Born of Flame Read online

  Heka’tan glowered at an Army overseer who was trying to restore order in his platoon.

  ‘Bring your men with me, soldier.’

  The overseer gave a sharp salute at the captain. ‘For the glory of Terra and the Emperor!’ He turned to bellow at his men with greater vigour. Across the jungle expanse, the Salamanders were wrangling control of the Army units and clearing a path. With the Legion as a spear-point, the Army would move behind them in support.

  Despite the death of the stegosaurs and the multiple defeats being inflicted across the two-kilometre stretch of jungle where the Salamanders had touched down, the eldar were tenacious. From the backs of their lizard-steeds, riders put up a whickering salvo of rifle fire. Pterosaurs executed lightning attacks on the legionaries until they’d lost too many to the Salamanders bolters. A baying stegosaur stomped defiantly until a missile burst tore it open. As the beast died, it rolled over and crushed a pair of raptor riders.

  Against the Legiones Astartes, the hit and run tactics of the eldar were blunted.

  As the Salamanders advanced, the jungle ahead of them began to change. Branches entwined together, leaves and vines thickened to form a union. Within minutes an arboreal impasse had grown in front of the legionaries. Through the retinal lenses of his battle-helm, Heka’tan could still detect multiple body traces from the enemy where they waited in the gloom. The faster-moving elements of the eldar force were already circling again. Raptor packs bounded across his peripheral vision in a colourful heat blur while pterosaur kindreds found perches in the highest trees from where they could launch an ambush.

  The icon of Fifth-Sergeant Bannon flashed up alongside targeting data on Heka’tan’s left retinal lens as the captain opened up a channel.

  ‘Hell and flame, brother.’

  An affirmation symbol flashed once before the entire Salamanders front line withdrew and fell back to suppressing fire protocols.

  The Army overseer, whose platoon was joined to Heka’tan’s squad, took this as a cue to drive the rallied Phaerians forward, until the legionary stopped him.

  ‘Not yet,’ he said, holding the human back.

  ‘We are ready to die for the Emperor’s glory, my liege!’

  ‘And so you shall, human, but step forward now and your death will serve no cause at all.’ Heka’tan gestured with his chainsword at movement within the Salamanders ranks.

  Sergeant Bannon brought six flamer squads to the front of the line.

  ‘Hell and flame!’

  His cry was answered by a pulsating wave of superheated promethium. The jungle shrivelled in the conflagration. On the flanks, incendiaries went up where the circling raptors made contact with the chains of frag grenades laid by Salamanders Scouts operating unseen at the fringes of the battle zone.

  Drop-ships filled the sky now, the flames savaging the jungle reflected on their metallic underbellies. Blackened tree stumps and crisped plant-life broke apart in the downdrafts from the Stormbirds’ descent thrusters. Ash laced the breeze. Everything burned.

  Heka’tan’s gaze was drawn skywards as the firestorm raged. One ship, apart from the others, had yet to disgorge those within its hold.

  ‘Father is not joining us.’

  Gravius had noticed the primarch’s absence too.

  Heka’tan’s fellow brother-captain was close enough to see him eyeing the smoke-wreathed heavens. His Fifth Company was advancing alongside. Over four hundred Legiones Astartes to tame a simple stretch of jungle – the word ‘overkill’ sprang to mind.

  Heka’tan replied on a closed channel. ‘He’ll come soon, Gravius,’ he said. ‘When he’s needed.’

  But the lonely Stormbird’s ramp stayed shut.

  In the ship’s hold, the heat was beyond human endurance.

  The warriors within didn’t sweat. Their breathing was even in their scalloped, draconian armour. Their steady exhalations made the air redolent with the tang of sulphur.

  One warrior stood apart from the rest. A serrated halberd was clasped in his gauntleted fist. Sharp dragon teeth half the length of gladii ran up the sides of his battle-helm, which he held in the opposite hand. Though the deck rumbled violently with the force of the Stormbird’s engines, he remained statue-still. A crest of lava-red hair, like a blade, cut his bald scalp into two perfectly even hemispheres. He kept his head bowed as he addressed the giant towards the back of the hold.

  ‘The Legion has taken to the field. Do we engage, my lord?’

  The abyssal voice answered, ‘Not yet. Hold, as the anvil tempers them.’

