STAR OF IPPICRUS
2
THE BLOOD KIN TRIBESMEN FELL UPON THE DARK ANGELS IN A HOWLING RED WAVE.
'To Turmiel!' Veteran Sergeant Raphael cried. 'Protect the Librarian!'
Turmiel, maimed by the trap that ensnared his ankle, had also noticed the Chaos space marines atop the wreckage of the valkyrie and knew his fate was likely sealed. Furious at such ill begotten luck he drew out his force sword. The Librarian's eyes rolled back into his head as he called forth the weapon's deadly power, coaxing it from the ruinous mysteries of the warp. A cold wind whistled around him. The blade stuttered into glimmering life. The runes running along the sides of the weapon writhed and breathed. Then the Librarian was swallowed in the storm of swords and flails and howling barbarians.
Sergeant Raphael launched forward into the crush of bodies to protect his trapped battle-brother. He activated his chainsword. Its inch-long teeth whirled and roared into savage life.
Two Blood Kin were felled instantly. One was run through by Turmiel's force sword, the other ripped in half by Raphael's screeching chainsword. Gouts of blood arced bright against the dusk-lit sky.
Tars and big Aramon had no close combat weapons. But the fibrebundled muscles of their power armour could create enough force to swing the muzzle or butt of their weapons hard enough to dent the armour of a rhino. More than enough to crush the skulls of the attacking Blood Kin. The two battle-brothers leapt into the fray.
The only grace to befall the ambushed Dark Angels was a moment's reprieve from the withering hail of bolter shells and heavy stubber fire as the Blood Kin swarmed upon them. The tide of howling barbarians made it impossible for their allies to get a bead on the surviving marines.
The Dark Angels fought savagely against the horde. The sands of the Bleeding Sea clutched and dragged at them like a living thing. The servo motors in their power armour whined in fitful labour to keep the prodigious weight of the marines aloft upon the sliding, shifting terrain. If they were not careful the sudden twist of a heel or a lunging step could sink any one of the battle-brothers knee deep into the sands, or even up to the hip.
The Blood Kin, however, were born to this realm. The howling horde danced atop the fine particles of ground quartz and iron as though it were solid earth. The marines may have had superhuman speed and strength but the barbarians had numbers on their side and innate experience with the desert.
Still, with their combined might, the four Dark Angels managed to whittle the screaming horde of twenty Blood Kin down to twelve.
Turmiel cut the head from another barbarian as Sergeant Raphael stepped in and blocked a deadly lunge from a Blood Kin's sword that would have seen the trapped Librarian's throat cut open. The blade skittered across the sergeant's pouldron. Raphael swung his chainsword in a fierce backward stroke that ripped through the Blood Kin's arm in a bright wash of crimson. The barbarian screamed and staggered backward as four more of his kin climbed over him to take his place.
Tars muzzle-whipped a barbarian in the face. Then, heedless of using his plasma gun in such close quarters, fired the weapon into the enemy. Two barbarians were vaporised in an instant. Tars kicked away what remained of the corpses before he felt the blurring wallop of a flail smash across his visor. He went down. Aramon loomed over him and charged his attacker, sending the barbarian hurtling into his fellows. Yet still the foe came on.
With his chainsword tearing up through the groin of one barbarian Sergeant Raphael kneed another in the sternum caving in the man's breastbone and sending him flying over the heads of his brothers. An axe slammed into the veteran sergeant's back and he twisted fast enough to see it skitter off his armour under his arm. He caught hold of the hefty blade with his free hand and wrenched it out of its owner's grip. Then his elbow caved in the barbarian's face.
The horde was bringing the Dark Angels to their knees, drawing them into the sand, burying them beneath their weight and the blows of their weapons. Aramon was struggling with two upon his back as they stabbed at him searching for chinks in his armour.
Then Turmiel raised his hand. A baleful blue light burned in his eyes. The scorching desert air went deathly cold.
There was the familiar sensation of static electricity and the burning wire smell of ozone. Several of the Blood Kin hesitated in their assault, sensing the psyker's power in the air around them - even within their own blood. It was too late for them to avoid what was coming.
The witchfire erupted from Turmiel's eyes. It shot from his fingers, zigzagging into the bodies surrounding him. It leapt from one foe to the next, burning through them, making them writhe in agony. Two Blood Kin folded over into smoking ruin.
It was then the tide turned. The last of the Blood Kin ran for their lives, morale lost in the stench of smouldering flesh. Seeing their brothers felled by the Librarian's deadly witchfire they had lost their appetite to kill.
Raphael ripped his chainsword from a corpse and raised his plasma pistol to fire upon the fleeing enemy. The cowards should have fought to the bitter end! Either way the Emperor's Will would brook no mercy upon their tainted souls.
Before the veteran sergeant or any of the Dark Angels could open fire, they saw the Blood Kin mowed down before their eyes.
Bolter fire ripped through their bodies, tearing away great swathes of limb and bone, sending pieces of Blood Kin across the desert sands until there was little left recognizable as human.
Draznicht and his Ravagers laughed and screeched as they worked.
'Aramon!' Raphael roared and pointed his chainsword high. 'Fire upon that Valkyrie! Now!'
Aramon raised his plasma cannon. 'It will be a pleasure, Brother Sergeant.' The big marine said. The plasma cannon roared.
