The Laurel of Defiance - Guy Haley Read online

  ‘FELGHAAAAAAAASSSST!’

  The Titan let off a rattle of inaccurate fire, smashing buildings into ruin.

  ‘We have its attention, sergeant!’

  Crassus was the finest armour specialist under Corvo’s command. He was a master of all aspects of tank warfare, but he was also a particularly gifted driver. He accelerated the carrier to maximum speed.

  Ultramar streets ran long and straight, but slumped buildings had narrowed the Via Palatine. Wrecked civilian vehicles cluttered what space remained. Corvo was slammed into the hatch rim as the Rhino burst through the shell of a burnt-out tram. Colonnades crashed down as Felghast spat fury all about them.

  The fog curled in vortices around the pursuing Titan. It was gaining.

  A missile hammered into the road. The Rhino slewed along the blast front as Crassus fought for control.

  Konor’s Forum lay ahead, a large market square paved in marble now thick with dust. Great idealised statues of the long-dead Battle King stood at each corner.

  Ramps led down underneath, where the streets intersected the square. If Felghast had been behaving to tactical norms, it would never have ventured into the forum.

  But Felghast was not operating to tactical norms.

  A spear of light slashed into the Rhino as it entered the square, sending it spinning across the pavement. It crashed to a halt in one of the arcades running around the edge.

  The Titan roared and then slowed, approaching its prey.

  Corvo cursed. He dropped back inside the tank. Fire licked out of the driver’s cabin. Crassus was clutching at his neck and moaning.

  ‘Release your belt!’ said Corvo. ‘Squad seventeen, lure it in. Lure it in!’

  Corvo kicked the side door open and pulled Crassus free. Felghast looked down at them, looming out of the fog like a monster of legend. Old gods help him, if Corvo didn’t actually see the metal nose snuffling.

  A beam of ruby las-light connected with the Titan’s void shields, sending up an oily flare. The beast swung around to find its source, already firing.

  Corvo dragged Crassus into the lee of a toppled column.

  The giant foot of Felghast moved over the square, throwing it into shadow.

  ‘Now,’ voxed Corvo.

  Explosive plumes ripped up the sides of the plaza. A rain of shattered ferrocrete pinged off his armour. He held his head down, shielding Brother Crassus. His body shook as a large piece of stone clanged off his armoured backpack. Warning indicators on his visor display climbed to critical, alarms sounded in his ears, but he blink-clicked them to silence. His power plant was compromised. Coolant jetted from the cracked left exhaust, and the bars indicating its level dropped dangerously low.

  The rain of debris stopped. Corvo raised his head.

  Felghast’s uncanny war-horns blared in alarmed tandem with its voice. Machinery squealed as its torso twisted, trying to arrest its progress. Walking was little more than controlled falling – now that there was nothing solid to place its foot upon, Felghast fell uncontrollably.

  The stacked layers of the subterranean spaces beneath Konor’s Forum were open to the air, and the Titan’s foot plunged into the hole. It roared in anger, its awful brazen jaws clacking. Weapons discharged furiously, pulverising the grand Administratum buildings around the ruined square.

  Slowly, it toppled.

  Corvo watched tensely.

  The metallic tail of the Titan lashed backwards and forwards, sweeping up a storm of rubble as it raked the ground. With a whip-crack, the thin end of it wrapped itself around the pediment of the statue of King Konor closest to Corvo. The whole structure held, though it shifted at this new load.

  Felghast hung over the precipice, and then it began to haul itself back upright. A daemonic laugh rumbled out from its engines.

  ‘Stay here!’ Corvo ordered Crassus. He mag-locked his bolter to his hip. ‘Heavy support squad Calorem, hold. Stand ready to execute. Anyone else, with me!’

  Space Marines came running from cover. To their rear, up the Via Palatine, gunfire rattled. The supporting units of Felghast were nearing, fighting running battles with the loyalist forces set to catch them.

  ‘To the statue! To the statue!’ Corvo roared.

