Traitor's Gorge Page 4

  Kantor glanced back at the members of his patrol. 'The Cassar have to wait,' he said to Olivos. 'Take us to Gueras-403.'

  THE GORGE WAS small by Shaniel's standards, but its walls were high and steep, and it wound like a snake's trail among the tall crags of a forbidding mountain range. The watercourse that had carved it over tens of millions of years had long ago run dry, leaving a rocky, slop­ing floor that began amid broken hills to the north and descended into a lush, green basin to the south.

  It was excellent defensive ground, the pathfinder saw at once. By luck or by design, the greenskins had chosen well.

  The war band stood on a granite ledge of a massive peak whose sheer flanks formed the western boundary along more than half of the gorge's length. From there, the eldar had a commanding view of the hills at the northern end of the gorge, and of its approaches. The greenskin camp was hidden from view around a broad curve to the south. Every now and then, when the mountain wind would shift, she could faintly hear their bestial shouts.

  Nine rangers from Shaniel's company - her very best, as Sethyr had directed - crouched like raptors along the length of the ledge, their cameleoline cloaks taking on the grey and black patina of the rock. Many wore their helmets and their hunting masks, but Shaniel's head and face were bare. She preferred to feel the touch of the air on her face, to breathe in the spirit of a world on the eve before battle. The pathfinder cradled her long rifle in her slender arms and squinted up at the hazy morning sky. The planet's two suns were blurry lamps behind the veil of atmospheric ash.

  Sethyr stood just to Shaniel's left, resplendent in matt black runic armour and a heavy cloak of crimson and cobalt scales. Her face was hidden behind an alabaster war-mask, its smooth surface inscribed with complex traceries of psychic sigils inlaid with crushed ruby. Her witchblade, a long, double-edged spear made from a solid piece of blackened wraithbone, was clenched in her left hand. Three long ribbons of white samite were tied to the spear haft, just beneath the long, leaf-shaped blade, their long tails rippling sinuously in the wind. A quartet of gleaming rune stones spun in the air above the farseer's upturned right palm.

  Behind them, in the deep shadow where the ledge met the arch­ing wall of the mountain, stood five funereal shapes clad in suits of black armour. Each curved plate was inscribed with wards against the terrors of the warp, as well as on the red war-masks that each of the Warp Spiders wore. The Aspect Warriors were silent and still, their fearsome deathspinners held at the ready. The jump generators affixed to their backs chimed softly, rising and falling in a kind of eerie threnody.

  Fifteen warriors and a farseer, Shaniel thought, feeling the wind pluck at her long braids. Too few. Too few by far. But Sethyr had been adamant. The task would require timing and finesse, she insisted, not the brute energies of a warhost.

  One by one, the rune stones dropped into the farseer's palm. Her helmeted head turned fractionally, and she pointed with her spear towards another, narrower peak on the eastern side of the gorge.

  'You will be there, Shaniel, along with a squad of your rangers,' Sethyr said softly. The armour she wore was many millennia old. When she spoke, her voice was overlaid with the psychic echo of count­less other farseers who had worn it before her. It was like listening to a chorus of ghosts. 'I will remain here, with the second squad, and direct their fire.'

  'And our targets?' the pathfinder asked.

  'Fault lines. Fracture points,' the farseer said, her voice distant. 'You will know them, when the time comes.'

  Shaniel accepted the enigmatic answer with a nod. Such was the way of farseers. She glanced back at the silent forms of the Warp Spiders. 'What of them?'

  'The spider's virtue lies in its web,' Sethyr replied. 'They will begin their weaving after the battle is joined.'

  'When?' Shaniel asked.

  The farseer's head turned. For a moment, Shaniel thought Sethyr was looking at her, but realised after a moment that the psyker was looking through her, at something far off to the south.

  'Tonight,' the ghostly voice answered. 'Even now, Pedro Kantor has­tens to his doom.'

  KAKTOR KNEW A final stand when he saw one.

  Hundreds of fresh bullet impacts pocked the ferrocrete steps and facade of the agri-combine's squat, two-storey operations centre, overlaying the faded scars and scorch marks inflicted during the invasion of the previous year. The building's heavy, reinforced doors had been blown open at some point during those hellish, early months, so the expedition's militia escorts had made a hasty barricade of burned-out logic engines, overturned tables - even the metal husks of long-dead servitors. The steps and the paving stones of the vestibule surrounding the barricade were heaped with the squat, brass shell casings of ork guns and covered with dried pools of thick, greenskin blood.

