’s Children never run!’ replied Tarvitz, drawing his sword.

‘They do from this!’

No Space Marine could have survived the storm of fire that blazed away at the interior of the gunship, but it was no ordinary Space Marine that was borne within it.

With a roar like a hunting animal, Angron leapt from the gunship and landed with a terrible crash in the midst of the ruined city.He was a monster of legend, huge and terrible. The primarch’s hideous face was twisted in hatred, his huge chainaxes battered and stained with decades of bloodshed. As the mighty primarch landed, World Eaters dropped from the other gunships.Thousands of World Eaters loyal to the Warmaster followed their primarch into the Choral City, accompanied by the war cries that echoed Angron’s own bestial howl as he charged into his former brethren.

It had been said that a Space Marine knew no fear. Such a statement was not literally true, a Space Marine could know fear, but he had the training and discipline to deal with it and not let it affect him in battle. Captain Saul Tarvitz was no exception, he had faced storms of gunfire and monstrous aliens and even glimpsed the insane predators of the warp, but when Angron charged, he ran.

The primarch smashed through the ruins like a juggernaut. He bellowed insanely and with one sweep of his chainaxe carved two loyal World Eaters in two, bringing his off-hand axe down to bite through the torso of a third. His traitor World Eaters dived over the rubble, blasting with pistols or stabbing with chainblades.

‘Die!’ bellowed Captain Ehrlen as the loyalists counter-charged, throwing themselves into the enemy as one. Tarvitz was used to Astartes who fought in feints and counter-charges, overlapping fields of fire, picking the enemy apart or sweeping through his ranks with grace and precision. The World Eaters did not fight with the perfection of the Emperor’s Children. They fought with anger and hatred, with brutality and the lust for destruction.And they fought with more hatred than ever before against their own, against the battle-brothers they had warred alongside for years.

Tarvitz scrambled back from the carnage. World Eaters shouldered past him as they charged at Angron, but the butchered bodies lying around showed what fate awaited them. Tarvitz put his shoulder down and hammered through a ruined wall, sprawling into a courtyard where statues stood scarred and beheaded by the day’s earlier battles. He glanced behind him.

Thousands of World Eaters were locked in a terrible hurricane of carnage, scrambling to get at one another. At the centre of the bloody hurricane was Angron, massive and terrible as he laid about him with his axes.

Captain Ehrlen crashed down a short distance from him and the World Eater’s eyes flickered over Tarvitz before he rolled onto his back and pulled himself to his feet. Ehrlen’s face was torn open, a red mask of blood with his eyes the only recognisable feature. A pack of World Eaters descended on him, piling him to the ground and working at him as though they were carving up a side of meat.

Volleys of bolter shots thudded through the walls and the battle spilled into the courtyard, World Eaters wrestling with one another and forcing bolters up to fire point blank or disemboweling their battle-brothers with chainaxes. Tarvitz kicked himself to his feet and ran as a wall collapsed and a dozen traitors surged forward. He threw himself behind a pillar, bolt shells blasting chunks of marble from it in concussive impacts. The sound of battle followed him and Tarvitz knew that he had to try and find the Emperor’s Children. Only with his fellow warriors alongside him could he impose some form of order on this chaotic fight.

Tarvitz ran, realizing that gunfire was directed at him from all angles. He charged through the ruins of a grand dining hall and into a cavernous stonewalled kitchen.He kept running and smashed his way through the ruins until he found himself in the streets of the Choral City. A burning gunship streaked overhead and crashed into a building in an orange plume of flame as gunfire stuttered throughout the ruins he had just vacated and Angron’s roaring cut through the din of battle.

The magnificent dome of the Precentor’s Palace rose above the battle unfolding across the blackened remains of the city.

As Tarvitz made his way through the carnage towards his beloved Emperor’s Children, he promised that if he was to meet his death on this blasted world, then he would meet it amongst his battle-brothers, and in death defy the hatred the Warmaster had sown amongst them.