Steel & Oil: Warhammer 32K

The shattered dome had crushed several charging Black Templars warriors, but Bohemond, who had been at the very front of the charge, was not among them. He and a handful of warriors had already fought their way to the Ork warlord's side, and several of them were now locked in a melee with the Ork warlord.

The remaining warriors could not reach their leader to support him; the entire Black Templars decapitation force had been split in two by the collapsed dome.

Lancelot, who bore the standard in the middle of the column, now found himself trapped in the severed rear half, and Travis—who had earlier cut his way back to protect Lancelot—now stood shoulder to shoulder with him.

This meant that the Emperor's Champion could not reach the battlefield where he was meant to be!

For a moment the Black Templars warriors were at a loss, but fortunately the High Marshal, locked in his desperate struggle, still issued his command:

"Come around the other way! We absolutely must kill this greenskin boss!"

With the success or failure of the entire battle at stake, none of the warriors dared slacken. They swiftly circled to the corridors on either side of the hall, trying to find a route through to the site of the final showdown.

But this was plainly a trap the greenskins had carefully laid.

The reason the hall had been so empty was now revealed. As a string of bombs detonated, a horde of greenskins wielding knives and pistols came howling down from the ceiling.

The Space Marines had long since noticed these commando boyz, but in their haste to reach the battlefield this was the only road open to them. Yet once they had dealt with these commando boyz amid the smoke of the explosions, even more greenskins came surging out from every direction.

They were ensnared.

Utterly unlike the greenskins they had faced before, the Black Templars warriors felt, for the first time, the true weight of beast-warfare.

"Leave men to hold the rear!" Travis decisively took over command. "Keep moving forward—do not stop!"

Like a black dagger, the Astartes pressed on down the corridor. But with every stretch they advanced, more greenskins burst from their ambush spots to bar the way.

More and more warriors were peeled off to cover the rear, yet these cunning Orks were in no hurry to entangle themselves with the rearguard warriors. They actually, quite deliberately, split off a portion of their boyz to tie down those warriors, while the rest continued to pursue the Astartes' column.

The advancing dagger grew thinner and thinner, until at last only two were left in the forward column: Travis and Lancelot.

The number of Orks chasing them from behind had, thanks to the rearguard action of their other brothers, become relatively "sparse"—but at a sweeping glance there were still thousands of them.

Lancelot, charging at the very front, discovered an entrance. He bent down to listen, and could even make out from within the High Marshal's labored breathing and the Ork warlord's savage laughter.

He turned and shouted to Travis, who was holding the rear: "I've found the entrance!"

Travis, the Black Sword in hand, did not turn his head, still fighting for his life amid the horde of beasts: "Then you go in!"

"Why? The one who should go in is you! As the Emperor's Champion, you should be the one to slay the Ork chieftain and win glory worthy of the Champion's name!"

"Then who holds the rear?"

"I do, of course!"

He heard the Emperor's Champion give a derisive snort: "With how many men?"

Travis took the opening to cut down a greenskin boss attempting a sneak attack. The edge of the Black Sword swept through the air, precisely carving open the greenskin's armour, and gore came spurting out.

The other greenskin boyz swarmed in, hoping to seize the chance to pin the Emperor's Champion beneath them, but the Emperor's Champion gracefully evaded their fangs and claws. At the same time he swept his sword in a wide horizontal arc, and for a moment he had actually cleared a small pocket of empty space around himself.

Lancelot knew full well that he could never be as consummate or as powerful as that.

But he still agonized over the honour of the Emperor's Champion—those were the tales he had revered ever since he had formally become a Black Templar.

He had come this far listening to stories in which the Emperor's Champion would inevitably slay the most terrible of foes. Now that he stood shoulder to shoulder with an Emperor's Champion, he could not give that Champion the chance to face the Ork warlord.

He would sooner be torn to unrecognizable pieces holding back the greenskins than let his cherished vision of the Emperor's Champion be shattered here!

But the Emperor's Champion went on, coldly laying out the facts.

"No matter who goes in, so long as they can land a single sword-stroke on the Ork warlord while he isn't paying attention, the situation in there will be reversed in an instant."

"But here, the only one who can hold back these greenskins is me, Lancelot—only me."

"But your honour as the Emperor's Champion...!" Lancelot was still waging a cruel struggle within himself.

"I have never cared about that! Run, Lancelot—get out of here!"

The Emperor's Champion barked sternly: "For victory, I will spend my own life more ruthlessly than anyone!"

Those words seemed to snap the last cord. Still holding the battle standard aloft, Lancelot cast one final glance at Travis, who alone was holding back a thousand Orks, then at last gritted his teeth and plunged into the passage leading to the site of the final showdown.

