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Black Gulch

Ben Counter

The scars made it difficult every time. Chapter Master Midnias had donned his armour on the eves of hundreds of battles, but each time the pain reminded him of everything that had gone before. His back was a lattice of ribboned skin separated by ridges of gnarled scar tissue, and they cried out as if they were newly-made as he buckled the breastplate of his power armour. His shoulder pads chafed the raw flesh on his shoulders, and he felt a shiver of new, cold pain as the armour’s interfaces slithered into the ports in the carapace under his skin.

He opened and closed his hands. It felt like his gauntlets were lined with spikes, for of all the punishments Midnias had endured, the worst had been to his hands.

This punishment, he told himself, we shall also endure.

‘My lord,’ said Scout-Captain Terundel. ‘My outriders bring word of the greenskins on the move. They are heading right for our position.’

Midnias fastened the demi-cloak around his shoulder. ‘Good,’ he said. ‘Their warlord could not hold them back forever. The most potent weapon against the ork is the nature of the ork himself.’

‘The first count is seventy thousand,’ continued Terundel. ‘More are landing on the Belishar Flats. Two hundred thousand in number, marching as reinforcements.’

‘Then we will have to see our warlord dead before they arrive,’ said Midnias. ‘Draw in the outriders and have them take their places in the line. We will need every gun here.’

‘It will be done,’ said Terundel. ‘This we shall endure.’

‘This we shall endure.’ Midnias placed the Crown of Obstiria on his brow before he put on his helmet. The crown was a simple spiked band that symbolised how Midnias was both the Chapter Master of the Obsidian Glaives and the Planetary Governor of Obstiria. Not that he ruled anything beyond his Chapter – the planet had seen off every attempt to settle it except for the Glaives themselves.

Midnias had chosen the shadow beneath an overhang of rock to spend the time before dawn, praying to the spirits of Guilliman, the Emperor and the ancestors of the Obsidian Glaives. It was not quite grand enough to be considered a cave and had afforded just enough shelter to hide him from the eyes of any orkish fighter craft that might pass overhead. He emerged from the overhang into the bleached irradiated light of Obstiria’s sun.

The knot of rocky ridges and crevasses at the head of Black Gulch was treacherous terrain for anyone but a Space Marine. It was broken and trackless, enough to whittle away an army of normal men who marched across it. But four hundred Obsidian Glaives had set up their battle lines there, with bolters and heavy weapons covering the long dark throat of the gulch.

Black Gulch was a deep furrow in the surface of Obstiria, a long canyon carved by a glacier in ages past before the planet had drifted closer to its sun. An army marching across Obstiria, from the landing grounds on the high plains to the fortress of Penumbral Spike, would inevitably follow the path of the gulch. Its soldiers would drain into the gulch like water trickling down off the mountainsides around it, and when they came to the broken ground at the western end they would find themselves bottled in, the front ranks struggling across the terrain as the rear ranks bunched forwards into a formless scrum.

That was the plan.

Midnias answered the salutes of the Obsidian Glaives on the way to the front line. With the losses at Penumbral Spike, including Captain Seharra, the structure of the Chapter had been compromised and battle-brothers from various companies were set up in fire teams together. Devastator-Captain Keshuma was positioned ahead, lying on his front as he scanned the landscape of the gulch.

‘I can smell them from here,’ said Keshuma.

‘Can you see it?’ asked Midnias.

‘It’s in the heart of them,’ replied Keshuma. ‘It’s got plenty of xenos flesh in front of it. But to these eyes it’s hard to miss.’

Midnias clambered onto the rock beside Keshuma. The captain hadn’t been exaggerating. The radioactive breeze carried on it the stench of alien sweat and blood. It carried the sound of the xenos too, rhythmic chanting and the churning of throaty engines.

Black Gulch was full of orks. The mass of green-skinned bodies stretched from one side of the valley to the other, a kilometre and a half of seething, furious xenos killers. For as far as the gulch ran, winding across the jagged mountain ranges back to the flats, it flowed like a green river. Obstiria’s radiation didn’t seem to affect the orks at all. They were difficult to kill.

Difficult, but definitely not impossible.

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