[Space Wolf 06] - Wolf's Honour

by Lee Lightner - (ebook by Undead)

  The young Space Wolf tried to summon the maps of the bunker complex to the forefront of his mind. He knew that the vault adjoined the main war room on this level, but how many passageways connected to it? The spilled blood in the room made it difficult to think. Ragnar started to pace, fighting the urge to charge off into the gloom in search of something to kill. Sounds echoed in the darkness. A howl seemed to echo from another passageway to the south.

  “Did you hear that?” he hissed.

  To Ragnar’s surprise, Torin answered at once. “I did. It could be Sigurd or the other team. If they’re pinned down, we’re the only ones in position to reach the vault.”

  Ragnar stifled a curse. Torin was right. He was letting his imagination get the better of him, and time was wasting. He worked his way past the fallen bodies of the rebel soldiers and reached the mouth of the north passageway, where he too could see a dim, purple glow pulsing slowly at the far end. As he passed Torin, he whispered, “Is there anything else you feel? Do you see shadows?”

  “Yes,” Torin whispered back, “perhaps worse than before, but let’s worry about that later. For now, let’s just get down this corridor.”

  Ragnar nodded to himself. He shouldered his way alongside Haegr and checked the ammo load for his pistol. Satisfied, he focused on the light in the distance and set off at a loping run with the rest of the team behind him.

  They passed through half a dozen small rooms along the way, cluttered with debris and devoid of life. As they drew closer to the pulsing ethereal light, Ragnar could feel the invisible tides of sorcery washing over him in waves of oily filth. A strange, acrid stench burned in his nostrils and set his teeth on edge. Buzzing atonal notes echoed in his ears, growing louder with each step he took.

  Distracted as he was, Ragnar didn’t notice the flak-board barrier until he was within three metres of the end of the passageway. The enemy had laid boards over the doorway to well above human height, their grey sides reflecting the shifting purple light from the ceiling of the room beyond.

  Ragnar slowed his pace at once. “Barrier ahead,” he said gruffly, his voice sounding tinny and distorted over the infernal buzzing in his ears. “We’ll get the plasma gun—”

  Haegr laughed. The sound was deep and guttural, like the growl of a bear. “A barrier for you perhaps,” he growled, “but not for mighty Haegr!”

  The huge Space Wolf charged right at the slabs of flakboard, his thunder hammer ready in his hand. With a bloodthirsty shout, he crashed against the barrier. The flakboard exploded inward in a shower of debris, falling apart so easily that Haegr stumbled forward with an awkward shout into a hail of gunfire and a chorus of excited cries.

  “Morkai’s black breath!” Ragnar shouted angrily, and then chased off after Haegr. Shouts and war cries echoed after him as Torin and the Blood Claws took up the chase.

  Sharp blasts of thunder rang from the walls of the chamber as Ragnar charged through the doorway and found himself in the bunker’s expansive war room. Situation tables and logic engines had been overturned or moved to create defensive positions across the wide, rectangular room, and more than a score of huge, burly figures stood or crouched behind their barricades and unleashed a storm of fire upon Haegr and Ragnar both. Beyond them, at the opposite side of the war room, Ragnar saw a pair of gleaming steel doors: the entrance to the bunker’s emergency vault.

  Stubber shells whipped through the air around Ragnar or rang off his ceramite armour. One gouged a fiery path across the side of his head before ricocheting off his thickened skull. Tracer fire criss-crossed around him in a deadly web of shells. A few metres away, Haegr had crashed against the face of an upended hololith table and was smashing at the traitors on the other side with his crackling blood smeared hammer. Bullets sparked and howled off the curved surfaces of his armour, though Ragnar saw where almost half a dozen rounds had left red-rimmed holes in the burly warrior’s arms, waist and legs. The hits didn’t seem to slow Haegr in the least.

  A heavy blow struck Ragnar in the left arm, and fiery pain blossomed just above his elbow. Snarling the young Space Wolf turned and blasted away at the rebels taking cover behind the barricades to his left. A huge figure reared up behind a broken logic engine.

  Ragnar caught sight of a twisted, misshapen hunk of gleaming muscles and a scarred lump that might once have been a human head. The mutant turned its beady red eyes on Ragnar and levelled a short-barrel heavy stubber at him. Roaring, the young Space Wolf charged at the mutant, blazing away with his bolt pistol. Shell after shell rocked the monster, blowing gory holes through its massive arms and torso, but the mutant refused to die.

