Wolfsbane

by Guy Haley

  'They are choosing where we are going to die,' said Bjorn.

  By then, the jarls had a cartolith up, and were panning it rapidly from star system to star system, briefly debating and dismissing each. They all had their drawbacks, most of them fatal for a weakened Legion.

  'What about this place?' said Helmschrot. He pointed his battle-stained gauntlet at the cartolith. 'Looks defensible, out of the way, but not too distant. It's a safe harbour. We can gather the fleet, and make a stand if we have to. We are well placed to threaten Beta-Garmon if we survive, and it is positioned close to the warp routes back to Terra.'

  'Looks as good as any to me,' said Hvarl.

  Scarred Oki nodded.

  'Yarant it is then,' said Helmschrot.

  * * *

  A dozen members of the Dark Mechanicum worked on Horus' damaged armour. He refused to take it off, and the bravest, most ambitious of the fleet's Martian armourers had been called to perform the repairs. They were wise enough to remain silent, discussing the damage to the machinery of the armour via data pulse.

  Horus stood with his arms resting at shoulder height upon a frame. His hands twitched with irritation. The adepts scuttled around him, probing at him with their tools. But as the crocodiles of ancient Terra allowed small birds to cleanse their teeth, so Horus forbore their attentions.

  Darkness surrounded the Warmaster. The lights of his armoury were out, save a single shaft of red that illuminated his power-swollen body. Gushes of scented steam rushed out of tubes around him, benedictions to the twisted machine-spirits of his armour, and counterseptics for his wounds.

  An unnecessary precaution. Russ had cut him deep, but since Molech his prodigious powers of self-repair had improved tenfold, and the wound was already closing. A dull ache in his kidney and an itching scar were all that remained to remind him of Russ' assassination attempt.

  Horus lived. Russ' Legion had been ravaged, and he doubted the Wolf King would be in any state to fight for a while. Despite his victory, Horus was in an ill temper. He could have killed Russ.

  A rasping fanfare announced an incoming hololith request. There were only a few men in his fleet who would dare to communicate with the Warmaster directly. The message would be important. The lives of those who wasted Horus' time were measured in seconds.

  'Leave me,' he said to the adepts.

  They bowed and grovelled and picked up their tools. Before the fanfare sounded again, they had vacated the room.

  'Hololith on,' commanded Horus. A ghostly miniature of Ezekyle Abaddon manifested in line with Horus' eyes.

  'My lord Horus,' said Abaddon. 'The Space Wolves are leaving the system in disarray. It would take little to kill them all. They are finished as a Legion.'

  'If you want permission to pursue them, you have It,' said Horus.

  'I will gather my armies immediately,' said Abaddon. 'The Word Bearers already pursue them, as do the World Eaters.'

  'Reinforce your company with Alpharius' get,' said Horus. 'They will appreciate the opportunity to finish what they began at Alaxxes. Hunt them down, kill them all. I will have none of Russ' warriors left alive to bare their fangs at me, Ezekyle. And when you are done with them, bring me my brother's head.'

  Abaddon's phantom smiled in anticipation of the slaughter. He began to outline his intentions, but Horus' attention drifted. The pain in his side swelled from a dull ache, and his hearing dimmed. He shut his eyes. He felt weak, disconnected from the world around him, and an image flickered in his mind's eye, displacing his immediate surroundings.

  He saw himself upon a vast field, fighting an endless horde of daemonkind. But he was not Horus the Warmaster, he was Horus Lupercal, favoured of the Emperor. This other Horus turned his face skywards, to where the Warmaster's presence watched, and shouted words that the Warmaster could not hear. His face was twisted in anguish and hatred, and a tremor ran through the Warmaster's soul at the sight of this other self. So many deaths, he seemed to be saying, so much betrayal, so many oaths broken.

  'So much blood,' Horus whispered.

  Abaddon stopped his gloating. 'My lord?'

  Horus came back to himself suddenly. His eyes opened. Sweat trickled down into his eyes. He felt nauseous. Weakness he could never show, and he hid it deep within himself. 'Nothing. Destroy the Space Wolves. When you are done, re-join me. The moment to strike is upon us. Today, I shall send out a call to our fleets and our armies,' he said. The time has come to make our drive for Terra.

