25 For 25

by Various

  ‘Rothgar!’ The young Marine scrambled to his feet, heedless of the power sword pointed at his chest.

  The great company’s wolf priest stepped slowly into the moonlight. At once, Skaflock could see that the priest was very gravely injured. Rothgar’s Terminator suit was rent in half a dozen places, and the jagged tip of a dead ork’s power claw jutted from his chest. His face was deathly white, and drops of red glistened in his grey beard. It was a testament to the wolf priest’s legendary prowess that he lived at all.

  ‘Well met, Sightblinder,’ Rothgar said, showing blood-slicked teeth. ‘Late to the battlefield, thank the primarch. What is your report?’

  ‘We’ve been lured into a trap,’ he said simply. ‘Once the assault teams began their descent the damned orks started jamming all the vox frequencies somehow.’ The Wolf Scout bit back a curse. ‘You and these Blood Claws look to be all that’s left from the team that landed here.’

  ‘Our pod suffered a malfunction on the way down and we landed some ten kilometres north of the drop zone,’ the red-haired Blood Claw said. ‘The woods were crawling with ork patrols. We had to fight every step of the way to make it here. Two of our brothers and our Wolf Guard leader were slain.’

  ‘The orks had more time to scout the area than we did. If we could find the best drop zones in each sector, so could they,’ Skaflock said. ‘But I’ve never known a greenskin to show such patience and forethought. There’s more at work here than meets the eye.’

  Rothgar’s eyes narrowed conspiratorially. ‘This Skargutz has ambitions, I think. He’s no Ghazghkull, but he’s no mere warboss, either. I think he’s got his sights set on uniting the ork warbands in this sector under his banner. If he can prove to them that he can strike anywhere he wants and get the best of any force the Imperium can throw at him, they’ll join his mob without hesitation.’

  ‘And now that he’s bloodied us, he’ll pull out of Cambion with whatever plunder he’s gathered and start rousing the other warbands.’ It was a clever move, as much as it galled Skaflock to admit it.

  Skaflock forced his anger and guilt aside and tried to find a way to salvage the situation. ‘All right,’ he said, addressing the wolf priest. ‘The orks have us cut off for now, but our fleet isn’t going to sit idle. With every pass they make over the planet their surveyors will have a clearer picture of where the ork landing sites are hidden. The orks can’t keep this jamming up forever – they need the vox channels to coordinate themselves almost as much as we do. Most likely they will wait until they think the power cells on our designator beacons have run dry, then they’ll begin their pullout. In the meantime, Kjarl here can watch over you at one of our campsites while my pack and I locate the main ork camp. When the jamming lifts, we can contact Lord Haldane and coordinate a counter strike before Skargutz can escape.’

  Kjarl shook his head in disgust. ‘Have you no idea what’s happened?’

  ‘How could he?’ Rothgar said darkly. When he turned to Skaflock, his expression was even more pained than before. ‘Have you ever known Haldane Ironhammer to let another lead an assault in his place? He dropped with us in the first wave, lad. Your lord lies somewhere among the fallen.’

  Lord Haldane and his Wolf Guard had made their stand on a low hillock just to the side of their drop pod. They’d fought like wolves at bay, like heroes of old, but one by one they had been overcome.

  Haldane’s Terminator armour hadn’t been hacked apart, as Skaflock had expected. It had been hacked open. The body of the wolf lord was nowhere to be seen.

  Tears of rage coursed freely down Kjarl’s face. ‘What have they done with our lord?’

  The Space Wolves parted as Rothgar moved slowly and painfully among them. The pain in his eyes as he surveyed the scene had nothing to do with his injuries. ‘They have taken him,’ he said hoarsely.

  ‘Why?’ Kjarl said.

  ‘The orks must mean to give him as a trophy to their leader,’ Skaflock replied, biting back his rage. ‘A wolf lord’s head would be a tremendous prize for an ambitious warboss like Skargutz.’

  ‘Then it’s a blood feud, by Russ!’ Kjarl raised his fist and howled a challenge to the sky. The rest of the Blood Claws followed suit, the intensity of their cries raising the hairs on the back of Skaflock’s neck.

  ‘The filthy greenskins have defiled our lord.’ Kjarl roared. He turned to Rothgar. ‘Hear me, priest, I swear that I and my pack will find Lord Haldane and reclaim the honour of our company, and woe to any ork that steps in our way.’