  Breath fogging the air through his mouth grille, Heka’tan checked his armour’s autosenses. Temperature readings were below freezing. Hoarfrost crystallising the surrounding ravaged trees made him discount a system malfunction. Ice and snow were extinguishing the fiery purge. Reacting to the assault, Bannon pressed harder and ordered his battle-brothers to open up their flamer nozzles. Hot light flared briefly but the creeping frost intensified, slowing pegging the flames back.

  Promethium burned quickly. Sergeant Bannon couldn’t sustain the firestorm much longer before a reload was needed. By now, frost-rimed leaves and snow-dusted trails flecked with frozen pools supplanted the fire-blackened wasteland created by the flamers. Blasted trees became crystal sculptures, wizened plant fronds were transformed into ice-bladed fans as an eldritch winter swept impossibly over the jungle. Behind the aggressive cold front, the thaw came just as swiftly. From under the snow, leaves were reborn anew. Fresh buds poked from the ash, growing from saplings to fully fledged trees in moments. The tropical heat was reasserted and the destruction wrought by the Salamanders largely undone.

  There could be only one explanation Heka’tan knew of.

  He hissed into the feed. ‘The aliens have psykers nearby. Seek them out.’

  Hunting the witches proved unnecessary. They emerged from the forest, coursing with green lightning. A bolt struck a legionary in the chest, announcing the psykers’ presence. Tiny ripples of energy arced from the impact point as Brother Oranor quivered in electro-shock. Before his smoking armour-carcass hit the ground, his squad responded. Bolter explosions blossomed and dissipated against a psychic shield warding the eldar as the Salamanders vented their rage impotently. The twelve-strong coven psy-crafted in tandem, aggressing and defending alternately. Invisible kine-shields bloomed ephemerally with incandescent missile strikes. Flamer bursts flared against the psychic wards in lurid, oily colour, but the witches were left unscathed to unleash tendril-lightning into the legionaries that split battleplate with ease.

  Above the roar of the storm, Heka’tan listened hard.

  ‘Singing, brother-captain?’ asked Luminor, his Apothecary.

  Heka’tan nodded slowly. He saw a bare-headed witch amongst the coven. Indeed, her lips were moving with the foul canting of the song.

  ‘It is sorcery. Close your senses to it.’

  Brother Angvenon was at the captain’s opposite shoulder, and gestured with the bladed sarissa on his bolter. ‘Something is happening…’

  Too late, Heka’tan saw the danger.

  ‘Fall back!’

  Spewing from the ground, a great tangling thorn snared the Salamander vanguard as the eldar used their witchery to turn the jungle against them. The supporting Army units were choked and crushed. Heka’tan lashed out with his chainsword, but the mechanism was quickly fouled and overwhelmed. The snagged teeth churned to a halt. He struggled against the binding strands but the roots and vines lashed around his limbs and pulled. Corded muscle in his arms and back bunched with the effort of trying to escape. He reached for the Army overseer but he and his men were quickly smothered. Their crooked fingers went into spasm as they died and then disappeared completely as the jungle consumed them.

  A subtle change in the witch’s siren song caused the serpentine roots to contract further, pulling down weapons and dragging on limbs. Though they fought it, the Salamanders were getting sucked into the earth like the human soldiers before them.

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nbsp; ‘Turn!’ Sergeant Bannon rotated his flamers to engage the living jungle but all six squads were enveloped before they could release what was left of their fuel canisters.

  The entire front line of the Salamanders was entangled by the choking and crushing vegetation, stalling the assault.

  The whooping cry of the raptor riders cut through the air, followed by the deep droning of stegosaurs. Shadows of pterosaurs wheeling and diving from above flashed across the Salamanders’ armour.

  ‘Fight yourselves free! Retaliate!’ Heka’tan broke a wrist loose and sketched a line of explosive bolter fire into the clinging morass. His honour guard did the same, chainblades and gladii hacking at the possessed foliage.

  Ahead of him, he could hear the eldar returning.

  This time, they were not alone.

