by Guy Haley
'I know,' said Bjorn. 'I will stay here.'
'He! you will,' said Grimnr. 'Russ ordered you to stay by his side. I don't want to be the one to explain that his favourite wyrd-mark went off to a glorious end without his permission.' The huscarl removed his own helm and held it out to Bjorn.
'I will not take it,' said Bjorn.
'You will, because I'm ordering you to,' said Grimnr. His single eye squinted. Gunfire sounded from further down the line. The howls of Vlka in combat grew louder. 'Go on, take it!' he snarled.
Bjorn stared at him defiantly.
'By the Allfather, you are a stubborn skjitna pjokej. They are coming. You have to leave. Now.'
Hesitantly, Bjorn took the helm.
Grimnr nodded and slammed Bjorn hard on the pauldron. 'Good luck, One-Handed. This is where we part ways for the time being.' He racked a bolt into his gun. 'I shall see you soon. First I have a small matter to discuss with the Warmaster.'
The atmospheric recycler opened onto a large circulation hall, where refreshed air was drawn and mixed before being pumped around the vessel. It was a huge space where dozens of pipes terminated in arrays like the barrels of gatling cannons. They hooted softly, the noise of a pipe organ played by the wind.
'The lungs of the ship,' said Bror. 'Now this would be a fine target.'
'If we had the time, or the charges,' said Enrir. He limped across the deck. Blood and hydraulic fluid spotted the floor behind him. Ragner pointed upwards.
'More maleficarum,' he said. Some of the pipes had changed from metal into sagging flesh tubes that opened and shut with wet clicks. 'The crew is breathing air that has gone through that filth. Do you think that it speeds the spread of corruption?'
Bror shrugged. 'I am no gothi.'
'Would that you were, you would never have dared come back here,' said a sneering voice. A shaft of light snapped on, illuminating a deck raised over a set of large sealed pipes. Upon it was a group of Justaerin Terminators dressed in black and gold, their plates decorated with eight-pointed stars and Horus' unblinking eye. There had been nobody there a moment before, and none of the tell-tale signs of teleportation to announce them.
'How by the Allfather did they get in here?' snarled Enrir. The Wolves reacted as one, bringing their weapons to bear.
A giant warrior stood at the fore. He had no helm and wore his hair in a high topknot. No one could mistake that figure. He was hated throughout the Imperium.
'Ezekyle Abaddon,' said Bror.
'I expected you to return, Fenrisian savage,' said Ezekyle Abaddon.
'I have gone to considerable trouble hunting you down. I do not like trespassers.' He looked around the circulation hall. The steady breeze lifted Abaddon's topknot into a long streamer. 'I don't see any windows an audacious pilot might shoot out here.' He grinned. The discolouration of his teeth was pronounced against his sickly white skin. Abaddon's physical condition had deteriorated since their last encounter, but he exuded an air of uncanny power. 'You will not be leaving alive this time.'
Ragner had his bolter up, aimed at Abaddon's exposed face.
Bror stepped forwards, his stolen chainblade held easily at his side.
'Then come down here and fight me.'
Abaddon shook his head. 'Not today, wolf. I'd enjoy the contest, but it would take too much time to kill you, and your master is escaping.'
Ragner shot then, a single bolt that roared on a tail of fire unerringly at Abaddon's exposed head.
It did not hit its target. Abaddon's armoured glove flashed in front of his face. The bolt hit the back of the gauntlet and detonated, leaving a small, smoking crater in the black ceramite. 'A good shot, but not good enough,' said Abaddon. 'Kill them,' he I ordered his Justaerin. Their weapons came up, rounds clicking into I place in their boxy combi-bolters.
Ragner died first, his last shot going wide. Enrir did not have time I to aim his weapon.
Bror was charging when he was blasted to pieces by Horus' elite. I The last thing he saw was Ezekyle Abaddon's smile.
As soon as the airlock opened onto the embarkation deck, the Sons of Horus made a concerted attempt to kill the Wolf King.
They came from all sides at once: from above, from below, from the side. Fierce skirmishes erupted at the large prow-ward gates, and from outside the ship came storming parties in void-hardened armour, attempting to force a way through the wrecked hangar blast doors and surround the retreating VI.
Two hundred metres across open deck, Russ' Stormbird waited for its master, its void shields still extended protectively.
