Battle Of The Fang

by Chris Wraight

  Morek Karekborn waited in the front rank of the crowd, less then a hundred paces from the statue, feeling the reassuring weight of his skjoldtar in his hands. His riven, just under five hundred kaerls, lined the galleries all round the walls of the Hall, placed to keep order.

  His heart was still beating from the hurried progress of the muster. He’d seen the Wolves leave, had watched them stream from the Fang like grey shadows. He’d seen others fire up the Thunderhawk transporters or begin deploying the heavy armour throughout the Aett. They’d worked with quick, blunt efficiency.

  As ever, he felt the inadequacy of his mortal response. His spirit had sunk when he’d been instructed to guard the Fangthane while the muster reached completion, though he’d voiced no protest.

  There will be no battle here, no murder-make. I cannot serve the Masters within the Aett.

  He suppressed the complaint. It was unworthy. The wyrd would be interpreted by the Sky Warriors, and they had ways of reading it that were hidden from him.

  I will learn to accept it. There are other ways to serve.

  And yet, if battle was coming, he deserved the chance to stand at the forefront of it. He’d earned that, over the decades. Surely, at the least, he’d earned that.

  A huge gong sounded from ahead of him, resounding through the gigantic space and throwing echoes back and forth across it. Another sounded from the far end of the chamber, and the stone beneath his feet vibrated.

  What little chatter there had been faded into nothing. Vaer Greyloc, Jarl of the Twelfth, resplendent in the massive shell of his battle-plate, strode on to the platform at the feet of Russ. A mortal would have been dwarfed by the figure of the primarch towering above him, but the Wolf Lord had a presence that refused to be dominated. In the scant hours since the first council of war, Greyloc had donned Terminator armour and wore two wolfclaws on each hand, each rippling from the power fields enclosing the talons. He wore no helm, and his ice-white eyes shone in the shifting firelight.

  Like a shade of Morkai. Snow on snow.

  ‘Warriors of Fenris!’ cried Greyloc, and his voice rose above the dying echoes of the gong. Whether it was augmented by some auditory effect or simply projected beyond the ambit of mortal vocal chords, it reached to all corners of the hushed chamber.

  ‘I call you warriors, as all those born on Fenris are warriors. Whether man or woman, whelp or elder, you all carry the spirit of Russ in your blood. You are killers, bred on a world that only respects killing. The time has come for you to take up that mantle.’

  His pale eyes swept across the motionless ranks. Morek shifted his weight, letting his attention flicker up to check his men were at their stations. They were all paying full attention. It was rare for any of the Sky Warriors to address mortals in such a fashion, and they were soaking up his words.

  ‘The Archenemy is here. They will land on this world soon, in numbers that have not been seen for a thousand years. They come, so they believe, to take this place, to burn it, to defile the home of your fathers. Not since the days when the Allfather walked the ice has an enemy come to Fenris with the power to shake these halls. I will not hide the truth of it from you. That day has come again.’

  The thralls made no response, but remained flinty-eyed and impassive, listening intently. Morek had been on distant worlds during campaigns and seen the way other mortals were. There were places where such speech would have induced panic, or provoked fist-pumping denunciations, or weeping, or collapse.

  Not on Fenris. They accepted the wyrd, and endured.

  ‘You are sons of the eternal ice, so I will not say: do not fear, because I know that you will not. You will defend your hearth with all the strength that is in your bones and fists. And you will not stand alone. Even as I speak to you, Sky Warriors have left the Aett, hunting for the first Traitors to make planetfall to burn their landings and bring death among them. Where the need is greatest, when it comes to the walls of the Aett, they will come among you too. The storm will fall here, that we may be certain of, but when it comes we will be in the eye of it with you.’

  Morek felt his heart quicken. These were the words he yearned to hear.

  They will come among us. The Sky Warriors, fighting with us. This is the honour I crave.

  ‘You will all be armed,’ continued Greyloc. ‘Even now, weapons are being brought from the armouries. Kaerls will instruct you in their use. Wield them as you once wielded axes. Every one of you will be called to fight. This is our time of testing.’

