Curse of the Wulfen

by David Annandale

  And they were being cut down.

  No, Ulrik thought. No.

  He would not let them fall. He howled, and the beast raced through his veins. He would tear through the abomination before him with his bare hands.

  At his shoulder was an even greater roar. Logan Grimnar barrelled into the horde. His face was contorted. His eyes were red and blazing. His fangs were bared.

  The way forward became clear to Ulrik. The frenzy of the Wulfen must not be contained, but embraced and channelled. It was spreading now, and it would destroy the abominations before them. It would be Midgardia’s salvation.

  Ulrik’s howl became a cry of savage joy.

  The blow hit the side of his head. It was so powerful it seemed to strike his entire frame. It knocked him to the floor of the platform. He fell on his back and darkness crept in at the edges of his vision. It withdrew, but the cavern spun. His limbs did not obey his commands.

  The daemon prince of Nurgle loomed over him. Beneath a faceplate, its mouth gaped in a leprous, contemptuous grin. Flies poured out from beneath its teeth. It lurched away from him, its jaw unhinging to spew a vast swarm of insects over the Space Wolves.

  Ulrik struggled to clear his vision. Feeling was returning too slowly to his arms and legs. The blow from Mordokh had been more than physical.

  Rise. Rise and hunt.

  The beast gave him strength. He started to move. He still could not see clearly. The war was a dizzying vortex. The platform rocked and suspension cables parted with a vicious twang and a walkway covered in struggling Space Wolves and daemons fell to the lava below.

  A lithe, reptilian presence stood over him. The Slaaneshi prince held the eyes of Ulrik’s brothers in one hand. It reached towards his helm with the other.

  And then its face split in half. The Axe Morkai was deep in its skull.

  Grimnar, baying his wrath, struck faster than Ulrik had ever seen. He moved with the speed of the unleashed predator.

  The change was taking hold.

  Rise.

  Hunt.

  Ulrik snarled. Crimson fury flooded his mind. He lurched to his feet. His vision at last began to clear, and Grimnar had already moved to a new target. Malyg’nyl was on its knees, elegant claws struggling to hold its head together. The Khornate Prince Arkh’gar clashed with Grimnar. Already the daemon was bleeding.

  Yes, Ulrik thought. He staggered forward to the Great Wolf’s aid. The gift takes us to victory. ‘We will open the way for Russ!’ he shouted. ‘We shall–’

  Laughter cut through his words. Tzen’char spread its wings. It spoke a sentence that flickered and looped through the laby­rinths of existence and madness as the daemon’s form did. A scream of the immaterium howled from the centre of the cavern. A flash of unlight cut through Ulrik’s armour and slashed his flesh. Bleeding from a hundred cuts, he kept his feet. He blinked his eyes clear.

  The daemons were gone.

  On the platform and walkways, Terminators and Wulfen stopped in mid-strike.

  The shriek of the wyrd passed. It was replaced by the rumbling crack of stone. The walls and ceiling of the cavern split. A web of crevasses spread and joined. All of Deepspark shook as the end approached.

  Ulrik howled his denial. But the wounded, weakened body of Midgardia did not care for prophecy. The cracks built to thunder, the thunder to a mountain’s roar, and then everything fell.

  Fell into the crushing dark.

  A shape ripped through the fog.

  Massive. A thing of sinew and claws and fangs.

  A monster of the bloody past and of the uncertain future.

  Yngvir slammed an Alpha Legionnaire to the ground. He stood on the Traitor’s back and seized his helm then twisted and yanked back, tearing off the Traitor’s head. He held his trophy high, blood raining down upon him, and howled.

  The fog began to break up. Yngvir lashed out into the fading limbo, and suddenly he was holding another enemy by the arm. The Traitor turned his blade against Yngvir. The Wulfen was the equal in speed to the Traitor. With the fluidity of the perfect kill, he released the Traitor, evaded the blow, and countered with his relic frost claws. He struck with both arms, shattering the Alpha Legionnaire’s armour and plunging the huge blades through the Traitor’s carapace and into his hearts.