  'We move on Beta-Garmon.'

  Afterword

  Writing a Horus Heresy novel is the pinnacle of ambition for any Black Library author. When you're asked to pen one of these stories, you know you've made it, trusted as you are with the most epic series of books in the Games Workshop canon.

  Wolfsbane is my second foray into Horus Heresy long-form fiction. Its singular focus on one primarch makes it a very different novel to Pharos, which has several subplots of equal weight.

  Naturally, I read all I could about Leman, King of the Russ, before I began this task. He and his Legion have been familiar to me for a long time, of course - in the background lore and upon the tabletop. My regular opponent in the 1980s, who incidentally has become my foe again in this middle portion of my life, played Space Wolves back then, so I've seen their grey livery lurking on the far side of the battlefield many times. Long participation in the hobby meant that I knew the main events of Russ' story within the Horus Heresy, but the details were unknown to me.

  I've come to the Horus Heresy at a strange angle. For many years, all my reading time was taken up with reviewing books. Rarely did I have the luxury of choice when it came to reading matter. Writing for the Horus Heresy has given me the opportunity, through necessity, of enjoying everything I'd missed.

  By the point I was commissioned to write Wolfsbane, I had made great strides in catching up with the story of the galaxy's greatest civil war, reading everything I needed to and more besides, but certain of the Legions' arcs remained unfamiliar territory. Russ' Space Wolves was one of them.

  I'm not telling you this to reveal myself as some kind of Jonny-come-lately, or cynic who does not read for pleasure. Instead I wish to share a little of my sense of awestruck enjoyment as I read through A Thousand Sons, Prospero Burns and Wolf King, among others. I'd heard these were good books, I'd been meaning to read them for some time, and anticipated devouring them gladly.

  I was not disappointed. Dan Abnett's detailing of the Rout's culture and his descriptions of hand-to-hand combat were achieved with outstanding lyricism. Graham's excellent battle scenes and the sense of doomed arrogance surrounding Magnus enthralled me, while Chris Wraight's race through the Alaxxes Nebula had me sitting attentive and silent (anyone who knows me, knows this is not me).

  I came to my work fully intent on doing these earlier tales justice, continuing the feel of them, acknowledging the excellent flourishes given the Legion and, most importantly, honouring Russ himself, a man so shaded by many minds he has taken on the aspect of reality.

  He and I got on famously. I came to love his impudence, his thoughtfulness and his loneliness. Russ is among the more human of the primarchs - so human he had his Legion find a way to get Space Marines drunk. Human enough to hide his ability and his wisdom to better fit in with his Fenrisian peers. Each of the primarchs is fascinating, and as I write about each one I find them deeply compelling figures, but of all those I've featured in stories so far, Russ is the only one I think I would wish to befriend, and the only one who might return the favour.

  His Legion, too, are more human than many Space Marines. They are so grounded in the culture of Fenris they could not be any other way. Humorous, quarrelsome, yet mighty and noble, their legacy passes from their Legion to their Chapter in the wake of the Heresy, and makes them among the most relatable of the Adeptus Astartes. Like the Blood Angels, Ultramarines and Salamanders, the Space Wolves care. Though they appear savage, they see the inherent value in life. Their dogged belief in fate mea
ns they also see the inevitability of death, but they do their best to cheat it. And, unlike the other three Legions mentioned here, they're the only ones who'd invite you round for a drink once they'd saved you. Although if they ever do, I advise you not to sample the mjod…

  We're many years and books on from when Dan Abnett sat down to put finger to keyboard and begin this grand saga. It has been a decade and more in the making, but we're now at a point in the Horus Heresy where the end is in sight. The branching stories of the Legions are braiding themselves together into one mighty thread. As Horus commits to his move on Terra, things that we have known will happen for a long time are now happening. One of those events, Russ' assault on Horus and his Legion's near destruction, is the heart of this book.

