‘Follow my orders!’ Gaunt shouted back. ‘We need our weapons! No more damn running! We face them here!’

  Ignoring the protests behind him, Gaunt leapt off the platform and landed on the lower staging with feline grace, rising from his bended knees and drawing the power sword. ‘The Emperor protects!’ he yelled, and ran towards the attack.

  Partisans fled past him, running the other way. Gaunt realised that one crucial thing was missing from this terrible scene. There was no screaming, no cries of horror. Even the Sleepwalker children were silent.

  The guns weren’t. He heard plasma fire, a flamer’s crackling hiss and spit, and bolter weapons. Heavy stuff…

  Pushing ahead, he got his first sight of the attackers as they strode forward through the camp, firing wholesale.

  And he realised he had made a bad call. A very bad call. Maybe Curth had been right. Maybe the taint was so deep in them now they were acting rashly and irresponsibly. They should have run. Just run. Forgotten the weapons. Just fething run for their lives.

  The attackers were giants, clad in the whirring power armour of Space Marines. Gaunt glimpsed ceramite plates as polished and luminous as mother of pearl, gold laced with filigrees of rust, adorned with abominable badges.

  Chaos Space Marines. The most grotesque, most powerful warriors in the Archenemy’s host. Imperial Guard didn’t fight Space Marines. They left that job to the superhuman Astartes, for the simple reason that there was precious little a Guardsman could do that would even annoy a Chaos Space Marine. On the battlefield, brigades of well-armed Guardsmen regularly fell back in rout when even a few Chaos Space Marines appeared.

  Gaunt had about a dozen Guardsmen in his team. They were unarmed, their weapons shut up in a coffer somewhere. Outclassed didn’t even begin to cover it.

  Bad call. Bad, bad call.

  Beltayn, Landerson and Curth were struggling to get Feygor down off the platform. Criid and Varl jumped down past them. The others had already taken off in the direction of the coffer.

  ‘He’s gone in alone,’ Criid was insisting. ‘Gaunt’s gone in alone and it’s Space Marines.’

  ‘You’re kidding me,’ Varl said.

  ‘Look for yourself.’

  ‘Holy feth. We are dead. We have to get our guns…’

  ‘Why?’ snapped Criid. ‘So we can fluster them a little?’

  ‘Tona–’ Varl warned.

  ‘Give me your satchel. Now, Varl. Right now!’

  Without thinking, Varl tossed her the satchel containing the last six tube-charges. She caught it and started to run after Gaunt.

  ‘Tona! Don’t be a total gak!’ Varl shouted. But she was already gone.

  Varl started to run in the direction of the weapons chest, then came to a halt. ‘Feth!’ he cussed, and turned back to chase after Tona Criid.

  Grey bodies lay everywhere amongst the burning tents and damaged trees. Some hung from the edges of the platforms, draping dead limbs into the green water, their segmented cloaks broken and disarrayed like the wings of dead birds, or swatted moths. Nezera, nearly two and a half metres tall in his hulking carapace armour, thumped up the walkboard bridgeway onto a higher level, and turned his cannon on a group of partisans who were trying to cower behind the remnants of a buckled tent dome.

  Gaunt came out from behind the thick tree that provided central support for the platform’s weight. He put all his strength into the two-handed sword blow. One chance.

  Nezera had just enough time to realise a figure had appeared to his right. Then the scalding power sword of Heironymo Sondar sliced round and through him. Ceramite armour could withstand just about anything… las-fire, bolt rounds, even cannon shot. But it was like paper to the powered blade. Gaunt’s lacerating blow cut through Nezera’s chest plating, through the torso inside, and out through the spine in a fog of gore. His body half-severed at mid-rib height, Nezera stumbled, amazed, his system trying to manage the pain and repair the traumatic damage.

  It was far too grievous. Blood poured out of the huge fissure in the plating like water over the edge of a wide cascade, jetting wildly in places. The cut edges of the armour plate glowed and crackled.

  Nezera fell, heavy and dead, face down on the platform. The impact was so great that the platform shuddered and wobbled.

  Gaunt looked at the cowering partisans. Their mosaic-edged eyes were wide in awe.

