The Horus Heresy: The Master of Mankind

The Archimandrite pivoted but the Blood Angel’s jump pack spurted stabilising gas jets, long enough for a fifth blow to bite deep into the carved wound. The tendril deformed with the damage, gushing oil and slime as it fell limp, dropping Sagittarus into the melee below.

His last sight before plunging into the battling bodies was the Archimandrite’s left hand closing around the Blood Angel’s torso, dragging him from his unstable perch.

Sagittarus rolled with all of the grace of an overturned sand turtle, clawing his remaining fist into the ground, and dragged himself back.

‘Five,’ he heard Zephon vox, the Blood Angel’s voice marred by strain for the first time.

Four.

Zephon thrashed in the beast’s grip, laying into the machine’s forearm with his damaged chainsword.

Three.

A lucky nick at the wrist tore a fluid-wet spillage of cabling from its housing, weakening the grip before it fully closed. The Blood Angel fired his jump pack, red ceramite scraping against the Archimandrite’s clutching fingers as he boosted free, straight up.

Two.

With a grace any winged being would envy, the Blood Angel twisted in the air, angling his propulsion to veer him back to the Imperial line.

One.

The bandolier of grenades mag-locked to the back of the Archimandrite’s head detonated in incendiary harmony, sending shrapnel rainstorming across the embattled lines. Daemons near to the detonation howled at the punishment delivered to their predator-monarch. The Archimandrite, missing a significant portion of its hunchback and both shoulders, staggered forwards, emitting a shriek that the true war machine was incapable of producing.

‘Engaging,’ came Jaya’s voice in Zephon’s helm.

6

She had expended her ammunition hours before, even depleting Torolec’s reserves. Her swordlimb was a cracked ruin; it had shattered against a Warhound after cutting through the bare metal and severing the leg at the thigh. Lacking any other recourse, she was down to clubbing with the broken hilt and her ammo-starved gunlimb, doing her best to guard the front ranks from harm by warding them from the Archimandrite’s onslaught with her ion shield.

Zephon sent the signal. Jaya forced her Knight into a sprinting run, charging as Sevik had charged, heaving her Castigator’s weight against the staggering Archimandrite. Hunched as she was, she found herself face to face with the Mechanicum’s creation, looking down into the broken cranial armour left in the wake of the grenades’ detonation. Fluids ran and bubbled in scorched cables. Fleshy matter was burned against the insides of the dome – what had once been Hieronyma’s brain and spinal column. The incinerated remnants still quivered with impossible life.

End of Empires, she heard in her mind. In the same second, warning chimes began singing their familiar song. The creatures were swarming around her knees and she had no means of shoving them away. The Custodians and Sisters were too far back to reach her.

Jaya reversed her grip on the control levers, throwing the Knight into a leaping backstep, coming down awkwardly on the flesh of the daemons around her. Freed from the pressure of her weight, the Archimandrite overbalanced and stumbled forwards – meeting the rising energised remains of Jaya’s swordlimb. The uppercut blow pounded into the machine’s ruptured chest-plating, sinking all the way to Jaya’s elbow joint.

‘For Sevik,’ she spat into her external speakers. ‘For the Emperor.’

The Archimandrite’s only reply was to slump, powerless, dead. For precious seconds they remained there together, fused at the point of death. Her cockpit shook as the creatures beneath her began crawling and cutting their way upwards, ascending her Knight’s savaged armour plating.

The Archimandrite began to topple, dragging the Knight down with it. Jaya locked her stabilisers and compensator balancers, buying her a few more seconds of standing upright. Her gloved hands scrabbled for the ejection release, but it had either not functioned since its initial repairs or fallen into uselessness during the days of fighting. The seals blew in the hatch above her, but her throne remained locked in place.

She heard the first creature reach the top of the Castigator’s carapace, its talons pulling at the seal-blown hatch. Yet when it ripped away, a figure in arterial-red stood silhouetted and haloed in the golden mist. It reached down and offered her its shining metal hand.

Jaya grabbed it, immediately hauled up into the Blood Angel’s grip. She barely had time to suck in a breath before his turbines kicked in and sent them skywards, shaking every bone and pulling every muscle in her body.