The men escorting the Wolf King broke into a run, dragging at their staggering primarch. Gunfire streaked noiselessly across the vast hangar deck. Explosions lifted up from the ground in silent effusions of brief fire. Bjorn jogged alongside his lord. Sighting his boltgun well with one hand was hard to do, but he called upon the mechanisms of his armour to steady his arm, and a spray of shots punched a Sons of Horus legionary off a catwalk high above. A hundred metres to go.
The great prow-ward gates blasted inwards soundlessly. Huge chunks of metal rushed onto the deck, smashing down Vlka manning barricades before them. Bjorn felt the explosion through the soles of his feet. A blast of atmosphere followed, and the Sons of Horus emerged in a cloud of dispersing ice crystals, guns blazing. The Vlka were withdrawing. Already gunships were lifting off, the sound of their passage reduced to faint tremors. As they departed, they loosed their remaining missiles through the gates into the enemy. Lascannon and turbo laser fire tore up sheets of metal. Warriors disappeared in incandescent plasma sunbursts. Both sides suffered from the other's attentions.
Fifty metres.
A stabbing flurry of phosphor rounds blasted the fleshmakers escorting Russ. The primarch stumbled as the warriors died. Half his remaining escort dropped to their knees, snapping off retaliatory shots. The Stormbird's powerful engines were cycling up to take-off speed. Heavy bolter rounds cut up the metal around Bjorn, chewing the deck into a snarled mess. Miraculously he wasn't hit. Bjorn added to the covering fire as he ran. More warriors aiding Russ were cut down as they sheltered the primarch with their bodies.
A brother of Sepp fell dead at Russ' side. Bjorn took his place, his armour jarring against Russ and making the primarch wince. His face was bare apart from the breathing grille over his mouth, but although his skin had taken on a bluish tinge, exposure to the near vacuum of the deck seemed to have done him little harm.
Twenty metres.
The Stormbird's ramp descended. Wolf Guard appeared in the aperture, beckoning urgently, shooting over the heads of the running Wolves. Three warriors besides Bjorn were left helping the wounded primarch. One lost his leg and he collapsed, blood rushing from his severed limb. Another took a bolt-round to the back, frying his power pack and locking his armour. The third turned back, howling madly over the vox, gun blazing. A volkite beam melted his pelvis.
Bjorn was alone with the limping primarch. His jaw was clamped hard with the effort of bearing his gene-father. The Emperor's Spear trailed loosely from Russ' fist He would not let it go.
Yellow lumen light shone from within the Stormbird, calm and steady against the frantic flash of the battle With a final heave Bjorn shoved the primarch forwards, and fell down through his effort. The Varagyr helped Russ up the ramp. Bjorn staggered forwards, turning back as his boots thumped into the ramp.
Horus had come.
His Legion was flooding the embarkation deck in a metallic green tide. Heavy weapons teams were setting up their guns. The first were already firing, targeting the fleeing gunships. A Storm Eagle took a direct hit in its port engine. Before it could adjust to the loss it dropped down and slammed into the hull's inner wall, sending down a fall of burning fuel and wreckage across the deck that went out almost as soon as it ignited.
Horus strode with impunity through the Rout, cutting down the sons of Russ wherever he went. Bodies tumbled head over heels from every strike of his maul. His claw macerated bold warriors int
o unrecognisable manglings.
The Space Wolves were quick to respond. Bjorn caught a screamed order tagged with a jarl's code ident. He didn't catch who it was, and their voice was scrambled by vox interference.
'Take down the Warmaster! Kill Horus!'
The Vlka's own fire support teams drew a bead on the Warmaster. Dozens, then hundreds of heavy weapons slammed into him. Horus leaned into their fire like a man braving a blizzard. Behind the dazzling light, Bjorn saw the wound in the Warmaster's side, wide and deep. A spear cut.
Russ had hurt him, after all.
More weapons drew a bead on the Warmaster, venting every method of destruction devised by human science. Bjorn saw beyond the glare of conjoining energy beams that the blasts were not hitting the Warmaster, but stopping short of him, as if they were kept back by an energy shield. No man-portable aegis could withstand that level of punishment. The force of shell, plasma and las-light bent around Horus, the boil-over annihilating his treacherous sons for metres either side. 'Maleficarum,' whispered Bjorn. It was the only explanation. In the last few years he had seen many terrible things, but only on Prospero had he seen a display of raw magic as potent as this.