  ‘Get up!’ he yelled, not even trying to use their language any more. ‘Get up and fight back, or they’ll kill us all!’

  Something’s changed, Uexkull thought, raking bolt fire through a cluster of tents and bursting open more grey flesh in bright splashes of blood. He could feel it. Like the change in the air before a thunderstorm. He–

  The first shots came at him. Metal quarrels, hissing in the air like angry hornets. They pinged off his carapace armour, stopped dead by the bonded ceramite casing.

  So, the peasants are fighting back, he smiled.

  Then an iron quarrel smacked through the flesh of his left cheek.

  There was some pain, but his bio-motors countered it. Uexkull closed his jaw and plucked the metal arrow out in a spurt of blood. Immediately, he felt his body glanding antivenin at a furious rate, the product sluicing through his system. The arrows were poisoned. An extremely lethal compound, no doubt derived from the local moths. An ordinary man would have been stone-dead in a second or two.

  Uexkull was not an ordinary man. Not even slightly. His body-system rejected the formidable poison. He savoured the burning rush of the antidote. Shrugging off the rain of quarrels that spattered against his armour, he moved forward.

  And continued to kill.

  Inspired by the example of sheer, thoughtless bravado Gaunt had displayed taking down the Chaos Space Marine, the Sleepwalkers began to rally. Many continued to flee, guiding the womenfolk and children into the waters to get clear of the doomed encampment. But others took up their weapons and turned back against the attackers. Muskets fired, their loads glancing off the Space Marines’ power armour. The crossbows fired too.

  Moving forward through the smoking devastation that the enemy had wrought on the camp, Gaunt witnessed the crossbows in use. Drawing a poisoned iron quarrel from his quiver satchel, each partisan dropped the projectile down the snout of his bow’s barrel and then shouldered the weapon to fire. The bows made no sound, just a whistle of release as they launched the iron darts with huge force.

  Magnetics, Gaunt realised. The heavy lobes on the end of each bent-back bow arm were powerful magnets. They sucked the quarrels down into the weapon and, at a flick of the trigger, the charged polarity reversed and spat them out. Simple, perfect.

  But utterly useless against Chaos Space Marines in full armour, warriors who could gland against toxins if they took a scratch.

  If this battle were to be won – and Gaunt doubted there was a tactician in the whole cosmos who would predict that outcome in his favour – it had to come another way.

  Unarmed Guardsmen and locals packing primitive weapons would not, could not stop a pack of Space Marines. But Gaunt had slain one, thanks to the sword. And he’d do it again.

  Even if that meant facing them one by one.

  Stalking forward on his high seat, Sthenelus blinked as two of his excubitors fell face down into the stinking water and did not get up. Metal quarrels hissed around him, and two plinked off the base of his walker.

  He used his articulated probe limbs to retrieve one from the water.

  ‘Crudely-fashioned projectile, perhaps deserving the name “quarrel”, fifteen centimetres in length, smelted from poor-quality iron ore. Latent polarisation indicates magnetic delivery, tip reveals evidence of a resin compound manufactured from the toxic wing scales of the local moth-forms.’

  The excubitor beside him walloped over into the thick water with a splash as a musket load burst its skull. The two remaining excubitors fired their las-locks and then began to reload.

  Before they had even half-finished the job, they had been felled by quarrels too.

  Sthenelus glanced down at the bodies of the excubitors floating lank and limp in the filthy water around him.

  ‘Said toxin has a rapid effect on humaniform biosystems, suggesting–’

  He stopped. He looked down. A passing quarrel had torn through the fabric covering his malformed belly. There was a single long scratch in the flesh from which blood welled in ruby beads.

  ‘Lord Uexkull?’ he said. ‘Lord Uexkull!’

  Ordinal Sthenelus tried to call the name a third time, but his mouth had filled with clogging foam by then. The tiny measure of poison killed him an instant later, turning his blood to sludge. His little body spasmed violently, and then fell still. A moment later, two more quarrels smacked into his torso, but they did nothing more than knock his walker carriage over. The misshapen man on the tall machine toppled backwards into the bog, and the stinking water rolled in to cover his face.