  The centre of the barricade was split asunder. Eventually, the frenzied ork attackers had simply hacked their way inside. By then, the surviving militia troops had likely been down to their last few power cells. The high-ceilinged antechamber beyond was littered with spent cells, and the floors and walls bore their own tales of blood, pain and death. The Chapter Master stood in the entryway and counted the telltale scorch marks of no less than a dozen grenade blasts. Three of the marks were especially dark and small in size. Men had thrown themselves on those bombs in the heat of the fight, smothering the blasts with their own bodies so their squad mates would live and fight on.

  Once the barricade had been broken, it had been down to bayo­net work and point-blank fire, against creatures that could shrug aside boltgun shells when their blood was up. All told, the militia had held out for hours, maybe even as long as a day, but once the greenskins had made their way inside, things had come to a swift and brutal end.

  Sergeant Daecor entered the antechamber from the doorway opposite the entrance, his bolter held across his chest. Glass and grit crunched beneath his boots. 'Search complete, my lord,' he said. 'No signs of survivors.'

  Kantor accepted the report with a curt nod and went back outside. A rising wind left thin streaks of moisture across the lenses of his helmet and stirred up clouds of dust and ash amid the burned-out vehicles crowding the square outside the operations centre. The Chapter Master looked south and east, past the rows of gutted ware­houses and the vast fields of the agri-combine, and studied the dark line of the horizon. He did not need the atmospheric readings on his helmet display to know that a storm was blowing in from the Medean.

  Sergeant Victurix and his Terminators were arrayed in a loose, defensive formation at the base of the centre's wide steps, alert in case there were still greenskins lurking about the site. Phrenotas and his veterans were making their way across the square from the west. Behind them rose the huge, hangar-like maintenance sheds where the combine's planter-harvester machines were kept. Beyond the sheds rose a trio of elevated landing platforms, where bulk lifters could land and take on cargoes of produce for orbiting cargo ships. The Chapter's Thunderhawk sat on one of the pads, its thrusters humming at a low idle. The next pad over bore the blackened, skeletal wreckage of the expedition's flyer.

  The veteran sergeant's voice crackled over Kantor's vox-bead. 'The orks struck during the day, while the expedition members were at work,' he said. A bright line of bare metal across the side of Phrenotas's helmet glinted in the late afternoon sun, evidence of the hasty repair work the Techmarines had performed on the flight to the agri-combine. 'Maybe they were drawn by the sound of the flyer landing or maybe it was a chance encounter with a hunting party. There is no way to know for certain.'

  Phrenotas gestured with his combi-bolter towards the two-lane access road at the northern edge of the square, which led off through the ruins of the combine's dormitories. 'They came through the north perimeter fence, and then down the access road, cutting off the inspection teams working in the maintenance sheds and the power plant to the south-west The rest barricaded themselves inside the operations centre.'

  Kantor indicated the landing pads with a nod of his head. 'What ab
out the flyer?'

  'Judging by the tracks, it appears that the team inside the power plant ran for the flyer while the orks were overrunning the mainte­nance sheds,' Phrenotas replied. 'They were boarding the craft when the greenskins caught up with them. A bullet might have found the fuel tank, or the pilot might have been killed as they were taking off. The end result is the same.'

  'And afterwards?'

  'Once the fighting was over, the surviving orks gathered up their spoils and headed north, towards Traitor's Gorge,' Phrenotas replied.

  'Spoils.' Kantor's lip curled in distaste. 'You mean the corpses.'

  The veteran sergeant nodded. 'And not just the humans, but their own dead as well,' he pointed out. 'Which orks never do, unless—'

  'Unless there's not much else left to eat,' Kantor mused. 'How large was this hunting party?'

  Phrenotas shrugged. 'Eighty to a hundred, I suspect. Much less after the battle was done. And also—'

  'Yes?'

  'There were human prints in the ash heading north with the orks,' Phrenotas said gravely. 'The beasts took at least five or six prisoners.'

