Blood Gorgons - By Henry Zou Page 0,73
The thin skin of a steel carriage would not resist bolter shot.
Drawn out in front of the camp, standing in a thin line, came two thousand Bassiq braves. They faced the enemy, standing against them with bow and arrow, throwing hatchet and firing their heirloom rifles. They were crested with massive feathers, quivering fans of squall pinion atop heads and shoulders. Their faces were painted red, like their brightly coloured shukas. The red would make them fearless, or so Barsabbas had been told.
The enemy advanced steadily. Their boots and tracks crushed the cactus fields. The engines became a monotone growl.
Anxious and rightfully frightened, the kinships dug deep within the sheltered encampment. They were vulnerable. Mothers hid their children under beaded blankets.
The old men sat together and spoke of younger days and death. Many more – tens of thousands of people – crowded behind the parked road trains, peering between boarded windows and carriage gaps for a glimpse of the battleline beyond. Far deeper into the camp, the sickened and infected began to spasm, as if sensing great evil.
Higher up, on the lower ridges of the mountain, Barsabbas signalled for Gumede to raise the totem standard. Each of the waiting flocks returned signal with their own kinship totems. There were almost sixteen thousand riders up there. Sixteen thousand birds clacked and cawed, waiting to stampede down the slope.
‘Weep not. Everything must have its day,’ said Barsabbas, leaning down from his quad-cage to shout at Gumede above the stormy clash of sound. ‘The mettle of your entire culture will be measured in this one engagement.’
The chief seemed to understand. He raised his lasrifle and lanced the signal upwards. A red beam, straight and true, pierced the sky. With a roar, sixteen thousand voices raised as one, the plainsmen charged down the mountain.
THE SEPTIC INFANTRY began to fire, just three hundred metres distant from the plainsmen.
Las‐shots and solid slugs came whistling through the organ pipe cactus. They were horrible, rapid fire volleys that cut through the braves in droves. A line of dust plumes kicked up in front of the road trains as dozens upon dozens of unarmoured braves writhed and buckled beneath the firestorm. Support weapons punched clean holes through the carriages behind them, landing ordnance and incendiary directly into the camp itself.
For the first time in his life, Barsabbas felt the fear of facing superior forces. He understood now what his foes had felt when they faced the overwhelming might of an Astartes battle force. Yet he waited, despite the carnage, waiting for the enemy to grow eager, to become lustful in the excitement of slaughter. On the slopes below them, braves 107
continued to die, odd arrows hissing fitfully in reply. Barsabbas waited, waited more, until the enemy drew level in the fields below.
And then they charged.
They charged, and what a stampede it was. Like a rolling avalanche, sixteen thousand talon squalls came. One‐tonne beasts, axe‐beaks snapping, pumping thighs slamming the dirt with black avian nails. They gathered a wild, heedless momentum.
A rolling tide swallowed the Septic battle line from the flank. The talon squalls crashed into and over the infantry platoons, rolling, tumbling, thrashing. Bodies were trampled.
Shots were fired at close range. Hatchets rose and fell. The men in ghastly hoods fought back with bayonets and pistols, but the crushing juggernaut birds simply ran over them.
Talon squalls sprinted onto the gun platforms. The birds began to peck at the fighting vehicles like shelled prey, clambering atop the chassis to snap at the crew compartments with their long necks and plucking them out like morsels with their clawed feet.
Engaged to the front and suddenly outflanked, the companies of Septic infantry buckled.
Their firing lost all focus and coordination. A young brave, no more than sixteen, pounced his bird atop an autocannon trailer, holding two bloodied sacks in one hand as trophies, a slick hatchet whirling in his other.
Surveying the field, Barsabbas dared to think that perhaps the braves might yet send the enemy into retreat.
Then the Plague Marines engaged.
They waded into the fray slowly, as if boredom had finally compelled them to action.
They were massive, as tall as a mounted rider and broader than the breast of a talon squall rooster. Incarnations of pestilence, they seemed invincible. Hatchets and arrows skipped off the dirty white surface of their plate, barely scratching the lime green bacterial colonies that beveined the enamel. Helmets with wide, trumpet‐like rebreathers and ugly, mismatched goggles encased their heads. They leaked grey and yellow fluid when pierced but showed