  We are future historians, and like historians it is our job to make sense of these pivotal events, and construct feasible narratives as to why they happened. Why, for example, is Russ so neglectful of the Emperor's Spear? Why does he, against all good sense, strike out to face Horus one on one? We know these things happened. It is future historical fact. The why is the interesting part. The why is where Black Library novels come into their own, both in the writing and the reading. Writing these books often feels like an act of discovery rather than creation, an uncovering of true futures through the parsing of facts.

  By the 41st millennium most Space Marine Chapters have an element of cultish mysticism to them, but the Space Wolves are among the few Legions that started out that way. Exploring their beliefs was one of the most enjoyable parts of this process. In a strange way, creating the part where Russ passes through Syrtyrs door to the Underverse linked satisfyingly with the sometimes oddly transcendental aspect of writing a book. Through the exercising of the joined imaginations of writer and reader, we create a kind of reality between us, somewhere new that is different every time the words are read, and somehow real because of it. It's a peculiar, sometimes frightening thought. A story is the safest way to explore such lands, for in these places lie the domains of the Erlking.

  This, then, is Wolfsbane. May the saga of these bold warriors fire your own courage, and entertain you on the coldest of nights.

  Fenrys hjolda!

  Guy Haley,

  November, 2017

  About the Author

  Guy Haley is the author of the Horus Heresy novels Wolfsbane and Pharos, the Primarchs novel Perturabo: The Hammer of Olympia and the Warhammer 40,000 novels Dark Imperium, The Devastation of Baal, Dante, Baneblade, Shadowsword, Valedor and Death of Integrity. He has also written Throneworld and The Beheading for The Beast Arises series. His enthusiasm for all things greenskin has also led him to pen the eponymous Warhammer novel Skarsnik, as well as the End Times novel The Rise of the Horned Rat. He has also written stories set in the Age of Sigmar, included in War Storm, Ghal Maraz and Call of Archaon. He lives in Yorkshire with his wife and son.

  An extract from Wolf King.

  Three standard days previously, inside the Alaxxes Nebula – called the blood-well, the eye of acid – the Wolves had met in war council.

  The Legion had been driven into the cluster by extremity, and only its extraordinary stellar violence had kept them alive to fight on. The gas cloud was vast, a skein of rust-red on the face of the void, falling into deeper and more intensive virulence the further one went in. Sensors were blinded, engine systems crippled and the Geller fields fizzed like magnesium on water. No sane Navigator would have taken a ship into those depths, save but for the certain promise of annihilation on the outside.

  There were tunnels within, mere pockets of clear space between the great blooms of corrosive matter. The ships of the fleet could slip down them, guarded and menaced by the lethal shoals on every flank, hidden from enemy scan-sweeps and torpedo-rakes but open to devastating flares that punched through armour-plate and overloaded void shields. As they pushed into the bowels of the blood-well, the Wolves found that the capillaries grew narrower, more fouled, less open, tangled like nerve fronds. A ship dragged into the burning gas fields would be consumed in hours, its hull melting as its shield-carapace imploded and its warp core breached; so the Wolves ran warily, sending escorts out wide and running repeated augur-soundings.

  No starlight illuminated those depths, and space itself glowed with the red anger of a clotted wound. The ice-grey prows of the Vlka Fenryka ships were as bloody as wolf maws. Every warship carried scars from the brutal battle with the Alpha Legion out in the open void. They had been ambushed while still recovering from post-Prospero operations; outnumbered and outmanoeuvred, and only retreating into the heart of the cloud had kept them alive to fight again. Many of their ships were now incapable of making for the warp even if the gas tides had allowed. Tech-crews crawled over every surface of every battleship, working punishing rotations just to get shield generators functioning and macrocannon arrays back online, but they would never complete that task adequately, not without the attentions of Mechanicum-sanctioned shipyards, and the closest of those was unimaginably far away.

  So the Wolves were cornered, wounded and lean with hunger, forced into retreat by an enemy with greater resources and infinite patience. They were harried at every turn, driven onward like cattle before the whip, until the madness of confinement ran like a virus through the decks.

  That was the environment in which Gunnar Gunnhilt, the Jarl of Onn, called Lord Gunn by his brothers and second only to the primarch, made his case.

  ‘They will run us down,’ he said.

