[Space Wolf 04] - Wolfblade

by William King

  A WARHAMMER 40,000 NOVEL

  WOLFBLADE

  Space Wolf - 04

  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

  All around was deathly still. The old trees, with grey bark, and leaves long since killed by pollution, loomed out of the shadows like tormented ghosts. In the darkness around him, Ragnar could sense armed men on the move. He was not afraid. They were his men, sworn to follow him, and die at his command if need be. He wondered where the thought had sprung from. There would be no deaths among his men this night — at least not if he could help it.

  He looked to the soft ground underfoot. Although he was moving quietly there was no way he could avoid leaving tracks. The weight of his armour ensured it. After weeks of fighting amid the wreckage of the hives of Hesperida, he was almost among nature again. Almost. The area must once have been a park or forestry dome, before the cultists had begun their uprising. It would have been a place of pleasure where the wealthy came to experience what the surface of their world had once been like. Now it was an area of death, the great geodesic dome was shattered, and the foul air of the tortured planet could now enter. Everywhere there were splinters of armour glass from the collapse, some of them almost as large as a man.

  The night air was a peculiar mixture of stenches: the rot from the dead trees, the spores of the fast growing fungi that blotched their sides, industrial toxins, the faint scent of animals that had passed by not so long ago. And everywhere and always there was the faint insidious stench that Chaos left when it inhabited a world’s surface for any time; it was the smell of corruption, rich, sweet and sickly.

  Abruptly it came to Ragnar that he knew the source. Some of the trees were still alive — the blotched ones, the palest, the greyest, the most degenerate looking. They were not being killed by some parasite, he realised. They were being changed by it, or into it. It was the only way any living thing could survive in an environment so rapidly altered.

  For some reason, he thought of Gabriella, and the Navigators, and he smiled grimly. It was the first time such thoughts had entered his mind in decades. He shook his head; he needed to concentrate on the task at hand. There were enemies out there in this tainted night, enemies who badly wanted him and his men dead. And right now their only defence was stealth.

  Ragnar was not sure what had gone wrong up in orbit, but something had. The last he had heard was a brief scrambled burst on the comm-net that told of the arrival of a massive enemy fleet. Then everything had been lost in static. It was almost as if it were a signal informing them that the enemy offensive had begun. The cultists had attacked en masse supported by heavy weapon fire, and strange sorceries. Ragnar had made his men hold their posts as long as possible, but he had known from the very beginning they were fighting a rearguard action, and that eventually their position would have to be abandoned.

  Several times he had tried raising central command, but something had shut down the whole net. Whether it was sorcery or some freak climatic effect, it did not matter. There was no way his superiors could know what had happened, and there was no means of attracting support. In any case, he did not need access to the comm system to know that none would be forthcoming.

  The roars of Chaos Titan weaponry and the sounds of battle drifting on the wind told him all he needed to know. The enemy were mounting a massive offensive all along the front. His Blood Claw scouts had brought back word that the two adjacent sections of the line, held by Imperial Guard and Planetary units, had already crumbled. His men and the local levies supporting them were now a salient pushed into the body of the main enemy advance. And they would soon be cut off.

  In the face of the sledgehammer falling on them, there had been no choice but to give the order to retreat. It had not been a popular one. For Space Wolves the most honourable death was in battle, and it was not in their nature to give way before the enemy.

  Ragnar grinned. A Wolf Lord did not need to be popular, he needed to be obeyed, and Ragnar was. It was not his duty to throw lives away needlessly. It was his duty to defeat the enemy. However, if that was not possible, he would preserve as much of his force as he could so that they could return and overcome the foe another day. They had held out as long as they could, giving their men a chance to find their way back through the ruins of the great dome while they still had the chance. In fact, they had done the work of ten times their number in throwing back the enemy assaults.

  It had not been easy. They had spent most of the time in deep bunkers amid the rubble, riding out the storm of artillery fire, keeping their heads down, and knowing that the enemy would advance as soon as the barrage finished. Perhaps sooner, for the warlords of the Dark Gods of Chaos were careless with their followers’ lives. They had emerged from their dens to throw back probing attacks, and one massive wave assault that had been repulsed by the thinnest of margins. When night fell, Ragnar knew it was time to leave. He had given orders to arm the booby traps that filled their position, and he watched as the first squads began to melt away into the night. Even now, somewhere behind him in the darkness, the rearguard waited, keeping up sporadic fire on their enemies so that they would think the position was still held.

