Leontus: Lord Solar, page 3
‘They’re turning on one another!’ Nomak yelled over to Belgutei, one arm supporting the Krieg trooper who bounced limply in the saddle before him.
‘Let them!’ Belgutei said.
And then they burst clear of the orks and onto open ground with a cheer that rippled down the line as each rider’s horizon became one of rolling hills and open skies, though the latter were still scarred by trails of smoke drifting on the wind. Even the Catachan joined in, hurling curses at the xenos and swearing bloody revenge, but her anger was soon turned on Belgutei.
‘Where are we going? Why aren’t you turning around?’ she asked.
‘Because the battle is over. We have lost, Catachan. There is nothing to be gained by doing so,’ Belgutei said, and he was surprised to feel cold steel press against his throat in response. A glance downward revealed a muscular arm reaching over his shoulder and a Catachan blade held in blood-caked fingers.
‘There are Imperial soldiers back there. Catachans, Krieg, Cadians – hell, there might even be a few of your mob left too,’ she hissed into his ear. ‘We aren’t leaving them.’
It would be the work of a moment to reverse his grip on Do-Song’s blade and ram it into her ribs, but something held Belgutei back – something more than the razor-sharp knife held against his throat. He turned his head slowly, wincing as the blade scored a neat line across his neck, and pointed the sword at the other Attilans. There were less than ten riders left, most carrying minor wounds, and it was clear that few of the horses had many miles left in them.
‘We are few, too few to help anyone now,’ he said carefully, each bob of his Adam’s apple grating against the Catachan’s knife. ‘Besides, we have our own problems.’
He felt the Catachan shift position as she followed the line of his sword to the blur of red kicking up dust to the west.
‘Speed Freeks,’ she said. She pulled her knife from his throat, and Belgutei breathed a sigh of relief. ‘Can we outrun them?’
Gori felt strong beneath him, but he knew her flanks would be frothing with sweat beneath the heavy armour and thick cloth barding. The others’ horses would all be the same after hours of charging and vigorous combat, and now their desperate escape, but they were all Attilan purebred and would run until their hearts gave out, if that was their riders’ will.
‘We can try.’
Belgutei sheathed Do-Song’s sword and kicked Gori forward to the front of the Attilan column. Even carrying twice the weight, she was strong, and she reacted to his touch as if they had been bonded far longer than the last frantic hour. Nomak followed with his Krieg passenger, who appeared to be a far more natural rider than the burly Catachan, despite the trickle of his blood that had coated his and Nomak’s flanks.
‘We have shadows to the west,’ Nomak called as he took his position beside Belgutei, seemingly unfazed by the blood that had doused half of his body.
‘I have seen.’
‘Take this burden and give me three riders,’ Nomak said, shaking the Krieg trooper’s limp form to emphasise his point. ‘I will meet them in their charge and you can make for the mountain.’
‘No, cousin. I will not spend our lives so cheaply,’ Belgutei said. He had already run through many such strategies in his mind, and discarded each in turn. ‘If we turn and fight, we risk drawing more of them in. Our best chance is to make for more uneven ground and hope they lose interest in us.’
‘It is a thin hope,’ Nomak said, but he slowed to let the others know Belgutei’s plan.
‘All hope is thin,’ Belgutei called after him.
‘“Except that which lies with the God-Emperor”,’ the Catachan said, finishing the quote.
‘Indeed. Tell me your name, Catachan, I would know who shares my horse.’
‘On the day you might die, you mean?’
‘Just so.’ Belgutei smiled. He had heard much of the Catachans over the years, of their skill as guerrilla fighters and the living hellscape that was their home world, and was glad to see that their grim reputation hadn’t been exaggerated.
‘Corporal Keori Arnetz, Catachan Eighty-Third,’ she said, shifting her position behind him. ‘Do you keep a lasgun on this thing?’
‘Her name is Gori, named for the eastern wind,’ Belgutei said, reaching down to pass her the lasgun from its saddle-mounted sling. It whined as Arnetz checked the charge and sighted the weapon on the incoming orks.
