"Our charges, my lord?" asked Sergeant Viejo, even as he too burst from the cover of the trees.

Damn our charges, cursed Cortez. Our brothers need us.

"Jadeberry Hill," Kantor snapped between breaths. "They'll be safe at the top."

Kantor was almost on the orks now, but they had yet to notice the imminent attack from their rear. Tending towards tunnel-vision in a fight, they rarely noticed anything but the foe in front of them. It was a weakness the Crimson Fists had exploited many times throughout their history of violent encounters with them.

Kantor reached striking range and plunged in amongst them, a living storm of violence and revenge. His power fist smashed his enemies aside, pulping organs and flesh wherever it connected, shattering bone.

Pressed together by their sheer weight of numbers, the orks hardly knew what hit them. They were still reeling from the sudden attack of the Chapter Master when Cortez and the others joined the fray. Again, Cortez felt centuries of relentless training take over. Time seemed to slow down around him, as if he existed in some kind of bubble in which his synapses operated that much faster than everything else. Surprised orks turned to engage him, and were rendered headless before they could even raise their blades and guns in his direction. Others, just beyond these first, did manage to slash out at him, but the blows seemed absurdly slow to his super-charged senses, and he almost laughed aloud as he parried them on his ceramite vambraces. His pistol barked at point-blank range, killing almost as messily as his power fist.

Cortez did not turn to check on his brothers. He trusted that they fought as he did, and he was right, but none save Kantor himself could match the lethal speed and prowess of the 4th Company captain.

Before Cortez realised what had happened, he found himself on the other side of the ork horde. The barricades were right there in front of him. He had carved an avenue of death straight through the aliens.

He raced forward and leapt over the wall of armour plate and razorwire, then turned back to face the orks and resumed firing his pistol, every shot a kill, eliminating close range targets with a speed he could never duplicate on a mere training range. It needed the energy of real battle, the flow of adrenaline that only truly life-threatening danger brought forth.

As he fired again and again, he saw Pedro Kantor whirling among the ranks of the enemy, severing arteries with his long, gold-hilted blade, spraying the air with crimson drops. Where his sword did not cut, his power fist obliterated everything it touched. Its power was incredible. It was master-crafted, as beautiful as it was deadly and, to Cortez's eyes, it had never been as beautiful as it was at that moment, employed in the slaughter of those that had so gravely wounded his Chapter.

Cortez heard a voice over the comm-link. It was a new voice-new in that it was not one of the sixteen other Astartes voices he had become so accustomed to over the last ten terrible days.

"Captain Cortez!" exclaimed the voice. "And the Chapter Master, by Dorn! Bless you, Deguerro."

"Identify yourself, brother," barked Cortez as he picked off a massive one-armed ork that was loping in to engage the Chapter Master from behind.

"I am Huron Grimm," said the voice, "Sergeant of the Second Company's First Tactical Squad. We... we have been waiting for you, captain."

Squads Viejo and Segala fought their way through the horde now, rallying around Kantor and cutting him some room to move. Cortez wondered where the rest of his own squad were until, through a gap, he saw them guarding the Chapter Master's rear.

Las- and plasma-fire streaked down from the top of Jadeberry Hill and ripped into the ork ranks, killing scores at a time.

"Get behind the barricades," Kantor yelled, and he charged forward and leapt clean over them, landing on his feet just beside Cortez.

The moment he landed, he spun, and twin muzzle flares licked out from the barrels of Dorn's Arrow. Massively muscled green bodies broke apart, erupting from the inside out as each mass-reactive shell detonated in quick succession.

Something was bothering Cortez even as he fought. "Where is Benizar?" he demanded over the link.

"Where are Teves, Secco and Olvero?" asked another. It sounded like Viejo.

No, thought Cortez. Do not let it be! They did not come this far to fall now.

But they had.

More plasma-fire streaked down into the middle of the orks, killings so many, burning and maiming others, and a space cleared in the churning ranks. Through it, Cortez saw an armoured monstrosity with a great horned helm lift one of his brothers into the air, one massive, blood-slick power claw grasping the Astartes by the neck.