A hand pulled back on his pauldron. Bjorn resisted, arrested by the sight of the Warmaster coming to slay his king. He had to see. The ramp started to close. Lift-off thrusts shot out pillars of fire, grav-impellers distorting his sense of mass. The Stormbird began to rise.
Horus trudged on towards the escaping vessel, his daemonic face, uncovered even in the airless deck, roaring his anger. His fury was a physical assault, pushing at Bjorn's soul painfully. Within the shimmering wall of power protecting the Warmaster, Bjorn saw wicked things whose words were all too clear despite the lack of air to carry them.
Something was burrowing into his head, urging him to leap from the ascending Stormbird. He tightly gripped the pistons of the rising ramp.
'No,' he said. 'No.'
A hail of fire was coming at the Stormbird. A shell got through the void shield and thrummed off the underside of the ship. The flickers of las-beams turned aside by the aegis strobed the interior through the closing ramp. A Thunderhawk exploded nearby, shrapnel from its death bouncing off the Stormbird's hull. Horus pushed on, surrounded by his attendant swarm of uncanny protectors, shielded from all harm, while his warriors fell to the punishment of Vlka Fenryka guns.
Horus stared into Bjorn's eyes. He looked right at him. Bjorn was sure of it. A bleak chill gripped his heart, a foreboding of endless long winters to come.
Then the ramp shut. Vents gushed atmosphere, pressurising the passenger cabin. Sound returned. A pair of Wolf Priests were attending the primarch.
'Bjorn,' said Russ weakly. 'Bjorn!'
One of the priests scowled at Bjorn and beckoned him over. Exhausted, Bjorn crawled to his gene-sire's side, his lightning claw cradled against his chest.
'My jarl.'
'Bjorn!' Russ murmured. 'I could have killed him. I could have killed him.'
'My lord?'
Russ grabbed at Bjorn's armour with a weak hand. His eyes were wild. 'I hesitated.'
'Then all was for nought,' said Bjorn. A plasma torch burned hot close at hand as the Wolf Priests cut away Russ' fabled armour to get to his wounds.
'No, no it wasn't,' Russ smiled. His teeth were stained with his own blood. 'The spear tasted his soul, and I spoke with him. I spoke with him.' His eyes were drooping again. He was sliding towards unconsciousness.
'With who? With the traitor?' asked Bjorn.
Russ shook his head, barely awake. 'Not with the traitor. Not with him. I spoke…' He took a shuddering, rattling breath. Before he slipped away he whispered, 'I spoke with my brother.'
Twenty-Six
The Silencia
The Wolf Priests shooed Bjorn away from the primarch. When he tarried, they made it clear in no uncertain terms that he was not wanted there, so he made his way up the ship, past wounded Space Marines occupying every spare part of the passenger compartment, towards the gunnery and piloting stations in the foredeck. The ship bucked and shuddered, battered by hits to its void shields. A Sokar-class Stormbird was large enough to mount defensive void screens, but not big enough for them to absorb all the kinetic energy of the projectiles they displaced. Some always transferred to the ship. Bjorn was nearly thrown from his feet several times.
Eventually, he struggled up to gunnery control, where he watched over a blademaker's shoulder as he operated the gimbal-mounted heavy bolters either side of the ship.
Bjorn's mood was already grim. What he witnessed on the pict screens made it grimmer.
The Hugin sped through a battlefield of deadly wreckage and burning gas. The ship was not Russ' usual craft, and bore no markings that
would make it out as the transport of a primarch. It lost itself in the maelstrom, joining the flights of other ships streaming towards the retreating wolf fleet. A valuable ploy, but not a guarantee of safety. Horus' forces were deliberately targeting the gunships. Each successful kill lessened the number of the Emperor's warriors by a score.
The larger ships were faring as badly. They were breaking from the attack, leaving themselves open to the continued fire of their opponents as they pulled away. Few of the Vlka Fenryka's vessels Bjorn saw in the jumping pict-feed had much in the way of void shields. Those that had them at all were reduced to the low brandy fires that signified imminent failure. Too many vessels were bearing the hits on their hull's armour. The Vlka Fenryka's void fleet was dying.
A bright explosion whited out the screens. For a moment, the armourer ceased chasing torpedoes and fighter craft across the sky and focused on the cause of the flash.
