[Space Wolf 03] - Grey Hunter

by William King

  A WARHAMMER 40,000 NOVEL

  GREY HUNTER

  Space Wolf - 03

  William King

  (An Undead Scan v1.0)

  It is the 41st millennium. For more than a hundred

  centuries the Emperor has sat immobile on the Golden Throne

  of Earth. He is the master of mankind by the will of the

  gods, and master of a million worlds by the might of his

  inexhaustible armies. He is a rotting carcass writhing invisibly

  with power from the Dark Age of Technology. He is the

  Carrion Lord of the Imperium for whom a thousand souls are

  sacrificed every day, so that he may never truly die.

  Yet even in his deathless state, the Emperor continues his

  eternal vigilance. Mighty battlefleets cross the daemon-infested

  miasma of the warp, the only route between distant stars, their

  way lit by the Astronomican, the psychic manifestation of the

  Emperor’s will. Vast armies give battle in his name on

  uncounted worlds. Greatest amongst His soldiers are the

  Adeptus Astartes, the Space Marines, bio-engineered super-

  warriors. Their comrades in arms are legion: the Imperial

  Guard and countless planetary defence forces, the ever-vigilant

  Inquisition and the tech-priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus to

  name only a few. But for all their multitudes, they are barely

  enough to hold off the ever-present threat from aliens,

  heretics, mutants — and worse.

  To be a man in such times is to be one amongst untold

  billions. It is to live in the cruellest and most bloody

  regime imaginable. These are the tales of those times.

  Forget the power of technology and science, for so much has

  been forgotten, never to be re-learned. Forget the promise of

  progress and understanding, for in the grim dark future

  there is only war. There is no peace amongst the stars,

  only an eternity of carnage and slaughter, and the

  laughter of thirsting gods.

  PROLOGUE

  Ragnar raced forward through the hail of enemy fire. Overhead, lightning split the night, turning the clouds an eerie electric purple. Moments later the thunder spoke, even its god-like voice unable to drown out the roar of small-arms fire. Rain the colour of blood, tainted by chemical pollutants and oxidised iron, pattered off his armour. Around him, las-fire ripped the night. Here and there grenades flared, bright as the lightning stroke and just as brief.

  Ahead of him the fortress loomed, a massive structure of plascrete sheathed in steel. Once it must have been the local headquarters of the Imperial levies, or perhaps a sector house of the Arbites. Now, it answered to a different master. Banners bearing the hideous eye of Chaos fluttered in the rising wind. Someone had painted baleful runes down the building’s bristling sides, creating an inscription in the language of evil gods. Was it a prayer or curse? Perhaps both.

  The earth shook as Ragnar scrambled into position behind the tumbled remains of a wall. Shattered brickwork lay near him. Close to his hand he could see where stonework had run like water under the infernal blast of energy weapons. He smelled the air: it stank of explosives, chemicals and technical unguents from the huge machines all around. He caught the scent of his battle-brothers, all hardened ceramite and altered flesh of Fenris. He looked backwards and saw them racing forward through the night, man-like shapes, though larger by far than any normal man, garbed in powered armour inscribed with the wolf sigil of their Chapter. Bolters bristled in their massive fists. A few carried rocket launchers and other heavy weapons. They moved through the rain and the mud with perfect confidence, an unstoppable tide rolling towards the enemy fort.

  Behind them, in the distance, he could make out the unimaginably huge shapes of the Titans. They looked like men but seemed the size of small skyscrapers, an impression heightened by the storm of battle, the clouds of dust and his own knowledge of how powerful the mighty war machines were. Beside them, all other armoured vehicles looked puny.

  Now they loomed out of night and storm like ancient gods of battle woken by the thunderous drumbeats of war. The glow of their shields was faintly visible even amid the clouds of dust surrounding them. When their weapons fired, the muzzle flare flashed brighter than the lightning, throwing the entire war-blasted landscape around them into flickering relief for a few seconds. At their feet, lesser vehicles scurried, weapons blazing, sending salvo after salvo scorching towards the fortress walls. The earth around them spurted upwards as the massive guns of the fortress replied.

