Chapter 7

  The happy noise of a good scrap turned sour. One minute, my Boyz were chargin’ and hollerin’, a proper green wave of glorious violence. The next, the blue boys answered back with a roar of their own. A metal roar.

  Two big, boxy tanks, bigger than their Rhinos, pushed to the front. And then… fire.

  Not a bit of fire, like from a burna. This was a flood. A river of fire that washed over my Boyz and turned ‘em into screaming, melting statues. The air filled with the stink of cooked Ork, and it wasn't a good stink. Then their other guns started shootin’, and wherever their bolts hit, Boyz just… dissolved. It was unnatural. It was cheatin’.

  My good mood vanished, replaced by a cold, hard rage that started in my guts and spread outwards.

  “Pull back! Get back, you grots!” I bellowed into the vox, but it was hard to hear over the sound of the ‘Umie firestorm and the screams of my burnin’ Boyz. The charge had broken. They were runnin’, stompin’ over each other to get away from the flames. It was messy. It was un-Orky.

  Zolk felt it. He felt my rage. The ground around us started to crackle with green energy, the power of the Waaagh! comin’ to a boil. The Squigosaur’s one good eye rolled back in his head, and his growl deepened into something that shook the scrap-plates under his feet. He was ready to charge, to bite and stomp and kill until the bad feelings went away.

  But a charge was stupid now. They’d just burn us. No, this needed something else. Something… loud.

  I filled my lungs, takin’ in all the rage and the power and the noise. I stood up in my saddle, my power klaw cracklin’ with energy that had nowhere to go, and I let it all out.

  “WAAAAAAAAAGH!”

  It wasn’t just a shout. It was every bit of my will, my power as a Warboss, my pure, distilled Orky-ness, given a voice. And Zolk, my beautiful, murderous Zolk, answered me. He threw his head back and let out a roar that tore the sky. The two sounds hit at the same time, a shockwave of green, psychic energy that blasted out from our ridge.

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  Down on the plains, the ‘Umies faltered. Their big fire-tanks sputtered, the flames dyin’ for a second. Lights flickered on their helmets. I saw one of ‘em, one of the blue boys, stumble and grab his head. It was just for a second. But a second was all I needed.

  I grabbed my vox. “FUMINUS! GET YER ASHEN BOYZ IN THERE! BURN ‘EM! BURN ‘EM ALL!”

  The reply was a crackle of static and a sound like a leaky gas canister next to a bonfire, which was what Fuminus used for a laugh. “TIME FOR DA BIG BURN, BOSS! WAAAGH!”

  From side canyons the ‘Umies hadn’t even seen, they came. Warbuggies and Skorchas, ramshackle contraptions that belched black smoke and dripped fuel. They screeched across the plains, goin’ straight for the blue boys’ flanks. And leadin’ them was Fuminus himself.

  He wasn’t in a buggy. He was the buggy. A Meganob so obsessed with fire he’d had a Mekboy weld him into a custom trike. His legs had been replaced with wheels, and his arms ended in massive burnas that were always lit. His entire suit of mega-armour was a blackened, soot-stained mess, with little bits of it still glowing red-hot from the last time he’d set himself on fire for fun. He didn’t wear a helmet; his head was a tangle of pipes and nozzles that spat jets of pilot-light flame when he got excited. He was the craziest, most fire-obsessed git I’d ever met, and right now, he was beautiful.

  And then the sky caught fire.

  A Burna-Bommer, a rusty, cobbled-together aircraft that had no right to fly, swooped low over the battlefield. It dropped its payload right on top of the ‘Umie tanks. Not bombs that went boom. Bombs that went WHOOSH. Great canisters of flammable grot-slop that splattered everywhere, covering the tanks and the blue boys around them in sticky, burning goo.

  The battlefield, which the ‘Umies had tried to turn into their own tidy little fire-pit, was now a proper Orky inferno. Fuminus and his buggies slammed into their lines, spraying fire in every direction. The ‘Umies turned to meet them, their discipline returnin’, but now they were fightin’ a war on two fronts, stuck between the wild, unpredictable fires of the Orks and the burning wreckage of their own failed charge.

  I watched it all from my ridge, a proper grin returnin’ to my face.

  “See dat, Zolk?” I said, pattin’ the Squigosaur’s neck. “Dat’s how ya have a proper burn-up.”