The Final Battle (By Graham McNeill)

The horizon burned the colour of blood, as though the sky itself was on fire. The jungles of Armageddon were ablaze, turning the darkness of the night into hateful, orange-lit day. Logan Grimnar, Chapter Master of the Space Wolves breathed deeply, tasting the toxins in the air with every breath and running a dirt and blood encrusted hand through his mane of unkempt blonde hair. He stared at the crater-marked hell that stretched out from the edge of the front line. The stench of rotting corpses mingled with the reek of burning fuel and his eyes stung from the noxious black smoke coiling lazily upwards from burning vehicles the enemy had lost in the fighting.

“Too few,” he whispered. “Too few.”

His practiced eye surveyed the barren expanse of the Ash Wastes on the far bank of the River Chaeron, easily picking out the hated icons of the Blood God swaying in the cold northern wind amidst the enemy camp. Bodies floated in the river, so many a man might cross without wetting his feet, their eyeless skulls turned up to face the fire-lit sky.

He marched along the length of the defensive wall, his dented and scored Terminator armour groaning as the damaged fibre-bundle muscles in the left thigh fought to match his pace. A careless parry had allowed a daemon’s axe to bite a hand’s breadth into his armour. It was only one of a dozen wounds he had suffered in this campaign thus far, but the armour had suffered greatly and, though the artificers had done their best, there was not the time for the repairs it deserved. He only hoped the armour’s battle spirit would understand and not fail him at a crucial moment. Grimnar stopped at an embrasure in the parapet and gripped the edges of the wall. The parapet was nearly twenty metres high and sturdily constructed by the men and women of the Departmento Munitorum Engineer Corp. Not nearly as strong or as high as he would have liked, but he knew they were lucky to have it at all. The Daemon Primarch’s inexplicable delay in crossing the equatorial jungles had given them the time they so desperately needed to regroup and reorganise the demoralised Imperial forces.

In the distance, nearly a hundred kilometres to the east, Grimnar could make out the smoke-wreathed spire of Hive Infernus, the teeming, stinking, manmade mountain called home by over twelve million people. People he was sworn to defend, but didn’t know that he would be able to. He shrugged off such defeatist thoughts and turned as he heard a calm voice behind him say, “Lord Grimnar.”

“Brother Captain Aurellian,” nodded Grimnar to the new arrival. Like him, Aurellian was clad in Terminator armour, its blue-steel surfaces polished and gleaming. The Grey Knight carried a long, wide-bladed pole arm, its edge silver and filled with intricate scriptwork, too small even for the enhanced eyesight of a Space Marine to read. Engraved purity seals and devotional litanies fluttered from the shaft and every surface of his pristine armour was decorated with heraldic iconography and carved idioms.

Grimnar felt a stab of anger towards the Grey Knight. His weapon was unblooded and though he and his warriors had arrived the night before last, they had immersed themselves in prayer instead of joining the desperate fighting on the walls.

“When the Adepts of the Cult Mechanicus have completed their preparations, we shall take the fight to the Fallen One,” said Aurellian.

“And how long will that be?” snapped Grimnar, “our people are dying here, Brother Aurellian. We do not have time to indulge every whim of your pet Techpriests.”

“I do not know,” shrugged Aurellian, ignoring Grimnar’s aggressive tone. “It will be for them to say when they are ready.”

The young Chapter Master of the Space Wolves bunched his fists and said, “Every second the Adeptus Mechanicus spends chanting doggerel and waving stinking censers over their technological witchery cost lives, don’t you understand that? We need to take the fight to the enemy now!”

“I understand it only too well, Lord Grimnar,” replied Aurellian coolly, “but it will avail us nothing if we attack before we are fully prepared. How many more lives will be lost if we fail because we acted in haste?”

Grimnar felt his anger ebb as the sense of the Grey Knight’s words penetrated the haze of his anger and frustration. Thus far they had been spared the full horror of the Daemon Primarch’s attack, but the defeats his army had suffered on the banks of the Chaeron would surely gain his attention soon. And the Emperor help them all when that happened.

