ASHES OF PROSPERO

by Gav Thorpe

  ‘Sorcery,’ muttered the Wolf Guard, a pointed finger directing the pack leader’s attention to the base of the citadel.

  Arjac had thought to see a foothill, but instead looked at the ground so far below. Birds startled by the fighting circled and swooped in the gulf beneath the fortress, which hung out in the open air held only by the strength of the causeway. His gaze moved to the threshold, and to either side where wall met bridge. Something seemed amiss, as though one was not quite built upon the other.

  Answer came with a warning shout from Valgarthr, turning all eyes skywards above the mountain battlefield. Floating in mid-air came two pinnacles of stone and ferrocrete, carried against the wind by a sorcerous gleam that pulsed from their rocky foundations. Catching the light of the two suns, the towers, ramparts and flying buttresses that were improbably heaped upon each other gleamed with a silver aura.

  Magnifying the view, Arjac saw a shimmer of energy playing about the impossible keeps, and upon the walls he spied blue-armoured figures, dozens of them crowded beneath the self-eating serpent banners of the Thousand Sons.

  Screeching fire blazed from the descending twin towers, erupting along the causeway in a series of cerulean blasts. Grey-armoured warriors were flung in all directions by the convocation, hurled into the air and over the rampart into the impossible depths.

  Tank-sized blocks of masonry rained down and Njal threw forward a screen of wyrdforce, sheltering Majula and her guards, and several of Valgarthr’s squad. A ragged boulder slammed into the bridge a little further ahead, crushing Ingvarr Thunderbrow into the rockrete. The debris rolled away, broken into three pieces, leaving the Terminator supine among the rubble.

  ‘I’m fine,’ Ingvarr wheezed across the vox, breathing laboured as he pushed to one knee, dust and shards cascading from the pitted plates of his Tactical Dreadnought suit. ‘Just give me a minute.’

  Counter-fire scorched up from anti-air lasers mounted on the Old Guard’s transports. Strobes of ruby energy dashed against the psychic shields of the Tzeentchian drifting citadels. Lascannon beams and krak missiles followed from the Old Guard packs, along with the heavy weapons fire of Arjac’s wolves. The Stormrider Dreadnoughts turned their armaments on the Thousand Sons’ war engines too, so that within seconds the pair of citadels was at the centre of a firestorm converging from the length of the viaduct. Blossoms of energy engulfed the closest silver tower, lighting it like a beacon as bright as the twin stars above. The other citadel veered higher, eluding the worst of the Space Wolves’ ire.

  From ramparts and platforms, a company of Thousand Sons poured down salvoes of bolter fire, each round a flickering sorcery-charged projectile of red and green fire. Where they struck they slashed effortlessly through the plate of the Space Wolves, punching through flesh and bone with equal ease. The vox and air filled with the cries of the wounded.

  +That is a kine shield,+ declared Izzakar.

  ‘And?’ demanded Njal. He swept his staff sideways, turning and stretching his psychic screen to deflect a volley of inferno bolts descending like lethal hail. ‘What does that mean?’

  +It is Raptorae-craft, the work of my cult-brothers. I know how to counter it.+

  ‘These are not cultists of Magnus. They are your Legion brothers.’

  +I share no allegiance with them, Stormcaller, and they stand between me and my resurrection.+

  ‘Then tell me, how do we stop them?’ The Stormcaller advanced, turning the shield into a ball of lightning. With a snarl, he hurled the crackling projectile towards the lower tower but it simply scattered harmlessly against the psychic defences. ‘How do we breach the shield?’

  +Give me your body. It will recognise me as one of Magnus’ sons and allow us to pass.+

  The higher tower drifted across the causeway, its shadow passing over the packs of the Stormriders and Old Guard. Looking up, Njal saw the underside scored by hundreds of maleficent runes that burned with flickering fire. The Thousand Sons upon the closer citadel directed the scouring blasts of their engine towards the Dreadnoughts, actinic sparks spraying at each impact on their armoured sarcophagi. Even the thick plates of Bjorn and his brothers-in-arms would not fare long against the assault, while their return fire was useless against the kine shield.

  Was this the ploy that Izzakar had been working towards? To deliver Njal into the grasp of Magnus’ warriors? It made terrible sense, to be spared death at the hands of the daemon primarch, a prize or something more sinister instead.