  ‘Don’t be a fool,’ Skaflock said coldly. ‘You won’t get more than a kilometre before the orks kill you.’

  The Blood Claws snarled in wordless anger. Kjarl turned on the scout leader, his power fist raised. ‘Keep your gutless bleating to yourself,’ he snarled. ‘This is a matter of honour – something you clearly know little about.’

  Skaflock advanced on the Blood Claw. ‘I know that you’ve been on this planet less than an hour, and I’ve been here for three months. I know approximately how many orks there are in this sector. I know their tactics, their equipment, the location of their bases and the routes they’re likely to take. I know exactly what your chances are, charging about on an ork-held world and lashing out at every foe that presents itself.’

  The vehemence in Skaflock’s voice took Kjarl aback for a moment. ‘What would you have us do then? Cower in the bushes and let them get away with this? What about your duty to Haldane?’

  ‘Don’t lecture me about my duty, whelp,’ Skaflock said darkly. Meeting Rothgar’s eye, he knelt by Haldane’s armour and solemnly took up the wolf lord’s axe. ‘If we hope to reclaim Haldane’s body we will have to swallow our anger and put our lord’s honour before our own.’ He raised the axe before the wolf priest. ‘I swear on this axe that I will find Haldane and do what must be done.’

  The wolf priest held Skaflock’s gaze for a long moment, and then Rothgar nodded slowly. ‘I hear you, Skaflock Sightblinder,’ he said, ‘and I hold you to your oath.’

  ‘And I swear,’ Kjarl hissed, ‘to tear your head from your shoulders if you fail.’

  Skaflock grinned mirthlessly. ‘If I fail, I doubt you’ll have the chance, but so be it,’ he said. ‘For now, you and your men gather weapons and ammunition from the dead: flamers, grenades and spare bolt pistol rounds.’

  Kjarl glared at the wolf scout, but beneath the forbidding gaze of the wolf priest he swallowed his pride. ‘We will not be long,’ he growled, and issued orders to his pack.

  Skaflock turned to Rothgar, but the wolf priest raised a gauntleted hand. ‘I will abide here, Sightblinder. Do not concern yourself about me. Russ knows I’ve survived worse than this.’ With his other hand he drew the Fang of Morkai from his belt. ‘Whatever else, I still have my duty to the dead.’

  ‘As do we, Rothgar. As do we.’

  Haldane’s blood made his scent easy to follow. Even where countless ork feet had trampled across the wolf lord’s trail, Hogun’s sharp eyes picked out dark spots of crimson to mark where their fallen leader had gone.

  Skaflock had assigned a pair of Blood Claws to each scout, taking Kjarl and another young Blood Claw for himself. After several kilometres the trail led out of the woods and down into a narrow, twisting valley dominated by isolated stands of stunted, twisted trees. Here the ork trail was easy to follow, and Skaflock knew at once where they were headed.

  ‘There’s a firebase up ahead,’ he said to Kjarl as they loped stealthily along the valley floor. ‘A small one. We scouted it out a couple of weeks ago. It’s probably where they’re staging all of the patrols in this sector, so there will likely be a lot of traffic. I expect the orks carrying Haldane will commandeer a vehicle there to carry their trophy to Skargutz.’

  Kjarl glared resentfully at Skaflock. ‘We’ll see,’ he said darkly.

  Half a kilometre from the firebase Skaflock waved the scouts off the trail, following a path that led to higher ground and offered a commanding view of the ork encampment. Hogun an
d Kjarl lay to either side of Skaflock as he scanned the firebase from a stony ledge using his magnoculars.

  ‘No sign of Haldane. If he was still there the orks would be showing off the body,’ Skaflock said, passing the magnoculars to Hogun. ‘There is something interesting though, a convoy of large trucks unloading fresh troops. And I don’t recognize their clan markings.’

  ‘What does this have to do with Haldane?’ Kjarl hissed impatiently.

  ‘This sector has the largest number of major ork landing sites on the planet,’ Skaflock explained, ‘so we always suspected that Skargutz himself was somewhere nearby. We never could find him, though. At the time, we thought that was pretty strange, but now it’s clear they must have set up a hidden base to conceal the vox jammers and shelter the bulk of their reserve troops from the initial bombardment.’ The Wolf Guard studied the ork trucks thoughtfully. ‘I’ll bet he’s still there, waiting for word that the ambush was successful, and those trucks will lead us right to him.’