  Its heavy stubber hammered at Ragnar, spitting a stream of tracer rounds at the onrushing Space Wolf. Hammer blows struck Ragnar in the chest and abdomen, but the blessed armour plate held against the heavy stubber rounds. Howling like a beast, Ragnar leapt onto the toppled logic engine and buried his blade in the monster’s cartilaginous skull. Sickly grey and yellow matter spewed from the frost blade’s whirring teeth, but the mutant refused to die. It howled and thrashed, throwing down its smoking gun and reaching for Ragnar’s blade. Horrified, Ragnar shot the monster twice in the face and dashed its blasphemous corpse to the floor.

  Howling, gibbering figures rushed at the young Space Wolf from every direction. A Guardsman with a skinned face swung a chainsword at Ragnar’s left leg. Ragnar parried the stroke with his frost blade and kicked the onrushing rebel in the head, bursting it like a melon. Another mutant, this one wearing the tattered uniform of a PDF staff officer, wrapped a long, barbed tentacle around Ragnar’s left ankle and with surprising strength hauled the Space Wolf off his feet. He landed heavily, smashing his head and shoulders against the metal and glass case of the logic engine before rolling, senseless, to the floor.

  For less than half a second he was too stunned to move. Sounds rolled like surf in his ears: shouts, gunshots, screams and thudding blows. A blade of some kind smashed into Ragnar’s back again and again, grinding off the armour. Figures crowded above him; a gun went off, the round burying itself in his backpack. Then a tentacle squirmed wetly around his throat and began to squeeze.

  Ragnar roared like a wounded beast and lashed out with his whirring blade, shearing through ankles in an arc around his head. Mutants shrieked and toppled like felled trees, bleeding their lives out onto the floor. Ragnar used the impetus of the swing to flip onto his back, his bolt pistol hammering at the foes still looming above him. Three mutants reeled backwards with smoking holes in the backs of their heads. The tentacle around Ragnar’s throat came away with a spasmodic jerk.

  An upended table nearby exploded in a blue ball of plasma, scattering flaming debris across the room. Two mutants staggered away from the explosion, blinded and firing wildly into the melee. Battle chants and bloodthirsty cries rang from the stone walls as the Blood Claws in Ragnar’s team charged into the fray. Ragnar caught sight of Haegr carving a gory path through a knot of struggling mutants, bursting them apart with earth shaking blows from his hammer. A shadow passed across the young Space Wolf’s vision, but this time it was Torin, leaping nimbly over a barricade of smashed logic engines and opening the throats of the mutants hiding behind them.

  For a moment, the room seemed to spin. Ragnar felt as though he was falling, but then he heard a guttural voice snarl into his ear. “Watch your head!”

  Something in the tone of the voice galvanised him. Ragnar rolled to the left, just as a roaring chainblade smashed into the ferrocrete where his head had just been.

  Heart racing, Ragnar threw a blind swing behind him as he lurched to his feet. His frost blade swept through empty air, and then he heard the chainblade’s throaty rasp, and a terrible blow struck him in the back of his left thigh.

  The pain was immense. For a brief, agonising instant, Ragnar could feel the teeth of the chainblade tearing through his flesh. He staggered, but his sacred armour sensed the impact and locked his left knee-joint to keep him upright. Snarling in agony, the youn
g Space Wolf spun on his immobilised leg, barely warding off a second blow aimed at his neck.

  He found himself staring at an enormous, hyper-muscled mutant, wielding a two-handed chainsword in its clawed fists. Ragnar recognised the weapon at once: it was an eviscerator, a ponderous but devastating weapon favoured by would-be martyrs in the Guard’s Ecclesiarchal auxiliaries. The young Space Wolf realised that the leering mutant was wearing the tattered remains of a priest’s homespun robes. An Imperial aquila, once the priest’s most prized possession, hung upside-down on a necklace of body parts strung around the mutant’s bull-like neck.

  The mutant gibbered a stream of blasphemies and pressed its attack. The eviscerator was a clumsy weapon in human hands, but the muscle bound traitor wielded it like a willow-switch. Ragnar blocked one powerful blow after another, knowing that if his defence failed, even for a moment, the mutant would hack him in two.

