Curse of the Wulfen

by David Annandale

  ‘I hope you are right, Slayer,’ Deathwolf replied. ‘We will know very soon.’

  Beneath sleep, above death, the giant daemon on the ramparts.

  Its sword high in hunger and triumph.

  No. You come no further.

  A duel of thought and dreams and lightning. The sword striking through the echo-sarcophagus. The assault cannon shadow pounding nightmare flesh. The noble savagery of Fenris stronger than the abomination’s wrath. The fell hand seizing the daemon’s limbs.

  The crushing of wrath’s form.

  The daemon broken, the wave hurled back.

  Only for a moment. The wave rising again, and with it a terrible shadow. An echo of a scream not yet heard. It has the shape of doom.

  The daemon laughing in defeat. Taunting. Revealing a horror all the worse for its truth.

  The silver templars will die. Their death is your end.

  The doom gathering definition.

  I see it. I see it!

  They must be told.

  Wake! Wake! Wake!

  Two summons came for Krom within seconds of each other. Albjorn Fogel voxed from the augur complex. The fleet had returned. Multiple ships had translated into the system. Contact was impossible, but their radiation signatures and warp displacements were unmistakable. Krom raced from the astropathic choristrium.

  ‘One vessel is unknown,’ Fogel was saying. Before he could continue, the second summons overrode the first. It came from deep in the roots of the Fang.

  ‘Lord Dragongaze,’ Hrothgar Swordfang voxed, ‘Bjorn the Fell-Handed is awake!’

  Krom felt the winds of fate howl around him. A culmination was at hand.

  ‘On my way,’ he told Swordfang. To Fogel he said, ‘Keep trying the vox.’ He changed direction, heading for a grav-lift. It dropped him thousands of metres, accelerating to near free-fall in seconds, then gradually slowing in the final minute, depositing him in the centre of the mountain’s ancient labyrinth. In the only vault that still held a Dreadnought, he found Hrothgar Swordfang and other Iron Priests, along with a group of Wolf Priests. ‘You finally succeeded,’ he said. They had been trying to wake Bjorn since Harald had returned from Nurades.

  ‘No,’ said Hrothgar. ‘This is not our doing. He woke of his own accord, and called for you.’

  Krom approached the enormous war machine. The oldest hero of the Space Wolves did not move. There was no sign of consciousness until Krom was a few metres away. The monolith lowered slightly. Optic augurs regarded him, relaying his image to the mind inside.

  ‘Krom Dragongaze,’ said Bjorn. The voice seemed as old and deep as the Fang.

  ‘You wake to aid us in our hour of great need, venerable brother.’

  ‘No. I sleep still.’ Bjorn spoke slowly. His words seemed to come from a measureless distance. ‘I must sleep. There is war there that only I can fight. The threat is dire. We stand on the brink of destruction. You must go to Valdrmani.’

  ‘I am bound by my oath to remain,’ said Krom. ‘The Great Wolf and our brothers have returned from the hunt. They will drive the abominations from our system.’

  ‘They have not come alone.’

  ‘That is so,’ Krom said, startled. ‘A battle-barge we have not identified.’

  ‘Silver,’ said Bjorn. ‘Grey Knights.’

  The priests stirred in surprise and anger. Those warriors were not welcome on Fenris.

  ‘They make for Valdrmani,’ Bjorn continued. ‘They will die on Valdrmani. Their fate will determine ours. You must go, Dragongaze. Warn them. Save them. Save us.’

  ‘I have sworn an oath,’ said Krom.

  ‘Break it, or doom us,’ Bjorn told him.

  ‘What awaits them?’ Krom asked.

  The Dreadnought was still. Krom sensed his consciousness recede to a place beyond reach. The vault was again filled with the silence that lived between sleep and death.

  Krom realised he didn’t need an answer. It was enough to know the Grey Knights would fall into a trap. Their fate will determine ours.

  The fleets led by the Allfather’s Honour and the Wolfborn entered low orbit over Midgardia. Its atmosphere was thick, forever clouded. The surface was invisible. To the eye, there was nothing to announce its taint. The vox was more revealing – faint traces of human screams mixed with the monstrous howling of inhuman tongues.

