"Storm of Iron" - читать интересную книгу автора (MvNeill Graham)

FOUR

Despite the warm wind that gusted across the mountain peaks, a shiver passed down Major Gunnar Tedeski's spine as he watched the activities below the fortress of Tor Christo. The stocky major leant over the parapet of Kane bastion, steadying himself with his one arm, and tried to guess at the number of men working below on the plains. At a conservative estimate, he guessed there were perhaps eight or nine thousand workers digging or otherwise engaged in the siege-works below. The enemy was not short of men to dig, that was for sure, but how many actual warriors faced him was impossible to say.

'Uh, Major Tedeski, I'm not sure that's such a good idea,' ventured his aide-de-camp Captain Poulsen, who followed behind him clutching a data-slate.

'Nonsense, Poulsen, these Chaos scum aren't the sort to go in for snipers.'

'Even so, sir,' reiterated Poulsen as the boom of artillery echoed from the sides of the valley.

Tedeski shook his head, saying, 'It's too short to matter.'

Sure enough the shell landed in the ruins of the watch-tower, sending up a plume of dust and rock fragments. The watchtower had been demolished after less than a day's shelling, but it had never been designed to withstand such a comprehensive bombardment in the first place.

Tedeski pulled back from the parapet and continued his walk around the perimeter of the bastion's walls. Soldiers sat, playing dice or sleeping below the level of the parapet. A few scanned the ground before them, their faces lined in exhaustion and lack of sleep. The more or less constant shelling had denied everyone sleep, and nerves were stretched taut.

In the week since the abortive attack on the traitors' trench system by the Legio Ignatum and the armoured units of the Dragoons, the plateau had changed beyond all recognition. Enemy artillery had pounded the plains day and night with high explosives, obliterating razor wire and detonating mines. Zigzag trenches covered the ground, reaching out towards the promontory that Tor Christo sat upon, their sides heavily reinforced with earthen ramparts. Tedeski's gunners had done their best, but the trenches had been constructed with mathematical precision and they were impossible to enfilade. Only once, when a portion of the trench had overreached, were they able to cause some real damage, killing the diggers and obliterating their machinery.

But since then, as each trench approached a point where the guns would be able to fire down their length, giant figures in grey-steel armour would direct the workers to alter the angle of digging.

A spider web of communication trenches and redoubts spread back to the main campsite and, though the Christo's guns shelled them daily, his observers could see no appreciable damage. It was maddeningly frustrating to see the foe advance with such impunity. The enemy had thrown out a second parallel at the termination of the saps, its sharp curve matching the sweep of his walls exactly. In two sections of this new parallel, high walls had been built. No doubt the trench behind them was being deepened and widened to allow the placement of large-bore howitzers.

Though the men in the Christo had been under fire for over a week, the range was too great for the enemy guns to do more than chip away at the walls. However, the range was ideal for delivering ricochet fire, which had dismounted a great many of Tor Christo's wall-mounted guns. Tedeski had ordered the remaining guns to be pulled back into the fort, and though casualties had been light - fifty-two men dead so far - that would all change when the batteries of the second parallel were completed.

But Tedeski had a surprise in store for Tor Christo's attackers.

Guns situated at the base of the rocky promontory, kept in reserve thus far, would soon make their presence felt when the enemy moved their heavy artillery forward into those newly constructed batteries.

'It won't be long now, Poulsen,' mused Tedeski.

'What won't, sir?'

'The attack, Poulsen, the attack,' replied Tedeski, unable to mask his irritation. 'If we can't stop them from completing those batteries, they will bring up their big guns and lob high explosive shells right over our walls. Then they won't need to batter our walls down, they'll be able to walk right up to the main gate and come in, because there will be no one left alive to stop them.'

'But the guns below will stop them, surely?'

'Possibly,' allowed Tedeski, 'but we'll only be able to pull that trick once. And that's assuming they don't know about them already. Remember that reconnaissance party we fired on at the beginning of all this?'

'Yes, sir.'

'Well there's every chance our enemies know of the guns down there, and have planned accordingly.'

'Surely not, sir. If the enemy had discovered them, they would have attempted to shell them before now, would they not?'

Tedeski nodded thoughtfully, resting his elbow on the stonework of the parapet, its sharply angled construction allowing a soldier to fire at attackers almost directly below.