  A blurring stroke leapt at Ragnar’s face. The young Space Wolf blocked the eviscerator in a shower of sparks, and shot the mutant in the left knee. The monster staggered, bellowing through a mouth full of pointed teeth, but it pressed its attack without pause.

  The mutant charged forwards, slashing across Ragnar’s left pauldron and leaving a deep gash in the ceramite. A lightning-fast return strike nearly took off half the young Space Wolfs face. Ragnar shot the mutant twice more, once in the belly and once in the groin, and this time, when the mutant lurched beneath the impacts, the young Space Wolf lashed out with his frost blade and severed the traitor’s left hand at the wrist. Hot blood spurted onto Ragnar’s face as the mutant howled in agony, and the young Space Wolf rushed in to finish off the traitor, but the former priest dropped its weapon and seized Ragnar’s sword wrist in a vice-like grip.

  Ragnar felt servos whine under intolerable pressure as the mutant closed its fist. The cuff of his gauntlet began to deform under the pressure. Bones grated in his wrist. Ragnar put the bolt pistol to the mutant’s head and pulled the trigger, but the weapon was empty.

  The mutant looked into Ragnar’s eyes and hissed cruelly. Ragnar felt a wave of panic as the bones in his wrist and arm began to splinter. It was as though a wild beast came howling up from deep in his breast. With a savage growl, Ragnar leapt forward and buried his teeth in the mutant’s over-muscled neck.

  He bit deep, feeling flesh and cable-like muscle tear within his powerful jaws. Blood, hot and bitter, filled his mouth. The mutant shrieked, pummelling Ragnar with the stump of its left arm, but the young Space Wolf wrenched his head left and right, widening the wound and digging for the pulsing arteries buried within the neck.

  Ragnar could feel the heat of the mutant’s heart-blood. He hungered for it, longing to feel it spilling in a flood over his gaping jaws. It was the purest, most vivid thing he’d felt in his entire life. For a fleeting instant, Ragnar was gone. What remained behind was something raw and elemental: a wolf in name and deed.

  He tore out the mutant’s throat, and then he started to feed.

  NINE

  Wolf-bitten

  A powerful blow smote Ragnar on the side of the head. The force of it knocked the young Space Wolf onto his side, but he was back upright in moments, showing his red slicked fangs and crouching protectively over his kill. Sigurd’s pale face appeared before him, blood spattered and severe.

  “By the holy name of Russ the Primarch I take your soul into my hands, Ragnar Blackmane!” The priest’s voice trembled, but the words were powerful, infused with the strength of centuries of faith. Ragnar blinked, drawing back from the image of a wolf’s skull amulet that Sigurd brandished before his eyes.

  “The wolf cannot have you! Your heart is not yours to give, but belongs to the Allfather, now and forever more! Remember your oaths, son of Fenris! Remember who you are!”

  The words were like the tolling of a bell inside his head, cold and bright and irresistible. He fell heavily onto the floor, shaking his head dazedly.

  After a moment, Ragnar’s vision cleared. Sigurd the Wolf Priest loomed above him, his wide eyes fearful, but his expression hardened into a mask of determination. His Iron Wolf amulet was clenched in one gauntleted hand.

  Ragnar could feel blood trickling over his lips and staining his breastplate. A shudder passed through him. The young Space Marine rose to his knees with an effort, and as he did so he noticed the bloody figure sprawled beside him. Ragnar looked down at the mangled corpse of the former priest and felt a wave of horror and revulsion crash down upon him. Blessed Russ, he thought despairingly, I’m wolf-bitten.

  “Forgive me,” he said hoarsely, unable to tear his eyes away from the gaping wound in the mutant’s throat.

  “Forgiveness is earned in battle,” Sigurd said coldly. “Stand and fight like a man, Ragnar, not an animal.” The Wolf Priest brandished his crozius before the young Space Wolf. “Just as Russ overcame the wolf inside him out of love for the Allfather, so you must too rise above the beast within. Now get up. The foe awaits.”

  Nodding Ragnar lurched to his feet. The battle in the war room was over. Sigurd and the remaining Blood Claws had arrived and overwhelmed the remaining traitors as Ragnar struggled with the huge mutant. Smoke and the stench of burned flesh hung in the air, and the bodies of the traitor Guardsmen lay in bloody heaps behind their makeshift barricades. Harald and his pack-mates stood among the carnage, clutching their weapons and watching the exchange between Ragnar and Sigurd with wary, fearful eyes. It was all Ragnar could do not to hang his head in shame.

