by Ben Counter
It was not long before Fejor and Tanngjost had buried the bombs at the top of the fractured snow field, where the upper layer sat precariously on an older fall of icy snow. The detonation would bring it all down, sweeping into the narrow defiles that would serve as paths upwards for the greenskins. More of the orks were gathering now, the hardiest and fastest climbers, lurking behind ridges of stone ready to make the final push upwards. Behind them smoke rose from the engines of bikes the other orks were manhandling over the rough climb, ready to scream up the flat slope.
‘The bombs need no help this time,’ said Tanngjost, ‘and our pack leader’s frost blade is as keen as it ever will be. But alas, the heavy bolter was destroyed at the bunker and all I have is my darling Frejya. Rune Priest, would you?’
Tanngjost held out his bolter to Ulli. It was a heavily customised model, an older marque from some ancient armoury of the Fang. Its casing was inlaid with red and gold, marked with silver eagle’s heads to mark notable kills the weapon had taken. Tanngjost had even had the weapon’s name inscribed on it.
‘It has been too long, Lady Frejya,’ said Ulli. ‘Last time I saw you, you were out of shells and Tanngjost was beating an eldar about the head with you.’
‘She might not be refined,’ said Tanngjost, ‘but she’s still my girl.’
‘What does she wish of me?’
‘She is jealous of Brother Fejor’s range,’ said Tanngjost. ‘Not his bite, for sure, for she can blow a hole in any greenskin big enough to spit through. But she’d rather not have to wait until I can see the reds of their eyes.’
Ulli laid his hand on Frejya’s casing. He could feel the years on the weapon, the countless alien and heretic lives taken by her, the joy that a Space Wolf took in the decimation of his enemies. Such a weapon took the runes well because half the work was already done – it was already infused with meaning and history, with a patina of age and bloodshed. Ulli created the rune in his mind, taken from the tomb of a long-dead Fenrisian prince who could shoot a snow hart through the throat from leagues away. Distance, accuracy and cold-heartedness were enwrapped in the symbol now being raised up in light and steel.
‘Fine raiment,’ said Ulli, ‘for a fine lady.’
Gunfire was stuttering up from below. The orks weren’t trying to hit anything, or even fire ranging shots. The noise and the fury was its own reward, raising the blood of the greenskins until they were in a raucous battle-frenzy, with war-cries echoing up from the throng. They were starting the climb up the slope, falling over one another in their eagerness to get to grips with the Space Wolves.
‘Can you see their leader?’ voxed Aesor.
‘Not yet,’ replied Fejor, who was crouched in the wreckage of the crashed aircraft, surveying the enemy through the scope of his sniper rifle.
‘Not right,’ said Aesor. ‘Greenskins lead from the front.’
‘This whole army could be swept away,’ said Ulli, ‘but if that creature survives, all our work here will be undone.’
‘Is it among them?’ asked Aesor.
Ulli knelt in the snow and put a hand to the ground. Though his psychic discipline was not the reading of minds or the perception of the warp, his psychic sense could still react when the touch of the warp was strong enough.
It was there. The dark and monstrous stink of warpcraft, filtered through the mass of hatred that each ork possessed in place of a mind. It pulsed through the rocks and the air. It stained the clear sky. Ulli felt filthy just to perceive it.
‘It’s here,’ said Ulli.
‘Much as I would love to try,’ said Fejor, ‘I doubt we can wade through this many greenskins to get to it.’
‘Then as Russ hauled the Iron-Scale Kraken from the ocean to best it on land,’ said Aesor, ‘just as Hef Shattertusk lured forth the Beast of the Black Fjord, so shall we bring the enemy to us.’
Above the Space Wolves’ position was a promontory of rock, sprouting from the base of the rocky spindle that formed the mountain’s peak. Aesor ran to it and stood on the edge, drawing his frost blade. Ulli could imagine that image in stained glass adorning a chapel, built by Emperor-fearing citizens to honour some act of deliverance from the Space Wolves. Very few of the Chapter were handsome, but Aesor was definitely among that few.