  Kjarl let out a snort. ‘And how do you expect the trucks to get us anywhere once we’ve killed the drivers?’

  Skaflock frowned. ‘Killed the drivers?’

  ‘You don’t expect they’ll survive once we’ve stormed the base, do you?’

  ‘We aren’t storming the base, Kjarl. We’re sneaking onto those vehicles as they head back to their base.’

  ‘Sneaking.’ Kjarl’s lip curled in distaste. ‘Cowering like a craven is more like. This is not the way the sons of Russ are meant to behave.’

  ‘I won’t speak for you, Blood Claw, but I’ll behave any way I must if it gets me one step closer to my goal. And so will you, so long as I’m in command.’ Skaflock’s stare was hard as adamantine. ‘Tell your men we’re going to sneak down to the firebase’s northern gate. Pistols will be holstered and flamers doused. Combat will be avoided at all costs. Understood?’

  ‘Understood,’ Kjarl said contemptuously, and slid down the slope to where the rest of the group waited.

  Hogun watched the young Space Wolf go. ‘A good thumping would knock sense into that lad,’ he muttered.

  ‘No time for that now. I want you to round up our melta bombs and set up a diversion on the southern end of that base.’

  ‘Good as done,’ Hogun said, handing back the magnoculars and heading down the slope.

  Skaflock gathered the Space Marines and made for the road north of the firebase in a single, widely spaced group. The Space Wolves reached the dirt road almost a kilometre north of the base, then began working south until they were within less than a hundred metres of the base’s crude gate. There they separated into their three-man teams and settled into cover near the road’s edge.

  The firebase itself was simple and rugged. An irregular perimeter of packed earthen ramparts five metres high was topped with razor wire and littered with small mines. Rough, uneven watchtowers composed of scrap metal and cannibalized shipping containers rose behind the ramparts, sprouting a lethal assortment of heavy guns and wandering searchlights. The noise within the earthen walls was tremendous, a discordant roar of shouting voices, revving engines, machine tools and occasional bursts of gunfire.

  Barely a few minutes after the Space Wolves had settled into place, Hogun seemed to materialize out of the darkness at Skaflock’s elbow. ‘Three minutes,’ he reported, then went to take his place along the line.

  Kjarl eyed the ork base expectantly. ‘What now?’

  ‘When the bombs go off, the orks will think they’re under attack. I expect that whoever is running that mob in there is going to send the trucks back to Skargutz for more troops.’

  Before Kjarl could reply a string of blue-white flashes ran along the base’s southern perimeter, followed by the sharp crack of the melta charges. Streams of wild tracer fire fanned and corkscrewed into the air. ‘Get ready,’ Skaflock called to the Marines.

  Within minutes, the scrap metal gate at the northern entrance was pulled back with a tortured shriek of twisted metal, and eight huge ork trucks lumbered onto the road in a billowing cloud of blue-black exhaust.

  Skaflock turned to Kjarl. ‘We’ll wait for the last three trucks, then I’ll give the signal–’

  The Wolf Scout’s instructions were cut short as a stream of heavy ork rounds whipsawed through the air over his head. Skaflock’s heart clenched as he ducked his head and stole a look at the firebase to his left.

  The watchtowers had somehow spotted the three Space Marines at the far end of the line. Searchlights transfixed the Space Wolves from three separate directions, and the orks in the towers opened fire with every weapon they had. Skaflock watched as one of the Wolf Scouts rose to a crouch and drew his bolt pistol in a single, fluid motion. He snapped off two quick shots, destroying two of the searchlights in a shower of sparks, but as he pivoted to fire at the third a burst from an ork gun blew his head apart in a shower of blood and bone. The two Blood Claws leapt to their feet as one, drawing their weapons and charging at the enemy encampment.

  ‘No,’ Kjarl roared, surging to his feet. Skaflock tackled him before he was fully upright.

  ‘Stand your ground,’ Skaflock cried, shouting into the maelstrom.

  ‘My men–’

  ‘Your men are already dead, Kjarl,’ Skaflock said. At the firebase the Blood Claws had made it into cover beneath the reach of the guns, but a mob of orks was already charging from the gates, their crude axes held high. ‘You can either die alongside them or remember your obligation to your lord. Which will it be?’

