Wolfsbane

by Guy Haley

  'You can kill me,' said Russ defiantly. 'But you will never win.' Horus swung his arm down. A howling grey blur intercepted the maul, knocking it aside. A member of the Rout took the full force of the blow intended for the primarch. The maul pounded the warrior flat. Blood burst from the ruptured plates of his armour.

  'You are wrong. I will do both,' said Horus, drawing back his arm to strike again.

  But the sons of Russ were roused to protect their jarl. A second warrior ran at Horus, chainsword growling. The teeth of his weapon shattered on the Warmaster's armour and Horus swatted him aside, sending his broken carcass clanging into the wall. A third came, and a fourth, dragging at his arms to save their king.

  'Your sons can die before you or after you,' shouted Horus, as more and more Vlka piled atop him. 'But I will kill you.' He shrugged off the press of bodies, sending their souls to Morkai with sideways twitches of his maul, but there were too many, and they would not stop. As Horus slaughtered his bold sons, Leman Russ dragged himself away.

  Bjorn's world narrowed to his immediate vicinity, as the necessities of staying alive dictated. Wicked voices jabbered at him in a multitude of tongues. The titanic clash of primarchs resounded like a thunderstorm throughout the hall, but he was distracted neither by their struggle nor by maleficarum. He could not afford to be. He had attention only for his foe.

  A screaming warrior in cracked green armour circled him. He flexed elongated fingers tipped with giant claws. He carried no weapons in his outsized hands. Large tumours split by puckered mouths forced their way out through broken plate, intimately enmeshed with the suit's inner workings. The possessed Space Marine wore no helmet. He would never have found one to fit, for the man's face was that of a giant insect blended with a simian's heavy features. Compound eyes and twitching antennae surmounted an ape's prognathous jaw. The slit of a second mouth ran off-centre where the warrior's nose should have been, lined with fixed, needle teeth. Bjorn could not understand how Horus' Legion could allow such an aberration to be. The Sons of Horus had destroyed entire species far less deviant than this. They had exulted in wiping out beings that did not match humanity's form, and now they allowed maleficarum to warp them into these things.

  A lashing tentacle wrapped itself around his elbow. A second daemon-ridden warrior was attacking from behind. This second warrior's other arm was a pincer covered in tiny, iridescent feathers that snapped at his face. Bjorn took a step back, as much in disgust at the thing's appearance as a desire to escape its attempts to kill him. Its malformed mouth chittered horribly, and spilled acidic spittle from its corrupted Belcher's gland. Bjorn yanked hard, dragging the creature towards the waiting lightning claws of his right arm. It died messily. The second took advantage of his distraction, rushing at him with a powerful leap that knocked them both back. Bjorn's power pack collided with a Sons of Horus legionary. The traitor was sent sprawling. Another Space Wolf finished him with a downward stab of his power sword.

  The first possessed Space Marine had one of its freakish hands clutched around Bjorn's helmet, the other pinned his arms to his sides in an enwrapping embrace. The daemonic Space Marine was incredibly strong. A tocsin pinged in Bjorn's ear as the ceramite of his armour creaked under the pressure, then cracked. Gas hissed from the hole. His helm groaned and gave, the inner surface pressing into his scalp.

  Bjorn grunted, and flexed his arms. The possessed Space Marine's pinning limb tightened like a constricting serpent around him, but in the moment before, it loosened a fraction, enabling Bjorn to swivel up the barrel of his gun.

  His chest vibrated with the explosions of a dozen bolts as he emptied his weapon under the warped breastplate of his foe. It shrieked and fell away, curling up like a dead spider, leaving Bjorn panting and covered in smoking ichor.

  The pain of the half-crushed helm became impossible to ignore. Bjorn swore as he fiddled with the release bolts. Still cursing angrily he wrenched it off and threw it away. His braids came loose, snagged on the ruptured ceramite, and his black hair stuck to the sweat of his forehead.

  The battle was shifting. He looked up the hall to where the primarchs clashed. An inferno burned around the stairs, drapery and artworks falling in flaming swags to the ground.

  Leman Russ was lying injured by the wall. Horus was pushing himself to his feet, retrieving his maul. He was wounded too, but he had won.

