Scipio nearly sank to his knees at the sight. Solinus steadied him. His voice was stern but genuine. 'That thing would have killed us all. You had no choice, brother.'

But Scipio felt differently. His inaction had caused Naius's demise; his bolter hand had slain what was left of Orad.

'I made my choice too late,' he breathed, avowing silently never to do so again. 'And it killed Orad. It killed them both.'

CHAPTER TWENTY.

Sicarius signalled the retreat. He'd cut a path through the necrons, dispatching one with every blow of the Tempest Blade. The air was thick with the stench of phasal shift. At their captain's command, the Ultramarines bled back into the ice-fog, their forms lit by the star-flash of bolter muzzle flares. Slow to react to the lightning a.s.sault, the necrons didn't even attempt to give chase. They settled for a desultory salvo of gauss-fire and then continued their advance towards Kellenport.

'Does this seem too easy to you, brother-captain?' asked Daceus when they were clear. He reaped a heavy toll with his power fist and was sweating with the effort of killing, but they'd barely dented the enemy's forces.

Sicarius's initial silence betrayed his anger. 'It's ineffective, sergeant,' he replied at last. 'Our attacks are of no consequence.' He opened up the battle-force-wide comms-feed. Though the necrons were blocking most vox-signals, it was only long distance communication that was affected.

The leaders of the attack groups he'd deployed to harry the necron phalanxes returned with similar replies. The mechanoids were defending themselves but otherwise had ignored them. Since their first foray, this was the fifth engagement. No one had, as of yet, managed to get close enough to the core of the force to ascertain if a high-level lord were present.

Sicarius clenched his fist, his rage impotent for now. 'Regroup, all squads.'

'Sir?' asked Daceus when his captain didn't make any move.

'This isn't working. I have to draw it out, Daceus.'

'My lord,' the voice of Sergeant Manorian crackled over the feed.

Sicarius was brusque. 'Speak.'

'The necrons have stopped moving.'

Sicarius acknowledged then cut the link. 'Something has changed.'

'A new weapon in their a.r.s.enal? Perhaps they're consolidating after our raids? They might be having an effect after all,' suggested Daceus.

'No, I don't think it's that.' Sicarius eyed the fog, as if searching it for the answer he wanted. 'But I will know the answer before we're done.'

Sicarius stared through Praxor's magnoculars, waiting for the rest of the force to join them. The Ultramarines would regroup in an area of spa.r.s.e ruins, part of one of Arcona City's commercia districts. Most of the megalopolis had been levelled by necron heavy artillery. These blackened nubs of debris were a rare feature on an otherwise bland and flattened landscape. The squads filtered in from the north and south; west was where the necron advance was coming from though, in truth, they dominated most of the planet and east led back to Kellenport. Ixion and Strabo, redeployed from the Thanatos Operation, arrived first on contrails of fire. Several of their number were wounded but they'd sustained no casualties.

Venatio was patching up the injured and stopped in front of his captain.

'I'll need to see that,' he said.

Lowering the scopes, Sicarius glared at him. 'Why do you think they've stalled their advance, Brother-Apothecary?'

'That's not my concern at this time. The injury to your shoulder is, however.'

A long cleft split part of the captain's pauldron and there was blood gumming the wound. It looked deep. Praxor had been taken aback at first when he'd seen it. He'd never known Sicarius to bleed. He knew he was flesh and blood, but Sicarius was such a peerless warrior, he had never witnessed more than a scratch against his armour. Praxor hoped it wasn't an omen.

The captain was about to protest again but Venatio's resolve was unwavering; so too was his stare. Sicarius pa.s.sed the scopes back to Praxor and seated himself on a chunk of ruin for the Apothecary to examine him.

'The shoulder: how is it?' Venatio was removing the cracked pauldron and was probing the mesh layer beneath to get at the wound.

'Stiff,' admitted Sicarius, rotating the blade once the armour was removed. Acutely aware he was being observed, he turned to Praxor.

'Watch them, brother-sergeant,' he said. 'I want to know the moment anything changes.'

Praxor nodded and continued where Sicarius had left off. There was a ridge of blackened stone just ahead of the Ultramarines position. It was a better vantage point to observe the necrons so he made for it.

Agrippen met him there.

'How do you defeat an endless foe?' Praxor asked after a few moments as he looked through the scopes.

'The same as any, with courage and honour,' the Dreadnought replied.

The ridge was little more than a spur of rock, a collapsed column or statue the damage and the ice made it hard to tell and could just about provide enough room for Praxor and the ancient.

