Cadaver Lord
Keeler watches Sigismund instruct his officers. His orders seem simple, and delivered with confidence, as though he is expecting to bring off an easy and decisive victory.
Keeler’s no student of strategy, but she realises it’s not that. Sigismund’s not planning how to win. He’s planning how best to die.
It’s hard to estimate the Death Guard numbers through the heat haze, but it seems to be several companies at least. The traitor force forms a black stain on the hard copper plain ahead, as though the rugged line of mesas and sandy bluffs behind them have leaked oil onto the desert floor. Oil or blood. Both look black in the amber light. Keeler can see banners and standards raised in the heat shimmer, the glint of light flashing off blades. Elements of the enemy force are already stirring and moving forward to meet the pilgrimage across the hard-baked ground. There is a noxious stench in the air.
She realises Sigismund is committed, and is obliged to make a fight of it. Even if she and the conclave could divert the immense column of humanity they are leading – and they cannot – there is no time for it to move, and nowhere for it to go to escape the traitor assault. Sigismund isn’t going to waste precious moments attempting to engineer some futile retreat. He’s going to meet the traitors head-on.
And that means he’s going to die. They’re all going to die. Sigismund’s instructions – quickly spoken and just as quickly accepted by his Seconds – contain no prospect of victory. They simply outline how to inflict as much damage to the enemy mass as possible before the inevitable overrun.
On the Via Aquila, there is no going back. There is only going forward, to whatever fate awaits. Out here in the amber waste, there is no trace of the Via Aquila, and there hasn’t been for a long time, but Keeler feels they are still on it, still flowing along it like a river along its channel. It will take them where it takes them.
Her mind remains bruised from the Emperor’s cry. It has left her feeling weak, her extremities numb. She wonders if Sigismund feels the same. He shows no sign of it. He seems unchanged, intent but quiet, not unduly bothered by the prospect of death. The approaching battle seems to be merely the next observance due, as determined by his order’s book of hours, a duty as solemn yet unremarkable as plainsong or meditation.
The first cohort of Seconds starts away from the head of the pilgrimage, a fast-moving group of light armour with infantry jogging at its heels. The second, slightly smaller, sets out a moment later, moving in parallel to the first, and then turning wider in a run towards the right flank of the enemy formation. The cohorts wash dust back over the head of the pilgrimage host. This is no place for a fight, she thinks. An open, arid plain without feature or relief, roasting in the ugly heat. Dust films the air like gauze. There is a breathlessness that seems to crush their lungs. Every metal surface catches the hot light like a mirror.
She jumps down from the fighting vehicle as it starts up. Every tread will be needed, nothing left in reserve. As it lurches forward to join the third cohort, she leads Zhi-Meng back towards the halted pilgrims, winding her scarf around her mouth and nose to block the dust. The river of humanity stretches out in front of her, trailing away across the desert flats as far as she can see. The faces of those closest seem unafraid. Their expressions are blank. They have seen too much already and their capacity for fear has been sucked out of them. They simply stand and gaze at the battle unfolding.
She looks back, and sees Sigismund. He seems to feel her eyes on him, and he turns to cast one brief look in her direction. A nod. What is that? Respect? Goodbye?
Then he’s starting forward at the head of the fourth cohort, which is principally Templar Astartes, and lacks any armour component. All four cohorts have raised Sigismund’s banner. The Champion wants the enemy to know who’s coming. The cohorts become four prongs scraping trails of dust towards the enemy, which is gathering momentum to meet them like an encroaching sandstorm.
Keeler realises, belatedly, that the battle has already begun. Sigismund, it seems, is not one for dramatic flourish, or for holding fire until some sudden commencement. The veteran marksmen riding on the hulls of the first and second cohort vehicles are already picking shots at the enemy lines, methodically killing and maiming with their powerful long-range weapons. Turret weapons have also begun a harassing barrage, loosing shells on the run. Each shot spits out a horsetail plume of white smoke that drifts behind the speeding vehicle, followed like an afterthought by the crump of firing. Keeler sees slow geysers of dust and fried earth start to lift among the enemy lines, a few dozen at a time, fresh ones raising their murky spouts even as previous ones fade to haze. She’s too far away to hear the detonations or see the extent of the damage, but she can see the grouping. The firing is not widespread and general, it is targeting specific sections of the line. By the time the cohorts meet the traitors, the traitor formation will be cracked and holed in several deliberate places.
There’s nothing she can do. She sits on the cracked earth and, for want of anything better, starts to recite a passage from the Lectitio to herself.
‘What are you doing, Keeler?’ Lord Zhi-Meng asks.
‘I don’t know,’ she replies. She reaches up her hand to take his. ‘But do it with me.’