  A low bellow shook the ground under Heka’tan’s feet. He paused in freeing his sword-arm to follow the source of the sound. From the arboreal depths, a pack of massive alpha-predators joined the reinvigorated eldar assault. Three times the height of a legionary, heavily muscled with taut sinews and scaled hide, the carnodons were immense. Though not as bulky as a stegosaur, they exchanged mass for killing speed and a pair of deadly, saw-toothed jaws. Cold intelligence blazed in the monsters’ eyes, the eldar riders on their backs as imperious as feral jungle kings.

  The predator pack broke in front of the rallying eldar, easily outpacing the smaller raptors and cumbersome stegosaurs. Even the pterosaurs, their riders circling the field like carrion-eaters, were reluctant to attack with the carnodons so close.

  Ensnared, Heka’tan knew the Salamanders would take heavy losses. On the right flank, he saw Venerable Brother Attion rip free of his arboreal bonds and counter-charge one of the alpha-predators. The Dreadnought slugged it with his power fist, releasing a spray of blood from the monster’s snout. He tried to bring his heavy bolter to bear but the beast battered it down with its claw and the barrage chewed up earth instead of flesh.

  Seizing the carnodon’s neck with his power fist, Attion held its snapping jaws at bay as he attempted to wrestle it down. The pistons in the warrior’s legs strained against the beast’s ferocious strength. His helmeted head, not so unlike those of his brothers, showed no hint of emotion, though the retinal lenses glowed in simulation of a Salamander’s fiery gaze and the servos whining in the mechanisms feeding power to his arms betrayed the struggle that was playing out between monster and man-machine.

  Attion released a spit of flame from a shoulder-mounted weapon and for a moment he had the upper hand, before the carnodon’s massively thick tail whipped out and swept the Salamander’s legs from under him. Attion lost his grip on the creature’s throat and fell.

  Behind his faceplate, Heka’tan’s eyes widened. He’d never seen a Dreadnought downed so easily. They were warriors-eternal, honoured with interment in a potent suit of monstrous battle armour. Before Attion could retaliate, the monster had clamped its jaw around the torso section that housed the venerable warrior’s atrophied body and squeezed.

  Oaths of moments and scrolls of parchment were severed by the creature’s razor-sharp fangs and loosed on the heady breeze. Decades of honourable deeds, promises of valour and loyalty disappeared in seconds. Impossibly hard adamantium buckled and creaked under the incredible pressure being exerted by the carnodon. Fissures ran up the torso section, widening to cracks as they met Attion’s helmet. All the while, the eldar rider looked on with hard-faced detachment. The Salamander’s sepulchral refuge was torn open. Beady, feral eyes regarded a legionary awash with blood-flecked amniotic fluid. The carnodon emitted a bellow to express its prowess and hunger. Red-rimed fangs were exposed in a brutal snarl, presaging Attion’s fate. He had fought during the Unification Wars and had been amongst the first of the Eighteenth to be born on Terra. It was not a fitting end for such a warrior.

  After it was done, the carnodon lifted its ruddy snout, not yet gorged with the small morsel Attion had provided. The monster’s rider lifted its power lance, summoning the others.

  Heka’tan’s struggles redoubled.

  Bannon’s flamers were the next to bear the brunt. Several legionaries were crushed underfoot upon impact with the carnodons, their battleplate dented and scraped by claw marks. Another was bitten in half, the beast tossing the warrior about like a rag before the torso parted.

  Superhuman blood and viscera rained down on the dead Salamander’s battle-brothers, invoking their anger. The same beast went for Bannon but the sergeant had his chainblade free and gouged a ragged line along the carnodon’s nose. Shed scales fell with a gush of the monster’s blood, anointing his small victory. Bannon tried to shift his body to defend against another attack but the root bindings slowed him enough for a second beast to rip off his arm. Bannon fought on with his bolt pistol, bleeding profusely and screaming defiance at the monsters.

  Heka’tan was watching, still half-pinned by the jungle, when the sergeant’s voice crackled over the comm-feed. His breath was ragged and speech didn’t come easy for him.

  ‘We’re done for, captain…’

  The lesser saurians were coming, picking off the injured, snapping at each other as they fought for dominance and for kills.

  The flamers were already being butchered. Seven of the monsters roamed amongst them, killing and maiming. As soon as the lesser raptors reached them…

  Heka’tan clenched his teeth. Bannon was lost.

  ‘Go with glory, brother. You will be remembered.’ The captain would make certain of it. His account to the remembrancers would leave out no detail of the sergeant’s heroism.