  Suspicion wracked Njal but he had to act now or all would be lost.

  ‘Very well, sorcerer…’

  He opened up his mind’s fortress, giving Izzakar full access to his powers and body.

  To surrender everything to the Thousand Sons psyker was to become a passenger in his own body. Izzakar shunted the Space Wolf’s thoughts aside, growing into the space left by the retreating psyche of the Stormcaller. Njal looked left and right but not under his own volition, and felt himself break into a run, a swell of psychic energy lapping up around him.

  The sensation of Izzakar’s warpcraft was different to his own wyrdlore. To Njal it always felt as though tapping into the warp was an elemental act, syphoning away its power as though channelling a storm into the narrow defile of his mind. The Thousand Sons Librarian did not channel, but flexed, opening his thoughts into the nimbus of the warp, allowing tendrils of his mind to spread like a rapidly growing crystal, forming geometric patterns among the immaterial swirl.

  Light burned around the Rune Priest as he ascended. He felt the moment his weight was no longer carried by the ground, effortlessly accelerating upwards with staff held before him, its skull tip aglow. He wanted to laugh at the freedom of it, but lacked lungs and mouth to do so.

  Inferno bolts scorched a changing line of fire towards him as the traitors responded to his approach. Nightwing slashed past, a streak of black and gold, faster than he had ever seen the psyber-raven travel. The familiar turned loops and arcs ahead, the blaze of its trail leaving Prosperine runeshapes marked in the air. Crimson-wreathed bolts bounced from the glittering sigils as though hitting a solid wall, falling to the ground like dying fireflies.

  The psyber-raven powered on. Energy buzzed from its wings as it passed through the kine shield. Cawing madly, it set upon the traitor legionaries at the rail of a balcony overlooking their approach, creating a gap in their fire. Into the space flew the Rune Priest.

  Static passed over his armour, dancing along his beard at the touch of the kine shield. Then it was gone, the tower just a dozen metres ahead. His bolt pistol spat rounds into the Thousand Sons, the salvo designed to suppress rather than kill, the armour of the traitors a match for the explosive bolts.

  Between the pistol fire and the dives of Nightwing, the volleys lessened from directly ahead.

  Izzakar cast a glance to either side and in the corner of his eye Njal glimpsed tenebrous wings stretching from his back. They folded, falling into shimmering nothingness as the Librarian guided the huge Terminator war-plate over an ornate rail and into the midst of the defenders.

  Lashing out with the staff tip, a fiery blast tore open the mask of the closest foe. Izzakar waded bodily into the enemy squad, shouldering them aside with the bulk of the Terminator armour. Around him telekinetic appendages whipped and writhed, their touch ripping weapons from hands, prising apart armour joints and tearing metal and stone from the fabric of the tower itself to dash against the warriors pressing towards the intruder. Shadowy limbs tripped a warrior coming at them from behind, his sword pulled from his grasp by another psy-tentacle before being plunged into his eye lens.

  Escaping soul-stuff formed wisps of red, grey and black that drifted away, the emptied suits clattering to the stone floor. Half a dozen foes lay broken on the balcony within seconds of their arrival, though that number again stood between the Rune Priest and the door.

  +Find the sorcerer,+ Njal urged Izzakar. His voice rebounded inside his own head, unlike anything he had experienced before, di
zzying and yet distant.

  The Space Wolf advanced without hesitation while the Thousand Sons formed a line against him. Inferno shells exploded in mid-air, detonating against an invisible wall of force around the Rune Priest.

  Izzakar exerted his will, pulling apart the outer wall of the tower to reassemble the blocks as a more substantial barrier against their fire; Nightwing darted into the ragged doorway thus created and they followed close behind.

  A perimeter passageway curved around the level of the tower, lit by pale yellow psyluminescence. Ahead, Thousand Sons legionaries arrived through a gateway, seeking the interloper.

  ‘Time to bring down this monstrosity,’ declared Izzakar.

  Njal could not sense wholly what the Librarian did next, witnessing it only from inside his own thoughts, a step removed. He tracked part of Izzakar’s soul-power flooding out into the substance of the tower beneath them. Another portion of the psyker’s mind whipped up through the walls and past the ceiling, seeking… Njal did not know, he could not follow its rapid course.

  ‘Just a slight adjustment…’ Izzakar muttered in Njal’s voice.