The Seconds and the traitors meet. The Death Guard, dark and bloated spectres in the welter of dust, do not charge to meet the Templar force in any disciplined formation. To Sigismund, the enemy mass seems to ooze forward, swelling, puffing outward like some ballooning fungus, or a fast-spreading mould. The wasteland air is so dry, the stink of the enemy is peculiarly intense.
As ranges close, weapons fire escalates. Pintle mounts start to drum, making streams of heavy las and tracer dance and spit. Small-arms open up, and bolters too. The space between the two armies is suddenly frantic with exchanging fire. Men start to drop, knocked out of the foot columns behind the tanks. In the traitor host, storm shields ripple with impacts, and iron beasts wallop over with the clatter of plate.
Armies. It isn’t two armies. Sigismund is fully aware of that. He’s fielding a force that’s outnumbered six or seven to one, perhaps more. His brigade is a fast combat unit. The enemy is a full compliance division. He can’t win this, but he’s laid his plans carefully. If fate allows, he can hurt the enemy grievously before death claims him.
Hurt them, as his father instructed.
Mortarion’s warriors have weight of numbers, and they are all Astartes. They possess a strange, organic cohesion that seems to flow as one amorphous whole. Once again, Sigismund is reminded of creeping moulds and mycotoxic mildews. His force, though far smaller and less than fifty per cent Astartes, is fleet and disciplined. Every man in it knows his objective, and has the autonomy to pursue it even if the chain of command is broken.
His four cohorts are designed to furrow and split the enemy mass. A divided enemy can fall prey to confusion and poor reaction, and even the biggest army can become ineffective if its coordination is lost.
The first cohort, the largest, rams into the Death Guard line, armour first. Dozer blades have been lowered, and the main guns, declined to their lowest angle, continue to fire, shelling pathways into the traitor mass. The Astartes, led by the Imperial Fist Huscarl Artolun, one of Sigismund’s most trusted men, maintain firing for as long as possible, forming shield lines that follow the armour in. The shield lines cover the more vulnerable Excertus and Auxilia squads. Sigismund has drilled these soldiers personally. They know to work as squads, for no human can tackle an Astartes alone. They function as packs, loaders and munition bearers supporting the heavy crewed weapons, some of which were salvaged from defeated Mechanicum forces. Each pack targets individual enemy Astartes, like wolves on a bear, assaulting with las and flamers, while the heavy weapons – plasmics, meltas and Adrathics – inflict serious damage. They know to keep killing until an enemy is dead before acquiring another target. It is a hard mindset to achieve, because it makes them vulnerable, but those packs that can master the art score kills against foes that far outclass them.
Even so, they die. Despite the spitting devastation of the armour’s side mounts, the moving picket of Artolun’s shield lines, and the precise headshots of the Stratac and Geno marksmen with their overcharged long-las, wherever the Death Guard breaks through, a pack is mauled and finished in seconds.
The second cohort engages, then the third. Like the first, they have both struck at portions of the enemy line already weakened by the tread weapons, fissures in the Death Guard mass that they can wedge into and exploit. The second cohort drives into the right lateral extension of the enemy group, actually cutting the end of its line off from its main formation. The amputated section mills in gratifying disarray. The second cohort’s guns punish it relentlessly. The Templar Oxaros, seconded by the fierce Salamander Rhi Echimar, holds second cohort true, and turns to shave another section off the Death Guard mass.
Third cohort, led by the Templar Antykus, ploughs into the furrow its guns have made. Heavy las and fusion mounts have superheated the ground, turning the dust into glass. Tank tracks grind over Death Guard plate made brittle by blast heat. Antykus’ Excertus packs follow him in, as Artolun’s followed him. They carry grenades and anti-armour launchers repurposed for Astartes-killing.
Sigismund’s fourth cohort, the smallest, meets the Death Guard surge left of the central formation. Like each of the other intersections, he has planned this carefully. The others are designed to subdivide the mass and break its cohesion, or sow destruction into the densest formations. But there are other ways to disrupt an army too. You go for the head. And that’s what Sigismund is good at. Head wounds.
His retinue crashes through the Death Guard shield wall. His lieutenants, Pontis of the Templar Brethren, and Faustal the Iron Hands Cataphractii, flank him. Myrinx of the Temple and the Fenrisian Janjar are at his heels. Their blades and bolters tear the Pale King’s bloated, seeping warriors off their feet. There are flies everywhere, thicker than dust, their black bodies glinting like glass beads in the desert light.
But Sigismund can see his target. Skulidas Gehrerg, the Cadaver Lord, the gigantic and monstrous commander of the enemy host. As he hacks through the enemy ranks to reach him, Sigismund raises the black sword to his brow in brief salute.