The Emperor's Legion (Watchers of the Throne #1) - Chris Wraight Page 0,97
walls, I knew that the victory had only been fleeting, and that the real change had already taken place.
We had grown used to keeping our fears at arm’s length, locked behind Cadia’s distant barrier. Now, with the faltering of the Astronomican and the waning of our long watch, we would never again be able to lie to ourselves about the nature of what we faced. If they could strike at us here, they could strike at us anywhere. No walls would be too high, no protection too complete, no hidden citadel beyond their reach.
I turned away then, unwilling to see the final carnage unfold. My hands were still shaking, my cheeks moist. I felt empty, like a dried-up husk thrown from the fire.
The Palace still stood. It was everything else that had been ruined.
Valerian
I did not leave that battlefield until the weak sun was high in the sky and the clouds glowed a dirty pink. Slaying the bloodthirster was only the beginning, and there were thousands of lesser daemonkind still to contest. The creatures of the warp loathe and fear one another far more than they do us, and so the killing of their master did not daunt them. If anything, it freed them to commit even more reckless acts of ferocity. They surged up the stairs and streamed across the platform, yowling and bounding with abandon.
We might yet have died, had we not remained close to one another. My fighting was badly hampered by my wound, although my sinews reknit and my bones re-formed even as I still wielded Gnosis, such was the resilience of my gene-wrought body. Alcuin was the linchpin in those moments, and had been given fresh vigour by the sight of the daemon’s demise. He led the counter-assault, smiting the Neverborn with a viciousness that I doubt any other could have matched just then. He truly hated those things, and I must admit that it made him brutally efficient.
We took more losses, though, and as I looked out at that ocean of detestation I suspected our resistance would only last a finite time before it was snuffed out.
We were lucky, I suppose. Or, as I do not strictly believe in luck, we must have been favoured yet by His gaze. I had begun to think of myself as being somewhat beyond His consideration since my failure at the Throne, and thus did not look for any especial indulgence from the ways of fate, but our duel with the bloodthirster had been noticed. Valoris had dispatched cadres of our finest warriors to engage all eight of them, and he himself had led the charge against those at the heart of the horde. Just as I began to think we would be overwhelmed at last, golden lifters braved the blood-rain and the fire-lightning to deliver Terminator-clad brethren to our side, as well as the Contemptor-entombed Ynnades, who strode from his attack craft surrounded by a glittering force aegis and waded into the daemons with disdainful majesty.
Then I knew we would survive. I took it upon myself to protect the Sisters of Silence, whose efforts in reaching us, and then warding us, had been exhausting for them. Only three remained alive, including the one who had downed the bloodthirster and saved my life.
I swore to myself that she would not perish, and that if I lived that day I would find a way to repay the debt of honour to her. That was, in hindsight, a strange thing for me to think. I was not used to having significant dealings with those not of my own kind, and in any case we did not generally indulge in such concepts of honour debt as I am told that the Wolves of Fenris do. Still, it gave me a purpose and a balance to my fighting.
So we saw out those grinding hours. The platform was held, and more troops were airlifted in, and then we were able to push down the stairs again to retake the plain below. Valoris led a second counter-assault following the destruction of the last greater daemon, and after that we could hammer our way out towards the perimeter of the old void port.
I killed more creatures of the enemy in those hours than I had done over hundreds of years previously. Despite my wounds, I found the combat – as Navradaran might have said – invigorating. It gave me pleasure to see those things crushed beneath the heel of my spear. It gave me pleasure