'There is that, Poulsen, and that's the only reason I haven't had the passages below ground blocked. I can't risk not having those guns firing when the time comes.'

Emboldened by his superior officer's cavalier attitude to the potential danger of snipers, Captain Poulsen stood at the edge of the parapet and watched the bustling activity on the plains.

'I never thought to see such a thing,' he whispered.

'What?'

Poulsen pointed towards the towering form of the Dies Irae, standing immobile where the death of the Imperator Bellum had crippled it. Its lower legs were blackened and still smoking where the meltdown of the Imperial Titan had scorched it. Vast swathes of scaffolding and buttresses had been erected around its legs as hundreds of men worked to try and repair the grievous damage done to it. The Titan's upper body had escaped the worst of the blast and each day its guns would fire upon the citadel, wreathing its walls in tremendous explosions, daring its enemy to come out and face it once more.

Tedeski nodded, 'Nor I. It was an honour to watch so brave a warrior fight such a diabolical monster. His brother Titans will avenge him though.'

'And who will avenge us?' pondered Poulsen.

Tedeski rounded on his aide-de-camp and snapped, 'We shall not need avenging, Captain Poulsen, and I will have words with any man who publicly voices such an opinion. Do you understand me?'

'Yes, sir,' replied Poulsen hurriedly. 'I only meant—'

'I know what you meant, Poulsen, but do not say these things aloud,' cautioned Tedeski, waving his arm at the soldiers who manned the parapet and the gunners who tended their artillery pieces.

What do you think is the single most important element of a fortress, Poulsen? Its walls? Its guns? Its position? No. It is the men who stand behind its walls and say to the enemy, "No, you shall not take this place". The fighting spirit of these men is all that keeps the enemy beyond these walls and only by standing together, with faith in the Emperor and an utter belief in our ability to hold, will we prevail. Regardless of the facts, the men need to believe that we believe the Christo can hold. Otherwise we are lost.'

Poulsen nodded thoughtfully before saying, 'Do you believe we can hold, sir?'

Tedeski returned his gaze to the plains below. 'Ultimately, no, we cannot hold. Tor Christo will fall, but we will hold it for as long as we can. When I decide that the day is lost, I will order the withdrawal along the tunnels and overload our reactor to blow this place apart before I allow these bastards to make use of the Christo.'

Honsou pushed aside an emaciated slave worker and followed Forrix along the twisting trench that led to the forward parallel. As the two Iron Warriors passed, slaves hurriedly dropped their shovels and picks and abased themselves before their masters. Neither Forrix nor Honsou paid the wretched creatures any heed, too intent on the looming shape of Tor Christo above them. Honsou felt the familiar anticipation as they stepped into the main parallel and he saw the thoroughness with which it had been constructed.

It had been dug to a depth of three metres, the wall nearest Tor Christo angled inwards to minimise the effect of airbursting shells. Propped dugouts were cut into the trench sides where slaves slept, ate and died. Too bone-weary to dispose of their dead in any other way, corpses were pushed to the side of the trench, the rotted remains filling the air with the stench of decay. Timber boards on iron sleepers were laid across the base of the trench and Honsou was impressed with the speed with which Forrix had driven the trench forward.

'The first battery will be here,' said Forrix, pointing to a portion of the trench Honsou estimated was some six hundred metres from the base of the mountain. He could see that work had already begun on widening the trench. Thick sheets of steel were piled at the entrance to the new battery, ready to be laid across the ground to enable the big guns to fire without their recoil burying them in the ground.

Honsou nodded, looking up towards Tor Christo, picturing the angle of fire this guns placed in this battery would have.

The most vulnerable point of any fortification was its salient angles, the projecting points of its bastions where the ground in front was not covered by direct fire from the parapet. Forrix had dug the main sap directly towards the central bastion, with this forward parallel constructed well within the range of the fort's guns, but protected by their depth and earthen ramparts.

Honsou could see that batteries were being dug to either side of the bastion's salient, angled inwards so that the guns placed there would fire perpendicular to the face of the bastion and break it open efficiently. Once the walls had been breached with direct firing guns, howitzers would send screaming shells into the gap to sweep it clear of enemy infantry before the main attack went in. Even so, it was sure to be a bloody enterprise.