  Now the fog was gone. So was the intricate, interlocking choreo­graphy of battle that had turned the band of warriors into a single being. Yngvir had broken their unity. Harald struck, and this time he found his target. Glacius severed the sword arm of the warrior before him. The Traitor stumbled back, spraying blood. He raised his bolt pistol. Harald plunged his axe blade through the Traitor’s chest.

  Around him, the Thunderwolf cavalry brought down the enemy with the full savagery of vengeance. Every blow Harald landed had a richly satisfying impact.

  And all the time he thought, three times. Yngvir had saved his life three times. He owed a transcendent debt of honour to the warrior he believed to be cursed.

  An explosion shook the upper levels of Morkai’s Keep. Armourglass blew outward. The turrets fell silent. At last, Harald heard Feingar’s voice on the vox once more. ‘The Keep is ours, Lord Deathwolf.’

  Harald stood back from an Alpha Legion corpse. He yanked Glacius from the skull. He looked over the battlefield.

  ‘Your Scouts have given us victory,’ he told Feingar.

  The elite Traitors were slaughtered. With the artillery down, the superior numbers of the Deathwolves were now turning the tide. A new inevitability had come to the glacier. Harald pushed aside the thought of how many brothers had been lost. There would be time to mourn and celebrate their sagas when the war was won.

  He looked for the Alpha Legion warlord. There, a few hundred metres away. He had lost the purpose in his movements. He hesi­tated, motionless in the midst of the battlefield’s eddying smoke.

  Are you wondering what has happened to your guns? Harald thought. He pounded across the glacier towards the warlord. Are you wondering what happened to your victory?

  The warlord’s hesitation was fatal. He was a motionless target. He did not see the enormous silhouette close in on him through the smoke. Icetooth slammed into the Traitor with the force of a tank. The warlord fell, rose again to defend himself, managing to strike the thunderwolf once before Icetooth brought him down with finality. The crack of a snapping spine sounded over the glacier.

  Icetooth stood guard over his prey until Harald arrived. The Traitor reached for his lost sword, but he was broken. He could not move. He looked up at Harald. ‘The ritual is complete, lapdog,’ he said. ‘Killing me won’t change anything.’ Empty insults, empty defiance. The Traitor sought some shred of pride, some measure of dignity at his end.

  Harald granted him neither. ‘Maybe not, but it’ll make me feel better.’ With a single blow from Glacius, he decapitated the Alpha Legionnaire.

  Harald kicked the head away from the twitching body. He had not lied – the execution was satisfying. It did make him feel better.

  Then he looked out across the glacier, at the blood and the cost, at the rampaging Wulfen, and at his transformed brothers. He thought about his debt to Yngvir, and of the contagion that had shut down strategic thinking.

  Damnation and salvation. He did not know how to separate them.

  Or if there was still time to do so.

  The three Stormwolves flew through the tumbling wreckage of the Grey Knights vessel. As they angled towards the surface of Valdr­mani and made for Longhowl, chunks of the battle-barge became a hard rain upon the moon. There were few remains of any size. Compared to the vessel that had been, Krom was passing through the ashes of cremation.

  On the bridge of the Winterbite, he had seen the ruby streak of the nova cannon shot, the flash. By the time the frigate had reached the far side of Valdrmani, the fires had faded. There had been nothing but the night of the
void, the ashes, and the terrible absence.

  Too late, he had thought. Too late. You held true to your oath too long.

  Then the augur array had detected the fading signature of engines on the surface of the moon.

  The Stormwolves flew close to the domes and passed over the landing site of the Stormravens. The gunships were intact.

  ‘Smoke rises from the main gates,’ said Hrothgar, looking through the viewing block.

  ‘A good sign,’ Krom said. ‘They went in fighting.’

  The Iron Priest gestured at the domeplex. ‘A big area to search.’

  Krom nodded. ‘We’ll make for the nova cannon emplacement. We can start there. I would want vengeance for my ship.’

  ‘Aye,’ said Hrothgar.

  ‘Lord Dragongaze,’ Egil Redfist voxed from his Stormwolf. ‘Bolter flashes three hundred metres to port.’

  Krom had been focusing on the column of the cannon. He looked down in the direction Redfist had indicated. The Blood Claw leader was right – a spot midway down the height of the dome strobed with the distinctive lightning burst of gunfire.

  ‘Take us there,’ he ordered.