“Do what you must then, but be ready to attack when the beast comes at us.”
“You are sure he will attack here?”

Grimnar nodded as he looked along the length of the wall and trench line before it, seeing the bone-weary troopers who manned its firing step and guns. They wore defeat and exhaustion like a shroud.
He nodded slowly. “I would.”

******************

Dirt and hard-packed earth rained down from the latest impacts of high explosive shells as Sergeant Kohler pressed his hands against his ears and squeezed his eyes shut. He kept his mouth open to avoid the pressure wave bursting his eardrums as he’d been taught and prayed for this nightmare to end. The ground heaved with shell impacts and the air burned with acrid propellant fumes. He smelt blood and the stench of voided bowels and bladders and gagged, pressing his back against the earth of his squad’s dugout in the trench line. Men ran insane with terror, strobing silhouettes against the bright flare of explosions before being snatched away in storms of fire and steel. Kohler spat dirt and blood.

He reached down and gripped his lasgun tightly, knuckles white. Kohler held the weapon close, clutching it to his muddy flak vest like a protective talisman, and it took him long seconds to realise that the shelling had stopped. As the ringing in his ears faded, screams and desperate cries for medics replaced the shriek of incoming artillery, the sudden absence of thunderous noise as surprising as the fact that he was still alive. The momentary elation at his survival faded as he remembered that the only reason it would stop would be an imminent attack. Sergeant Kohler surged to his feet, shouting, “Everybody up! Get up! Get up! They’re coming again!”

Dazed and terrified soldiers reluctantly rose from their dugouts, their eyes haunted by the carnage and horrors they had seen in this war. Things so terrible that many would never sleep again, even were they to live through this nightmare. Kohler chivvied his squad members onto the trench’s firing step, yelling encouragement at anyone who passed by. Mangled bodies and severed limbs littered the iron duckboards of the trench and foot-deep holes were filled with blood. Kohler slung his lasgun and pressed his face to the trench periscope, extending its vision port over the lip of their defence. Rolling banks of grey-flecked smoke filled the viewer, jerked and snatched by gunfire. He could hear a swelling roar of hatred and a rumbling vibration through the ground. Chunks of earth and dust rattled around him, falling from the lip of the trench as something immense drew closer. Then the smoke parted and Kohler felt his knees sag as he saw Angron’s horde in horrifying clarity.

Blood red daemons, with thick manes of gore-streaked fur, loped alongside men in tattered and bloody uniforms. The soldiers’ bodies were twisted by mutation and crude symbols had been painted over their insignia, but it was clear that they had once been Imperial Guardsmen. Men they would have called brother not so long ago. A gargantuan, clanking machine preceded them, brass and crimson and adorned with skulls. Huge, spiked wheels – each larger than a battle tank – churned the ground and crushed all before it. On its back, a huge, black cauldron belched choking red smoke, the hissing of white hot metal and a huge bow wave of infernal heat preceding the war engine’s advance.

Kohler turned to his soldiers and shouted, “All guns open fire! Fire at will!”

The Imperial line erupted in a storm of lasbolts and heavy weapon blasts, and the front of the Chaos horde was instantly scythed down. Volley after volley hammered the Chaos troops, but Kohler could see that it wouldn’t matter, there were simply too many to kill. The war machine loomed as large as a hive spire, the deafening hissing of the thing it carried on its back overshadowing all but the loudest weapons. Kohler ducked down below the lip of the trench, ejecting a spent power cartridge from his lasgun and fumbling for another. He heard what sounded like a huge, sucking breath followed by a roaring like the howl of some ancient monster. The top of the trench disintegrated, turned molten under the fire of the war engine. Magma-hot daemonic ichor spewed from the hissing cauldron, destroying everything it touched before vaporising into the ether. Scores of bodies fell into the trench, their upper halves burned away and the remains of their uniforms ablaze. Burned human meat and sizzling fat filled Kohler’s nostrils and he dropped to his knees, retching at its foul stench.