  She saw the partisans were fighting back now, but knew it wasn’t going to be enough. The four remaining Chaos Space Marines were reducing the camp to blazing wood pulp. Criid clambered higher into the boughs of one of the main trees, her hands tearing on the damp bark. The satchel of tube-charges swung about her slender body on its strap.

  Below her, she saw one of the monsters, the one with the plasma weapon. He was storming forward, shrugging off the rain of quarrels and musket balls, vapourising everything in his path.

  Don’t look up. Don’t look up, Criid willed.

  Rawne kicked open the chest’s lid and started throwing weapons out. Mkoll, Mkvenner and Bonin caught their lasrifles and took off towards the mayhem. Brostin pulled out the heavy cannon and started to feed in the last rounds in his hopper.

  ‘Long-las!’ Rawne yelled. Larkin caught it neatly and smacked home a hotshot pack. If anything could dent a Chaos Space Marine’s armour, it was a high-yield hotshot. Larkin knew he’d have to place it right. Between the plate joints. That’s the one chance he had.

  Brostin was suddenly firing. The cannon was kicking out a huge, vibrating sound. One of the enemy monsters was right on them.

  Not even fazed by Brostin’s cannonfire, the Chaos Space Marine thundered forward. His swinging power fist crumpled the autocannon like tinfoil and sent Brostin flying. Limp and spinning over in the air, Brostin splashed into the swamp water off the platform.

  ‘Larks!’ Rawne yelled.

  Larkin raised his long-las. The Chaos Space Marine brought his flamer to bear. The world vanished in a blaze of white flames.

  Uexkull paused in his onslaught, and knelt down, smoke wreathing from the muzzles of his overheated weapons.

  He had come upon a body. One of his own.

  Nezera was dead, his corpse split open. Dead? How was that possible? Uexkull reached out with his steel fingers and touched the steaming innards that had spilled out of his warrior’s sliced armour.

  A true challenge. That’s what Uexkull had said. That’s what he’d boasted of to his warrior band. That, it seemed, was just what Nezera had found. By the laughing gods, what waited for them here?

  Uexkull’s inhumanly sharp senses suddenly warned him he was about to find out.

  Gaunt launched himself out of the shadows and swung the power sword at Uexkull. Jerking back at the last moment, Uexkull raised one gauntlet to deflect the blow. The sword clanged off in a flurry of sparks, the savage rebound stinging Gaunt’s forearms. He tried to reprise, but Uexkull was up on his feet again now. The scything blade cut the end off Uexkull’s bolter. The severed edges of the metal sizzled.

  With a deep roar, Uexkull lunged forward, dropping the mutilated weapon and reaching for Gaunt.

  Gaunt threw himself flat and rolled away.

  ‘You little bastard!’ Uexkull creaked, smashing his fist at his human prey. Stage planking split and cracked. Gaunt was already up again, clambering up a rope ladder onto the next platform.

  ‘You can’t escape me!’ Uexkull roared, and opened fire with his shoulder cannon. The furious salvo punched upward through the stage, and shredded the wet canopy overhead. Gaunt rolled sideways, wincing as huge holes exploded in the wood beside him.

  Uexkull fired again, raking the upper stage, and decapitating several of the supporting trees. With a terrible shriek of wrenching timber, the entire stage platform buckled and collapsed. Gaunt flew into the air, falling with it.

  Her breathing short and panicky, Criid balanced herself between two branches, legs splayed, and looked down. The Space Marine was almost directly beneath her, firing on anything that moved. Criid plucked the satchel off her shoulder, weighed it in her hands as a test, and then pulled out one of the tube-charges. She knotted the satchel strap around the charge as a counterweight, then pulled off the twist of det-tape and threw the bag down.

  It spun in the air. Her aim was dead on. The loop of the satchel landed around the Space Marine’s neck.

  The tube detonated. A millisecond later, the other five in the bag went off too.

  The Space Marine vanished in the blinding flash.

  Criid had a brief moment to enjoy her success. Then the rushing, rising fireball rippled upwards through the trees and engulfed her.

  Screaming, she fell into the expanding flames.

  Larkin was down, felled in the concussive rush of the Space Marine’s flamer-surge. Dead? Unconscious? There was no time to check. There was fething little time for anything at all.

  Not even a prayer.