  He sprinted, his body and armour working as one to propel him at speeds that his bulk would suggest impossible. He charged at the pediment without slowing, slamming into it. The impact made his visor display fizz. Alarms sounded again as his suit’s ruptured coolant system struggled to keep the temperature of his labouring power armour down. He ignored it, trusting to his superhuman metabolism to save him from heat exhaustion.

  ‘With me, brothers!’

  Others crashed into the statue. They pushed at it, grunting in effort, armoured boots skidding on the rubble at the square’s edge. Brother Vestorious drew his gladius, leapt up, hooked his arm around the tail and hacked at the ribbed flesh-metal as he hung there. Molten metal spurted from the wound and splashed on his visor, but he did not stop.

  ‘Heave!’ cried Corvo. ‘Heave!’

  More Ultramarines hammered into the statue, but there was no space for anyone else. The newcomers pushed against their fellows’ backs or dropped broken slabs underfoot, giving purchase to sliding feet on the treacherous ground.

  ‘Heave!’

  Small arms fire came in, pinging off their battleplate, followed by the deranged howls of the XVII’s supporting Army units. Bolter fire barked in return as Corvo’s rearguard squads moved up to engage from neighbouring streets. Popping bangs rattled around the dusty fog as mass reactive projectiles detonated. The intensity of the firestorm suggested a larger force of traitors than he had anticipated.

  ‘Heave!’ shouted Corvo.

  The statue jolted, spilling Space Marines onto the ground. ‘It’s going! It’s going!’ shouted someone at the back of the group.

  Corvo’s vox was a torrent of feeds coming at him from all quarters. He had no effort to spare for their ordering.

  ‘Heave!’

  The defiled Titan was still trying to drag itself upright, its foot pawing at the air, seeking solid ground. They did not have much time. His men brought up a girder, and rammed it into the widening gap, levering the pediment upwards.

  ‘Heave, brothers!’ yelled Corvo. ‘Heave!’

  The statue lurched. With the sound of grinding stone, the pedestal came free of its foundations and toppled over. King Konor slid from his perch and shattered upon the flagstones.

  Felghast gave out a withering howl as it fell. Its void shields breached themselves on the jagged lip of the pit, bursting in a storm of lightning that ran sparks over the Ultramarines power armour. It crashed down through the open sub-layers, bringing its armoured torso to ground level and jamming its weapon arms wide.

  The Titan was down. One leg was splayed behind it, wrenched at an awkward angle, the other buried hip-deep in the hole. Machinery protested violently as it tried to drag itself up, but it could not. Its tail cracked back and forth in anger, catching three Space Marines and sending them crashing into the ruins.

  ‘The tail! Get clear of the tail. Stand ready to repel ground forces.’

  Shapes were coming up through the dust. Enemy armour. Corvo dismissed them – in the choked avenue they posed little threat. Poor theoretical, worse practical and XVII Legion idiocy as they raced to save their downed idol. In confirmation, a loud whoosh and clang heralded a rocket going into the side of one of the enemy tanks. It stopped dead, hatches blown, further blocking ingress to the forum.

  There were other shapes in the mist. Power armoured. Legionaries. These did cause him concern. Still, if they were in the city, then they were not outside it, waiting them out. Corvo’s plan was working. He had drawn the enemy in.

  ‘Calorem, execute! Execute, now, now, now!’

  At the other end of the downed daemon-machine, the heavy support squad advanced out from the shelter of a courtyard. Armourglass eyes caged by sloped brass brows stared hatred at the Space Marines as the
y approached the Titan’s head. Carapace guns swivelled hopelessly. Its jaw clacked on the ground, seeking to bite. Heavy melta cannons were arrayed by the Space Marines, five of them, and set to maximum power.

  The roar of the fusion weaponry was audible on Corvo’s side of the square.

  The Titan screamed. They fired again.

  ‘That is not the cry of a machine,’ said one of his men.

  The scream trailed off. Felghast writhed in its pit, the crashing of its death throes drowning out the sound of battle.