  The Chapter Master bit back a curse. 'How long ago?'

  'Two days,' the sergeant answered. 'Perhaps less.'

  Kantor glanced westwards at the line of sharply etched mountain along the horizon. Traitor's Gorge was only sixty kilometres away. If that was where the orks were camped, then their prisoners were likely already dead and roasting over a fire. Unless the beasts were interested in a little sport, in which case the people they had caught would take a very long time to die.

  Sergeant Daecor worked his way through the gap in the barri­cade and stood at Kantor's side. As if sensing the Chapter Master's thoughts, he said, 'They had no business being here. Your edict was perfectly clear, my lord.'

  'The fault was not theirs, brother,' Kantor said. 'They were here at the behest of the noble houses, who have a great many people to feed and winter only a few months away.' Kantor shook his head. 'And they did not bring the orks here. We did.'

  'Nonetheless,' Daecor said. 'This is not our responsibility. Not now, after all that's happened.'

  'Rynn's World is still ours, brother,' Kantor chided. 'Whatever left of it and its people. And we are still Crimson Fists. We are still the sons of the Emperor, and the shield-hands of Dorn. If we turn our backs on our sacred duty, then what right does our Chapter have to survive?' The Chapter Master pointed at the distant moun­tains. 'Right now there are Imperial citizens in the hands of our enemies. You know as well as I what kind of fate awaits them. Do you have any doubt that they are praying to the Emperor for salvation?'

  Daecor was silent for a moment. 'No, my lord,' he said. 'I do not doubt it.'

  'Then you understand that we must answer their call if we can,' the Chapter Master replied. 'And if we cannot save them, then at least they can go to their deaths with the sure and certain knowl­edge that we will avenge them.'

  Chastened, Daecor bowed his head and rejoined his squad. Kantor keyed his vox-bead. 'Brother Olivos, we're heading to Traitor's Gorge,' he said.

  The Thunderhawk's co-pilot responded at once. 'We will need to get you aboard at once,' he said. 'There's a major storm on the way, so our transit window is limited.'

  'We won't be using the Thunderhawk,' Kantor replied. 'Its thrust­ers can be heard for kilometres. We don't want the orks to know we're coming.'

  'Understood,' Olivos replied, though it was clear that he was uncomfortable with the idea. 'Then we will power down and wait here for your return.'

  'No,' the Chapter Master said. 'You are needed at the Cassar. We will meet here again in a week's time for pick up. If we don't make the rendezvous, run a search pattern and listen for my beacon.'

  'And if we can't detect the beacon?'

  'Then return in a week's time and try again,' Kantor said sternly. 'Is that clear?'

  'Clear,' Olivos replied. 'Dorn go with you, my lord. Good hunting.'

  'Thank you, brother,' the Chapter Master said. He glanced back to the south-east, and saw the steadily thickening band of clouds in the distance. The storm was moving quickly. If they could reach Traitor's Gorge in time, perhaps it could be turned to their advantage. 'Sergeant Phrenotas, you and your squad take point. Sergeant Daecor, split your squad to cover the flanks.' Kantor descended the stone steps and made for the northern access road. Squad Victurix fell in around him, while Phrenotas and his warriors jogged ahead to pick up the orks' trail.

  By the time the Thunderhawk spooled up its thrusters and lifted from the pad, the hunting party was already kilometres away.

  THE ORKS MADE no effort to conceal their trail. Had they done so, Kantor and his hunters might have caught up with them before they reached the gorge. But the greenskins were more interested in speed than stealth, and the spoor they left behind ran as straight as a bul­let in flight up and out of the Altera Basin, towards the brooding mountains. Such a trail said much to a keen tracker like Sergeant Phrenotas. He could tell that there were six prisoners by the depth of the tracks left by the orks that were carrying them, and he was certain that they had been taken alive from Gueras-403. From spots of blood and spent shells along the course of the march, he was also certain that the filthy xenos had already begun to fight over their human prizes. By the time that the Space Marines crested the rim of the great basin, Phrenotas reckoned that they were only twelve hours behind the greenskin raiders.

  The Crimson Fists reached Traitor's Gorge just after midnight, with the fury of the storm howling at their heels.