‘They don’t look like they’re losing interest,’ she said.
‘They do not.’
Belgutei called out to his riders, asking for speed that he knew their horses didn’t have as they crested the first rise. The orks dropped from sight below the hill for almost half a minute before their ramshackle vehicles ramped over the crest and came down with an almighty clatter. Belgutei watched with his heart in his mouth, hoping that the shearing armour plates and spraying components might slow their pursuers. One machine crashed, an unholy amalgamation of halftrack and dirtcycle, which flipped end over end as its front end collapsed on impact.
His riders cheered, but it was not enough. At least five more of the Speed Freeks’ vehicles gouged deep furrows in the earth as their drivers fought for control, but none stopped to aid their stricken comrade. Black smoke belched from their engines as they let out a still-louder roar, and careened up the hill towards the fleeing Attilans.
Even from the front of the column, Belgutei could hear the telltale thud-thud of ork rounds slapping into the ground behind them, and the hollow thumps of shells striking flesh. Dirt sprayed as hard rounds whined past him and Arnetz, kicking up clods of earth that pattered against Gori’s armour as she galloped on.
‘They’re getting closer!’ Arnetz shouted and loosed a burst from her borrowed lasgun.
The riders crested the next rise at a far slower pace as the incline ate into their speed, and the scream of wounded horses told Belgutei that he had lost at least one of his men to the orks’ indiscriminate fire. There was far less open ground before the next rise, but it was far steeper, and at the top…
A shimmer of golden light in the shape of a man, who disappeared before Belgutei could be sure of what he had seen.
‘Who the hell is that?’ Arnetz asked.
‘I do not know,’ Belgutei said, the after-image of the figure still fresh in his mind. The man had looked too small to have been one of the God-Emperor’s blessed Adeptus Astartes, but he had no answers to what else it could have been. He erred on the side of caution regardless, ordering his men to be ready for combat as the next climb began.
The hill receded beneath them to reveal an open plain carpeted with sun-bleached grasses and bereft of any trees, bluffs or cover – perfect ground for the orks to catch the riders. But it also revealed the mysterious figure to be a man in a pale blue uniform and golden armour, a long white pistol in one hand and the other held up to halt the galloping riders. Belgutei dragged on Gori’s reins as he recognised the figure from the propaganda films, recruitment posters, and statues erected in places of honour on a hundred worlds.
‘That’s the Lord Solar,’ Arnetz breathed.
It was him, down to the golden greaves and the breastplate emblazoned with the Imperial aquila, the flowing red cloak, and the wreathed helm topped with the dawning crest. It was Lord Solar Leontus himself.
Belgutei’s riders pulled up behind him, churning up the ground as several horses wheeled about as they fought against their natural instinct to keep running. The others whickered beneath their sweating riders to voice their displeasure as the Lord Solar made straight for Belgutei.
‘Lord Solar, you’re–’
‘Give me your explosives. We don’t have much time,’ the Lord Solar commanded, making straight for Gori’s saddlebags and pulling the explosive lance-tips clear. ‘Catachan, help me – quickly!’
With a confused look at Belgutei, Arnetz slipped down from her perch, grabbed the few remaining explosives, and followed the Lord Solar to a patch of ground a few yards away from the edge of the rise.
‘Move the horses away and prepare for a counter-charge,’ Belgutei ordered, handing Gori’s reins to Nomak as he stepped out of the saddle and took up a bundle of his second-in-command’s spare melta-tipped lances.
Nomak did as he was ordered and led the other Attilans away from the edge of the hill, whilst Belgutei followed Arnetz and the Lord Solar to where they were driving the lance-tips into the ground to create a thicket of makeshift mines. He followed their example and worked swiftly but carefully alongside them, the clatter of engines growing closer with each lance they planted, until the Lord Solar stood to look down at the approaching orks. Even with the dirt staining his gloves and the mud caked around his boots and knees, he looked imperious as hard rounds whizzed past or chewed into the crest of the hill.