It was the leader of the ork assault. Did the creature feel Cortez's eyes on him? Did it feel the captain's hate stabbing out at it through all the noise and the killing? Perhaps it did. It turned its wicked red eyes towards Cortez and a sickening alien grin split its massive, tusk-filled maw. With Cortez's eyes locked to it, the ork snapped shut the blades of its power claw. Snikkt!

A blue-armoured body fell lifeless to the blood-soaked ground. For a moment, the Space Marine's helmet, his severed head still inside, remained balanced on the huge claw. Then the ork boss flicked it away, as if it were mere garbage.

"Bastard!" roared Cortez, and he leaped over the barricade once more, barrelling into the orks, heading straight for the murderous abomination in the middle.

"Alessio!" shouted Kantor over the link, but there was no reaching him. Instead, his fellow Fists concentrated their fire around him, helping to cut him a path.

Dimly, Cortez registered their aid. The orks on either side of him fell with great melon-sized wounds that exploded in their flesh. From somewhere high on his left, there was a great flash of light, and howls of agony burst from alien throats. He heard the distinctive shriek of a missile, and felt the ground under him shake as it struck thirty metres away. The explosion sent a fountain of blood and cooked flesh into the air to rain down a moment later.

The Crimson Fists on the hilltop, he realised, were still giving their support.

Then he was in front of the black-armoured beast with the horned helm. His target. The focus of his rage. He noticed the black and white checks on the monster's battle-scarred armour. He noticed the icon on its banner of human skin, a red skull shaped like that of a bull auroch. And he noticed the size difference between them. The ork boss towered over him. Even hunched, the beast was at least a metre taller than he.

"Keep the others off me," snarled Cortez over the link. But he needn't have bothered. The ork boss bellowed something in what was just barely a language, and the closest orks pressed aside, making space.

"That's right," said Cortez, a lupine grin twisting his features. "One-on-one." He fingered the grip of his knife, flexed the thick digits of his power fist. "Let's have it, monster!"

The words blared from his helmet's vox-amp at maximum volume.

The ork growled back, recognising a challenge by its tone, though the words themselves were meaningless noise to its ragged ears. Its long metal claws snapped open and shut, as if its whole right arm had a mind of its own, and a beastlike appetite for raw, bloody flesh.

In the other arm, it held a chainaxe no mere man could have hefted into the air. The weapon's teeth were an angry blur, whirring too fast to see. It was this weapon the creature raised first, opening the combat with a blistering lateral swipe that Cortez avoided by millimetres, leaning back on his rear foot as the blade swept by.

For all that armour, all that bulk, the monster was fast.

But Cortez knew he was faster.

The fight was on. There was little any of the others could do save to continue taking their own deadly toll on the rest of the ork band. They knew better than to interfere directly. Honour forbade it. One-on-one, Cortez had said, and that was how it would be.

To the 4th Company captain, the universe seemed to shrink. There was nothing else, only he and his opponent locked in struggle of life and death, the definition of existence.

Soon, there would be only one.

Death surrounded them as their weapons clashed again and again, but they paid it no heed. They were well-matched, and the sound of blow after clashing blow resounded in the damp air. Cortez snarled as his power fist was, once again, deflected. The ork boss' great snapping claw was sheathed in a power field of its own. Every time the deadly claw met the Space Marine's huge red fist, there were arcs of lethal, crackling energy.

Against the monster's chainaxe, the captain's combat blade looked pathetically small, but it was the skill with which the knife was wielded that truly mattered. Every time the monster ripped through the air with its axe, Cortez shifted just enough to avoid the blow, and, little by little, his slashing stabbing counterattacks began to take their toll. Thick ork blood started to stream from the gaps in the beast's armour, and Cortez was sure the monster's blistering swipes were beginning to slow, just fractionally, perhaps, but enough to offer him the opening he would need for a killing stroke.

The ork boss now seemed to sense the fight was not going its way. It changed tactics, feinting with a wide claw-swipe and bull-rushing Cortez when the captain moved to parry.

It worked. Cortez found himself grappling, wrestling desperately to stay on his feet. If he went to the ground under the bulk of all that armour and green muscle, he knew he would not be getting back up. He knew it would be the end of him.

Was this the moment? Were all the stories, all the legends of his immortality, to end here? He had not thought a creature like this would claim that victory, but then again, even as he struggled, he conceded a grudging respect for the ork's raw combat prowess. The creature had successfully executed a feint, something no other ork had ever done in combat with Cortez. There was more going on inside that thick skull than he had given the beast credit for.

