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Sand Lords – Extract

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Sand Lords

Peter McLean

Captain Amareo Thrax

The deep deserts

Marbas II

Now

The Chimera was dying.

Thrax could sense it from his position in the open turret of his command tank. He could smell the reek of over-burned promethium that told him the tracked carrier’s fuel injection system was shot, could hear the grinding of the rear differential that made it clear there wasn’t any point in even attempting a field repair. It was dying, and soon it would be as lost as the rest of his armoured column was.

When it finally expired, that would leave him the one Leman Russ he rode in, and two surviving Chimeras. Not a good outcome from an armoured recon force that had started out twenty-eight vehicles strong. All the same, he gave thanks. That any of them had got out at all spoke of the Emperor’s blessing on the Tallarn 236th Sand Lords, and the grim wisdom of the colonel’s plan.

Thrax turned his face to the pitiless sky of Marbas II. The sun beat down like the Emperor’s wrath, scouring everything beneath its glare. All around was scorched sand, wind-whipped dunes and distant plumes of smoke rising from the ruined vehicles Thrax had left behind him. Marbas II was a baking, blasted wasteland of dust and misery. It felt like home to the men and women of the Tallarn 236th, but even they couldn’t live without shade or water. There was none of the first to be had, and they were getting dangerously low on the second.

‘Another reason why we lived underground on Tallarn,’ Thrax muttered to himself.

He pulled his shemagh, the traditional tribal headscarf worn by every Tallarn desert raider, tighter over his nose and mouth. It did little to shut out the promethium reek of the dying Chimera, but at least it kept the flying dust out his face as the Leman Russ ground up over a dune and down the far side, its tracks kicking up sand dervishes in its wake.

‘I’m losing her, captain,’ a voice cracked in his vox-bead. That was Duf’adar Al-Rabbam, who had the controls of the ailing Chimera. ‘Every rune on my screen is red. She’s not going to make it more than another mile.’

Thrax could only nod to himself, and accept the Emperor’s will.

‘So be it,’ he said. ‘We’ll stop in the next depression. Decamp your men into the other two Chimeras.’

‘But…’

‘I realise that the loss of your holy war machine pains you, Al-Rabbam,’ he said, ‘but there’s nothing to be done. The machine-spirit gave its all in the flight from Iblis Amrargh. We all did.’

Behind them, the howling started again.

Then

Iblis Amrargh.

A backwater Imperial shrine city overrun with orks, ransacked and all but destroyed by the foul xenos.

The sole reason the Sand Lords were on Marbas II at all.

They had stormed down the desert highway in a column twenty-eight strong, sixteen Leman Russ main battle tanks and twelve Chimeras full of murderous infantry to follow in their wake and mop up any remaining opposition after the armour had reaped its terrible corpse harvest. They came to reclaim the khalig of the great fallen Tallarn hero, General Al-Fallan, taken as a trophy in battle by the orks. The sword was a symbol of the general’s leadership, an inspirational relic of his heroism even in death. Reclaim the khalig, that was the rallying cry that drove Thrax’s men and women into battle against the xenos horde. That was what he had told them they were there for.

It was even partly true.

Captain Amareo Thrax had been standing up on his seat in the open turret of his command tank, Rage of Tallarn, his own khalig – three feet of wickedly curved, gold-chased steel – clutched in his fist. It had a pommel in the shape of a lion’s head and a cutting edge a single molecule thick, the blade catching the sunlight and calling for blood in the Emperor’s name.

Iblis Amrargh was ahead of them, the dust-choked road into the city closed by a rough, handmade barricade of old promethium drums, barbed wire and salvaged flakboard. Shots blasted from behind the obstruction, but Thrax ignored them as they impacted harmlessly against the hull of his tank. The swarm of gretchin manning the barricade lacked heavy weapons, and their resistance was pitiful. A shot screamed past his head and he ignored that too, laughing with contempt. They were nothing in the face of the Divine Emperor’s holy war machines.

He raised his khalig and brought it sharply down to signal the tank charge.

‘For the Emperor!’ Thrax bellowed, and his tank’s cannon roared and demolished the crude barricade with a single shot.

It exploded in a cloud of shrapnel and smoke and bloody body parts, and the crude guns of the enemy fell silent. Rage of Tallarn ground over what was left, pulping bodies under its churning treads. The column followed, spreading out in a litter-strewn square with their turrets traversed to cover all the angles.

Iblis Amrargh was a ruined place where now-derelict Imperial buildings sweltered endlessly under the merciless sun. The orks had stripped and scavenged everything worth having, and left the rest to collapse. The only structure of any note was the mighty cathedral that reared above the centre of the city, its vast, twisted gothic spire stabbing into the wide blue sky. That was their objective, some three miles deep into the city.

‘Set course for the cathedral,’ Thrax said into the vox. ‘There the xenos have made their stronghold, and that is where we shall find the khalig of General Al-Fallan.’

Thrax took an auspex bearing then formed up his column again, leading them down a wide but rubble-strewn thoroughfare between crumbling buildings. They took a turn and were met with another crudely made barrier constructed from rusty scrap metal and old chunks of broken armourglass. There was a heavy autocannon of some kind concealed behind it, snarling and spitting rounds from a flickering cone of muzzle flash.

Shots rattled against the hulls of the lead tanks, chipping flakes from their paint.

Ork voices bellowed primitive gibberish from behind their roaring weapon.

They were xenos filth, Thrax reflected, nothing more than beasts in the eye of the divine God-Emperor. They deserved no mercy, and from the Tallarn guns they would receive nothing but death eternal.

‘Gorebrakah Urlakk!’ the orks bellowed. ‘Gorebrakah Urlakk!’

The very name made Thrax’s guts twist. The ork warboss was well known amongst the ranks of the Astra Militarum, but still, hearing its name shouted with such reverence felt like a blasphemy. Thrax’s hatred for the xenos beasts reached new heights, and he raised his khalig once more.

The Tallarn tanks went through the fortification like a chainsword through rotten meat.

The air was thick with the smoke of discharging cannons and promethium exhaust, and the screams of dying animals. It was music to Thrax’s ears.

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A Black Library Publication

First published in Great Britain in 2018 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.
Cover illustration by Paul Dainton.

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ISBN: 978-1-78030-769-5

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