‘Beast of Sacred Mountain!’ Aesor bellowed. ‘I know you can hear me! You have slain my brothers and I have slain yours, and who is either of us to leave such work undone?’
Aesor’s words echoed up and down the mountain, as if Sacred Mountain itself were calling out the greenskin. A few whooping war-cries reached Ulli’s ears from below.
‘My frost blade has not drunk its fill!’ continued Aesor. ‘And there is space for another skull above the fire of the Great Hall! I think yours will fit perfectly, greenskin. And so I call you out! You will find no fiercer quarry on this planet, you will find no sword keener than mine to test your own! I call you out, and I know you hear me true!’
The orks howled and bellowed, and fired randomly up in the air. And then the din subsided.
Ulli had never seen greenskins cowed into obedience, not when they were chanting their war-cries and ready to spill blood. But these threw themselves face-down into the snow or scurried to the side as the horde parted.
The greenskin leader walked out from the throng. The mountain seemed to shake under its feet. It pointed up at Aesor and bellowed, the sound carrying on the wind like a roar from the warp itself.
‘Do it!’ yelled Aesor.
Fejor shouldered his rifle and jumped down from the wreckage, where the detonator had been rigged to the bomb load.
The ork grinned and the contraptions on its back glowed blue-white, spraying sparks and arcing into the ground. With a sound like a clap of sudden thunder, it vanished.
The orks around it were thrown aside by the shockwave. A blast of air tinged with the steely taste of ozone and blood hit Ulli, heavy with the greasy feel of warpcraft.
‘It exploded,’ said Tanngjost.
‘It teleported,’ replied Ulli.
The air was torn apart. The ork appeared on the promontory a few paces from Aesor, bellowing as it brandished the massive cleaver in its fist.
Aesor saluted with his blade – a foolish gesture, but a feint. The ork lunged at him, bringing the cleaver down to cut the pack leader in two. Aesor dodged to the side and turned the cleaver with his frost blade – a mundane weapon would have been shattered but the kraken-tooth blade turned the cleaver aside and the weapon was driven into the rock beside Aesor’s foot.
Aesor leapt into the ork, planting a foot on its knee to propel himself upwards. He grabbed one of the beast’s fangs with his free hand and headbutted it in the bridge of the nose. Cartilage cracked and the ork reeled.
‘Say the word,’ voxed Fejor from the wreck.
‘Stand by,’ replied Ulli.
Aesor vaulted off the ork before it could tear him off and dash him against the rocks. The separation was enough for Tanngjost to draw a bead with Frejya and blast a volley of shots into the greenskin. Shots punched into the mass of gnarled green scar tissue, but only angered the creature more. It hauled the cannon off its back, the barrels cycling as it levelled the weapon at Tanngjost. The ork had patched the weapon back together using ill-matched spare parts and chunks of welded steel plating. There was no way it should have worked, but there had been no reason for the ork aircraft to fly either.
The cannon blazed. Tanngjost sprinted for the rocky base of the mountain spire as shots erupted around him, throwing columns of snow into the air.
Aesor lunged at the ork. His frost blade was aimed at the place where its heart should have been. But the ork was fast, far too fast for a creature of its size. It brought its cleaver down into the path of the blade and caught Aesor’s arm in the crook of its elbow, levering Aesor to the ground. It let its cannon fall to the rock as it drew its fist back.
Ulli’s axe was in his hand. He had not willed it – it was a reflex action, wired into his hindbrain.
Psychic power was pooling into the weapon, illuminating the runes on its blade. They were runes from the ancient peoples of Fenris, sigils of keenness, valour and ferocity, glowing bright against the dark steel.
The ork drove its fist into Aesor’s chest. Ulli heard the ceramite buckling and the stink of warpcraft was suddenly sharp and real, the savage joy of the ork making its corruption flare up.
Ulli charged at the ork. This time he dropped at the last instant, knowing the ork had the cunning to anticipate the attack. The ork’s cleaver swept over Ulli and he hacked the axe deep into the ork’s thigh.