He hurried forward, and upon reaching the centre of the hall he beheld a scene of brutal, tragic combat.

The several warriors who had accompanied the High Marshal lay sprawled this way and that, fallen to the ground, their flowing blood pooling into puddles on the floor—plainly every one of them had breathed his last. The only one still standing to fight the Ork warlord was now High Marshal Bohemond, but his situation too was perilous in the extreme.

Faced with a colossal monstrosity over five metres tall, even an Astartes—who stood like a giant before ordinary mortals—was no more than a fragile doll.

Against a monster like this, one that offered no chance for a contest of strength, the fight would inevitably revolve around dodging. But dodging itself was an act that drained one's stamina at a furious rate.

Bohemond's movements began to grow sluggish, his footwork no longer nimble. In the instant of a sidestepping dodge, he noticed Lancelot coming in.

"Where is Travis?"

"He's outside, holding back the Orks!"

"Let him come in! Only the Emperor's Champion can defeat an opponent like this!"

For a moment Lancelot did not know how to explain that the Emperor's Champion was outside, fighting thousands of Orks single-handed. He felt as though he had been shut out of this battle; though he was an honoured standard bearer, the glory of bearing the standard seemed, at this moment, to be of no use whatsoever to this fight.

The Emperor's Champion had told him to come in, yet the High Marshal was telling him to go and fetch the Emperor's Champion...

What on earth was he supposed to do?

His hesitation lasted only a moment, but in that brief instant the situation of the duel between the warlord and the Marshal had abruptly changed.

The distraction of their exchange caused the already visibly fatigued Bohemond to expose a fatal flaw. By the time he barely reacted, the warlord's cleaver already bearing down upon him, he realized at once that there was no way he could dodge the Ork's next attack.

Seizing the chance, Goldtooth split his face into a savage grin.

"Ya dare get distracted in a scrap with me?"

He suddenly lunged, driving Bohemond—who had dodged but had no time to recover his stance—into a dead corner, and the cleaver in his hand, as long as an entire Astartes, swept across in a brutal arc, bent on cleaving Bohemond clean in two at the waist!

Bohemond had no choice but to bring his sword across to block, but his High Marshal's blade looked exceedingly small in the face of this enormous threat.

When the blades met, the sound of clashing metal was deafening. The High Marshal's sword, reforged from Dorn's own blade, took no damage in the collision, but Goldtooth's titanic strength actually wrenched this Power Sword—chained to his wrist by a lock-chain—from his grip and sent it tumbling away.

Bohemond's arm hung at an unnatural angle, plainly dislocated in that clash a moment before. Disarmed, he could only watch helplessly as Goldtooth raised his cleaver once more.

"This is what ya get for provokin' me, shrimpy!"

Goldtooth cackled mockingly: "Get chopped to bits by me, an' go bawl yer eyes out to that big golden geezer like some little lass!"

The battle seemed about to be brought to its end just like that.

But it was not without a twist.

At the critical moment, Lancelot—having flung aside the battle standard—suddenly hurled himself forward.

He used his chainsword to block the cleaver from the side; though he could not halt it, he borrowed its force to alter the angle of the descending blow just slightly. With his other, freed hand he scooped up the immobilized High Marshal.

Lancelot gave a shove with the momentum, and the two of them—he and the Marshal—rolled together across the floor in a tangle. It was undignified, but it carried them clear of the Ork warlord's clutches.

Bohemond's eyes went wide as he stared at Lancelot, who had abandoned the battle standard to save him.

Lancelot could have sworn that there was not the slightest relief in that gaze—only an overflowing, brimming fury.

"Lancelot!" he roared. "What have you done!"

"I saved you..."

"All I see is that you cast aside our honour—that you cast aside our battle standard!"

"We cannot afford to lose the Marshal!" Lancelot raised his own voice in turn, thinking of the Emperor's Champion still fighting the horde of beasts outside. But Bohemond cruelly rejected him.

"Set beside the Emperor's Champion, I too am nothing but an ordinary warrior. Lancelot, your actions will bring shame upon the entire Black Templars!"

Though they were still in the midst of battle, a rift was faintly beginning to open between the two. Goldtooth watched the pair with great interest; he did not mind enjoying one more farce of shrimpy infighting before he sent the two of them on their way.

But the Squig on his shoulder suddenly began rapping at his shoulder, warning him that danger was drawing near. Goldtooth cocked his ear and listened, and keenly caught some sound.

Had more tinned shrimpies arrived?

No, it was not footsteps. It was something else—like the grinding screech of those Mek boyz cutting through steel plate, and it was closing in fast...

That thing was moving quickly!

Goldtooth was abruptly on his guard; he whipped his head around in a hurry, only to see a colossal dragon-head smashing through layer upon layer of obstructions aboard the battleship, plowing into this battlefield with unmatchable momentum!