  The Legion command, a council of forty souls, listened intently. Russ himself had not spoken. The primarch was slouched in a granite throne, his true-wolves curled at his boots, his ruddy face locked in brooding. Frost-blue eyes glittered dully under a mane of dirty blond hair. The Lord of Winter and War had not fought since the abortive attempt to summon Alpharius to the Hrafnkel, and the enforced lethargy seemed to have atrophied him.

  Bjorn had witnessed that last fight, had seen his primarch take apart a Contemptor Dreadnought as if it were a child’s toy. That power must still have been there, coiled deep, locked in his brawler’s hearts even in the midst of endless defeat, but the surface fire had gone. Russ now surrounded himself with runes, listening to the cold whispers of white-haired priests and trying to divine the auguries like a gothi of old.

  It was whispered, and Bjorn had heard the whispers, that the Wolf King had lost his stomach for the fight; they said that being kept out of the greater war had turned his mind, that the death of ¬Magnus haunted him and that he had not slept a clear night since the Khan had refused to come to his aid. Bjorn did not believe that and knew the whispers were foolish, but something, it had to be admitted, had changed. Lord Gunn knew it, Helmschrot knew it, as did the priests and the ship commanders and the jarls of the Legion.

  ‘They believe us beaten,’ Gunn said. ‘That makes them unwary. We strike back hard, the fleet together, launching boarding actions to take out the lead battleships.’ There were grunts of agreement around the ceremonial circle, lit only by the swaying light of half-cold fires. Above them all, looming in the dark, were totems from the origin-world – animal skulls, knot-handled axes, wide-eyed masks of gods and monsters – still bearing the marks of long-gone Fenrisian wind and rain. ‘If we keep running, we will deserve to die here, skinny as starving dogs.’

  Russ said nothing, but his fingers moved through the thick fur of the wolves at his feet. He stared into the heart of the circle at the annulus-stone, brought from Asaheim like all the other sar¬sens in that massive ship. Circles had been carved on its surface, concentric and spiralling, worn smooth by aeons, predating the Great Crusade by a thousand years.

  ‘Gunn speaks true,’ said Ogvai, adding to the counsel he had given before. All the jarls were united in this – they were tired of running.

  Russ looked up then, but not at Lord Gunn or Ogvai Helmschrot or any of the others. He looked, as he so often did, straight at Bjorn. As he did so, Bjorn sensed the spark of resentment from the elder warriors, eve
n Ogvai, the master of his own Great Company, and he felt the old mix of shame and pride that Russ’s attention gave him.

  No one knew why the primarch favoured him so much. For some, it was further evidence of the softening of his once-peerless battle-cunning. The rune-rattlers and bone-carvers kept their own counsel, and Bjorn himself had never wanted to know the reasons, not least for fear of what Russ might have seen.

  In the event, the primarch said nothing to him. His gaze wandered away again, and one of the two wolves at his feet whined uneasily.

  ‘This will be your fight, Gunn,’ Russ said at last. ‘Hit them hard, or not at all – they have the numbers on us.’

  Lord Gunn did not grin at that, not like he might have done in the past. ‘It will be done.’

  ‘You have two hours, once we start,’ said Russ, distractedly. ‘No more. We break out in that time, or I’m calling you back.’

  ‘Two hours–’ started Gunn.

  ‘No more,’ snarled Russ, his eyes briefly flashing. ‘They outnumber us, they outgun us. We break the cordon and push free of it, or we fall back. I will not have my fleet crippled on their anvil.’

  He slumped back into torpor. He had not said whether he would try to hunt down Alpharius again, or leave the bladework to his warriors. He said so little.

  Slowly, Lord Gunn bowed his head. He had been given his chance, but the margin for success was slender.

  ‘As you will it,’ was all he said, his fists balled on the stone before him as if he wanted to break it open.

  They tracked the Alpha Legion on long-range augurs for the next two standard days, gaining as complete a picture of the enemy formation as they could. Lord Gunn’s war council estimated that two-thirds of Alpharius’s fleet had followed them into the gas cloud’s heart, arranged in as loose a formation as the treacherous ingress-routes would allow. The rest had remained further back, hanging above the entire sprawling structure to ward against the Space Wolves escaping.