  A heavy blow to the shoulder nearly knocked the young Space Wolf off his feet. Haegr loomed over Ragnar, chuckling deep in his throat. “You call that a bite? Mighty Haegr would have taken that monster’s head off with a single snap of his jaws!”

  The huge Space Wolf’s laugh was infectious. Soon, every warrior in the room was laughing along with him, but for Sigurd and Ragnar.

  “You want something to chew on, come over here and try your teeth on this,” Torin said, pressing his fingertips to the cold steel doors of the vault. “Our time is almost up, and the Allfather alone knows what they’re up to inside.”

  Ragnar rubbed his chin with the back of his hand and turned to Sigurd. “Have you got any charges left?”

  “Two,” the Wolf Priest said, and nodded to Harald. The Blood Claw pack leader waved a pair of his men forward, and they began setting the charges against the door.

  Harald turned to Sigurd. His eyes passed over Ragnar, as though afraid to see what lurked within the young Space Wolfs gaze. “We’re sure to kill everyone inside when these go off,” he said.

  “No,” Ragnar replied, shaking his head as he reloaded his pistol. “These doors are doubly reinforced, designed to protect the general staff in the event of a major attack. More likely the Shockwave will rebound back on us, so I suggest standing well off to either side of the door.”

  The battered and bloodied Space Wolves quickly took up positions around the vault. Ragnar could still feel the sickly wash of unclean energies rippling from within. He nodded to the Blood Claw waiting at the threshold. The warrior keyed the fuse and leapt clear.

  Sure enough, a tremendous concussion shook the entire room, throwing the armoured warriors back against the stone walls and sending clouds of broken debris flying through the air. When the smoke cleared, Ragnar leapt forward, weapons ready, and found a hole melted through the thick steel doors just wide enough for a Space Marine to fit through. He threw himself into the gap while the metal edges were still red-hot, with Torin, Haegr and Sigurd just a few steps behind him.

  The vault was a small redoubt, with a narrow, thick-walled passageway beyond the molten doors that opened into an octagonal chamber barely ten metres across. Two bodies, charred almost beyond recognition, were sprawled on the stone floor at the far end of the passageway. Beyond them lay a scene of bloody pandemonium.

  There were perhaps twenty officers and staff aides crammed into the chamber, shouting and babbling desperate pleas to their newfound gods. Their ornate uniforms were t
orn and stained where they had dug into their flesh with ceremonial knives, and their faces were painted in fresh blood. More blood had been spilled on the floor. A young orderly, little more than fifteen, had been dragged to his knees and slit from ear to ear, and the red flood that had poured from his narrow throat had been used to paint a blasphemous circle in the centre of the room. It was towards this terrible sigil that the rebels directed their pleas, their gore-stained hands outstretched in abject worship. As Ragnar charged into their midst he saw a ghostly figure take shape within the sigil. It was a towering form clad in ancient, baroque armour of blue and gold, its edges inlaid with blasphemous sigils, and its curved plates decorated with charms and fetishes of bone and withered skin. Flickering purple flames glinted hungrily in the oculars of the Chaos champion’s horned helmet, fixing Ragnar with a glare of eternal malice. In one hand, the sorcerer held a sword made from tooth, horn and soulless, black iron. Flames leapt hungrily in the palm of his other hand, hissing and spitting in the dank air.

  For a fleeting moment Ragnar’s heart leapt with bloodthirsty joy at the thought that he’d come face-to-face with Madox himself. Yet there was no glint of recognition in the sorcerer’s strange eyes as he raised his blazing hand and called out a horrific string of syllables in a raw, hateful voice.

  A howling torrent of pink and purple fire burst from the sorcerer’s hand, aimed right at Ragnar’s chest. The bolt struck one of the rebel officers a glancing blow as it passed, and the traitor dissolved right before the young Space Wolfs eyes. Cursing fearfully, Ragnar threw himself to the side and the sorcerous flame struck his right pauldron a glancing blow. He heard the ceramite hiss and scream beneath the blast, scattering molten droplets upon the floor. The bolt continued on, missing Haegr by a hair’s breadth and crashing into the onrushing form of Sigurd.