  Ulrik stared at the cloud cover through the oculus. Anger at the desecration suffused his blood. He was eager to be on the ground. Eager to eradicate the abomination. Eager, too, for the Wulfen to prove their worth, to at last assume their proper role amongst the Great Companies. They would be fighting for something much more than the recovery of their kin. They would be fighting for the salvation of Fenris and the Space Wolves.

  The Wolf Lords were increasingly wary of the Wulfen. The spreading aggression was a challenge. What they did not understand, Ulrik thought, was the nature of the test. Fury was in the blood of the Space Wolves. They were stronger with the return of the Wulfen. So was the fury. We must learn to channel it, he thought. We must remake ourselves. Then we will be ready for Russ when he comes again.

  ‘Augurs,’ Grimnar said.

  ‘Readings confirm two rifts,’ the vassal officer answered. ‘They are located near the Magma Gates. One above ground, one below.’

  ‘Good.’ Grimnar touched the vox console beside the command throne. ‘Is Strike Force Fenris ready?’

  ‘We are,’ said Egil Iron Wolf.

  The last of the ship-to-ship transfers had taken place just before the battle-barge and strike cruiser reached their positions. Grimnar had sent his heavy armour to join the Ironwolves, while Egil’s Terminators and recovered Wulfen had come aboard the All­father’s Honour.

  ‘Good.’ Grimnar stood. He joined Ulrik at the rail overlooking the bridge. ‘Let it begin!’ he roared. His wrath was a storm. It held and expressed the rage of every Space Wolf. ‘Strike Force Fenris, you are the hammer that shatters the enemy’s skull. Strike Force Morkai, we are the frostblade between the ribs. Now, let thunder fall!’

  ‘Well done, lad,’ Ulrik said quietly. ‘Well done.’

  The orbital bombardment began. The lance batteries of both ships fired into the atmosphere. The target zone was before the walls of the Magma Gates. The enormous fortress complex would withstand the attack. Anything outside on the walls or on the ground within several thousand metres would not.

  Spears of lasers plunged through the cloud cover. The air heated to red. A fierce wound appeared on the shifting, opaque face of Midgardia and fury seared the planet. The attack was continuous. The view in the oculus shifted to display the Wolfborn. Along the length of the hull, shafts of concentrated destruction lashed the world below.

  We are bombarding our own worlds, Ulrik thought. It has come this far. The pattern has ensnared us this far. But no longer.

  With the purifying destruction of these strikes, the Space Wolves were breaking the snare. Dark machinations had created the vulnerability of the home system. The wills behind the warp storms had used the Wulfen to lure the Great Companies away. Ulrik would grant Harald that much. That lure, though, would be the seed of the foe’s destruction. No one could use the brothers of Fenris against each other.

  This is our trial, he thought. There is yet another pattern at work, a glorious one, and we approach its culmination. We are being tested. We must prove ourselves worthy of Russ and of the saga into which he will lead us.

  He stared at the lance fire so fiercely, his vision contracted to the blaze of those vertical suns. He blinked, jolted from his reverie of faith when half the batteries ceased fire. The Wolfborn’s bay doors opened. Stormwolves launched. They flew down in formation, their dives so steep they were almost in parallel to the lasers. A new series of short bursts lit the hull. The drop pods plunged into the atmosphere. They too were a bombardment, a living one, a
nd their reach would be far greater and more destructive than that of the batteries.

  Grimnar clapped Ulrik’s shoulder. ‘Fenris has begun its work,’ he said.

  ‘It’s time Morkai was about its own,’ Ulrik growled.

  The Great Wolf and the High Wolf Priest left the bridge. They took a grav lift down through the towering superstructure of the battle-barge. On the same level as the launch bays, they entered a huge chamber amidships.

  The Terminators of the Kingsguard and the Ironwolves stood along the periphery of the teleportarium’s platform. The rest of the Great Company formed concentric rings of Grey Hunters, Long Fangs, Blood Claws and Scouts. Inside those rings were the Lone Wolves. At the very centre were the Wulfen of two companies, and in their midst were the massive sarcophagi of Haargen Deathbane and Svendar Ironarm. The Venerable Dreadnoughts stood guard over Murderfang. He had been subdued with helfrost after the departure from Vikurus. Wrapped in adamantium chains, he was conscious once more. The presence of the Wulfen appeared to have the same effect as in Absolom. Ulrik thought Murderfang was calm, but perhaps it was the patience of a predator about to spring. Whatever the truth, it was possible to bring him here.

