The Emperor's Legion (Watchers of the Throne #1) - Chris Wraight Page 0,91

into that horde’s heart, aiming for the high stages of an old landing pad. Both Alcuin and I had seen the potential of it – a high raised platform, ringed by stairways, commanding a vantage over the eastern portion of the huge battlefield. If we could make that, I judged, it would serve two purposes – to give us higher ground to defend against the endless tide of the enemy, and to make us visible to Valoris’ forces advancing from the north. If we could endure long enough, inward teleportation or airdrop could secure the position, opening a second front against the enemy and dividing them.

We had almost gained that location when the Sisters reached us. Even as I wondered why I was killing the daemonic horde with such fluency, I saw the woman I would later know as Tanau Aleya driving into them with all the fury of a baresark. She threw herself around in what I might have thought was reckless blood-mania, had it not been so bluntly effective. She did not engage the enemy so much as run through them. My first thought on witnessing such a style of combat was that she would soon exhaust herself, allowing the daemons to take advantage once she tired, but of course that was to miss the purpose of the single-minded charge – they had worked so hard in order to link with us, to form up into a combination that the Neverborn would find impossible to counter.

After that we were fighting together, sliding in amongst one another, dancing and parrying and interweaving as if born to it. Alcuin’s squad must have found the Sisters uniquely unsettling, even painful, but in the thick of that combat they had no choice but to adapt. The ten of us formed into a tight circle of bodies, myself and the Grey Knights taking the brunt of the physical assault, the Sisters directing their null-effect from the shadow of our blades. Whenever one of us tired or made a mistake, another would leap into the breach. We left a trail of slaughter behind us, and finally gained the foot of the stairs. I looked up, expecting to see the platform rear above us, ready to plan our assault on the high position.

Only then did I see what we had attracted, rushing across the fire-swept platform to meet us.

Aleya calls such things by the ancient name, shaitainn. That captures the stature and the horror better than the Low Gothic, I think. It was truly gigantic, far greater than any foe I have engaged before or since. It reared high into the blood-rain storm, its wings lashing like the sails of some ancient galleon. Its cloven hooves sunk deep into the rockcrete with every step, breaking the earth into fresh plumes of flame. Its movements were horrific – bleeding with the same power a Titan has, but bound up in sinew and gristle and bone. Its axe alone was the size of a Dreadnought chassis, and as the blade whistled through the air it left a trail of fire in its wake.

It crashed down onto the platform, threw its muscle-corded arms wide, and roared in challenge. The gale of that roar sent the lesser daemons flying into one another, and even we had to lean into that foul, spittle-flecked storm of meat-rotten breath.

I could sense perversion radiating from its burning heart over the dampening aegis generated by the Sisters. It was like a furnace, a cauldron of boiling and uncontrollable rage. Something about it spoke of eternity, of its near-infinite malice dragged up from the deepest vortices of the hell-plane in which it was enthroned.

I swung Gnosis round, its blade-edge crackling with disruptor energies.

‘This is His realm,’ I told it, calmly. ‘You feared it before. You will fear it again.’

Then I was moving, vaulting up the stairs, generating the momentum I would need to counter the daemon’s incredible mass.

None of my companions hesitated. They all came with me, racing up the stairs, their blades poised. Alcuin was at my left shoulder, crying out words of fell power and denunciation, his daemon-hammer now psychically inert but still physically powerful. His battle-brothers laid down a rain of shells from their wrist-mounted storm bolters. Aleya was at my right hand, her silence if anything more daunting, her eyes black with fury, and behind her came the others, running in lock-step, charging into the heart of darkness.

As I reached the summit I leapt high, bracing my spear to meet the