  The squadron dropped, closing in until it was flying almost flush with the anti-rad crystalglass skin of the dome. The interior of Longhowl was lit with a sick glow that pulsed slowly from red to green to bone-grey. Monstrous shadows cavorted. They grew in number the closer the gunships came to the flashes.

  ‘Good,’ Krom said when they reached the position. The word felt strange to utter. When had he last been able to look at anything and declare it good? He had just passed through the dust of a Grey Knights battle-barge. He beheld the settlement of Fenris’ moon overrun by daemons. And now he saw a small band of Grey Knights surrounded by daemons led by a bloodthirster. The Grey Knights were moments from being overwhelmed. Even so, Krom said, ‘Good.’ The battle was not over.

  There was still time.

  ‘On my signal,’ Krom voxed to all three Stormwolves, ‘breach the dome.’ Over an open channel, he broadcast, ‘Grey Knights! Incoming! Brace!’ Then he said, ‘Now.’

  Skyhammer missiles and lascannons struck the dome. The battle flashes vanished behind the greater blaze of explosions and the dome wall burst outwards, turned to powder in the violent decompression. The atmosphere of the dome rushed out, carrying with it the daemonic horde. Las and twin-linked heavy bolters pulverised the enemy cloud. More missiles streaked towards the bloodthirster as it sailed out, carried by a wind more powerful than its wings. It disappeared in the multiple blast.

  ‘Take us in,’ Krom said when the last of the daemons were ­scattered over the surface of Valdrmani.

  The three Stormwolves flew in through the huge breach. Their assault ramps dropped before they had finished settling. Krom strode down first. His Fierce-eye’s Finest followed.

  The Wulfen came last.

  The Grey Knights said nothing but headed for the nearest exit from the void-struck quadrant of the dome. Even when both armed parties were on the other side of a sealed bulkhead and in a full atmosphere again, they remained silent. Krom eyed them and their captain. He could list a dozen reasons effortlessly why he had contempt for their order, but their actual presence was impressive. It was more than the superlative Aegis armour and the perfection of the Nemesis power weapons. The cold nobility commanded respect.

  Krom felt the strength of the captain’s gaze even beneath the Grey Knight’s helmet. When the captain’s attention passed from Krom to the Wulfen, Krom chose that moment to laugh.

  ‘You can embarrass us with thanks a bit later,’ he said. ‘Once our work is done. I am Krom Dragongaze, Wolf Lord of the Drake­slayers. My men and I are honoured to fight at your side.’

  The Grey Knight captain looked a few moments longer at the Wulfen. Serkir held them in order. Low growls issued from their throats, but their attention was focused beyond the Grey Knights. The captain faced Krom.

  ‘Brother-Captain Stern of the Third Brotherhood,’ he said, and held out his hand. Krom did the same. They clasped forearms.

  ‘We have to move quickly,’ Stern said. ‘Whatever the daemons are doing, it is almost done.’

  As the tension of the immediate moment passed, Krom noticed the growing pressure behind his eyes. It throbbed with the pulsing of the unnatural light. ‘There is something…’ he began.

  ‘Yes,’ said Stern. ‘You feel it, then. There is a ritual at work on this moon.’

  There were two exits from the storage bay in which the Fierce-eyes and the Grey Knights found themselves. Stern headed for the one on the left.

  ‘What sort of ritual?’ Krom asked. He signalled for his warriors to follow. The Grey Knights had fought their way this far. They would have done so for a good reason.

  ‘I do not know, as yet. I believe the destruction of our vessel is part of its work, however. Every event since the formation of the warp storms has been part of a foul pattern. The ritual is reaching the critical point. We cannot permit its completion.’

  ‘How do you know this? Or that we must go in this direction?’

  ‘Are you a psyker, Lord Dragongaze?’

  ‘I am not!’ He made a sign of maleficarum.

  ‘Yet you can feel the energy. Imagine, then, my experience of it.’

  Time, Krom thought. In the end, there was even less than he had dreaded.

  Lord Skayle had fallen silent.