  The silver tower lurched, heeling rapidly to a forty-five-degree angle. Expecting this, Izzakar was already braced, but the traitors were not. They stumbled and fell into the wall, landing heavily upon each other. Njal could imagine similar anarchy across the edifice – warriors tossed from balconies and windows, traitors within tipped down stairwells or sent reeling into each other.

  The light through the breached wall shifted and Njal felt the weightlessness of rapid descent, as though he was in a drop pod. Izzakar pushed them up the sloping floor and out to the balcony, bolts flaring after them as the Thousand Sons recovered their equilibrium, figuratively and literally.

  From outside it was plain that they were plunging down towards the edge of the causeway. White tatters of fire fled past from below, streaming in the gale of descent. Izzakar strode to the rail and looked down. On the bridge, he watched the Space Wolves scatter from the falling tower.

  They were barely twenty metres from impact when Izzakar launched skywards, unfurling kine wings to carry them free of the stricken tower.

  The listing citadel crashed into the causeway wall, shattering stone. A cloud of shards and dust swallowed the crippled engine as it toppled further and further, spilling more warriors from crenelated turrets as its summit descended past the base. Still turning, it disappeared into the fog, leaving a trail of falling armoured bodies and sorcerous fire like a comet’s tail.

  The other silver tower lifted away, as though shying from the loss of its companion. Overhead the Stormbird and other gunships circled back, emboldened by the destruction of the tower. Lascannon blasts and missiles raked across the kine shield, forcing the tower higher still.

  Izzakar brought them back to the causeway, a short distance from the broken section. A few Thousand Sons lay upon the cracked stone where they had fallen or jumped, some of them unmoving, others trying to get to their feet, slow and disjointed. The Space Wolves levelled their weapons at the leaderless spirit-shells, cracking open the armour of the hapless warriors with a continuous fusillade.

  Njal tried to reassert himself so that he could join the fight. His body did not respond, dominated by the mind of Izzakar.

  +Let me fight.+

  ‘Your brothers have the situation in hand, Stormcaller.’

  Njal let his anger seep into Izzakar’s consciousness but the Librarian paid it no heed. The psyker made sparks of wyrd dance across the head of the staff, each mote a tiny symbol of the Thousand Sons Legion.

  ‘So much power, wielded with so little precision.’

  Njal looked on impotently while the Thousand Sons fell to the combined wrath of the Stormriders and Old Guard. As the last of them perished, the fighters of the Thirteenth Company drew back, their weapons aimed at the newcomers. Suddenly surrounded, Valgarthr and Arjac signalled for their warriors to lower their weapons.

  +Give me back my body.+

  For a few seconds, Njal thought Izzakar would refuse. His gaze moved between the Space Wolves and the half-built fortress behind them, as though weighing his options. There was nobody between them and the gate by which they had come to the bridge and all other eyes were turned on the Old Guard. Njal guessed Izzakar’s thoughts, perhaps wondering if he had the power to command such a tower himself.

  With reluctance, the Librarian shucked away his control of Njal’s body, easing himself out of the nervous system and muscles like a serpent shedding its skin. Njal swept into the vacuum, eager to be master of his own flesh once more.

  He hurried across the debris-littered causeway, revelling in the sensation of physical flesh again. It had been a couple of minutes at most since he had relinquished himself to the Thousand Sons Librarian but every second had been fraught with frustration and the nagging doubt that he would not regain control. It gave him pause to think how Izzakar had experienced the last few weeks since the sorry episode had begun. He pushed aside any sympathy to concentrate on the escalating situation between the two factions of Space Wolves.

  ‘Who’s in charge here?’ The demand came from a Greybeard, his Terminator armour archaic in design. The paint and ceramite was much-chipped, and the gilding scratched away in many places, but still recognisable as an aettgard of the 13th company. His language was similarly archaic but decipherable. ‘Your aettmark is not known to me, utlander. Make plain your geldfut or my fyrbrod will be your ruin.’

  ‘I am Njal Stormcaller,’ the Rune Priest called out. ‘Of the Space Wolves.’

  The Old Guard veteran’s keen gaze appraised his runic armour and psychic hood in a glance and his eyes narrowed.

  ‘Wyrdskaldr?’

  ‘Yes. There’s a lot to be explained but we haven’t the time for it now. I am looking for Bulveye, your Wolf Lord.’

