Eidolon's position had been attacked.

'Come on!' Lucius cried.

'And do what?' Tarvitz asked. 'Wait! Look!'

The six of them scrambled down into cover on one side of the spoil heap. Megarachnid were approaching from the edges of the forest, their marching grey forms almost invisible except where they caught the starlight and the distant blink of lightning. They were streaming towards the tree mound in their hundreds, in neat, ordered lines. Amongst them, there were other shapes, bigger shapes, massive megarachnid forms. Another clade variant.

Tarvitz's party slid down the chalky rubble and backed away into the open, the expanse of the clearing behind them, keeping low. To their right, Lord Eidolon's position was engulfed in loud, furious combat.

What are they doing?' asked Bulle.

'Look.’ said Tarvitz.

The columns of megarachnid ascended the heap of rabble. Warrior forms, equipped with quad-blades, took station around the base, on guard. Others mounted the slopes and began to sort the spoil, clearing it with inhuman speed and efficiency. Tarvitz saw warrior forms doing this work, and also clades of a similar design, but which possessed spatulate shovel limbs in place of blades. With minute precision, the megarachnid began to disassemble the rubble heap, and carry the loose debris away into the thickets. They formed long, mechanical work gangs to do this. The more massive forms, the clades Tarvitz had not seen before, came forwards. They were superheavy monsters with short, thick legs and gigantic abdomens. They moved ponderously, and began to gnaw and suck on the loose rubble with ghastly, oversized mouth-parts. The smaller clades scurried around their hefty forms, pulling skeins of white matter from their abdominal spinnerets with curiously dainty, weaving motions of their upper limbs. The smaller clades carried this fibrous, stiffening matter back into the increasingly cleared site and began to plaster it together.

They're rebuilding the trees.’ Bulle whispered.

It was an extraordinary sight. The massive clades, weavers, were consuming the broken scraps of the trees Tarvitz had felled, and turning them into fresh new material, like gelling concrete. The smaller clades, busy and scurrying, were taking the material and forming new bases with it in the space that others of their kind had cleared.

In less than ten minutes, much of the area had been picked clean, and the trunks of three new trees were being formed. The scurrying builders brought limb loads of wet, milk white matter to the bases, and then regurgitated fluid onto them so as to mix them as cement. Their limbs whirred and shaped like the trowels of master builders.

Still, the battle behind them roared. Lucius kept glancing in the direction of the fight.

'We should go back,' he whispered. 'Lord Eidolon needs us.'

'If he can't win without the six of us.’ Tarvitz said, 'he can't win. I felled these trees. I'll not see them built again. Who's with me?'

BUlle answered 'Aye.’ So did Pherost, Lodoroton and Tykus.

Very well.’ said Lucius. 'What do we do?'

But Tarvitz had already drawn his broadsword and was charging the megarachnid workers.

THE FIGHT THAT followed was simple insanity. The six Astartes, blades out, bolters ready, rushed the megarachnid work gangs and made war upon them in the cold night air. Picket dades, warrior forms drawn up as sentinels around the edge of the site, alerted to them first and rushed out in defence. Lucius and Bulle met them and slaughtered them, and Tarvitz and Tykus ploughed on into the main site to confront the industrious builder forms. Pherost and Lodoroton followed them, firing wide to fend off flank strikes.

Tarvitz attacked one of the monster 'weaver' forms, one of the builder dades, and split its massive belly wide open with his sword. Molten cement poured out like pus, and it began to daw at the sky with its short, heavy limbs. Warrior forms leapt over its stricken mass to attack the Imperials. Tykus shot two out of the air

and then decapitated a third as it pounced on him. The megarachnid were everywhere, milling like ants.

Lodoroton had slain eight of them, including another monster dade, when a warrior form bit off his head. As if unsatisfied with that, the warrior form proceeded to flense Lodoroton's body apart with its four limb-blades. Blood and meat partides spumed into the cold air. Bulle shot the warrior dade dead with a single bolt round. It dropped on its face.

Lucius hacked his way through the outer guards, which were closing on him in ever increasing numbers. He swung his sword, no longer playing, no longer toying. This was test enough.

He'd killed sixteen megarachnid by the time they got him. A dade with spatulate limbs, bearing a cargo of wet milky cement, fell apart under his sword strokes, and dying, dumped its payload on him. Lucius fell, his arms and legs glued together by the wet load. He tried to break free, but the organic mulch began to thicken and solidify. A warrior clade pounced on him and made to skewer him with its four blade arms.

Tarvitz shot it in the side of the body and knocked it away. He stood over Lucius to protect him from the xenos scum. Bulle came to his side, shooting and chopping. Pherost fought his way to join them, but fell as a limb-blade punched clean through his torso from behind. Tykus backed up close. The three remaining Emperor's Children blazed and sliced away at the enclosing foe. At their feet, Lucius struggled to free himself and get up.

'Get this off me, Saul!' he yelled.

Tarvitz wanted to. He wanted to be able to turn and hack free his stricken friend, but there was no space. No time. The megarachnid warrior dades were all over them now, diittering and slashing. If he broke off even for a moment, he would be dead.

Thunder boomed in the clear night sky. Caught up in the fierce warfare, Tarvitz paid it no heed. Just the shield-storm returning.

But it wasn't.

Meteors were dropping out of the sky into the clearing around them, impacting hard and super-hot in the red dirt, like lightning strikes. Two, four, a dozen, twenty.

Drop-pods.

The noise of fresh fire rang out above the din of the fight. Bolters boomed. Plasma weapons shrieked. The drop-pods kept falling like bombs.

'Look!' Bulk cried out. 'Look!'

The megarachnid were swarming over them. Tarvitz had lost his bolter and could barely swing his broadsword, such was the density of enemies upon him. He felt himself slowly being borne over by sheer weight of numbers.

'-hear me?' The vox squealed suddenly.

'W-what? Say again!'

'I said, we are Imperial! Do we have brothers in there?'

Yes, in the name of Terra-'

An explosion. A series of rapid gunshots. A Shockwave rocked through the enemy masses.

'Follow me in,' a voice was yelling, commanding and deep. 'Follow me in and drive them back!'

More searing explosions. Grey bodies blew apart in gouts of flame, spinning broken limbs into the air like matchwood. One whizzing limb smacked into Tarvitz's visor and knocked him onto his back. The world, scarlet and concussed, spun for a second.

A hand reached down towards Tarvitz. It swam into his field of view. It was an Astartes gauntlet. White, with black edging.

'Up you come, brother.’

Tarvitz grabbed at it and felt himself hauled upright.

'My thanks.’ he yelled, mayhem still raging all around him. 'Who are you?'

'My name is Tarik, brother.’ said his saviour. 'Pleased to meet you.’