  Corvo blink-clicked his way into Squad Calorem’s helmet feeds. He saw a cooling puddle of molten brass where the Titan’s head had been. There was no sign of a princeps or moderati within what remained, nor any indication of a cockpit cavity – only a fibrous, organic mess shot through with bands of distorted metal. He clicked off.

  ‘Good work,’ he said, drawing his gladius. ‘Move up to square east side. Prepare to engage Seventeenth Legion elements. Strikeforce Alpha, commence assault. We march for Macragge!’

  ‘Captain Lucretius Corvo! Ninetieth Company, Ninth Chapter. Step forward!’

  Corvo approached the dais. Corvo knew no fear, but this convocation of demigods gave him pause. Sanguinius’s glorious visage in particular was hard to look at up close.

  He came to the end of the carpet, to the top of the steps, and knelt before his lord.

  ‘Look at me, captain.’

  Corvo forced his eyes upwards.

  Lord Guilliman looked upon him benevolently, as proud a father as ever there was.

  ‘For you, my son, there is great honour.’

  He held out a hand. A man came forward, bearing upon a velvet cushion a laurel wreath, so cunningly wrought from metal that it looked as though it were fashioned from fresh-cut leaves.

  ‘The Laurel of Defiance!’ called out Guilliman. He held up the award for all the world to see. ‘One of our Legion’s highest honours. For the Titan killer, for the saviour of Astagar, for Captain Lucretius Corvo!’

  Corvo bent his head. The primarch placed the wreath. It clicked as it mag-locked itself around Corvo’s helm.

  ‘The honour was my men’s, not mine alone, lord,’ said Corvo.

  ‘You led them well, captain. By honouring you, we honour them all.’

  An expectant air formed. An uncomfortable silence followed.

  The Lion spoke. ‘Are you not forgetting something, captain?’

  ‘Am I, my lord?’ said Corvo.

  ‘All others honoured here today have renewed their oaths to your Legion, and to the Imperium. Will you not do the same?’

  ‘No, my lord.’

  There was a sound akin to a soft wind, the sound of a world gasping.

  The Lion’s face hardened. Sanguinius looked to his brothers.

  ‘Are you a traitor, then?’ asked the Lion.

  Corvo drew his gladius. The Space Marines on the dais brought their weapons up, but Guilliman stayed them with a hand. Corvo held the sword high above his head, blade flat upon his palms.

  ‘I do not renew my oath, my lords, for the oaths of an Ultramarine are forever binding. I am not like my traitor kin to renounce their solemn promises. I have sworn already to serve the Imperium, the Emperor, the Legion and all of mankind, and through those oaths my lords have my sword until death takes me. You ask me to renew that which needs no renewal, for the oaths of an Ultramarine are eternal. To speak them again implies a weakness inherent to them. And there is no weakness. Not in my arm, nor in my mind, nor in my word. I am an Ultramarine. I march for Macragge and the Emperor for evermore, as I have pledged. I need not do so again.’

  A slow, gauntleted clapping broke the silence.

  Guilliman. Guilliman himself applauded his words. ‘Well said, my son, well said!’

  ‘Insolence, brother,’ muttered the Lion.

  ‘Honour,’ Guilliman corrected him. ‘Captain Corvo, put away your sword.’

  Corvo did. His primarch’s hand fell on his shoulder.

  ‘Stand, my son. Stand and face your brothers.’

  Corvo turned, and saw the Legions arrayed in the square as the primarchs did. Behind the expressionless visors of his brothers, he knew that some faces would show displeasure. Prayto had been right. He did not care.

  ‘Do you hear his words, warriors of the Thirteenth?’ said Guilliman. ‘Listen, for he speaks the truth. The honour of our Legion is unimpeachable! We march for Macragge!’

  The response rumbled out from the square, heavy as thunder.

  ‘Return to your brothers, Lucretius.’

  ‘Wait!’ said the Lion.

  Corvo paused.

  ‘Tell me, I understand it the custom in the Thirteenth to allow captains to modify their heraldry, but yours is a bold departure. Might I ask why?’ asked the primarch.