  Bjorn felt a terror he had never known, not even as a youth fighting to survive the endless dangers of Fenris.

  The primarch was going to die.

  'To the primarch!' a voice called. 'To the primarch!' Warriors abandoned their individual struggles with Horus' traitors, felling their opponents in their desperation to get to their gene-father. Dozens failed and were cut down as they attempted to disengage and rush to the Wolf King.

  They ran at the Warmaster, hitting him with weapons that had little chance of wounding him, grabbing for his arms. They were like children trying to save their parents from an ogre, helpless against his strength. They persisted, dragging at him with their weight of numbers. He bludgeoned them aside, killing one with every stroke. Jarls fell as easily as warriors.

  Under the cover of their assault, Russ dragged himself away. Horus disappeared for a moment under a seething mass of grey ceramite warsuits, before he burst outwards, sending the Vlka flying. The survivors got up and hurled themselves back into the fray. Horus levelled the guns attached to his talon at them, blasting them down, but more came. Hundreds of the Vlka Fenryka sacrificed themselves to save their primarch. The Sons of Horus were forming up around their master, adding their guns to the culling of the Wolves.

  Bjorn howled in anguish. He broke into a sprint, gutting a traitor running to intercept him, shooting another down, determined to sell his own life to save his lord. All semblance of discipline had gone from the field. Neither side was operating as a whole. It was mayhem, as disorganised and deadly as the land raids Bjorn had fought in as a child.

  He reached Russ' side a moment later.

  Russ was still crawling away from his brother, half-conscious, his hand pressed at his wounded side. His shoulder was mangled and his battleplate red with blood. The Varagyr formed about him, presenting a wall towards the Warmaster and keeping the lesser traitors at bay.

  Grimnr skidded down on his knees by Bjorn's side and lifted Russ' hand aside.

  'His wounds are bad, One-Handed,' he said. 'We must take him away from here. We have failed.'

  'No,' said Russ, his voice barely audible. 'We have not.'

  'Horus still lives, my jarl,' said Bjorn.

  'We did not fail.'

  Bjorn and Grimnr looked at one another. Bjorn shrugged.

  'We must evacuate,' Grimnr said. 'The day is lost.'

  Russ nodded.

  Grimnr switched to Legion-wide vox-cast.

  'Fall back, in the name of Russ, fall back!' He sent pulses of coded information verifying the order as genuine.

  Bjorn lifted one of Russ' arms, Grimnr the other. It was like bearing the outflung limbs of a mountain, but Russ managed to get to his feet with their help.

  'Can you walk, my jarl?' said Bjorn.

  Russ gritted his teeth, unable to speak. Bloody spit ran through his lips. Groaning with pain, he forced himself to take a step, then a second.

  They dragged their limping primarch away as dozens of howling Wolves held the rear, and were massacred for their pains. The Sons of Horus pushed in from all sides, shooting into the press of Vlka Fenryka. The Wolf Guard walked beside the primarch, shielding him with their Terminator plate. Their energy shields crackled with deflected shots, and they gunned down the Sons of Horus as they attempted to stop Russ' escape.

  Half a minute later, they reached the door that led deeper into the ship - their evacuation route. The four wolf packs who held the door were all shouting, agitated by their lord's fall. Anguished hands clutched at the Wolf King, hindering him in their need to help, and Bjorn was forced to slap them away. When they got through the door the fle
shmakers came to the primarch, and Bjorn relented. Russ' arms slipped from his and Grimnr's shoulders, smearing clotting blood and sealant foam across Bjorn's plate.

  Bjorn turned back to look through the door. The last of the rearguard able to do so were retreating. A semicircle of warriors were laying down a withering hail that kept the traitors back to cover their fellows, but they were falling quickly, and beyond them were over a thousand members of the Rout trapped inside the hall, surrounded by the Sons of Horus. Enemy reinforcements were flooding into the chamber, attacking the Vlka with savage glee. The Rout howled and roared out their oaths, letting their savagery run free. They were doomed nevertheless.

  'They are all going to die,' Bjorn said. 'It is glorious.'