A force weapon, such as the rune axe, was not just a badge of a Rune Priest’s rank. The psychic circuitry built into it was attuned to the wielder’s mind, a conduit for the raw psychic power created by accident of birth and merciless training under the Rune Priests of the Fang. When that power flowed through the blade, it killed. It did not wound or sever – it sheared the enemy’s soul away, annihilated his mind in the torrent of willpower.
Ulli let his mind flow through the axe now, the killing wave, the flood of mental fire, to shred the greenskin’s mind from the inside.
A great black wall of hatred met his mind. The psychic force crashed against it like an ocean against a cliff. Ulli was thrown back, mentally and physically, hurled onto his back with his vision greying out and fireworks of shock bursting in his mind.
The mass of warp-born corruption had welled up and thrown him aside. The darkness inside the ork was more powerful than Ulli had realised. It was not an ork at all – it was a vessel for that darkness, brimming over with raw hatred that found form in the greenskin’s savagery and lust for war. Ulli had faced daemons and witches, and sorcerers of the dark gods on the battlefield, but he had never felt such a magnitude of raw corruption.
‘Fejor!’ gasped Ulli into the vox, and his own voice sounded far away. ‘Do it!’
‘Thirty seconds!’ came the reply.
Aesor was on his feet. The breastplate of his armour was crushed and split, and blood ran from his mouth. The ork lashed at him with its cleaver and Aesor parried, duelling with the creature blow for blow. They were both fast, both strong. The ork had the greater reach and power, but Aesor’s frost blade was the finer weapon and he had the skill of a Space Marine and master swordsman. Ulli rolled onto his front and pulled himself to his feet, picking up his axe from the ground – the weapon’s blade was smouldering and the snow around it had melted away.
Aesor was forced back a step. The ork slashed at Aesor at waist height with enough power to cut the Space Wolf clean in two. Aesor jumped back and sliced in response, the frost blade cutting off a good chunk of armour on the ork’s shoulder and revealing oozing red muscle beneath the gnarled skin.
Fejor was running to join Tanngjost by the spire. Ulli glanced behind him and gauged the distance to the wreck. He was a little too close, and scrambled across the slope out of the blast radius.
Frith crouched beside the wreck, head in his hands and shivering.
‘Frith!’ yelled Ulli. ‘Move! Move!’
Frith didn’t respond. Perhaps fear made him insensible to what was going on around him. Perhaps he knew full well what was happening, and chose not to flee.
The bomb exploded. The wreck, Frith, and a good portion of the mountainside vanished into a column of grey snow and flame. The ground seemed to liquefy under Ulli’s feet and he pitched onto his face.
The greenskin stumbled back. Aesor leapt onto its chest, frost blade drawn back to spear it through the heart. The ork grabbed Aesor with one hand, its massive fist enclosing his waist, and slammed him into the rock head-first.
The side of the mountain shifted and slid downwards. Ulli couldn’t even imagine how many tonnes of snow had been dislodged, now gathering speed as it rumbled towards the ork horde below. The greenskin mech turned at the sound to see the avalanche seething downwards.
Ulli took the chance. He sprinted for Aesor, who lay on the rock at the greenskin’s feet. Ulli grabbed the collar of Aesor’s armour and hauled him away towards cover.
The ork looked back around to see Aesor out of reach. Its face split into a grin, of all things, and it laughed – it laughed to see its quarry escape and its army seconds from destruction. Liquid corruption, oily and black, was slathered around its fangs and glinting in its eyes. It reached behind it and worked the controls of the contraption in its back.
The ork vanished again, leaving the taste of burning metal in its wake. Ulli thought it must appear ahead of him, at the base of the pinnacle, cutting him and Aesor off from the cover of the mountain’s caves. But instead, the flash and sound of the teleport came from below. The greenskin appeared in the midst of its army again, in the path of the avalanche that by now had taken the entire slope’s worth of snow with it in one boiling mass.