  Bannon gave his last reply. ‘In Vulkan’s name…’

  A blistering firestorm erupted across the jungle a few seconds later. Carnodons and the more eager raptors were engulfed by it as Bannon’s men detonated their flamers. The blaze swept across the front line, bathing the Salamanders in a cleansing fire, reducing the strangling roots to powder.

  Of the entangled Army units in the vanguard, there was no sign. A few Salamanders lay dead or seriously injured, some half submerged by the earth.

  Heka’tan shouted into the comm-feed. ‘Avenge them!’

  Debris from the burned vegetation swathed the battlefield in sepulchre-grey. Heka’tan and the survivors powered through the dirty snowfall of drifting flakes. Ahead of them, where the flamers had given their lives, seven barrow-like mounds stood upon the killing field. They were only dormant for a few seconds before each one collapsed in a deluge of displaced ash. Singed but very much alive, the carnodons emerged from the ash mounds and gave a collective roar as they charged the Salamanders rushing to meet them.

  Only a few of Bannon’s flamers had perished in the firestorm. Many, though blackened and burned, got to their feet and joined their brothers. Salamanders were a tenacious breed but it would take more than a stubborn refusal to die to defeat the monsters.

  Heka’tan’s rallying shout became a scream resonating with the sound of his chainblade. Targeting matrices within his battle-helm aligned over one of carnodons on a direct collision course. This was the pack leader, the one that had killed Attion. Gathering momentum with every massive stride, it carried an amount of force equivalent to a battle tank. Its fangs were as long as Heka’tan’s chainblade and could shred his battleplate with the ease of a power axe. No man, not even a Space Marine, could hope to stand against such a monster…

  But then Vulkan was so much more than either.

  The primarch landed in front of Heka’tan like a scaled god. His battle-armour was ancient and inviolable, fashioned by his own hand. Dragon heads and fiery iconography wrought from rare quartz made it ornate and unique. Overlapping plates of deep sea green, scalloped at the edges, promoted a reptilian aspect. One shoulder guard bore the head of Kesare, a beast he had slain long ago. The other was draped with his mantle, a scaled cloak of near-impregnable firedrake hide. Behind the snarling faceplate of his drake-helm were eyes as deep as lava chasms, the heat of their intensity rising off the prima
rch in a palpable aura. Drake cloak flaring with the engine wash of the Stormbird above, he brandished his forge hammer and a crackle of caged lightning ran up the haft.

  When he spoke it was like the shifting of the earth, as if his voice possessed the power to demolish mountains.

  ‘I am Vulkan, and I have killed fiercer beasts!’

  The carnodon slowed. Doubt flashed in its eyes.

  The eldar upon its back shrieked a clipped command. Its tattooed face was bare and showed all of the alien’s hate for the intruders.

  Baring its fangs, the monster rallied and opened its jaw wide for a killing lunge.

  Squaring his massive armoured shoulders, Vulkan gripped his hammer two-handed and swung. He was fast, faster than anyone wielding such a weapon had any right to be, and it took the eldar and its mount by surprise. The impact was spectacular. A grisly fusion of bone chips, brain matter and blood exploded where the carnodon’s head had been. A tremor rippled from the blow, pushing Heka’tan and the onrushing Salamanders to their knees. It fed outwards in an expanding shockwave, hitting the other carnodons, who reeled and careened into one another before crashing to the ground. The darting raptor packs were flattened. Riders tumbled. Momentum carried the beheaded monster in its death throes, carving a deep trench in the earth that became its grave.

  Vulkan ignored it and drove at the monsters that still drew breath.

  Seven warriors armoured in drake scale, bearing blades and bludgeons each unique in design, joined him.

  He roared to the Pyre Guard, ‘Slay them!’

  The hammer hand swung again. Three more times, lightning erupted from the god-weapon, equalled by the tally of carnodon bodies left broken and dead upon the charnel ground.

  Inspired by their liege-lord, the Salamanders cut the rest apart.

  Glory-fire burned in Heka’tan’s blood. To fight upon the same field as the primarch was a singular honour. He felt emboldened and empowered. The anvil had broken some, but he was alive and tempered into unbreakable steel. By the time it was over, his throat was hoarse and his heart sang with the litany of war.