‘Ten seconds – Attilan, get back to your men and charge whatever survives,’ the Lord Solar said, stepping back from the edge before breaking into a run. Belgutei found himself dragged back to his feet with surprising strength and pushed into a sprint, just as the sound of ork engines reached a revving crescendo on the incline behind him.
‘That’s the Lord Solar!’ Nomak said as Belgutei swung himself into Gori’s saddle, and his second-in-command passed him a primed hunting lance. The Krieg man was on the ground, a borrowed laspistol in his hand as he stood over a prone Attilan rider who had been caught by an ork round and would not ride again. Ahead of Belgutei, the Lord Solar had led Arnetz away from the trap and the Attilans, and they were both taking cover in a shallow depression less than twenty yards from the mines.
‘It is,’ Belgutei agreed, and he looked around at the handful of Attilans he had left. ‘Follow me on the charge and look after each other. We might just make it out of this alive.’
The first ork dragsta crested the hill at a lunatic’s pace, the underside twisting through the air as its oversimplified aerodynamics turned its unchecked momentum into a suicidal spin. The driver was ejected as it flipped, the xenos flying clear as its vehicle slammed into the open ground beyond the trap.
Then the other Speed Freeks appeared in a cataclysm of red paint, torn metal and fire.
The bikes were the first to land, the lance-tips impaling engines and riders before blowing both apart with concussive force. Glossy ichor and stringy sinew splashed across the trikes and buggies that followed them into explosive destruction. A second later, the final trukk landed in the centre of the destructive mass and detonated.
Lesser mounts would have reared at the sensory overload, losing themselves to their base instincts no matter what their riders did, but the Attilans did not breed lesser mounts. Gori tensed beneath Belgutei, ready to surge towards the carnage at the slightest command from her rider, trained to harness her adrenaline into devastating speed.
Belgutei didn’t need to shout his order. With Do-Song’s lance in one hand and Gori’s reins in the other, he touched his stirrups to her flank and set her charging into the inferno. His riders followed, directing their mounts into forward motion and onward into the destruction. Scraps of blackened metal landed in their path, embers and butterflies of flaming cloth dancing in their wake as the Attilans charged in to finish off what remained of the Speed Freeks.
To their credit, those orks that survived fought on with burned faces and mangled limbs, hacking at their foes with brutal choppas and firing on horses and riders alike with heavy shootas, but their resistance was cut short by the Attilans’ lances. They didn’t bother detonating the explosive tips, but ran the creatures through again and again until the beasts stopped thrashing. A blur of gold and blue moved amidst the smoke and burning vehicles with Arnetz at its back, the Lord Solar putting down the orks with clinical cuts and blasts from his legendary pistol.
Finally, once they had all been put down, Belgutei ordered his surviving troops away from the burning vehicles and back to clear ground, the final kills leaving his mouth tasting of sour ash and bitter chemicals. Arnetz met him on the edge of the skirmish, her skin soot-blackened on her arms and cheeks, her borrowed lasgun still in her hands.
‘Are you hurt?’ Belgutei asked.
‘No, I’m… I’m fine,’ Arnetz said. She looked back towards where the Lord Solar was approaching a wounded ork, the driver of the first dragsta to make the rise, as it dragged itself away. ‘I didn’t even know he was part of the first wave with us. Should we…?’
‘He can take care of that himself,’ Belgutei said. ‘See to the others. I will keep an eye on the Lord Solar.’
The Lord Solar drove his sword down through the ork’s torso, pinning it to the ground as he primed his pistol. He looked like he was saying something to the xenos as it lashed out at him with taloned fingers, swiping dangerously close to his mud-caked boots.
‘What is he doing?’ Nomak asked. Belgutei hadn’t realised that his cousin had approached – yet another sign that his mind wasn’t as sharp as it needed to be. He should have thought of trapping their trail as the Lord Solar had; it was an old trick used by Attilans being pursued behind enemy lines, or to slow fast-moving predators on the steppes of Attila. That he hadn’t galled him. Had his own fear blinded him to the opportunity? Or had he been too fixated on their escape to remember that Attilans had more than just simple speed in their arsenal?