'Our forces are battered, though. I would follow my captain into battle until I could no longer wield bolter and blade, but it is hard to see how we will prevail.'

'The Chapter has been bloodied before. Some wars are merely harder than others. It is here that we truly test ourselves and prove our strength.'

Praxor tried not to think of the remark as facile. So much of what he knew, or thought he knew, had been tested on d.a.m.nos. Not all of it had survived the journey.

He looked below and saw that the rest of the battle force had returned. Sicarius was gathering them for something big, some fresh a.s.sault as he sought his prize.

Praxor chastened himself such thoughts were unfitting for a s.p.a.ce Marine. He resolved to speak to Trajan at the earliest opportunity. He returned to the scopes.

'They are like statues. What are they waiting for?

'Perhaps they seek to gauge our next course of action,' suggested Agrippen.

Praxor lowered the magnoculars again and looked at the Dreadnought. 'Tell me, brother: how would Agemman have prosecuted this war?'

Agrippen's reply was emphatic but neutral. 'He would not have.'

'd.a.m.nos would have been left to burn?' Praxor was incredulous.

The Dreadnought fixed him with a glare from the vision slit in his sarcophagus. 'It would have been made made to burn.' to burn.'

'You think that d.a.m.nos is already lost?'

'It doesn't matter what I think. I serve the Chapter. On this field of war, on this campaign, I serve Captain Sicarius. What I believe or what I know is immaterial; duty is what matters most.'

'I am unworthy of that honour,' Praxor admitted. 'I do not see my captain's mind and I doubt our purpose on this world.'

'What do you doubt about it, brother?'

Praxor paused, weighing up his next words carefully, 'These are a broken people. Imperial citizens, yes, but unworthy of that honour. It is hard to find accord with saving a people that does not want to save itself.'

'Are you so sure they are without defiance? Courage?'

'It is what I have seen, yes.'

Agrippen considered that for a moment, before saying, 'Answer me this, brother: do you believe you are above these humans in some way?'

'In all ways,' Praxor said flatly.

'Then is it not the duty of those lofty individuals to inspire and lift those beneath them so that they too might achieve some measure of greatness?'

Praxor wasn't expecting that. The Dreadnought's logic was hard to refute, so he didn't try. Instead, he bowed his head. 'Of course it is.'

'There is more?' Agrippen pressed. Praxor's shame was not only at his discarding of the d.a.m.nosians' right to protection and life.

He lifted his head. 'I had thought you here to press Agemman's interests and secure the pre-eminence of the First by undermining Sicarius. It was an unworthy belief.'

Agrippen was sanguine. 'Your faith has been tested, that is all. It must be if it is to remain strong.' There was no hint of reproach in his rumbling sepulchral voice, 'As to the matter of Agemman, too much is made of this supposed rivalry. I trust in the wisdom and leadership of our Lord Calgar. Do you know why that is so?'

Praxor's silence bade him to continue.

'Because I have witnessed his courage and heard his words. Victory or death one or the other awaits us on d.a.m.nos. I do not fear it. I do not let it concern me. It merely is is. This is our duty. It is what makes us Emperor's Angels. He will protect us and He will grant Sicarius the wisdom and guile to lead us.'

Praxor bowed his head again that such a n.o.ble warrior had deigned to share his wisdom with him. 'Victoris Ultra, venerable one.'

'Victoris Ultra.'

Servos whirring, gears grinding, Agrippen dismounted from the rocky spur and went to find Ultracius. He left Praxor to his thoughts and his duty.

'What do you see, brother-sergeant?' Sicarius asked a few moments later. He was done with the Apothecary and had come for a status report.

Praxor was looking through magnoculars at the distant enemy formations but the ice-fog was still thick. They'd reached the edge of Arcona City and were about to pa.s.s over its borders if they ever moved again.

'They are waiting.' In spite of the weather, Praxor could see the ma.s.sive phalanxes standing shoulder-to-shoulder. Their utter stillness was unnatural. Skeletal-faced, their eye sockets aglow, they reminded him of revenants. 'Do we attack?'

Sicarius shook his head, ignoring the proffered scopes. Daceus was with him, carrying his captain's battle-helm.

'We will fall back.'

'We continue to flee?' asked Praxor.

'A s.p.a.ce Marine does not flee, brother-sergeant,' interjected Daceus. His bionic eye seemed to burn with indignation. 'When met by an implacable enemy, he does not throw his strength at it until he is spent. He finds a way to bring the battle to his advantage.'