  The walls of the gorge were sheer and steep, rising hundreds of metres into the air on either side, plunging the uneven, rocky floor into deep shadow. With a simple, mnemonic command Kantor recalled the most recent geological survey of the region, made some four hundred and fifty years before. Aerial survey maps appeared in his mind's eye, as sharp as the day he had first set eyes on them. The gorge ran north to south for just over forty kilometres, sloping gently downwards the entire way before emptying into the Altera Basin, Along the way, the gorge carved a serpentine path, where rushing water had found a path through softer rock amid the mountain granite. There was one spot along the course, near the midpoint of the gorge, where it widened to almost a half-kilometre across. That was where he expected to find the greenskin camp.

  Kantor kept his warriors on the move, keeping the Sternguard on point and letting them move further ahead to deal with any orks in their way. Then he called Daecor's squad forwards and let Victurix's slower Terminators bring up the rear. The Space Marines kept to the centre of the gorge, where the ground was flatter and allowed them to move quickly and quietly. Distant lightning flickered at their backs, painting streaks of blue across the rock walls and providing momentary glimpses of the barren, rocky terrain.

  The Space Marines' pace slowed and grew more cautious as they drew closer to their objective. Over the past hour, the wind at their backs had been rising steadily, and the constant flicker of lightning left streaks of static across their helmet displays. The farther they went, the more evidence they found of the greenskins' presence. Every scrap of dried wood, every shred of vegetation, had been stripped from the walls and floor of the gorge. The ground had been churned by the passage of hundreds of heavy, hobnailed boots, and every corner and crevice near the gorge's high walls had collected drifts of rubbish dropped by ork scavenging parties.

  Two hours after they had entered the gorge, Phrenotas's voice spoke in Kantor's ear. 'We've found them,' the veteran sergeant said, his words hashed with bursts of interference from the storm. 'Some isolated orks moving about the outskirts of the camp just north of us. The rest are concentrated in the centre, around a series of fire pits.'

  The cooking pits, Kantor thought, feeling a rising tide of anger. 'How many?'

  'More than expected,' Phrenotas answered. 'Judging by the noise, perhaps a hundred. Perhaps more.'

  Kantor's eyes narrowed. He studied the status icons along the margins of his helmet display. The pat
rol had been able to replen­ish its ammunition, but the rest of its wargear was in sore need of repair. A protracted battle would be risky, when even one casualty constituted a serious blow to the Chapter.

  Surprise is on our side, the Chapter Master reminded himself. We are the sons of Dorn, and these vermin have defiled our world. Our duty is clear.

  'Make a path,' Kantor told Phrenotas, and then ordered the rest of the patrol to advance.

  With Daecor's squad and Victurix's Terminators close behind him, Kantor headed up the gorge. The rocky floor turned sharply to the west, and then ran for a few hundred metres before curving roughly northwards again. Up ahead, the rock walls narrowed to a natural choke point, some fifteen metres across. Beyond, Kantor knew, the gorge widened out dramatically. That was where the ork camp lay.

  'Weapons check,' Kantor told his warriors. With a neuromuscular command, he ignited his power fist's deadly energy field. Another command released the safeties on Dorn's Arrow. Auto-loaders clattered faintly in the darkness as shells fed into firing chambers. Lightning flashed directly overhead, followed immediately by a punishing blow of thunder.

  Kantor passed through the choke point, his armour's autosenses searching the darkness for threats. Past the narrow gap, the slope of the gorge increased slightly. Perhaps another hundred metres fur­ther on, Kantor could see the eastern edge of the greenskin camp. The uneven shapes of crude shelters and filthy, trash-strewn nests were silhouetted by the flickering, orange glow of the greenskins' fire pits. The camp stretched nearly the entire width of the gorge, almost to the rocky overhang of Widow's Spire on the left, and the steep flank of Darkridge to the right. A tangle of narrow, debris-strewn paths wound amongst the squalor, all of them leading more or less towards the distant flames.

  One of Phrenotas's veterans crouched at the entrance of one such path, his helmet lenses glowing balefully in the darkness. He rose silently as Kantor approached and led the rest of the patrol forwards. The wind was gusting at their backs, buffeting the greenskins' crude shelters and sending drifts of rubbish down the path ahead of the Space Marines.