Cortez fought force with force, but only for a moment. He knew he would not win this fight on those terms. He had dropped his knife in order to free his right hand for grappling. It was locked around the beast's left wrist, though it couldn't close entirely over it. That wrist was as thick as Cortez's knee. His power fist was, likewise locked around the armoured housing of the monster's great metal claw, but the energy fields were reacting, making the contact slippery, like two magnets of opposite charge repelling each other.

The ork had dropped its chainaxe to lunge forward and grab its enemy. It knew it had only to fall on Cortez for the battle to be won. It pressed all its weight forward, and tossed its head from side to side, trying to pierce Cortez's visor with its sharp steel horns.

A deep, wet laugh began in the creature's throat. It sensed victory was close. Soon, it would crush the Space Marine to the ground, sit astride him, and snip off his limbs, one after another. It knew that humans were soft beneath their shells. Their flesh parted as easily as the flesh of a fruit. The ork liked the parting of that flesh. It liked the hot sprays of red that accompanied it. It liked the noises the humans made, the high screams and agonised roars they vented in their final moments.

Now was that moment. The ork thrust forward one more time with all its strength, piston-boosted legs lending it irresistible power.

Cortez's legs started to buckle under him, but this was what he had been waiting for, the ork abomination's final forward push. This was the moment the ork was most vulnerable.

Cortez twisted hard, shifting the direction of his own energy, not forward against the creature as it expected, but backwards and to the left, moving with it, adding his own momentum to his enemy's.

It happened. The ork found its massive bulk off-balance, with no hope of recovery. It teetered forward on one tree-thick leg, desperate to regain its equilibrium.

Cortez was already behind it. He kicked out at the monster's supporting leg, his ceramite boot connecting sharply with the back of its knee.

The creature went down hard, its armour cracking the rockcrete underneath it. It flailed, its claw slashing back and forth, frantic swipes intended to sever the Space Marine's legs. But Cortez didn't stay still long enough to get caught. He stamped down on the ork's lower back with his left boot, raised his power fist over his head, and punched straight down into the metal plate, his knuckles passing through into the hot, bloody meat beneath.

The ork howled in pain.

Cortez found what he was looking for. He closed his metal digits around it and yanked hard, then raised his prize above his head and roared in triumph.

In his oversized, blood-drenched gauntlet, he held a large section of the monster's spine.

Other orks turned away from the barricades, sensing something had changed. They saw Cortez standing over their fallen leader, the strongest of their tribe. They saw the massive body beneath his boot and the gleaming white bone in his upraised hand. Of all things, orks recognised strength most of all, and here it stood before them, a strength they could not overcome. Not here. Not now.

The mob split, turning from the Imperial barricades and racing back towards the cover of the ruined buildings nearby. Bolter-fire chased them and a score more went down with wounds in their backs the size of grapefruit.

Cortez watched them go and, finally, lowered his arm.

He cast the ork vertebrae to the ground.

Someone was calling him over the link. The voice eased him out of the battle-rush, soothing him, slowing his primary heart back to a steady beat and sending his secondary heart back into its sleeping state.

It was Pedro Kantor. "Well fought," he said simply.

Cortez could hear tension, not pride, in the Chapter Master's voice. He was about to reply when another voice beat him to it.

"Armour!" It was Sergeant Tirius. The Devastator Squad leader was still on top of Jadeberry Hill. "Sergeant Grimm, ork tanks are pressing towards us from the streets to the south. I see twenty. We'll not be able to hold this time. Our ammunition is almost out. Will you give my squad permission to descend?"

Grimm turned to the Chapter Master, immediately deferring to him.

"We had human refugees with us," Kantor said to Tirius. "They were ordered to high ground during the fight. Are they with you?"

"They are, lord," replied Tirius. "One died on the ascent. An old man. His heart gave out."

Cortez winced. Surely it was Dasat. Kantor would take that hard, no doubt.

The Chapter Master paused only briefly, before ordering Squad Tirius to shepherd the refugees down the side of the hill at once. Then he addressed Sergeant Grimm. "I cannot tell you, sergeant, what it means that you held this passage open for us. I swear to you that you will be honoured properly when there is time."