  Rawne grabbed the fallen long-las. Smoke and wood fibres swirled in the air. The Chaos Space Marine turned, saw him through the haze, and began to raise his weapon.

  One chance. One shot. Rawne was no marksman, not like Larkin. He wasn’t even practiced with the long-las. But it had a hotshot loaded and Rawne knew he had to make it count. He wouldn’t get another.

  The Chaos Space Marine’s flamer came up to roar again.

  Rawne relaxed into the butt stock and fired.

  Range was almost point-blank. The searing round took the Chaos Space Marine’s head clean off.

  Cannon fire chewed the swamp water behind him. Clutching his sword, Gaunt surfaced with a splutter, and fought his way up onto a walk-board. He ran, dripping, across the next platform, trying to stick to the shadows.

  But Uexkull saw him and followed, wading into the mire, his cannon barking out tongues of muzzle-flash. Gaunt frantically got a heavy tree bole between him and the line of fire. He heard shots slam into the body of the ancient cycad. Leaves, insects and droplets of water rained down from the shaken canopy above. He started to run again, up a walk-bridge onto the next stage.

  Uexkull’s weight quaked the staging behind him as he got up out of the ooze onto the boards. Filthy water streamed off the lower half of his ceramite armour. Gaunt heard a distinctive clatter as the enemy’s suit-loaders automatically engaged a fresh ammo supply to the smoking cannon. He looked for cover, moved, slipped and fell hard. Cannon shots zipping over his head.

  Gaunt rolled violently, shots chewing into the old wood, and ducked down behind one of the anchor posts from which several of the platform’s supporting ropes ran. The ropes were old and hand-wound, and had been treated with some kind of lacquer to harden them. He sliced his blade through the central knot. The platform trembled, creaked, and fell, one end first.

  Uexkull toppled back into the water as his end of the stage dropped down violently. His wild cannon shots ripped up into the canopy as he fell, and churned up a showering downpour of leaf-mulch.

  Gaunt slithered down the shelving slope of the stricken platform. He got a purchase, and began hauling himself up onto the next stage section. Making deadly, almost feral sounds now, Uexkull dragged himself out of the marsh water, thrashing up from the stagnant liquid like some rising swamp-beast. Festooned with weed and algae, he seemed to be a hideous, primeval daemon of the marshes, submerged for eons, and woken to anger now by the tumult of war.

  Uexkull ascended the slumped stage after Gaunt.

  Criid landed badly on the splintered platform. The impact drove the breath right out of her. Limp, winded, she rolled over. The boards beneath her were hot and smouldering. Right next to her, the steaming Chaos Space Marine lay crumpled and dead. The combined satchel charge had burst it open, its armour fractured like an egg shell, the bloody interior oozing out like yolk.

  Criid tried to get up. She was dazed and close to grey-out. She couldn’t breathe. Gasping, trying to refill her lungs, she writhed, her vision dim and starred with lights. Little circling lights, like moths in the night.

  A partisan, grey-faced and silent, was pulling at her to move. A second partisan, armed with a crossbow, stood over them, uttering something urgent in their guttural language.

  Criid began to roll to her feet.

  ‘All right,’ she choked. ‘All right…’

  The partisan pulling at her smiled. Then he vanished from the chest up in a boiling cloud of blood and tissue. His ruined corpse fell over to one side. He was still holding her hand.

  A second Chaos Space Marine came roaring out of the smoke, bolter still firing. Criid felt the scorching heat of shells zipping past her head.

  The second partisan fired his bow weapon and died a moment later as one of the bolt rounds struck his chest and detonated. But the partisan’s quarrel had punched through the radiator vanes of the Chaos Space Marine’s helmet. He staggered backwards, dropping his bolter with a heavy thud. Blood was gushing from under the snout of his helmet where the quarrel had stuck, transfixed. He clawed at his snout with both hands, making monstrous, squealing noises that were amplified by his suit’s vox-system.

  As Criid tried to crawl away, she heard a twang of snapping, parting metal. The Chaos Space Marine had pulled the arrow out. He came forward, unsteady, reaching his huge paws at Criid as she flinched back. The Space Marine’s armoured gauntlets were immense, each one big enough to enclose her head, and strong enough to crush it like a berry.