This is Leo St. Garus's second month at the Frostbound Wall.
The wind on the ice field is always bitterly cold, and snowflakes keep pounding against the Ceramite armor.
Leo stood at the edge of the watchtower, his hands gripping the cold alloy railing. It had been two months.
He remembered the day he left Saint Garus Castle; the old man sat on the throne, with liquid constantly flowing through his life support tubes.
They had a huge argument, and finally he kicked open the welded-closed door, and left the main stronghold without looking back, leading several hundred noble sons who had volunteered to follow him and five million private soldiers.
At that time, he was still wearing a neatly pressed aristocratic uniform, looking splendid and elegant.
Now, his Power Armour is covered in oil and blood, and there is a deep scratch on his left shoulder armor.
That was left by an Ork Warboss using Power Claw three days ago.
But a light appeared in his eyes; he now knew why he was fighting and was willing to give everything for it.
"Sir." The adjutant's voice came from behind, sounding weary.
"The repair work on Zone C8 is complete, but the engineer says its load-bearing capacity is less than one-third of what it used to be."
Leo didn't turn around. "Understood."
He looked to the east, where the Brontë Longknives Regiment's camp was located, with neat rows of camouflage blue tents.
On the eve of Lynn's arrival in Brevis, Leo arrived at the Forbidden Wall with five million reinforcements.
This team is composed of diverse members, and while their equipment and discipline are adequate, they lack practical combat experience.
Less than one-tenth of them are truly qualified combatants.
When they arrived, Brontë Longknives had just suffered a Pyrrhic victory.
The previous Commissar, Marcus, was killed in action, the number of soldiers was reduced to 10,000, and ammunition reserves were running out.
Leo's reinforcements quickly changed the course of the battle.
The first two weeks went quite well, with the Orks ' attacks being sporadic and probing.
Leo learns to command under the guidance of Hammond Walker, the newly appointed political Commissar of the Brontë Longknives Legion.
The attacking Orks were even fewer in number than the humans, making victory easier than Leo had imagined.
The soldiers started calling him " Grand Marshal St. Garus," not because of his general rank.
It wasn't because he actually slept in trenches with the soldiers, ate the same canned starch, and was always at the forefront of the charge.
For a few days, Leo even thought they could sound the horn of a counterattack and drive the Orks back into the depths of the ice plains.
But all of this changed twenty days ago.
It was a night as dark as ink, and the sentries in the watchtower were the first to notice something amiss.
A strange green meteor shower fell from the northern sky.
Then, violent tremors came from the depths of the ice field, continuous and relentless, and the snow on the Forbidden Wall slid off in a rustling sound.
The tremors lasted for a full six hours, during which communications were severely disrupted, and Psyker reported a "drastic increase in Warp background noise."
At dawn, the first batch of observation reports arrived at the command post.
Leo will always remember how he felt when he saw the data; he felt like he was looking at a fake report.
The Orks population has increased at least fiftyfold overnight!
The footage captured by the reconnaissance aircraft showed the ice field densely covered with Orks, so many that they trampled each other, turning the snow into a green carpet.
The bright red war banners of the Evil Sunz Clan and the blue war banners of the Deathskulls Clan appeared in large numbers on the ice plains.
But what troubled them most were the yellow flags representing the Weizhen Clan.
Among them, the "Stomach Boys" can cook large quantities of stew, which can effectively enhance the combat power of the Orks.
The battle that followed went from easy mode to hell mode.
The Orks were no longer harassing in small groups, but launching a true, wave-like attack.
They relentlessly assaulted the Forbidden Wall day and night, piling up corpses to create ramps, attempting to blast a breach with suicide tanks.
The Leo Alliance quickly exposed all its problems: insufficient heavy firepower, a shortage of vehicles, and weak fighting spirit among its soldiers.
The most fatal flaw stemmed from the flawed command system. The five million-strong army came from more than two hundred noble families, each with its own agenda.
Leo's orders had to go through multiple layers of relay before reaching the frontline company, at which point they might have been completely distorted.
Orks don't have this problem; they only have one command: Waaagh!!!
Until a week ago, the Brevis Vanguard Army First Legion arrived.
Three million soldiers, carrying Leo's much-needed ammunition and supplies, but without heavy artillery, tank formations, or air support.
In order to save time, they marched lightly and quickly.
However, the addition of the First Legion helped the Forbidden Wall army stabilize its lines, albeit only barely.
The Vanguard soldiers were not better than Leo's allied forces, but the junior officers were incredibly efficient!
Moreover, they were resolute and ruthless; under their leadership, the Vanguard's fighting power far surpassed that of Leo's noble coalition.
"Sir." The adjutant's urgent voice interrupted Leo's thoughts.
" The Orks guys from Zone C8 are here again."
Leo turned around and put on his helmet. "Scale?"
"Very big."
Leo stopped as soon as he opened the Dataslate handed to him by his adjutant.
On the screen, the map outside the Forbidden Wall is almost completely covered by densely packed red dots.
" The Emperor..." Leo murmured to himself.
After turning off the screen, he stepped into the elevator.
The metal elevator slid along the tracks, making a screeching sound.
After the ladder doors opened, the passageway inside the Forbidden Wall was crowded with soldiers.
Leo walked through the crowd, and the soldiers automatically made way for him.
They looked at him with a mixture of expectation and barely concealed despair in their eyes.
"Make way! Make way, all of you!" a gruff voice rang out.
Hammond Walker walked towards them from the opposite direction, his blue-grey uniform from the Brontë Longknives Regiment stained with dirt.
A new scar appeared on his face, running diagonally from his forehead to his chin, the stitches resembling a centipede crawling on his skin.
"You saw that?" Hammond walked up to Leo and patted his shoulder armor with his right hand.
"This time they're serious."
"When wasn't it?" Leo forced a smile.
They climbed to the top of the wall, where the wind picked up. Leo walked to the edge of the crenellations and leaned over to look outside.
The vanguard of the green wave has come into view.
There were no orderly queues, only a chaotic and noisy red tide.
Orks motorcycles, thousands upon thousands, painted a garish red, their bodies welded with spikes and inexplicable pieces of metal.
Each vehicle carried two or three Orks, brandishing machetes and scrap pistols.
They are the young men of the Evil Sunz Clan, who crave speed and passion.
These Mekboy kids casually built extremely unstable motorcycles, but they didn't care.
As long as they're fast enough and noisy enough, they can happily launch a waaaagh charge on these motorcycles.
More than a third of them were already lost before they even entered firing range.
Because their driving was completely haphazard—some sped straight ahead, others even spun in place to burn their tires—they eventually collided and exploded into fireballs.
But for every one lost, more motorcycles would emerge from behind, as if the number of Orks motorcycles was endless.
"Stay calm," Leo's voice rang out over the public channel.
"All companies, listen up! Do not fire without my order."
"Repeat, do not fire."
But the Orks' fearless image was already etched into the soldiers' minds, and panic began to spread.
Leo switched channels and heard static filling the communications of his allied forces:
How many are there?!
I don't have enough bullets!
"I don't want to die..."
As if realizing something, the experienced Hammond immediately gave the order:
Those who desert in the face of battle will be executed without exception!
Hammond's voice boomed through the loudspeakers throughout Sector C8: "Company officers, enforce battlefield discipline now!"
Then, sporadic bursts of Boltgun echoed from the Forbidden Wall.
In this battle, humanity suffered its first casualties at the hands of its own people.
When it comes to deserters, the Imperium has always had only one way of dealing with them.
Execute on the spot!