  'We have to move!' snapped Grimnr. 'The primarch's life depends on it.'

  Bjorn was dazed. His limbs trembled from the efforts of carrying his gene-father.

  'Come on, One-Handed,' said Grimnr. His voice was a metallic snarl from his augmitter, but he was speaking more gently. 'Now is the time to prove that you deserve the primarch's confidence.'

  Still, Bjorn could not stop watching the slaughter of his brothers. Horus was massacring them with contemptuous ease.

  'Run back to father, whelp!' shouted Horus, and it seemed he was addressing Bjorn personally. He plucked a Vlka from the ground, crushed him in his claw, and flung his corpse into his fellows. 'Run away like the cur you are!'

  He was laughing as he murdered Russ' sons.

  Then the door shut on the carnage, and blademaker Iron Wolves moved in to weld it closed.

  Twenty-Five

  Wolf Cull

  Bror's enemies changed in quality. No longer were desperate human thralls or mindless cyborgs sent against them. Now they faced the Sons of Horus themselves. At first they attacked in small units, perhaps because Bror's group was outside the Vi's main lines of attack, but after their first encounter word of their presence spread, and the number of warriors they faced increased considerably.

  They fought through them all, charging recklessly into their guns, hacking them down.

  Fall back. The order went out. It was delivered by Grimnr Blackblood, huscarl to the king. The wolf pack feared the worst.

  Fall back. Unthinkable. The Rout did not fall back.

  'Were we victorious?' Enrir was forced to shout over the battle noise. He had a fresh wound in his leg to go with that in his shoulder, and limped badly.

  'There is no word whether Horus is dead or alive,' said Bror.

  'We failed. Else Russ would have given the order himself,' said Ragner grimly. He cut down a Traitor Marine with his power axe and shot his boltgun one-handed into the chest of a second, shattering his breastplate and ribs.

  'Brothers!' laughed Enrir. 'The passageways swarm with the Sons of Horus, and they do not have the desperation of men who have lost their beloved leader. Of course we have failed.'

  There was a defensive wildness to his joking. The thought of their primarch dead chilled them to the core.

  Diort's skitarii were down to three men. They fought well. To get past the traitors' thick battleplate they concentrated the fire of their projectile weapons on single targets. They were otherwise outmatched by the legionaries attacking the group. Bror and his brothers did their best to shield them from death, but one by one they fell, and the support they could offer the Vlka diminished.

  Vox reports painted a grim picture. Strike groups attacked the fall back corridor in multiple places, attempting to break it down, isolate the wolf packs and destroy them individually. Horus had allowed them to penetrate so far into the Vengeful Spirit to trap them, that was clear to Bror. The Warmaster had exploited Russ' recklessness, though Russ had counted on Horus doing so. They were pieces on the tafl board building intersecting snares. The situation looked hopeless, but in truth they could not tell who had succeeded in their objectives until the battle was done.

  Bror fought like a great white bear. He had a new chainsword, liberated from the clutch of a dead traitor. Once the teeth on that were blunted, he intended to take another, and then another, until there were no more chainswords or no more traitors. Dying did not factor into his plans.

  They blasted their way into a tall, domed chamber whose ceiling was ringed with fans chopping noisily at the air. A gas mixture that smelled of algal bed carbon scrubbers past their best wheezed up from pipes beneath the grilled floor. Bror slammed the final traitor in the face with his stolen sword's spiked guard, and shot him dead while he staggered. His brothers stepped in after him, covering the interior with their guns.

  'There is no one here,' said Ragner.

  'Not yet,' said Bror. 'Take a moment. Drink. Search the enemy for ammunition and supplies.' He pointed at the corpses spilled around the doorway to the hall.

  The Sons of Horus had changed. Bror had seen them before aboard this very ship not so long ago, but in the interim between his visits their armour had deviated further from the norms of the faithful Legions. More of them sported spikes and hooks. Skulls hung in bunches at their sides, and the pauldrons and poleyns of some had been reworked into leering daemonic faces. Out of curiosity he removed the helm of one of the slain. He was not surprised to see the warrior's face had lost some of its humanity. If maleficarum could rework metal, why not flesh? The appearance of the traitors was altogether crueller than it had been, and everywhere the insolent, stylised eye of Horus stared.