‘I don’t know. Speaking to it, I think?’
Belgutei could hear the harsh rumble of the ork’s speech across the open ground between them, and the low murmur of the Lord Solar’s response. Then, with little warning, the Lord Solar fired his pistol into the ork’s face. There was a blast of heat and vaporised flesh, and the ork went still.
Nomak whistled. ‘I don’t think he liked what it said.’
‘Who did we lose?’ Belgutei asked, nodding over to where Arnetz was kneeling next to the Krieg trooper. She hadn’t moved the prone Attilan, which he took as confirmation that the rider was dead.
‘Almost everyone,’ Nomak said. He was looking in the opposite direction, down onto the plains below, where a sea of green orks screamed war cries that could still be heard on the wind, though now only faintly.
‘I need your mind here, Nomak, not back there on the plain,’ Belgutei said. ‘We’re all tired, all dulled by what we’ve been through today. The more eyes I have looking forwards, the better chance we have of making it through this alive. Now, who do we have left?’
‘Just you, me, Rugen and Csaba. Utari was dead when we pulled her from the saddle.’
Belgutei twisted around and took in the two Attilans that remained, each leading a riderless horse behind them. Bile rose in his throat at the thought of how many riders had been lost, the friends and comrades who he had known since their days amongst the hunting lodges of his home world.
‘Four of us?’ Belgutei breathed. ‘We landed with more than five hundred.’
‘Maybe others escaped? We can’t be the only ones who got away.’
It was a fool’s naive hope, but Belgutei found himself praying for the strength to believe.
‘I’ve heard stories of the orks taking captives before,’ he said. ‘Maybe, in the God-Emperor’s mercy…’
He looked to the plains, at the mass of orks that roiled between the burning landers, and spat bitterly in the dirt. A horse nibbled at a patch of ground on the hill below, the remains of an Attilan rider slumped in its saddle. He recognised Battari’s steed by the devices woven into its barding, the emblems of the hunting lodge that had bred him for war. Little was left of Battari himself above the waist, just a ruin of red meat and shattered bone from the orks’ heavy guns.
Belgutei found himself unable to look away, numbed by the sight of his comrade’s broken body. He had known the man for years, and charged into battle at his side more times than he cared to remember. Now all that remained of his worldly flesh wobbled in the saddle as his horse tore clumps of dry grass from the earth with its teeth, awaiting directions from its master – directions that would never come.
How many other horses had been left riderless in the last few hours? How many men and women were little more than cooling meat beneath a foreign sun?
‘We need to move,’ the Lord Solar called out as he approached. His pistol was still clasped in one hand, the other pointing to the plume of smoke rising from the destroyed ork vehicles. ‘That will be visible for miles in a matter of minutes. I will need to borrow a horse.’
‘Of course, my lord,’ Belgutei said, tearing his eyes from Battari as he searched his memory for the proper honorifics. He’d never even met a planetary governor before, never mind someone who commanded the armies of an entire segmentum. But if he’d used the wrong titles, the Lord Solar gave no sign, and Belgutei made off towards where Arnetz was tending to the Krieg trooper. His own leg was throbbing where the ork had sunk its fangs into him, and the bloodstained fabric felt worryingly hot under his touch.
‘Nomak, get Battari’s horse and give it to the Catachan woman, Arnetz. The Lord Solar can ride Utari’s,’ Belgutei ordered with a sigh, turning Gori from the plains and back towards the mountain. ‘If the Krieg can ride, then he rides with Arnetz. We have carried him far enough – we stopped for him once already, and I won’t have him slowing us down.’
THREE
Leontus led the others away from the still-burning ork vehicles towards the mountain, forgoing any reminders to keep their eyes open on the unfamiliar terrain. They were all on edge; that much was clear from the wary glances cast back on the plains and the hands that rested close to their weapons as they rode.