  The legionary did not take his stare from Njal. He spoke carefully, shaping the sounds of Low Gothic with precision rather than natural deftness. It was as though he spoke to a child, Njal realised, not out of ignorance of the language.

  ‘What news of the Wolf King? Does Tizca still resist? Have you brought the Silent Sisters and Custodians? We could use their help.’

  ‘Hard questions, and harder answers,’ Njal replied. ‘Know that we have come to bring you out of the Portal Maze. We must meet with Bulveye. Where is your Wolf Lord?’

  The Old Guard took a step back, relenting in his questioning. Servos hissed as he waved his combi-bolter to the far side of the causeway where the flicker and boom of battle still raged. Contrails of gunships and the swooping winged shapes of semi-daemonic attack craft crossed the skies above the mountainside. Though it was some distance, Njal could see the flash of battle among the scattered rocks and pillars where grey-armoured figures were pitted against splashes of blue.

  ‘Over there, rune-wielder. Right where you’d expect him. In the thick of it.’

  CHAPTER 15

  LAST OF THE GREYBEARDS

  The tense stand-off lasted a little longer, the two companies of Space Wolves separated by ten metres and ten thousand years. The Old Guard clearly had the advantage of numbers and firepower, but Njal and his Stormriders refused to back down, a knot of resistance in the midst of the 13th Company.

  ‘I know you,’ boomed Bjorn. The Dreadnought took a step, claw raised to point to the battle-leader of the Old Guard. ‘I see your markings. Halvar Trystven, husjarl of Bulveye.’

  ‘I cannot say the same, dread-clad,’ Halvar replied. He continued in a stream of Old Fenrisian too fast for Njal to follow precisely, but Bjorn responded in kind. The exchange went on for some time and ended with Halvar taking a step back, relenting slightly.

  ‘It is not possible to believe, but believe it I must,’ the husjarl declared, returning his attention to Njal. ‘Your warrior, Bjorn, speaks of matters only one of the Wolf King’s aett would know. A hundred centuries! Allfather’s spirit, that is harder to take in than a kraken carcass on a rowboat. You are right, th
is is beyond me, you need Bulveye. Head along and find him, we still have our orders to secure this citadel.’

  ‘It is empty,’ said Arjac. ‘You saw us leave it. There is no foe within. Your arms are better used assisting your Wolf Lord yonder.’

  Halvar half turned to his companions and Njal heard the hiss of a vox exchange.

  +Say nothing of me,+ insisted Izzakar.

  ‘I wasn’t planning to,’ Njal murmured in answer.

  The husjarl turned back to them and nodded.

  ‘Seems that circumstances have outpaced my orders. We’ll take you to the Old Wolf.’

  It did not take long to organise the force. Though a divide of ten thousand years sat between them, the culture and battle drill of the Space Wolves had changed little and the Stormriders found themselves falling into place without too much thought, behind the Greybeards’ vanguard and next to Halvar’s Terminators.

  They advanced back across the causeway, wary of the silver tower returning or some other fresh threat. By the broken gatehouse at the far end several transports waited. Njal recognised the three Rhinos, a ubiquitous transport design still in use after ten millennia. Several other vehicles were not so familiar – variants of the Predators he knew well, but also a slab-sided larger cousin to the Land Raider. Triple-mounted lascannons hung on its sponsons, its elongated assault compartment jutting like a hound’s muzzle.

  +That is a Spartan,+ explained Izzakar. +And that tank destroyer behind is known as a Sicaran Venator. Your ignorance is astounding. How does one forget how to build a tank?+

  The Stormcaller did not know. Such things were secrets of the Adeptus Mechanicus, a creed steeped in even greater ritual than the holy teachings of the Adeptus Ministorum. He fixed his attention on Halvar, wary of any slip that might betray to the husjarl that all was not as it seemed with the rescue force.

  ‘You have been fighting the Thousand Sons long?’ Njal asked his escort.

  ‘On and off,’ said Halvar. ‘It is… This place makes it hard to keep track. I thought perhaps days, maybe two weeks since we entered. We put the bolt and blade to the curs of the sorcerer that trapped us, and we searched for a way out or another foe. Nothing. This last day, the Thousand Sons returned, but clad not as we had known them. As you see them, with strange wyrd-folk as companions. Their armour is empty yet lives on, but for a few of their leaders. A conjuration of Magnus.’