'Skjitna,' he breathed.
Gutted by multiple lance strikes, the Niddhoggur detonated violently. A ship died that had fought for Leman Russ for two hundred years, that had survived the Wheel of Fire and worse, that bore witness to the terrible brother-on-brother battles of Prospero and the Alaxxes Nebula. The artificial star of its reactor slipped free of its magnetic bonds and enjoyed a fleeting moment of freedom. Smaller vessels detonated as they were overcome by the ball of dissipating plasmas, their own power plants igniting in a chain reaction. Overlapping spheres of light crowded out the ships in the sky. When they winked out, several vessels from both sides were burning and adrift.
The heavy cruiser Grinunggap was the greatest of these secondary casualties. Half its port side was ripped away, leaving the cellular structure of its decks exposed to hard vacuum. Oxygen fires burst in and out of life in its vented halls. The walls glowed hotly. It was like a paper model, half burned, its exposed innards glowing cinders. No guiding hand steered the Grinunggap, its command centres were open to the void and its engines out of control. With stately elegance, it powered away from the engagement, turning nose down towards the gas giant. Its death spiral took it into the path of the Word Bearers light cruiser Vox Deus. The traitor ship attempted to pull up, but instead raked obliquely along its flank. Locked together, the two vessels fell towards the deep gravity well of Etrian, and to their inevitable doom in its milky skies.
These moments were but vignettes in a greater tableau of destruction. Flights of Alpha Legion attack craft sped over the retreating wolf fleet, dropping clusters of bombs that bloomed like flowers on iron fields. Swift destroyers and torpedo boats dogged the Vi's heels. More ships of the Imperium named for the indomitable monsters of Fenris died in the void, their warriors and crews lost.
'Morkai's breath!' cursed Bjorn. 'The Legion is dying.' Helpless, he punched the wall of the ship, leaving a bright silver dent in the cream paint.
'Can you fly a Stormbird?' asked the gunner.
'No,' admitted Bjorn.
'Then you can let me do my job, One-Handed, without distraction,' muttered the blademaker. 'We are almost there. We are almost back at the Hrafnkel.'
'That will do nothing for us,' Bjorn said. He pointed at a tiny screen showing the stem view. 'The Vengeful Spirit is pursuing!'
Horus' massive battleship was coming about. Fires burned all along the sides and spine, visible markers of the havoc the VI had wrought within, but though it had been sorely hurt by the bite of the Wolves, it was still battle capable. Ventral thrusters burning hard, it rose up and turned to starboard, bringing its bladed prow into line with the Hrafnkel's escape vector. Its ram filled the small screen. Lance turrets trained their weapons on the fleeing Vlka Fenryka's flagship. A dozen of the largest were inoperable after the raid, but too many of them remained active.
Lance fire and short-ranged particle beams stabbed from the guns. An alarm peeped as they streaked past barely a hundred metres from the Stormbird.
'They're going to destroy the flagship before we have chance to board,' said Bjorn.
His eyes scanned the void battle. No other ship could threaten the Vengeful Spirit. There was none to help them, and all the Vi's ships were fleeing in disarray powering hard for a safe jump point. 'It's going to catch us,' said Bjorn.
And then, the Vengeful Spirit abruptly turned away. A spear of fire stabbed outwards from its side. Lights flickered all over the ship as power was disrupted by the explosion.
'A final gift from wolf to wolf,' said the blademaker. 'That looks like one of the magazines.'
The Vengeful Spirit fell astern, its immense bulk quickly shrinking into the night as it wallowed helplessly.
Bjorn was so focused on the aft view that their sudden arrival aboard the Hrafnkel came as a surprise. The ship's massive hull streaked past the starboard picter, and suddenly the Stormbird was landing, engines blasting on full reverse, claws banging hard into the deck.
Every door and ramp on the ship opened. Masked kaerls and Space Marines rushed aboard, struggling to get their fallen king aboard a casualty bier.
Bjorn followed the gaggle of grim-faced men out of the Stormbird. Gunships were coming in hard into the embarkation deck. The similarities between the Hrafnkel and the Vengeful Spirit were all the more striking now Bjorn had visited both in so short a space of time, but the feeling of the Hrafnkel was completely unalike the Vengeful Spirit, a sense of soul that went beyond superficial differences.