  He wondered how much the noose had tightened around their necks. If the encirclement was complete the scouts would soon encounter enemy pickets and patrols. They had orders to report back without engaging, but it was always possible that the sons of Fenris would somehow manage to start a fight.

  He had done his best to impress on the Blood Claws in particular that now was not the time for violence. A mistake could lead to the death of their entire company. At the time, they had appeared to recognise the gravity of the situation,
but who could know what they might do out in the field?

  Ragnar pushed these thoughts to one side. He had done all he could, and matters were out of his hands. He should focus on things he could influence. He sniffed the air. He caught the scents of his comrades, along with something that made his hackles rise — the taint of madness and murder that he was so familiar with. Deep within him something stirred. He felt the urge to snarl and rend. His worries about the scouts returned. If the stink of Chaos could still affect him after all these years, what about those youths…

  No point worrying, he reminded himself. They were as well trained as he had been. They knew what to do. He just had to trust in that.

  The ground shook under his feet as more high impact shells slammed home. He froze, instinctively, seeking to blend in with cover. Those hits had come from close by. Had the enemy spotted and targeted them? It was hard to see how they could have done so by conventional means, but then Chaos did not have to use conventional means. They had sorcerers and daemons and all manner of divinatory enchantments to call on. Ragnar had seen evidence enough of that in his career never to doubt it.

  Their own position was supposedly warded by the spells of the Rune Priests, but they had been cast days ago, and such things had a way of untangling when most needed. Ragnar breathed a prayer to Russ and forced himself to start moving again. All around him his warriors did the same. With the pack mentality of the Wolves, they had instinctively waited for his response. Now they loped into action again.

  Step by tortuous step, they progressed through the shadow of the great warped trees, grey ghosts in a grey landscape, towards fleeting sanctuary. Ragnar was not even sure that there was a sanctuary any more. What the scouts had reported earlier might no longer stand. Battle was a fluid situation; lines that seemed solid had a way of melting like tracks in sand before the tide. Perhaps the men behind them had been over-run by the advancing tide of evil. He would not know until he was much closer. Once again he cursed the battle that raged overhead. Without access to the comm-net and the divinatory orbital sensors, they were blind as well as deaf. At least, he hoped battle still raged overhead. If the Imperial Fleet had been defeated, then they were cut off, and they were all dead men who did not know it yet.

  He glanced skywards at the strange stars through a break in the clouds. They glittered and twinkled oddly, their light filtered by pollution. Some of those lights might be ships, he thought, and some might even now be firing weapons of unimaginable power at foes shielded by titanic energies. There was no way to tell. All he could do was watch and hope.

  How quickly the situations change, he thought. A week ago everything had seemed well in hand. His forces had cleared most of the surrounding blocks of territory and were poised to strike at the heart of the enemy — the great citadel where the rebellion had its headquarters.

  The appearance of the enemy fleet and an unexpectedly large number of enemy forces had thrown all careful calculations out of kilter. Ragnar told himself not to despair. He had been in worse situations.

  He had been in such tight spots that this seemed a mere feast day revel. It was strange though, how faded memories of long past dangers never compared with feelings engendered by current threats. He had seen enough men die to know how long the odds were. No matter how well trained or experienced, there was always the chance that a stray bullet would find you. Even odds of a thousand to one did not seem long when you had been in a thousand fights.

  Where were these thoughts coming from, he asked himself? They should not normally occur to a commander with an Imperial field force at his beck and call. He was not normally like this. And he felt worse than a normal commander would, because his scent transmitted his mood back to his pack, and they in turn reflected this.

  Was he under some sort of attack, he wondered? Was there some chemical in the air, too subtle for his detectors and his nose to pick out? Or was some daemon-worshipping sorcerer at work? Not all spells involved bolts of fire or the summoning of hell-spawned fiends. He was shielded against obvious attacks, and knew how to resist a direct probe at his mind. But this could be something more subtle, he thought, a flank attack on the citadel of his mind. He began to recite a litany of protection, softly, under his breath.

  Immediately he felt better, although he was not sure whether it was from the comfort he took in his words, or the potency of prayer itself. Sergeant Urlec moved up beside him. There was acrimony in his scent. The sergeant had taken to questioning many of Ragnar’s decisions in private. There was friction between them, and Ragnar recognised its source. It was the tension that rose between the younger Wolf and the older one, as to who would lead the pack. This friction was grafted into every Wolfs geneseed from the ancient days of the First Founding.

