“Then let there be war.” Angron walked out of the main gate of the Bloody Sand Arena.
The street outside was blanketed in smoke and dust.
The tattered banners of House Talq were still impaled on a burned-out hovercar, and fragments of platinum power armor littered the ground.
Blood ran along the cracks in the street to lower ground, mixing with cooling fluid to release acrid white smoke.
The roar of engines came from the distance—steady, unhurried, and orderly.
Angron stopped before the gate, looking up toward the end of the street.
Out of the smoke and dust, the first anti-gravity bike glided into view.
Its black-and-silver chassis hugged the ground, the melta carbine on its nose swept low.
The rider wore light power armor, the platinum crest of the High Riders’ Council engraved on his shoulder guards.
A second.
A third.
More bikes glided out from the intersection like a row of silent blades.
Behind the bikes came the shield-bearing guards.
Their steps were in perfect unison, their personal forcefields locking together into a pale blue glow.
Melta-guns poked out from the gaps between their shields, red targeting dots lighting up one by one, all aimed at the main gate of the Bloody Sand Arena.
Along the walls of the Bloody Sand Arena, the sound of racking bolts rang out.
Those who had just freed themselves from their collars stood behind the parapet, clutching looted firearms.
Their shoulders trembled from pressing the gunstocks too tightly.
Ammo crates were dragged to the edge of the ruined walls, sheet metal scraping against stone in a sharp, chaotic rasp.
Oenomaus’s voice crackled down from the control console.
“Keep your muzzles down!” “Don’t crowd the gateway!” “Wait until they cross the line to fire!” By the time the orders reached the wall, they were already a beat too late.
The High Riders’ elite guard didn’t wait.
The lead bikes suddenly accelerated, their engines roaring as several dark blurs swept close to the street level.
Angron lunged forward, reaching out to grab the closest one.
The rider leaned low, the bike sliding right under Angron’s palm as his melta-gun swept across the side of the gatehouse.
*Boom!* The crude sandbag barricades were sheared through, blasting the gunners along with half the wall back into the Bloody Sand Arena.
Angron spun around.
Another bike had already zipped past from the right, its blade-wings scraping across the top of the wall, raining down metal shards and blood.
The gunfire from the wall descended into chaos, bullets chasing the bikes’ thruster plumes into the street and kicking up showers of gravel.
Angron grabbed a chunk of hovercar wreckage from the ground and hurled it into the air.
The tumbling wreckage smashed squarely into one of the bikes.
The bike and rider slammed into a building facade, fire billowing from the window frames.
The remaining bikes didn’t stop.
They swept past the main gate, veering into the flanking alleys, their engine plumes scoring bright trails across the walls.
The shield wall began to advance.
The hail of bullets struck them, only to be deflected by the forcefields, sending ripples of blue light across their surface.
Angron charged the shield wall.
The melta-guns flared, burning several red-and-white beams into his chest, charring his flesh and sending acrid smoke curling up along his muscles.
He slammed into the shield wall.
The foremost guards buckled behind their shields as the forcefield dented violently inward, like water struck by a boulder.
Angron’s hands punched through the blue light, gripping the edge of a shield, and he ripped it up—guard and all—hurling them into the rear ranks.
The shield wall was shattered open.
Atop the walls of the Bloody Sand Arena, the gunners finally found their opening and brought their fire down.
Several guards fell near the gap, but more stepped up to fill it instantly, their movements seamless.
Angron spotted the commander in the rear—wearing a white cloak, a sealed visor, and hovering a hand over a tactical pad.
The commander swiped left.
Two squads of anti-gravity bikes surged out from the side streets.
They bypassed Angron, heading straight for the ammunition stockpile on the outer edge of the Bloody Sand Arena.
There lay a pile of newly hauled melta batteries and ammo crates.
Several maintenance thralls were dragging the supplies behind the walls; before they could even turn their heads at the sound of the engines, the bikes were upon them.
The bikes swept low.
Their blade-wings sliced open the ammo crates, and their melta carbines fired directly into the battery pile.
Flames erupted.
The shockwave battered half the outer wall, tossing rubble and severed limbs up onto the battlements.
Angron looked back.
A bike was pulling up from the edge of the flames.
He grabbed a capsized heavy shield-car and flung it.
The heavy shield-car smashed through the bike’s rear.
The rider spiraled out of control into a street corner, where he was shredded by a flurry of gunfire from the walls.
The other bikes had already veered off into the distance.
They didn’t strike the ammunition pile again.
Their second strike fell upon the crowds rushing to reinforce.