  With a wordless snarl Kjarl shoved Skaflock away and readied himself to move.

  The last three ork trucks were coming up fast. Skaflock gauged speed and distance, then shouted ‘Now,’ and bolted for the road.

  The Space Wolves rose in a ragged line and rushed at the ork transports, leaping for struts and flanges on their armoured flanks. Kjarl landed easily to Skaflock’s right, both men glaring balefully back at the firebase dwindling in the distance.

  The ork trucks roared along dirt roads and broken trails for nearly two hours, then abruptly turned onto an old, sharply sloping roadway littered with rocks and debris. The small convoy climbed steadily up the side of a mountain for several minutes, then turned suddenly into the mountainside itself. The trucks’ huge engines thundered in the tight confines of the tunnel as the convoy descended deep into the bowels of the mountain. The vehicles finally came to a stop in a cavernous, dimly lit chamber reeking of exhaust fumes and echoing with the bedlam of an ork warband at work.

  Skaflock slowly eased himself from the truck’s undercarriage and lowered himself to the ground. Peering left and right, he could see that the ork trucks had been driven into an enormous staging area crowded with other vehicles, piles of crates and gangs of grease-stained gretchin mechanics. Illumination in the cavernous space was poor, creating dark alleys between stacked crates and pools of shadow cast by the looming vehicles. Skaflock rolled out from under the truck to the right and dashed into cover between two stacks of looted shipping containers. The Wolf Guard kept moving, trusting that his brothers would track his scent as he worked his way towards the edge of the broad cavern.

  Dark shapes emerged from the shadows, weapons held ready. Kjarl was the first to reach Skaflock, his eyes searching the shadows. ‘Where are we?’

  ‘We’re in an old mine, somewhere south of the landing zone,’ Skaflock said. ‘There’s scores of them honeycombing the mountains in this region. The orks are probably tapping the mine’s abandoned reactors to power their jamming system.’ The Wolf Guard sought out Hogun. ‘Do you have the scent?’

  The scout nodded. ‘His blood’s like a beacon. Not much further to go, I think.’

  ‘All right.’ To the assembled Marines, Skaflock said, ‘Stick to your teams. No shooting until I give the signal. Hogun, you’re on point. Gunnar, cover the rear. Move out.’

  Moving quickly and quietly the Space Wolves made their way around the perimeter of the cavern and down a rough-hewn passage running deeper into the side
of the mountain. Few of the mine’s lamps still functioned, and the darkness served them well in the wide tunnels. They passed numerous side passages, abandoned lifts and galleries; on several occasions the Space Marines had to find an alternative route to avoid mobs of orks along their path. Each time Hogun led them unerringly back on track.

  This sector of the mine had been given over to offices and dormitories for the indentured miners who once laboured in the tunnels below. Up ahead, the Space Wolves began to hear the raucous sounds of a celebration, and Skaflock felt a cold, black rage welling up in his heart.

  The passageway ahead ended in a broad double doorway, opening onto a huge rectangular space carved from the living rock. Once it had served as a dining hall for the miners, but now it was packed with orks feasting on the plunder of Cambion. Several hundred greenskins tore at haunches of bloody meat and drank from steel casks of ale, roaring drunken boasts of their fighting skill.

  The far end of the chamber was given over to a raised dais, where priests of the Ecclesiarchy once exhorted the faithful as they took their meals. Now it supported a crude throne of black iron, where an enormous, armoured ork sat, surrounded by his bodyguard.

  A man’s bloody body lay at the foot of the throne, wearing only the black undergarment of a Space Marine. As the Space Wolves watched, Skargutz the Render laid an armoured boot on Haldane’s dead chest, like a hunter posing with his prize.

  The Marines made not a single sound, but Skaflock could feel the fury seething from them like heat from a forge. Kjarl’s eyes were fixed on Skargutz, his fangs bared. ‘Here it ends,’ he said, his power fist crackling into life.

  Skaflock nodded solemnly. ‘The time for stealth is done at last,’ he said, slipping into the tongue of their homeland. ‘Now is the time for broken swords and splintered shields, for red ruin and the woeful song of steel. Haldane’s eyes are upon us; his honour lies in our hands. Let no man falter until the deed is done.’