Ulli was sure he could still hear the greenskin laughing as it activated another of the devices it had built into itself. A dome of crackling golden energy leapt up around it, flaring and spitting with arcs of electricity, encompassing a good third of the ork army.
It was a forcefield. The damn thing had a forcefield. Ulli cursed inwardly as he dragged the reeling Aesor towards Tanngjost and Fejor at the nearest cave entrance.
The ork horde vanished in the whiteout. Ulli waited at the entrance to watch, and sure enough, after a few moments of stillness the snow hissed and boiled away, revealing the perfect circle where the forcefield had protected the ork army from its fury. In the middle of hundreds of greenskins their leader stood bellowing orders and pointing up at the pinnacle.
Hundreds had died. Maybe thousands. But more than enough remained. Ulli spat in the snow and headed into Sacred Mountain, knowing the orks were following.
FIVE
Not even the Knightly Houses of Alaric Prime knew what lay inside the peak of Sacred Mountain, nor who had built it or why. The intelligence the Space Wolves had on the world suggested only that it was an archeotech site, full of technology from the Dark Age before the coming of the Emperor, when human innovation ran untempered and great wonders and terrors were made. A few legends suggested those who entered the peak never returned, which made it a less than ideal shelter for Pack Aesor, but one slightly more appealing than facing the orks in the open.
Inside the cave the pack found walls of smooth metallic stone cut into enormous blocks, dark and shot through with silver lines that suggested circuitry. Along the ceiling ran broad metal pipes that looped in and out of the stone. Panels of black crystal made up the floor and sections of the walls, still polished and reflective even after Throne knew how many centuries exposed to the elements. Flurries of snow blew in from outside and melted against the stone, for it was slightly warm to the touch, and Ulli could just feel a faint vibration as if from a power source running deep down in the mountain.
There was no sign of anyone having set foot in here. The cave led down into the body of the mountain, in a wide winding spiral lined with silver glyphs of some ancient tech-language. It was better shelter than nothing, but for real cover the pack would have to move further in and find a defensible location. They had time until then, but not much.
Fejor was kneeling over the stunned Aesor, trying to get his buckled breastplate off so the pack leader could be checked for injuries. Ulli leaned against the wall, watching the snow swirling outside and listening to the orkish war-cries and bike engines.
‘How many did we get?’ asked Tanngjost.
‘Half,’ said Ulli. ‘Maybe more. A good tally for us this day.’
‘But you do not rejoice in it, Rune Priest.’
‘No. The true enemy lives. With luck it will follow us up here and spare our brothers below a few more hours of whatever evil it can wreak among the Knights. That is scant recompense.’
‘We gave it a bloody good fight,’ said Tanngjost.
‘That would be enough for an Imperial Guardsman with a lasgun and bayonet,’ replied Ulli, ‘to tell himself while he waits to die. It is not enough for a Space Marine
. We cannot claim valour as victory, or endeavour, or a fight well fought. Only victory is victory to us, and we are not victorious.’
‘Does a man have to be miserable to join the Rune Priests,’ said Tanngjost, ‘or is it just you?’
Ulli tried to raise a smile, but could not. He could only think of the Aquila Ferox, corrupted and lumbering at the greenskin’s command, and how a whole legion of them might look advancing on the great companies of Ragnar Blackmane and Logan Grimnar.
‘How dare you?’ came a voice from behind Ulli.
Ulli turned to see Aesor standing behind him, his damaged breastplate hanging loose, one shoulder guard buckled and split. Aesor’s face was pallid and his eyes sunken, as if he had not slept for days, and Ulli could feel the anger in his eyes – a hot, red tint, flickering behind the pack leader’s mind.
‘I do not understand, brother,’ said Ulli.
‘How dare you deny my combat against the enemy!’ snapped Aesor. ‘The greenskin was mine to fight! The kill was mine, and you denied it to me!’
‘You were wounded,’ said Ulli, keeping his voice level. He had not seen Aesor like this before, but somehow it was not a surprise – that proud predator had always been there, lurking behind Aesor’s eyes, waiting to uncoil.