'Hurry!' shouted Honsou, running for the artillery pit now that all hopes of subterfuge were gone. He dropped into the artillery pit, firing his bolter at its other occupants. Loader slaves died in the hail of fire, blasted apart by his explosive shells and Chirumeks dived for cover as the Iron Warriors stormed-in.

Yells and shouts of warning sounded from the human soldiers, but as the bark of gunfire continued, most were soon silenced. Honsou knew they didn't have much time and shouted, 'Zakayo, get down here!'

The lumbering giant climbed down into the pit as Honsou and his warriors slaughtered the remainder of the gun's crew. The huge cannon hissed and rumbled, revelling in the bloodshed around it and he could sense the daemonic urge to kill bound within it. Obax Zakayo climbed to the gunner's mount and began hauling at the bronze levers there.

Laughing at the irony of the moment, Honsou also climbed the ladder to the gunner's position as the turret emitted a bass groan and the barrel began turning from Khalan-Ghol towards the pavilion of Berossus.

The growling barrel depressed until it was virtually horizontal as bolter fire rattled from the sides of the artillery pit and Iron Warriors from Berossus's grand company poured from their barracks - together with their human auxiliaries - to launch a counterattack.

'Can't you hurry this up?' snapped Honsou.

'Not really, no!' shouted Obax Zakayo, pulling thick levers and heavy chains fitted to the daemon gun's breech. Honsou leaned over the railings of the gunnery platform and shouted down to his warriors. 'Get ready to reload this gun when we fire! I want at least a couple of shots before we have to escape!'

Four warriors broke from the defence of the gun pit and began hauling on the pulley chains that led down through a great iron portal in the floor of the artillery pit to the armoured magazine below. Within seconds, the iron gate groaned open and an enormous shell emerged. Grunting with the effort, the Iron Warriors manhandled the shell onto the gurney that would deliver it to the gun. It was extremely dangerous to have the magazine open while firing, but Honsou figured that since it wasn't their gun anyway, it didn't matter whether it got blown up or not.

'Ready to fire!' shouted Obax Zakayo.

Honsou sighted along the aiming reticule and laughed, seeing the roof of Berossus's pavilion and the gold and black heraldry of his banner.

'Fire!' he yelled and Obax Zakayo yanked the firing chain. Honsou swayed as the gun's massive recoil almost hurled him from the gunnery platform, the roar of its firing nearly deafening him. Thick, acrid smoke belched from the barrel as the great cannon screamed in pleasure. The daemonic breech clanged open of its own accord and his Iron Warriors ran the next shell along the rails and into the weapon.

As they fetched another shell from the magazine, Honsou saw that the first shot had been uncannily accurate. The banner of Berossus was no more, destroyed utterly by the explosion. The top portion of the pavilion was gone, nothing but a saw-toothed ruin left of its upper half. Even as he watched the debris rain down, secondary explosions were touched off by the burning wreckage as the gun fired again.

This time he was ready, but even so, was again almost dislodged by the recoil. Once more the pavilion vanished in a sheet of flame as their second shell impacted. Another shell was rammed home, but as the breech clanged shut, Honsou felt a huge tremor pass through the earth, swiftly followed by a second.

He looked up through the murk in time to see a massive shadow moving through the darkness and saw with a thrill of fear that one of the Titans was making for them. The ground shook to its tread, the footsteps of an angry god of war come to destroy them.

'Come on!' he shouted to Obax Zakayo. 'One more shot, then it's time we were gone!'

Obax Zakayo nodded, casting fearful glances over the gunner's mantlet with each booming footstep of the approaching Titan. Once again the mighty daemon gun fired, this time striking the barrack block beside the pavilion and reducing it to flaming rubble.

'Everyone out!' shouted Honsou, leaping from the gun and running towards the ladders that led from the artillery pit. Honsou wrenched open the iron door to the magazine as he passed and lobbed a handful of grenades inside. He leapt for the ladder as a huge shadow enveloped the artillery pit and looked up in time to see the massive, clawed foot of the Titan descending upon him.

He scrambled up the ladder and rolled aside as its thunderous footstep slammed down, obliterating the daemonic gun in a heartbeat and missing him by less than a metre. He rolled away and lurched to his feet, still dazed from the concussive impact of the Titan's foot when the grenades he had dropped into the magazine detonated.

The ground heaved and bellowed, huge geysers of flame and smoke ripping from the ground as hundreds of tonnes of buried ordnance exploded in a terrifyingly powerful conflagration. Honsou was lifted into the air and swatted for a hundred metres or more by the blast, slamming into an earthen rampart and rolling into a pile of excavated soil.

He picked himself up, coughing and reeling from the impact to take stock of his surroundings. He turned as he heard a groaning sound and saw the Titan that had destroyed the gun pit sway like a drunk, its leg destroyed from the knee down by the magazine's explosion. Sparks and plasma fire vented from shattered conduits and sparking cables. Even as he watched, the massive daemon engine began to slowly topple over, its piston-driven arms flailing for balance as it fell.

He turned away, laughing as dismayed soldiers and horrified Iron Warriors watched one of their mightiest daemon machines destroyed before their very eyes. The ground shook as the Titan hit the ground and was smashed asunder, but Honsou was already making his way back to Khalan-Ghol. He had no way of knowing what had become of the rest of his warriors, but trusted that they were experienced and resourceful enough to get back to Khalan-Ghol on their own in all this confusion.

A dark form emerged from the smoke beside him and he recognised the sinuous form of Onyx. The daemonic symbiote's claws were unsheathed and bloody, the glittering fire of his eyes shining with a deathly lustre. He had hunted well.

'A successful foray,' said Onyx with typical understatement.

'Aye,' agreed Honsou. 'Not bad. Not bad at all.'

The sanctuary Ardaric Vaanes had spoken of turned out to be secreted in a shadowed valley overlooking the plains before the mighty fortress shrouded in dark clouds and explosions. The sounds of battle still raged from below and Uriel could see a tremendous blaze deep in the besieger's camp. Their flight from the Unfleshed had been a helter-skelter journey of false trails and looping attempts to prevent the beasts from following their tracks. Uriel could not shake the sound of the Unfleshed feasting on the prisoners, but was surprised at how little it bothered him now. Perhaps Vaanes had been right, there was nothing anyone could have done for those poor unfortunates, and death was the best thing for them.

The renegades had split up once clear of the death camp and now returned to their base in ones and twos, climbing down the valley sides or hiking up from below.

'Our sanctuary,' said Vaanes, pointing towards a series of crumbling bunkers and blockhouses that had fallen into disrepair and had clearly seen better days. Partially filled-in trenches and rusted coils of razorwire were angled before the dilapidated constructions, but Uriel's practiced eye could see that this place was not without its defences. Barely visible gun nests overlooked the approaches and he doubted that anyone could approach without some warning being given.