There was a pleasing inevitability to the mechanics of a siege thought Honsou, as he watched dying slaves digging the gun battery. He had heard tales that in ages past there was a prescribed series of stages an attacker would be forced to go through before it was deemed that he had done enough to earn the surrender of a garrison. Once it had been decreed that both forces had done all that honour demanded, the defenders would surrender and be allowed to quit the fortress carrying their weapons with their colours raised high. Such a notion was clearly ludicrous, and Honsou could not imagine a time when he would accept an enemy's surrender.

Once the Iron Warriors began a siege, there was no way to stop it.

When the great Perturabo had still led his warriors in battle, he offered his foes one chance to surrender before he had even planted a single shovel in the ground. Should that offer be refused, there would be no others, and such a siege could end only one way: in blood and death.

'You have sited your batteries well, Forrix,' noted Honsou.

Forrix nodded briefly, accepting the compliment. 'I do not believe we need to dig any further. To do so is pointless - we would expose ourselves needlessly to airbursting shells and the slope of the promontory will obscure the walls of the fortress should we press forward.'

Honsou saw that Forrix was correct. 'What about the batteries at the foot of the mountain? This will be well within their ideal range and the guns here will undoubtedly be targeted.'

'I realise that, Honsou, but when our guns are in place I will lead warriors from my company to take the enemy gun positions by storm.'

Honsou narrowed his eyes, aware that Forrix had called him by his name for the first time. Then the notion that he would be denied the chance to capture the guns he had discovered hit him and he snarled, You will capture the lower guns? I discovered them, the honour of their capture should be mine!'

'No, Honsou, I have another task for you.'

'Oh, and what would that be? Keeping the guns fed with shells? Guarding slaves?'

Forrix said nothing and pointed to a gap in the trench wall that was filled with sandbags and defended by a full squad of Iron Warriors.

'When the time is right, you will lead the storming parties from this point and take the breach. You will hold it until the human soldiers are able to scale the rock face and escalade the walls with ladders and grapples.'

Honsou opened his mouth to retort, then snapped it shut as he realised the honour of the task he was being given. His chest swelled with pride before his natural cynicism and suspicion came to the fore.

'Why, Forrix? Why do you do me this honour? You have done nothing before now but deride me and keep me in my place as a mongrel, a half-breed.'

Forrix was silent for long seconds, as though he himself did not know exactly why he had made such an offer. He turned from the mountain and faced Honsou.

'There was a time I thought like you do, Honsou. A time when I believed we fought for something more important than simple revenge, but as the millennia of battle ground on, I came to realise that there was no point to what we did. Nothing ever changed and nothing brought us closer to victory. I have been too long from the field of battle, Honsou, and as I watched you fight the Imperials, I knew that in your heart, you are an Iron Warrior. You still believe in the dream of Horus, I lost my hold on it many centuries ago.'

Forrix grinned suddenly. 'And the fact that it will send Kroeger into a towering rage.'

Honsou laughed, feeling uncharacteristically charitable towards the venerable Forrix.

'That it will, Forrix, but he will be shamed by your decision. Are you sure you are wise to antagonise Kroeger in this way? He descends further into the grasp of the Blood God with each passing day.'

'The young-blood is nothing to me. I see nothing for him beyond mindless slaughter, but you… for you I see great things. The Warsmith does too, I see it every time he speaks to you.'

Honsou said, 'In that I think you are mistaken. He hates me.'

'True, and yet you lead one of his grand companies' pointed out Forrix.

'Only because Borak died at Magnot Four-Zero and the Warsmith has not yet named his successor.'

'Again true, but ask yourself this: how long ago was the Battle at Magnot Four-Zero?'

'Nearly two hundred years.'

'Aye, and do you think that in all that time the Warsmith could not have found someone to lead the company?'

'Obviously not, or he would have done so.'

Forrix sighed and snapped, 'Perhaps that tainted blood of yours has made you as slow-witted as Dorn's lap-dogs from whence it comes! Think, Honsou. Had the Warsmith named you Borak's successor there and then, would any of his warriors have accepted you? No, of course not, and nor should they have, because to them you were just a despised half-breed.'

'Not a lot has changed, Forrix.'

'Then you are more foolish than I took you to be,' snarled Forrix, marching back along the trench to the supply depots and leaving Honsou confused and alone in the half-finished battery.