Grimm answered without hesitation. "Your words are honour enough for a dozen lifetimes, my lord. And seeing you alive is a reward even greater. We so hoped it would be you."

"How did you know anyone was coming this way?"

"The Librarians, my lord. They felt it. Epistolary Deguerro ordered us to hold the underpass for as long as we could."

Cortez was climbing over the barricades for a final time. "Deguerro?" he said.

Sergeant Grimm faced him. His voice was heavy with grief as he replied, "Captain Alvez no longer leads us."

"You cannot mean..." said the Chapter Master.

"My lord," said Grimm, "the captain gave his life in battle two days ago. More than anything, I wish he could have lived to see you return. I don't think he ever really believed you had perished at Arx Tyrannus."

The link went silent. Cortez pushed a coil of razor-wire aside and climbed over a cluster of concrete-filled drums before coming to a stop at Kantor's side.

"Drigo," said Kantor softly. "Dorn's blood. Not him, too."

Cortez could hear the aching sadness in his friend's voice.

No one said another word until Squad Tirius and the refugees joined them at the mouth of the underpass a moment later.

A woman with matted blonde hair crossed to the Chapter Master and knelt at his feet.

The Space Marines looked down at her. The dirt on her face was streaked with tear tracks. "My lord," she sobbed. "Dasat is dead." She glanced fearfully in the direction of Sergeant Tirius. "He would not let us bring the body down from the hill."

Tirius nodded to confirm this.

"That is Jadeberry Hill," Kantor told the woman, bending to lift her to her feet. She was as fragile as a doll, her bones showing sharply beneath her malnourished flesh. "It has been a special place since the days Rynn himself claimed this world for the Imperium. Let Dasat lie there, at peace. When this war is over, his passing will be marked more appropriately, his and that of so many others. For now, though, we press on. Our journey is not quite over. You are not safe yet."

Nodding obediently, stifling her sobs, the woman moved off to instruct the refugees.

Cortez detected the first sign of the approaching tanks, a tremor in the ground beneath his feet. Kantor must have felt it to, because he gestured to the cavernous mouth of the underpass and said, "Lead the way, Sergeant Grimm. We should hurry."

"This way, my lord," said the sergeant, and began his descent down into the tunnel.

The others followed. Behind them, the rubble-strewn streets began to shake.

SEVENTEEN.

Jadeberry Underpass, New Rynn City Pedro Kantor was bone-weary, but, as he marched behind the men of Squad Grimm, he was determined not to let it show. He sensed they were all weary, the brothers that surrounded him, but he, more than any other, had to keep his exhaustion at bay a while longer. He was back among his own now. They would be looking to him for guidance, for answers, for a path into the future that would ensure the survival of their ancient brotherhood. It was up to him to provide all these things and more, no matter how impossible that seemed right now.

The tunnel was pitch-black. There were lights at regular intervals along the walls and ceilings, but their power came from a station outside the city limits, and it had fallen to the orks early in the conflict. The Crimson Fists moved easily enough in the dark, of course, their visors and gene-boosted eyes revealing every last detail to them, but the refugees needed light if they were to keep up. Thus, Brother Galica travelled at the rear, holding a lit flare for them to follow. Now and then, when their pace became too slow, he offered words of encouragement, or reminded them of the greenskins at their backs. The latter never failed to spur them on.

The underpass was broad, perhaps forty metres across with a ceiling twelve metres above the surface of the road. Pillars supported all that rock and earth, some of them sculpted in the likeness of hooded figures, the forty-two acolytes who had assisted the famed Imperial Reclamator, Saldano Malverro Rynn. The eerie red light from Galica's flare cast sharp black shadows along the folds of their stone robes.

Kantor's eyes picked out the boxy forms of two large trucks in the gloom up ahead. "Might we not travel faster in those?" he asked Grimm.

"They have another purpose, lord," Grimm replied. "Their carriages are packed with high-explosive. Once we have passed at a safe distance, I will arm them. The first orks to reach them will trigger a detonation that will bring the ceiling, and the Pakomac River, crashing down on their heads."

Kantor nodded. "Let's hope the orks give chase in staggering numbers."

Cortez gave an amused snort.