As he gagged on the ashen remains of his fellow soldiers, he heard a thunderous detonation as the war engine activated the buried mines placed in their hundreds before the trenches. Secondary explosions within the stricken war machine hurled burning liquid all across the battlefield, splashing down in molten sheets. The earth rocked as it toppled, slamming into the ground with teeth-loosening force. Kohler fell into a pool of steaming blood. Screams and screeches of agony filled the air and Kohler felt hatred like he had never known flood his heart. He rose to his feet and shouldered his lasgun, pumping shot after shot into the reeling Chaos forces. The minefield had halted them in their tracks and the survivors milled in shell-shocked confusion at its edge. Scores fell to the fire of the Imperial Guard and Kohler laughed in hysterical release. They could do it. They could win this battle!

But then the sky darkened and roiling black clouds, shot through with blood red lightning billowed from the Chaos horde and a bellowing roar that froze the marrow in Kohler’s bones echoed across the battlefield. The beat of powerful wings parted the clouds and Kohler had a barely perceived vision of a vast red figure crashing down to earth with an ear-splitting boom. The creature landed heavily, thrusting out its slab-muscled chest and spreading its powerful arms wide as it roared its challenge. It carried a broad-bladed sword of dark iron, unnatural sigils blazing with unholy light. Kohler sobbed as the enormous creature strode into the minefield, joined by a group of hulking monsters from his darkest nightmares. Armoured in brass and covered in filthy, blood-matted fur they carried pulsing, red axes and lashing, barbed whips. Kohler dropped his lasgun and wept in terror, curling into a foetal ball and waiting for death as the monsters approached, the crash of brass-shod hooves sounding like the death of worlds.

Then Kohler screamed as he felt tongues of lightning lash his body, jerking spasmodically as the fire scorched his flesh. He rolled onto his back, feeling his hair burn and tried to make sense of what he saw before him. Flickering arcs of blue energy leapt and danced above the glassy slag of the trench top, making the air taste electric. Then with a crack of displaced air the lightning vanished and in its place stood perhaps a hundred warriors in suits of burnished blue-steel Terminator armour.

******************

Brother Captain Aurellian blinked rapidly, feeling the knot of tension in his gut relax as his body adjusted after the mass teleportation of his Grey Knights. He stood on the lip of a snaking trench,
filled with weeping and terrified Guardsmen. Ahead, he could see the smoking remains of a smashed daemon engine and the explosion wreathed battlefield. And striding across the cratered wasteland came Angron, Daemon Primarch of the World Eaters, the Fallen One. A dozen of the Blood God’s most favoured daemons surrounded Angron, and Aurellian gripped his Nemesis weapon tightly, knowing that this battle would decide the fate of the world. With a pulse of thought he ordered his warriors to advance as Angron raised his sword in mock salute.

Aurellian marched forwards, the Grey Knights following in disciplined groups, their Nemesis weapons held before them. Waves of bloodlust broke against them, but their souls were hardened to resist such petty evils and not a man amongst them faltered in his stride. A slavering daemon leapt into the air, its powerful wings carrying it across the battlefield in a heartbeat. It landed before Aurellian, thick ropes of bloody saliva drooling from its jaws. It swung its giant axe in a disembowelling stroke, but he swept up his force halberd, blocking the blow in a halo of bright energy. He spun his weapon and rammed the blade into the daemon’s belly and tore upwards, ripping a screech of pain from its jaws. Black light spilled from the wound as Aurellian pulled his weapon free and beheaded the monster with one psychically charged blow.

The daemon’s substance vanished, dispersed like smoke in the wind and Angron bellowed in amusement, his skin splitting and orange flames blossoming from his veins. The Daemon Primarch’s bestial face rippled in the heat haze, and Aurellian could feel Angron’s hunger to fight them.

“The knights of the corpse god,” rasped the Daemon Primarch in recognition, the voice rumbling like a slow-moving avalanche. “I shall enjoy feeding you your entrails.”

Aurellian did not reply. He had no wish to speak with a daemon; its words were all falsehoods and its very presence hateful to him.