  Ragnar breathed in the shuddering air. He smiled, showing two enormous protruding fangs. He could smell terror coming from the Imperial Guard units around them, and a dim distant part of him understood it. Many a night, as a boy on his home world of Fenris, he had lain awake shivering as he listened to the thunder’s rumble and saw the lightning’s flare. It was on such nights that wolves of war were said to come forth to hunt, and ancient terrifying beings bestrode the world.

  The scene surrounding him might have been ripped from his boyish imaginings, but in reality was a thousand times more fearsome. Yet, now, he himself felt no fear. He felt alive, every sense stretched to the maximum, every tendon of his altered body taut and ready to spring into action. All around him the pack that were his brethren and his liegemen awaited his commands.

  He poked his head up and surveyed the massive walls of the fortress ahead of them. So far so good. The small postern airlock the Scouts had reported was just ahead. Over it turrets bristled, but their weapons were trained on the distant attackers, distracted by the mass of Titans and armour, and the hordes of waiting Guardsmen. Mikko’s Blood Claws were already in position, ready to swarm through the gates to take out the plasteel lock and hold the entrance at his command. A good leader, Mikko, Ragnar thought, about ready for promotion to Grey Hunter. He shook his head. Now was not the time to let organisational details distract him.

  The heretical defenders were unaware of the closer threat. Good. For Ragnar, it was just a matter of crossing the fifty metres of killing ground and they were in.

  Suddenly the landscape erupted. Tonnes of earth and broken paving hurtled into the sky. Ragnar flinched for a moment, wondering if they had been spotted. His body tensed in anticipation of explosions or raking fire strafing their position, but nothing happened. It had been a near miss, a miscalculated shot from the distant support force. Ragnar glanced back to make sure none of his men had been caught in the blast and saw no sign of it. He offered up a prayer of thanks to Russ and the Allfather. That had been a little too close for comfort, the sort of mistake that happened on a battlefield, all too often and all too fatally.

  Brother Einar, Brother Anders and the rest of their Blood Claw packs had formed up around him. Their young faces looked tense, strained and eager for the kill. Briefly Ragnar wondered if he had ever looked as green as that to his superiors, and knew the answer was a resounding “yes”. That had been a very long time ago though.

  Brother Hrolf and his Long Fangs were in position now in the nearby crater ready to give them supporting fire if it was needed. The rest of his company’s Grey Hunters stood ready to go in. Ragnar looked over at Brother Loysus. The Rune Priest had been assigned to his company for this mission by Great Wolf Logan Grimnar himself.

  Ragnar’s fingers flickered through his Chapter’s handsign asking the priest if he was ready. It was too noisy for speech, and too close to the sensitive detection equipment within the fortress to risk the comm-net. Loysus gestured in the affirmative. A faint nimbus of light played
round his fingers. Ragnar smiled grimly and then gave the sign. It was time to go in.

  “Take out the door!” he told Mikko over the comm-net.

  +Aye, lord!+ The youth’s response was instant. Ahead of them, the bright bloom of explosive charges lit the night. The gate crumbled. Ragnar gave the gesture to move.

  “Charge!” he cried.

  After the sounds of conflict, all seemed quiet. After the dreadful brightness of the storm-lashed night, the sunrise seemed almost dim. Carrion birds fluttered over corpses. Pariah dogs had emerged from their holes to drink the water puddled in craters. The priests went about their business, tending to the wounded, granting final rites to the dying, speaking words of encouragement to the living. Above the walls of the fortress the Imperial banner had been restored. Already work teams from the guard units were scouring the Chaos runes from the side of the building.

  Ragnar sat in the silence, filled with the sense of gloom and anti-climax that often filled him after a battle, and took stock of the situation. The casualties had been light, all things considered. Ten Blood Claws wounded, six dead. Two Long Fangs lost to enemy fire. Four men missing. It was not yet known whether they were dead or if their locator beacons had simply been damaged. Doubtless all would become clearer as the morning progressed.