  Ragnar had been like this once, and he wondered when the challenge would come. It was strange to think of himself as the elder in this situation. He had come early to his lordship and was probably younger in years than Urlec although that had no bearing on the way either of them viewed the situation.

  “Scouts report enemy up ahead,” said Urlec. “Looks like we are cut off!”

  “Did they say that, sergeant?” said Ragnar. Both of them spoke so quietly that only another Space Wolf could have picked up their words, and only then if they were very close. Urlec’s scent became more acrid.

  “No, Lord Ragnar,” he said grudgingly. “They only said the enemy were present.”

  “Then there’s no evidence of encirclement yet, sergeant,” said Ragnar, his hackles rising as he spoke the contrary words. “Just because there are enemy there, we are not necessarily cut off. Send the scouts forward and tell them to feel out the enemy position. In the meantime, tell the rest of the packs to slow their advance. We don’t want to blunder into a firefight in the dark.”

  “It’s already done,” said Urlec, with some satisfaction. Ragnar fought an urge to growl. Of course Urlec had done it. He was competent. That was why Ragnar had promoted him when Vitulv had died. He only wished the man was not so smug. He did not need this contest of wills and wit with his senior sergeant right now. There were more important things to worry about.

  Ragnar forced his breathing to slow. The problem here was his. The folly of Urlec was just one more obstacle to overcome in order to preserve his company. The man would be dealt with later, but right now, Ragnar had to live with his presence and his attitude.

  “Very good,” he said, knowing that Urlec could read his mood from his scent. Briefly he considered once more the possibility of psychic attack. Perhaps this was more than instinctive hostility, perhaps it was some form of sorcerous assault. Ragnar wished Brother Hrothgar were present to perform a divination. But that was like wishing for a fleet to carry him to the moon. Hrothgar had been summoned to command days ago and had not been heard of since. It was a pity. Perhaps a sending would have been able to find out what was going on back there.

  Ragnar slowed his pace, as he and the sergeant began to encounter groups of Wolves hunkered down in cover. They were taking things seriously at least. They knew that potential disaster lay ahead of them, as well as behind. He threaded his way through them, silent as a shadow. He made less noise than Urlec although he was the larger of the two. He wanted to get as close to the frontline as possible, and get the word direct from the mouths of the scouts as they returned.

  He reviewed his options. One good thing about fighting on this ground was that he was familiar with it. Over the past few weeks he had scouted it himself several times, getting to know the terrain. He had wanted to be prepared for any eventuality, no matter how remote a retreat had seemed at the time. He knew that the dome was full of rolling downs, depressions and ridgelines that could provide cover for defence and attacks. That the hills were sculpted and artificial did not matter — they looked as natural as anything on his home world of Fenris. He knew there were two winding valleys, like canyons that snaked through the park and many sculpted streams and waterfalls.

  Right now they were mov
ing along the inside of those valleys, using the cover. On the other side of the elevation, flanking troops of scouts could make sure no ambushers took them by surprise from the ridge tops. This was the easiest line of retreat but also the most obvious for an enemy familiar with the terrain. He had chosen it because they needed to be swift as well as stealthy, and he trusted the ability of his men to keep out of sight of their opponents. He hoped that his trust would prove justified.

  Why the constant doubts, he asked himself? He knew the answer. They were not the objects of some psychic attack. They were the products of what was happening. It was easy to have complete confidence in yourself and your men when you were winning. It was a lot harder when things were against you. He did not think it was a coincidence that Urlec’s subtle challenges had begun when things started to go against them. He supposed it was only natural, but he did not like it.

  Get used to it, he told himself, you cannot always be on the winning side. Not unless you were the Imperium anyway. It was a joke among the human military that the Imperium always won, even if it took a thousand years. Individuals, regiments, armies might be lost in meat-grinder campaigns but in the end the forces of the Emperor were always triumphant — they had to be, they were just too numerous for it to be any other way.

  Part of him knew this was mere conceit. In the great cosmic scale of things, the Imperium was relatively young, despite its ten thousand year history. There were races out there that had been old when humanity had just begun to look up at the stars from the caves of a single world. Ragnar himself had seen the remains of civilisations that had once covered as many worlds as humanity did today, and perhaps had been even more powerful. “Look upon my works ye mighty and despair,” as he had observed once on the plinth of a toppled statue on a far off desert world. It had been erected by humans during the long gone Dark Age of Technology, but the sentiment could have been directed at any of the extinct races of the times before man.