Thousands of throats gave voice to a roar of bloodlust as Angron and his Bloodthirsters stamped forwards, mines detonating harmlessly against their daemonic armour. Through the thunder of explosions, the daemons crashed into the thin Grey Knight line, axes flashing and whips snapping. Aurellian saw half a dozen of his warriors cut down instantly, shorn in two by shrieking daemon weapons. He tore his gaze away from the battle around him as a pair of Bloodthirsters charged him and his squad. He widened his stance and braced his weapon on the ground, shouting, “Grey Knights, hold!” as the first Bloodthirster smashed into them. Its whip lashed out, shearing through a Terminator’s armour and cleaving him from collarbone to pelvis. Aurellian lunged, jabbing his blade at the monster’s head. Its axe smashed aside his blow and a brass hoof thundered into his breastplate, buckling the ceramite and shattering the bone shield of his chest cavity.

Aurellian collapsed to his knees, fighting for breath as another of his brothers fell, ripped apart by Angron, the pieces swallowed whole. Everywhere he looked, his warriors were falling, unable to match the unimaginable ferocity of these avatars of the Blood God. Though they fought bravely, with faith and nobility, it was no match for the primal savagery of their daemonic foes. But it was not a battle without cost for Angron and his daemons. Fully half his retinue were little more than screeching shadows, their physical vessels put asunder by the righteous wrath of the Grey Knights. Aurellian pushed himself to his feet wincing as he felt that one of his lungs was pierced. Angron swung his black sword in wide arcs, killing with every stroke and his glowing musculature rippled with power. Aurellian saw that the Daemons closest to Angron towered above his Terminators, drawing their strength from the well of the Daemon Primarch.

He staggered towards Angron, using his force halberd to steady himself as his breath wheezed in his chest. The Grey Knights closed on their leader, forming an impenetrable shield wall around him as they fought their way towards Angron. The Daemon Primarch saw his foe approach and reared up to his full height, bellowing a furious challenge. Lesser mortals might quail before this monster, but Aurellian and the Grey Knights had been steeled to face the worst horrors of Chaos without flinching. Less than two dozen of them were still alive, but they were almost there. Daemons pressed in all around them, attacking in a frenzy of axe blows and lashing whips. More Grey Knights fell, their blood mingling on the cratered earth as Angron and Aurellian finally came face to face. At some unheard command, the Bloodthirsters pulled back, hissing with barely-restrained battle lust.

Time slowed and the world held its breath as man and monster faced one another. One, a devoted and loyal servant of the divine Emperor of Mankind, the other the basest traitor who had trampled on his oaths of loyalty and embraced ultimate evil.

“You cannot win, Aurellian,” hissed Angron, planting his sword in the ground before him.
Aurellian spun his force halberd, assuming a relaxed fighting stance and pointed the blade at the Daemon Primarch’s heart. “You underestimate me, traitor.”

“Perhaps, but I was once one of your Emperor’s chosen and I cannot be defeated. You know this, Aurellian; I can see it plain as day. Why must you fight and die here for a rotted corpse on a planet you have never seen?”

“Because I must,” said Aurellian simply, thrusting his weapon towards Angron.

The Daemon Primarch laughed and batted away the force weapon, scalding steam hissing from his iron skin. His clawed wings pounded the air as he fought, swirling dust and smoke around the combatants. Aurellian blocked a blow meant to remove his head, feeling the jarring impact numb his arm to the elbow, and ducked the reverse stroke. He spun inside Angron’s guard and slashed his blade across his foe’s flank, drawing a bellow of pain and a wash of hot, black blood.

Angron smashed a club-like fist down on Aurellian’s shoulder, driving him to the ground and tearing his helmet from his head. Lights exploded before Aurellian’s eyes, but he saw the blow that would kill him arcing towards his head and threw up his weapon to block it. Angron’s sword sheared through the haft of his force halberd and hacked through his arm in a shower of sparks and blood. The Grey Knight tumbled backwards, blood pouring from his arm, but miraculously still alive.