  At this, an image flickered through Corvo’s mind. The eidetic memory of the Legiones Astartes was a great gift, but carried a high price. It made all recollections that came before its bestowing pale and unreal in comparison. Another irony in a life of ironies, that every image of death seen by his transhuman eyes remained sharp, that every privation could be recalled and felt anew in painful clarity. He fought for humanity, while his own youthful experience of being human was reduced to sun-bleached flashes, opaque moments of dreamlike quality that could not be trusted.

  He treasured them all the same.

  This was what he remembered.

  The forecourt of his father’s house one hundred and twenty years ago. Bone-white flags snapped in the breeze bearing the badge of the Corvo line – a hollow, spiked circle. A stylised sunburst.

  His father was the last to fly that flag. There were no male heirs beyond Lucretius.

  Natural memory was imprecise but in its looseness was found the miracle of evocation, and it was far more emotive than the cold exactness of his Legion-gifted mind. Lucretius again felt his hair stir, he felt the goosebumps rise on his bare arms. Autumn was chill that year, and already the wind had turned to come down from the mountains. There was something invested in this recollection, so deep and fundamental to who he was as a human being, not as a Space Marine. Something that he had almost forgotten how to feel, and struggled daily not to forget.

  His father knelt before him, the proud scion of an old and powerful house. Corvo had never seen him kneel before. Not even in the old picts from when Sulustro was taken back into the fold of the Five Hundred Worlds.

  ‘My son, Lucretius,’ he had said. ‘You go from us, and for this I grieve.’ He grasped his son’s shoulders. His voice was unsteady. ‘I am proud of you. The Corvo name will die with you, and still I am proud.’

  Corvo could not speak. What could he say? How could he be strong for the Emperor if his father – the strongest man he knew – was not?

  Corvo’s father searched his eyes for a glimpse of the man he would never know. They stayed like this, his father’s hands warm on his shoulders, the wind cold on his skin.

  He embraced his son and stood. ‘Go now, Lucretius. Be proud of what you are to become, but never forget who you are or what you were.’

  ‘I swear, father,’ said Lucretius. ‘I swear I will not forget.’

  His father smiled. Corvo had never seen a sadder sight, before or since.

  The memory faded. He was with a different father now.

  It was hard to hold the Lion’s eye. Perilous, even. But Corvo did.

  The Lion glanced at Sanguinius. They seemed amused.

  ‘Well, captain?’ said the Lion. ‘What is the significance of your colours? Would you care to explain?’

  ‘It is simple, my lord.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I made a promise,’ said Corvo. He bowed from the waist.

  They were calling out the name of the next hero as he walked away.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Guy Haley is the author of the Horus Heresy novel Pharos, the Primarchs novel Perturabo: The Hammer of Olympia and the Warhammer 40,000 novels Dante, Baneblade, Shadowsword, Valedor and D
eath of Integrity. He has also written Throneworld and The Beheading for The Beast Arises series. His enthusiasm for all things greenskin has also led him to pen the eponymous Warhammer novel Skarsnik, as well as the End Times novel The Rise of the Horned Rat. He has also written stories set in the Age of Sigmar, included in War Storm, Ghal Maraz and Call of Archaon. He lives in Yorkshire with his wife and son.

  When the Night Lords fall upon the Pharos, the great light of Imperium Secundus, it falls to the Ultramarines and their allies to stop mankind’s last hope from falling into eternal darkness…

  A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION

  First published in Sedition’s Gate in Great Britain in 2014.

  This eBook edition published in 2017 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd,

  Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

  Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.

  The Laurel of Defiance © Copyright Games Workshop Limited 2017. The Laurel of Defiance, GW, Games Workshop, Black Library, The Horus Heresy, The Horus Heresy Eye logo, Space Marine, 40K, Warhammer, Warhammer 40,000, the ‘Aquila’ Double-headed Eagle logo, and all associated logos, illustrations, images, names, creatures, races, vehicles, locations, weapons, characters, and the distinctive likenesses thereof, are either ® or TM, and/or © Games Workshop Limited, variably registered around the world.

  All Rights Reserved.

  A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN: 978-1-78572-836-5

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

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