  'They have the look of the Underverse, don't you think?' said Ragner, lifting up the deadweight of a slain legionary so Enrir could pull out spare ammunition from his belt. 'How could they possibly think they are on the right side carrying things like this?' He flipped over a flap of tattooed, flayed skin worn on the warrior's pauldron. 'They call us barbarians.'

  'All power makes tyrants, brother,' said Bror. 'They have been made mighty - now they use those gifts for themselves rather than for mankind. Do you think the people of our world would view us any differently than these creatures if they knew the Imperium could purge their world of monsters, stabilise its orbit and free them from lives of fire and ice?'

  'I don't like your tone, Tyrfingr. The primarch keeps Fenris that way to keep the Legion strong. Do you want a planet of weaklings?'

  'I am sure the weaklings would like to be alive,' said Bror.

  Ragner growled. 'You've been away too long, tugging at the skirts of Malcador on Terra. You have gone soft.'

  'I am merely saying, brother, that all we of the Legions are monsters. Some of us are more open about it than others.' He looked around the bodies one last time. 'That's it. We'd best move on. How's your leg, Enrir?'

  Enrir limped to the closed door on the far side of the chamber. 'It hurts a lot, but I'm not going to follow Himmlik's wyrd yet. I'll lie down on the red snow when I'm good and ready.'

  The closer Bjorn and Grimnr got to the embarkation deck, the heavier the fighting became. As they passed down the evacuation route, the Vlka maintaining the perimeter folded back on themselves, so that although casualties were high and becoming heavier, the group around the primarch grew in size. Explosions shook the Vengeful Spirit as demolition charges and fusion devices planted deep in the vessel went off, bringing ruin to vital systems. These explosions could be differentiated from the impact of weaponry upon the surface of the ship, being altogether heavier in feeling in the way they shook the deck beneath Bjorn's feet.

  The flight back to the extraction point was a blur of flashing light, weapons discharge and screaming alarms. Ogvai Ogvai Helmschrot and Scarred Oki took charge when the remnants of Tra and Tolv joined their warriors into the group. What had become of Hvarl Red-Blade, Bjorn did not know. The companies of Helmschrot - Bjorn's own company - and Oki were badly mauled. The warriors that made it back to the escape corridor were wounded, their armour streaked with sealant foam and blood. The collective grinding of malfunctioning power armour became loud enough to compete with the thunder of boltguns and shrieking discharge of plasma weaponry.

  Russ remained
quiet through it all, gasping out the occasional direction to the warriors carrying him. When Bjorn tried to leave to turn back and fight the forces harrying their retreat, Russ snarled that he should remain. The primarch gave no other orders. Although the vicious wounds in his shoulder and side had ceased bleeding, and he was walking a little more surely, he remained weak. His heavy arms bore down on the warriors carrying him, forcing them to change several times as they became exhausted. The fleshmakers fussed around him even as they evacuated.

  Cthonian war cries chased them onwards and downwards. Russ' party was kept at the centre of the fighting retreat, and Bjorn heard rather than saw their enemy.

  They passed through areas that were aflame, others that were flooded. Gravity plating had failed in several sections, and the air was stale in more. Whether they escaped or not, the Wolves had dealt the Vengeful Spirit a grievous injury. Bjorn wondered if it would make any difference; such were the resources the Warmaster commanded, his vessel would be quickly repaired. Perhaps all of this blood spilt would gain the Emperor nothing but a few extra months. It was a waste of a Legion.

  The sounds of fighting receded a little. They passed into sections held by heavy Vlka Fenryka presence. Wolf packs guarded the approaches to the deck, garrisoning captured fortifications and makeshift defences.

  A closed airlock into the embarkation deck was ahead, wires trailing from open instrument panels plugged into VI Legion equipment. Neither Bjorn nor the primarch was wearing a helmet. A spare breathing mask for Russ' suit was sourced from the Iron Priests accompanying the Varagyr. Bjorn had none.

  'There is no atmosphere beyond, you know that?' said Grimnr, nodding at the door.