At the mouth of the lower street, dozens of newly uncollared slaves were running toward the Bloody Sand Arena, clutching old guns, broken blades, and iron pipes.
The anti-gravity bikes swept past them, their melta beams carving glowing trenches into the street.
The crowd was blown back by the heatwave, their screams drowned out by the roar of the engines.
Angron’s fists slowly clenched.
Pain flared from the back of his head, the remnants of the Butcher’s Nails burning like hot iron, urging him to charge and tear the riders off their bikes.
He didn’t move.
The shield wall was still pressing from the front, the bikes were slaughtering on the flanks, and scout skiffs hovered between the rooftops, their turrets trained on the casualty zone inside the Bloody Sand Arena.
This army knew they couldn’t kill him, nor were they trying to kill him right now.
They were shaving the edges of the Bloody Sand Arena, cutting down the people who had just stood up behind him.
Angron turned back to the front.
The shield wall had already advanced to within a dozen paces, melta-guns rising in unison through the gaps.
Angron grabbed the glowing, red-hot wreckage of the heavy shield-car, holding it in front of him as he charged.
The melta beams made the wreckage glow white-hot, molten iron dripping from the edges.
He plowed into the shield wall behind that mass of molten metal, sending a tremor through the entire street.
The shield-bearers were crushed, their forcefield generators exploding one after another.
Angron reached out from behind the scrap metal and grabbed the helmet of the guard officer.
A short spear slid from the officer’s armored gauntlet, stabbing into Angron’s wrist.
Angron didn’t flinch.
The spear pierced through flesh and wedged into the bone.
He hoisted the officer up to his face.
The helmet buckled in his grip, the visor shattering as blood squeezed through the seams.
Angron hurled the corpse back into the shield wall.
For the first time, the guard retreated.
Coarse shouts erupted from the top of the wall.
The slave gunners began firing down into the gap; though their shots were still wild, they were no longer aimlessly chasing the airborne bikes.
Ammo crates were dragged behind the ruined walls, and the wounded rolled down the ladders, their blood smearing long streaks across the stone steps before they were quickly dragged away by waiting hands.
Coughing up blood, Oenomaus’s voice still boomed from the loudspeakers.
“Hold the wall.” “Do not pursue.” “The gates must not open.” Angron heard him.
He locked his eyes on the white-cloaked commander in the distance.
The man stared back.
They were separated by burning streets, overturned shield-carts, and a field of corpses.
The white-cloaked commander raised his hand.
The shield wall began to withdraw, retreating with great discipline.
The front ranks dragged away their wounded, the rear ranks kept their weapons raised to cover them, the bikes pulled back from the side streets, and the scout skiffs ascended.
The entire force was like a blade sliding back into its sheath—it had drawn blood and inflicted pain, but remained entirely untethered by anger.
Angron took a step forward.
The pain in the back of his head throbbed again.
*Chase them.
Tear open that command vehicle.
Drag the white-cloaked commander out of his armor.* In the next breath, the tech-slave’s voice exploded through the communicator.
“The west side!” Gunfire crackled furiously in the background.
“They have another unit wrapping around from the lower workshop!
Their targets are the casualty zone and the granaries!” Angron stopped.
There was no main gate on the west side of the Bloody Sand Arena.
The newly seized grain was stockpiled there, and the people fleeing from the estates and labor zones were gathered there as well.
The white-cloaked commander was still retreating, moving slowly, as if doing it deliberately for him to see.
Angron understood.
If he pursued, he would lose the west side.
If he defended the west side, this army in front of him would simply keep flanking, keep killing, and continue drawing him from one spot to another.
He looked up at both sides of the street.
The tall buildings pressed close, and a derelict aqueduct spanned the air.
Several power conduits threaded between the buildings; beneath them lay narrow streets, slanted alleys, ruined walls, and burned-out hovercars.
The bikes were fast.
But they were only fast because the roads were still open for them.
Angron turned and walked toward the adjacent high-rise.
Its foundation had already cracked from the shelling.
Inside, the whine of the guard’s bikes looping around in the distance could still be heard—sharp, slick, like a swarm of insects sliding through cracks in the wall.
Angron shoved both hands deep into the load-bearing pillar.
Concrete and rebar groaned in his grip.
Through the communicator, the tech-slave was still shouting.
“Aren’t you going to chase them?” Angron looked toward the rising smoke on the west side.
“No.” He threw his strength into his arms.
The entire load-bearing pillar was violently ripped free.
The structure above groaned as it fractured, dust billowing out of the window frames.
“Tear down the road.”