  In the astropathic choristrium of Longhowl’s command sanctum, Hekastis Nul walked the circumference of the glyph, musing about the silence. The Dark Apostle felt little concern. It did not matter to him whether Skayle lived or died. Nul would be dead himself in a few minutes. But his anticipation of the great moment was acute, and his preparations were complete. He filled the remaining seconds by contemplating the implications of his lord’s defeat. Perhaps the Dogs had reclaimed Frostheim. Maybe Svellgard too, or at least established a foothold there. Unless they had performed Exterminatus on their own moon, it was impossible that they should have banished millions of daemons in so short a time.

  ‘Did you lose Frostheim, Lord Skayle?’ Nul mused aloud.

  Standing around the glyph, his cultists bore witness as it approached its great flowering. The astropaths of Longhowl were alive, after a fashion, but they no longer had flesh or minds. Imprisoned in their cradles, their power, their pain, their sanity and their selves had been siphoned into the glyph. They were melted, deformed figures, still convulsing in agony, still screaming, kept alive by the hunger of the thing they were feeding.

  ‘If the Dogs have Frostheim,’ Nul reasoned, ‘they now have hope. If they have hope, what follows will be richer still. Therefore, Lord Skayle, your death is part of our pattern.’

  The power in the choristrium spiked. So did Nul’s anticipation. He stopped pacing and looked at the glyph, standing between two of his cultists.

  The glyph was daubed in daemons’ blood. It occupied the centre of the choristrium, embracing the astropathic cradles. Its light was as painful to behold as a sun’s. The light in the chamber had ceased to shift colours. Now it was a jade of mind-stabbing intensity. Soon the glyph would bring about an apotheosis of pain, and with it, the end of the Space Wolves. The blast that would destroy Longhowl and all within was no more than a by-product of its true goal.

  The goal was the vision – the vision that would travel across the galaxy. The vision of Grey Knights murdered by the Space Wolves. The vision for the entire Imperium.

  The final moments slipped away. As they did, the Dark Apostle felt another tension begin to fold and cut the air. A being that was many and one was coming from many directions and none. The Living Labyrinth approached.

  Nul said, ‘I am glad, master, you have chosen to witness the moment.’

  On the other side of the choristrium, his wards at the entrance collapsed, banished. Their sudden release of energy blew th
e doors apart. Shredded metal flew across the dome. The dogs who did not understand they were already dead rushed in.

  You are too late. I will show you.

  Hekastis Nul stepped into the glyph.

  Energies erupted around him.

  Beyond the doorway, Krom saw the fate of his Chapter reduced to seconds. He charged into the chamber. By his oath, he would prove those seconds to be enough.

  ‘Cultists!’ Stern voxed. ‘In cover behind the cradles.’

  ‘Petty little men,’ said Krom as lasgun fire streaked his way. ‘Drakeslayers!’ he called. ‘Put them down!’

  The Space Wolves spread out through the room. Their fire wreaked monstrous havoc on the mortals. The cultists were armed, and shot back, but the effort was futile. They did nothing to slow their execution.

  ‘Kill them all and kill them now!’ Krom ordered. Faster, he thought. Faster. He streaked around the circumference of the chamber, his axe cutting down another cultist with every step. He was a scythe. He fired into the cradles as he ran, killing the astropaths too. His one thought was to stop the energy flow into the glyph.

  ‘Commendable vehemence,’ said Stern. ‘Lord Krom, keep them busy. My warriors and I will finish this. Brothers! The Rite of Nullification!’

  The Wulfen and the Fierce-eye’s Finest hit the humans of the choristrium like a cyclone of bolter shells and blades. The air filled with a deluge of blood, but the energy was still building. Green light lashed out from the centre of the glyph. The pressure was so intense, Krom’s ears began to bleed. The dome of the choristrium cracked. The walls and floor vibrated, on the verge of shattering outward. The seconds were falling away to nothing.

  The Grey Knights began their counter-ritual, moving into the glyph. Hurry, Krom thought, glancing away from the killing to see their progress. They were moving with deliberation, marching directly into the blazing energy, pushing against it. The wyrd lashed out. It could not keep them away.

  Hurry, Krom willed. There is no time.

  There was a concussion at the centre of the glyph. For a moment, Krom thought the end had come, but it had not. The pressure still mounted. The light strobed with madness and shrieked with rage. From its blinding core came a Dark Apostle of the Alpha Legion.