  Ragnar suddenly grinned, trying to find something that would dispel his black mood. “Mikko for Grey Hunter,” he said suddenly.

  Old Brother Hrolf grinned back at him. “Aye, he’s about ready. So are Lars and Jaimie.”

  Ragnar nodded. Talk to the brotherhood. See if they agree to accept them. “If they are, I will perform the rites myself this evening.”

  Strictly speaking, Ragnar had no need to consult anybody before elevating a Blood Claw to the ranks of the Grey Hunters. It was his privilege as Wolf Lord to make that selection, but only a fool discounted the opinions of his master sergeant, and the men who would have to fight alongside the newly raised Claw.

  Initiation into the ranks of the Grey Hunters was an important rite for all concerned, not just for the men involved but for the company. It marked the passage from raw ferocious youth to something wiser, more battle-hardened, and above all, less likely to get his companions killed by his eagerness for combat. Blood Claws were furious young men; Grey Hunters had tempered their lust for combat with experience.

  Ragnar saw the sergeant was looking at him, as were all the other warriors surrounding him.

  “What is it?” Ragnar asked, already knowing what was coming. It was part of the personal myth that surrounded him.

  “The tale is that you were never a Grey Hunter, lord.”

  “Aye, that is so, more or less.”

  “I thought it was impossible for a man to become Wolf Lord unless he had been initiated into the brotherhood, lord,” said Zoran, one of the newest recruits to the company, a man who had been transferred in from Fenris as a replacement for casualties. Zoran had the fresh-faced look of a Blood Claw who had only just been accepted into the Grey Hunters himself.

  “I thought every man must undergo the rites to become a Grey Hunter, to be bound into the brotherhood.”

  “I did not,” said Ragnar.

  “How can that be, lord?”

  “It’s a long tale,” said Ragnar.

  “We have all day,” came someone’s voice from the background. Ragnar could see they were all keen to hear it, even those who had heard the story many times before. The sagas were one of those things that bound them together as a Chapter, part of what made them a brotherhood. Some of the Blood Claws had approached and were taking their places around the fire. Ragnar looked at their eager faces, and smiled sadly.

  He plunged backwards into his memory, seeking the words that would, this time, enable him to tell the whole terrible tale correctly.

  “It was a long time ago,” he said. “In the days when Berek Thunderfist was lord of this company…”

  CHAPTER ONE

  “When will we ever get out of this bloody place?” asked Sven, a grimace of pure frustration twisting his cheerfully ugly features. Frost had gathered on his eyebrows, and hung like icicles from his sideburns. “It’s been nearly six months since Xecutor, and I am as sick of looking at bloody Fenris as I am of looking at your ugly face, Ragnar.”

  Ragnar did not take the comment personally. It was just Sven’s way. He understood his fellow Blood Claw’s frustration. All of this training might well be improving his skills, but it was no substitute for action.

  Briefly he wondered if the process that had turned Sven and himself into Space Marines had not done something to their minds and souls as well. He felt restless in a way he had never done before. He craved the excitement of battle and the thrill of combat in a way that he suspected was not entirely natural even for one of his warrior people. Or maybe it was that despite the leatheriness of their skins, and the few grey hairs that had started to appear in their hair, they were still Blood Claws at heart, with all of a young warrior’s yearning for blood and glory.

  He smiled and shook his head looking at their surroundings. All around them were the Ice Wastes of Asaheim, league after endless league of snowy desolation, broken only by the cold peaks of the Dragonfang Mountains. It was an environment in which he could not have survived ten years ago, back when he had been merely a lad of the Thunderfist tribe. It was so cold that even wrapped in the thickest of furs he would not have lasted an hour, and so desolate that if the temperature did not kill him, starvation would have. Most likely the ice fiends would have taken him before that happened. Now he found the place merely entertaining, a place to hone the skills he had been taught by his Chapter.