Aurellian climbed to his feet, his armour torn open in a dozen places, but his stance still defiant. Blood was flooding from his body, too much for even the Larraman cells to halt. He could see his men were fighting bravely, but were falling one by one. Before long they would all be dead. That they may die was unimportant, but they must not fail in their duty.

“Brothers! Defensive circle!” shouted Aurellian, though it sent hot spikes of pain through his chest. The few surviving Grey Knights fought their way towards him, forming a circle about their wounded leader.

Aurellian focussed all his hatred of the Fallen One until it was an incandescent power that burned within him and threatened to consume his flesh unless released. His battle-brothers felt the power building within him and, understanding the finality of such powerful psychic energy, began doing likewise.

Angron roared, clearly sensing the build-up of their power, but either did not care or, in his arrogance, believed himself too powerful to be harmed by it. He charged towards Aurellian, bellowing in fury. Aurellian felt the power of his fellow warriors pulse through him and released it in a fiery corona of psychic energy. He screamed as the colossal forces wracked his shattered body, feeling the life energies of three of his battle brothers fade as the power consumed them. The Bloodthirsters screeched in rage as the power of the Grey Knights’ faith hit them like a tidal wave, two bursting apart in an explosion of black ichor.

Angron roared in pain and Aurellian watched as the furnace glow of his body diminished. The Daemon Primarch dropped to his knees, thick blood drooling from his slack features. The Grey Knight next to Aurellian fell, his body little more than a shrivelled sack of bones within his armour. As Aurellian watched, Angron’s form grew less solid, less real, as though his hold on the material realm was slipping. Even as he formed the thought, the Daemon Primarch’s flesh began re-knitting as his iron will held his form solid. Aurellian knew he would never get a better chance than this and lurched forward, gripping his force halberd by its splintered haft like a sword. Angron lifted his bestial face in time to see Aurellian lift up his sword and drive it deep within his chest. Fat red sparks flew as the blade plunged into the Daemon Primarch’s body, and his roar of pain split the earth apart all around him. Aurellian drew upon the depths of his courage and unleashed his last reserves of strength and faith through the force weapon in a blazing spear of purity.

He rejoiced as he felt Angron’s substance dissolving and knew that he had defeated the monster. He pushed the blade deeper and grunted in sudden pain as Angron’s sword plunged into his belly and tore upwards, ripping through his heart and lungs. He coughed blood, spattering the daemon’s burning features and feeling his own killing power ravaging him through Angron’s blade. The Daemon Primarch sneered mockingly.

“If we are to die, we will die together, Aurellian. I will be reborn in the Warp, but your spirit-flesh will be devoured by daemons for all eternity, and you will know an immortality of agony…” ‘So be it!’ shouted Aurellian, and fulfilled his duty.

******************

Logan Grimnar watched the ten Grey Knights kneel in prayer around the fallen body of their captain and bowed his head in respect. The battlefield was eerily quiet, the daemons having vanished like morning mist upon the destruction of Angron’s physical form and the traitors, cultists and mutants falling back in disarray. A shaft of golden sunlight broke through the oppressive cloud layer and Grimnar felt a sudden surge of optimism as he watched his Space Wolves mount up in their Rhinos to begin the pursuit and destruction of the enemy. Mud-and-bloodcaked Guardsmen began clambering dazedly from their trenches, their faces lined with exhaustion and fear. A soldier, drenched in blood and black ichor from head to foot, staggered from the trench and dropped, weeping, to his haunches.

“They won,” he sobbed in relief, “I can’t believe they did it…”

Grimnar looked down at the man, seeing his sergeant’s stripes through the blood on his upper arm. The name Kohler was stitched above it.

“Aye,” he said slowly. “They destroyed the Beast. But at what cost?”

The sergeant looked up, uncomprehending as the Chapter Master of the Space Wolves continued.

“A noble warrior of the Emperor fell this day, Sergeant Kohler, and you will never see a greater display of heroism,” said Grimnar. “Remember what you have seen here today.”

“I will,” nodded Kohler, but Logan Grimnar had already turned and marched away.