  The teleportation was risky. Only Terminator armour had homing devices. The Iron Priests had communed with the machine spirit of the ancient teleportarium. With the Terminators’ homers marking the full spread of the strike force, the Iron Priests believed it would be possible to send the full complement of warriors into the subterranean warren of Morkai’s Gate with an acceptable degree of safety. Most of the complex’s population lived below ground. The tunnels and caverns were large. The maps were detailed and accurate. There was no uncertainty to the coordinates. The risk came from the turbulence created by the warp storms.

  Grimnar and Ulrik strode across the teleportarium platform to the centre. The Wulfen watched their approach. They dropped their heads before the Great Wolf, acknowledging the supreme alpha. Their battered armour and punch daggers had been replaced using the stores of new, Wulfen-adapted equipment aboard the Coldfang. They were restive, clawed hands opening and closing. Their jaws were wide, lips curled back over their gums. The tension of such a large murderpack bled into the rest of the strike force. Ulrik felt the contagion. He could not dismiss it. His heartbeats accelerated. His teeth were on edge and saliva flooded his mouth. His righteous anger over the daemonic incursion lost some of its focus, becoming a beast of its own. He needed to fight. He needed the warm spray of his prey’s blood.

  He clutched the totems hanging at his waist and fixed his gaze on the crozius arcanum. This is the trial. This is our truth. The rage is ours. It is mine. There was no curse here, only the reality of the Space Wolves, the truth of the spirit that had grown larger and more ferocious with the return of the 13th.

  ‘Let the enemy feel our claws at their throats!’ Grimnar called.

  In the control gallery in the upper reaches of the chamber, the Iron Priests saluted and began their task.

  There were pylons at each of the four corners of the platform. They were tall, engraved with sigils holy to the Omnissiah. They curved inwards, their tips pointing towards the centre of an invisible dome over the strike force. The pylons came to life, energy spiralling up their height, building to a blinding intensity at their points. The air grew taut. There was the sharp smell of ozone. The Wulfen howled, their manes bristling.

  The shift happened.

  A split in the materium.

  The eyeblink of reality.

  Ulrik experienced the jolt of being and non-being. He was in the Allfather’s Honour, and then he was in the high cavern before the great underground gates of the fortress.

  And the Wulfen were maddened. Maniacal howls filled the cave. The monsters of the 13th Great Company leapt forward, claws out, fangs gaping.

  In their midst, Murderfang exploded into violent movement, a thunder of frenzy and war.

  In the Alpha Fang’s strategium, Harald gathered the Wolf Guard, Feingar of the Coldeyes and Norvald Iceflame around the hololithic display of Morkai’s Keep.

  ‘The ship we detected in orbit translated into the warp before we could identify it,’ Harald told his officers. ‘However…’ he tapped the vox. An auspex recording played back. The vox traffic on Frostheim was active. It was scrambled by the proximity of the rifts. Enough was intelligible, though. Dark, twisted voices emerged from the speaker.

  ‘Traitors,’ Canis spat.

  Harald nodded. ‘There are more than daemons below. Our true enemy begins to show his face.’

  ‘Who are they?’ Feingar asked.

  ‘Still unidentified.’

  ‘Just one ship,’ said Canis.

  ‘Yes,’ said Harald. ‘They have Morkai’s Keep, but we are many.’

  ‘What about the defences?’ said Norvald.

  ‘Inactive.’ Harald distrusted the new turn of luck, but the readings were clear. Fate was at last favouring the Space Wolves. ‘Sensor auguries have detected no energy readings from the gun emplacements. The wyrd stirs in the heart of the keep, but its outer walls are dead.’

  ‘If that is true,’ Feingar said, ‘the attack must have occurred very recently. A poor strategy to leave yourself vulnerable to retaliation.’

  Harald agreed. His loathing for the Traitors did not mean contempt for their skill in the battlefield. They were not fools. It would not do to treat them as such. The assumption that the Traitors had only just taken Frostheim troubled him, even though it was the only plausible deduction. He did not second-guess the augur readings. He had to act based on the information he had.