  But then, ten years ago, his body had not been sheathed in the miraculous armour of the ancients, capable of shielding him from far more hostile environments than this. And ten years ago his body had not been transformed into a near tireless killing machine capable of eating lichen or the inhuman flesh of the ice fiends and their related folk. Ten years ago his unaltered eyes would have been snow-blind by now, rather than filtering out the glare. Ten years ago he would not have agreed with Sven in finding this little hiking trip quite so dull. Being back on Fenris after the Xecutor campaign had proven a bit of an anti-climax. He did not even feel a thrill of pride any more when he contemplated the armour runes that showed he belonged to Berek’s company. Not much anyway. Not as much as when he had first been assigned to a proper unit.

  Of course, back then he had never been off-world, had never embarked on the great ships that sailed between the stars, had not fought against men and daemons and monsters. Back then, he would have thought only gods capable of doing what he now found so lacking in challenge. How times had changed! Since then there had been Gait and Aerius and Logan’s World and Purity and Xecutor and a host of minor campaigns he could not even be bothered to enumerate.

  “There’s nothing bloody funny about it, Ragnar Thunderfist, or should I call you ‘Blackmane’ like all the little cubs do?”

  Having failed to get a rise out of him one way, Sven was taking another tack. It was a bit of a sore spot. Part of Ragnar wished he had never had that old wolfskin made into a cloak, it had been the cause of so much jesting from his old comrades. The new Blood Claw packs and even some of the older Wolves, the Grey Hunters and the Long Fangs, had taken it as a mark of Russ’s favour. After all, it had been a long time since any man had killed one of the beasts while still in training and armed only with a spear. It was in fact considered near impossible.

  Ragnar had pointed out the old monster had been sick and starving and he had killed it with a lucky blow, but that had made no difference. If anything, his un-Wolf-like modesty had gotten almost as much attention as the slaying. Perhaps he should have boasted about it, like Sven or anybody else would have done. He did not quite know why the fame made him so uncomfortable. Perhaps it was because he felt he was not worthy of it.

  “You bloody daydreaming again?” Sven asked. “Or can’t you answer a civil question?”

&
nbsp; “You’ll find out when you ask one,” Ragnar responded, his nostrils dilating, catching the faintest hint of an acrid inhuman scent on the wind. He looked over at Sven to see if his friend had caught it too. Sven’s marginally less keen nose twitched. The long moustache he had been cultivating since the campaign on Xecutor moved like the whiskers of some great hunting beast.

  “You smell that?” he asked. Ragnar nodded.

  “Ice fiend, I reckon. Not too close, not too far either.”

  “Perhaps you’re not quite so bad at tracking as I thought,” said Ragnar.

  “We can’t all have the razor keen senses of the blessed of bloody Russ,” said Sven. “Maybe I should let you go and check this out on your own. After all, the cubs will give you all the credit for killing the beasts anyway. Even if I were to kill a whole bloody tribe single handed, while you stood back and applauded my fine bloody technique with a chainsword, they would praise you for it.”

  Ragnar checked his weapons. Tracking down the ice fiends was the whole purpose of this expedition. They had been raiding along the coastal glaciers and slaughtering the mastodon herds. It was time they were taught a lesson. “I think you’re just jealous of my well-deserved reputation,” he said.

  “I would be jealous if it was well-deserved,” said Sven. “Unfortunately all you do is hog the credit for my own heroic deeds.”

  “Like I did on Micah,” said Ragnar, “when I pulled you out of that squig pit, before they could gnaw you to death?”

  “You always have to bring that up, don’t you?” said Sven in a tone of mock gloom. “I would have fought my way out in a few heartbeats if you had not interrupted.”

  “Your plan was to choke the squig to death by thrusting yourself down its throat then, was it?”

  “I was lulling it into a false sense of security,” muttered Sven, his eyes checking the horizon. Ragnar could tell he too had spotted the massive white shapes until now near invisible amongst the snows.