'We need to level the scales, Sergeant Manorian,' a.s.serted Sicarius. 'A warrior has many weapons in his a.r.s.enal. This,' he brandished his plasma pistol, 'and this,' then tapped the hilt of his sheathed Tempest Blade before gesturing to their surroundings, 'but he must also use his mind and mould the battlefield into a weapon too.'

He paused, peering into the mists. 'How close are they now, brother?'

'Two kilometres and static. My lord, what are they waiting for?'

'What else?' Sicarius answered, and there was a hint of a smile in his voice as his eyes narrowed. 'For their potentate, the one who wields power.'

Sicarius was right. Praxor looked back through the magnoculars and found the necron lord who commanded the army. He had just emerged in the throng. It was an ancient, terrible creature with age-tarnished trappings and a body of shimmering gold.

'I think the wait is over, sire.' He handed his captain the scopes and this time Sicarius took them.

'So it seems. Tell me something, Brother Manorian, have you heard of the Battle of Thermapylon?'

'I know a myth, from the days of the Terran battle-kings.'

'Go on.'

'Seven hundred men of warrior blood held the pa.s.s of Thermapylon against the numberless hordes of Xeruclese from across the sea. Their sacrifice allowed the army of King Vidus to muster and throw back the enemy, harrying them all the way back to the beaches where they made their berths, and burn their ships at anchor.'

'And the seas ran red with their blood and the sand became as crimson night,' added Sicarius, reciting from the epic poem that recalled the legend.

Praxor was briefly wrong-footed; he didn't know his captain had studied the arts. But then it was military history, mythic or not, and Sicarius was an arch-student of war. It made a certain sense.

'Do you know how they triumphed?'

'With blood and steel, I presume.'

'Oh, their blades were red as the dawn, brother, but that wasn't how they engaged an army of five hundred thousand with seven hundred men. No, they achieved their goal because they knew the lay of the land. Every death was paid for by a hundred enemy soldiers. It was a battle of attrition that could only end in suicide but it wrested time from the hands of fate and used it to the king's advantage. His army was ocean-borne and won a great naval victory against Xeruclese's allies. Much of the details are lost to time but the message remains true and relevant.'

'I am ready to die for my Chapter, brother-captain,' said Praxor.

'That is not what I mean.' Sicarius returned the magnoculars. 'This war can can be won. But we need time. We need our tanks Antaro would relish this theatre of war and the be won. But we need time. We need our tanks Antaro would relish this theatre of war and the Valin's Revenge Valin's Revenge. I plan to get us that time and cut down the necron overlord into the bargain. But I do not plan on dying to achieve it.' He turned, fixing Praxor in a gimlet glare. 'My legacy is not yet at its end, and I would add more laurels to my banner.'

Praxor nodded. Sicarius's defiance was stirring, even if he found his arrogance a little bitter with the casualties they'd already sustained.

'Outside Kellenport, at the edges of the city wall, we will funnel the necrons into our own pa.s.s and there they will fall to our fury. Tigurius will have destroyed the Thanatos guns by then and Antaro can unleash his armoured fists.'

'The necrons are formidable, my lord. They are not the hordes of Xeruclese, nor do they merely wield spears or travel in wooden boats.'

'Indeed, but we carry bolters and are Adeptus Astartes.' He turned to Daceus. 'We make for the Kellenport outer marker,' he said. 'Signal Sergeants Ixion and Strabo to range ahead of us there and tell them to make haste. The necrons are moving.'

Both Strabo and Ixion came back to Daceus swiftly. The speed of the reply sent a tremor of unease through Praxor as did the veteran-sergeant's grim face as he related the reply to Sicarius.

'Request denied, sir.'

'Explain, brother-sergeant.'

'They cannot. There are forces coming from the east, from Kellenport. The necrons have us blocked in.'

Sicarius took his battle-helm without response. When he slammed it down against his gorget, there was a clang clang not unlike a death knell across the frozen quietude of the wastes. When the captain did finally speak it was with the grating cadence of his vox-grille. not unlike a death knell across the frozen quietude of the wastes. When the captain did finally speak it was with the grating cadence of his vox-grille.

'Gather your battle-brothers, and have the other sergeants do likewise. We make our stand here.' His tone turned belligerent as he drew the Tempest Blade and pointed towards the advancing horde and the necron overlord in its ranks. 'Death or glory awaits us I will welcome both.'