  And he needed to act. The idea of Morkai’s Keep in traitorous hands was insupportable. The enemy was forcing the Space Wolves to attack their own fortifications. Harald’s limbs thrummed with anger. He would fall on the Traitors and make them curse their own existence. Every second of waiting was indefensible.

  He saw the same furious anticipation in the faces surrounding the tacticarium table. The bloodiest, most violent retaliation imaginable was required.

  Harald made a claw of his hand and held it above the centre of the hololith. ‘We drop into the heart of Morkai’s Keep,’ he said, ‘with the full fury of Whitestalker. They would use our walls against us. So we will ignore the walls. Drop pods first, Stormwolves following in a steep descent, providing covering fire for the drop pod troops. Our primary target is the command chamber. Retake it and exterminate the Traitors.’

  There was nothing subtle about the strategy. It was designed as a brutal hammer blow, fuelled by rage. Harald’s anger was too great for anything else. So was that of his brothers. The Wolf Guard roared as one, and clapped their fists to their pauldrons.

  Revelation hovered before Harald’s eyes. He saw the salute as a thin veneer. The truth was the roar. The truth was the beast. He saw the mark of the wolf on all his brothers, and in himself. He saw the division between human and animal vanish altogether. He saw what he had been warning against, and fighting against.

  He saw that the contagion had reached him too. The insult of the Traitors was too great. The war anger was too strong. The beast was claiming him.

  He saw all this, and then he didn’t. The revelation sank beneath the red sea of wrath.

  He answered his brothers with his roar, and then he marched from the strategium.

  A few minutes later, Harald and one pack of Thunderclaw Wolf Guard with their thunderwolves were aboard Runeclaw, streaking through the frigid atmosphere of Frostheim. He looked through one of the forward viewing blocks. The air was clear. Visibility was excellent. He could already see, on the plane of white below, a small shape, barely more than a dot, but jagged, clearly artificial: Morkai’s Keep. Ahead of Runeclaw and the other Stormwolves, the drop pods left contrails of fire in their wake. Searing claws stabbed towards the fortress.

  Harald felt calmer than he had aboard the Alpha Fang. The hunt was
on, and soothing the rage of frustration. His earlier revelation rose in his mind. He pushed it aside, consciously this time. Those thoughts were useless to him now.

  The surface of the planet drew closer and the uniform white acquired texture. The cracks of crevasses and the shadows of mountains appeared, outlined by the reflected light of Svellgard. Morkai’s Keep grew. Its blocky form gathered strength.

  Harald’s calm bled away again. His senses sharpened. The hunger built.

  Closer. The distant mountain ranges cleared. The mesa of the keep filling the view. The concentric walls of the keep marking the target.

  Strike Force Whitestalker fell towards the silent fortress.

  Silent no longer.

  The walls of Morkai’s Keep erupted with light, the barrel flashes of dozens of guns. Lascannons and vortex missiles struck at the drop pods. The lethal flowers of flak blossomed in such density that the keep vanished beneath their blackened crimson. The huge shells of macro cannons roared through the squadrons. Drop pods exploded, vanishing in expanding fireballs. Other pods had their sides sheared off and were sent into uncontrolled, tumbling falls, shedding wreckage and warriors as they spun.

  Proximity alert klaxons shrieked.

  ‘Turn that off!’ Harald shouted over the clamour. The alarms were pointless now.

  In the cockpit, Iron Priest Veigir obeyed. The klaxons fell silent. Now Harald could hear the uproar on the vox. Curses mixed with snarls and electronic shrieks.

  ‘There were no energy readings!’ Veigir shouted. ‘How can the guns be active?’

  ‘What matters is they are,’ Harald said. ‘Stormwolves, provide covering fire for the drop pods,’ he ordered. ‘There is no evasive action to be had. We are committed.’

  Straight down, into the cauldron. The anti-air fire was so intense that the sky was a single explosion. The Space Wolves had designed the armaments of Morkai’s Keep to annihilate any attack by air or by land, and now it fulfilled its duty. Other, darker weapons added their destructive force to the las and missiles and flak. Wyrdflame billowed and writhed between the explosions. Harald saw a drop pod fall into a concentrated burst of the mutagenic horror. The pod collapsed in on itself, crushing its occupants, then turned itself inside out, becoming a thing of giant, bulbous organs. It continued to change as it fell. It had no form any longer. It was a constant flow of transformation.