He tried to dodge, but just like Bohemond a moment before, he could not get out of the way in time. He could only bring his cleaver across to block—an action that, again, was exactly the same as Bohemond's.

At this moment he looked even more ridiculous than the Bohemond he had been mocking just before.

At least Bohemond's opponent had not been a colossal ship's prow whose weight was measured in tonnes!

Even though smashing through the battleship's armour plating had already exhausted all the kinetic energy the Kushala Daora engine could provide, the dragon-head prow—painted a blood-red hue—still, despite being nearly at a standstill, sent the Ork warlord flying with a single blow!

The massive cleaver held across his front turned to powder in an instant, and Goldtooth was hurled backward through the air, slamming into the wall like a fly swatted aside by a giant palm. His body sank into the wall, plastered there like a twisted oil painting, while great clouds of dust and smoke billowed up all around, proclaiming the sheer ferocity of the impact.

And yet, astonishingly, he could still draw breath.

The warriors who leapt out from the warship were led by Admidel; gripping their Monster Hunter weapons, they warily closed in on the Ork warlord. Behind them, the Felynes carried Avenger bolt cannons stripped from their vehicles—working in pairs, they pushed these Gatling-like weapons forward, immediately taking up positions to guard every key passage in the hall.

The yellow power armour they wore declared their identity to the Black Templars, and the two who had been quarreling fell silent. Their attention, too, was drawn to this suddenly arriving reinforcement.

"Imperial Fists..." Lancelot murmured.

However one looked at it, the manner of their entrance was simply too... heart-stirring.

But Bohemond's attention was drawn to another matter entirely. He gazed at that oddly shaped vessel, its dragon-head prow and wing-like structures making him knit his brow.

This misgiving was not eased in the slightest by the Imperial Fists' rescue, and when Admidel drew the dragon sword Red Leaf from his back, his pupils contracted almost to dangerous needle-points.

"A daemon weapon...!"

Admidel did not notice Bohemond's manner. As though on a hunt, they closed in on their current primary target—that Ork warlord. The orderly tread of their footsteps echoed across the floor, forming a suffocating rhythm.

Goldtooth hauled himself with difficulty out of the dent in the wall, blood seeping from the corner of his mouth, the sound of his fractured ribs clearly audible. The arm bearing his great claw hung askew, plainly badly damaged. But even in such a hopeless plight, his scar-covered face still managed to squeeze out a savage grin.

"You bunch of fools...!"

He spat curses as he rose, looking every bit as though he meant to make a last desperate struggle. The Second Legion veterans warily raised their weapons—only for Goldtooth, against all expectation, to turn on his heel and run.

There were no boyz around here to see him, so why wouldn't he run?

Surely they didn't take him for some fool who only knew how to fight!

He was an Ork warlord who knew well when to press forward and when to fall back!

"Just you wait! I'll be comin' to collect on this debt!"

He bellowed in a hoarse voice, and though his fleeing steps were staggering, they lost none of their agility. The stunned warriors made to give chase, but they were plainly far less familiar with the layout of this warship than he was.

Goldtooth soon vanished into the far end of the dim corridor, leaving behind only a thick, heavy reek of blood.

Admidel and his men had no choice but to put away their weapons and return to the side of the only two Black Templars left in the place.

"I hope we arrived in reasonably good time."

Admidel extended this goodwill of his own accord, only to be met with Bohemond's ferocious glare.

The other man did not seem at all grateful.

"Since when did the glorious Imperial Fists sink so low as to keep company with daemons?" the High Marshal demanded, his tone utterly cold.

Admidel paused, only then realizing that the man was probably referring to his weapon.

Armour bristling all over with fangs, a long blade fitted with Rathalos talons...

This appearance might indeed look like a daemon weapon. But out of respect for a fellow warrior, other Astartes, however curious, would not idly pry into secrets of this sort, still less open with such an interrogation.

He recalled what Lin had told him beforehand—that the Black Templars were a pack of stubborn madmen.

This fellow was clearly outstanding even among that pack of madmen.

Admidel's expression rapidly turned cold; he had no fondness whatsoever for this sort who snapped at everyone they met.

Under Bohemond's ingratitude, the atmosphere between the two sides swiftly chilled into an awkward silence. Fortunately, at this moment Issaga too arrived on the scene.

Having hurried over from the corridor, he too was somewhat startled by Admidel's weapon. But compared with the High Marshal, he was clearly far more reasonable.

"We thank our brothers of the Imperial Fists for their aid." He extended his hand toward Admidel. Indeed, no matter the occasion, the warriors of the Imperial Fists were forever a dependable cornerstone upon the battlefield.

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