  I welcome it. I glory in it. We will be tested together.

  ‘Little time remains before the storm hits. Use it well. Remember your hate. Remember your inner fire. The Traitors come to challenge you in our own lair. They are numerous, but they know nothing of the wrath of Fenris. We will show it to them.’

  Greyloc’s words gradually rose in volume. As he spoke, his fists crackled more brightly with the vast energies held within them.

  ‘Do not disappoint me,’ he snarled, and the threat of his wrath ran like a chill wind around the chamber. ‘Do not spurn this faith shown in your spirit and determination. These interlopers will be hurled back into the void, whatever pains we endure to accomplish it. You will be a part of it. You will do this!’

  The claws rose in unison.

  ‘You will do this for the Allfather!’

  The crowd began to press forwards. Their blood was stirred.

  ‘You will do this for Russ!’

  Growled murmurs of acclamation broke out.

  ‘You will do this for Fenris!’

  The muttering defiance rose in volume.

  ‘You will do this, because you are the soul and sinew of a deathworld!’ Greyloc roared aloud, and his talons blazed into swirling life. It was as if his ice-cold demeanour had been cast aside like a cloak, and what remained was white-hot, burning with a fierce intensity.

  As one, the crowd slammed their fists on their chests. The heavy, thudding sound rolled across the Hall like a peal of thunder on the distant peaks.

  ‘Fenrys!’ cried Greyloc, tapping into the waves of rage.

  ‘Fenrys hjolda!’ they thundered, and the wall of noise was deafening.

  Drums broke out from hidden places in the Hall, and the driving rhythm rippled across the seething masses.

  ‘Hjolda!’ shouted Morek with the others, feeling his blood begin to pump harder. The murder-make was being roused, the animal spirit of the people of Fenris. It was a fearsome, wonderful thing. No other human world could match it, and the thrill of the impending hunt began to run through his veins.

  Morek gazed at the lone Sky Warrior ahead of him even as he screamed out his words of defiance. The Terminator-clad leviathan was the representative of all he venerated, all he worshipped.

  A god among men.

  ‘Fenrys!’ rang out across the Hall. The fires exploded into red, angry life, licking the stone and iron around them like writhing beasts.

  ‘Fenrys hjolda!’ repeated Morek, hefting his weapon and crying the words with feeling.

  They will fight among us.

  As the Hall descended into roars and bellows of untamed aggression and the pinions of war descended over the Fang, Morek Karekborn looked on the image of the Wolf King and felt his faith blaze like a comet in the empty skies.

  This is what they cannot understand, he realised, thinking of the faithless who came to despoil the Aett in their folly and madness. We will die for Sky Warriors, for they show us what we can become. Against this certainty, they can have nothing. Nothing.

  He smiled through his shouting, feeling the hoarseness in his throat, welcoming it as the badge of his devotion.

  For the Allfather. For Russ. For Fenris.

  PART II:

  WAKING THE DEAD

  CHAPTER SIX

  Twelve hours after the destruction of the orbital defences, fire came to Asaheim.

  The Thousand Sons warships Alexandretta and Phosis T’Kar assumed geostationary orbit one hundred kilometres above the F
ang and prepared their payloads for dispersal. The two ships had minimal crew – fewer than two thousand each – and virtually no void-war armaments. They’d been shielded from the battle by a dozen frigates and kept away from harm by ships more suited to close combat. In form, they resembled huge cylinders on a vertical axis wedged through the clinging superstructure of a conventional warship. Everything on board the two ships was designed to feed those cylinders, to keep them supplied with huge amounts of promethium and heavy plasma-derivatives they needed to operate. The curved muzzles were aimed planetwards, ready to unload the energies already cradling within their polished walls.

  Aphael called them planet-scourers. They were capable of levelling cities and razing continents, and there was nothing left in local space to hinder their operation.

  Orders went out over the fleet mission channel and the devices began to power up. Within the narrow crew corridors around the cylinder housing, unearthly whining gave way to a low rumble. Chain lightning leapt across the empty void between the cylinder walls, cracking against adamantium bulwarks and breaking out into the void. Generators geared up, pumping energy into enormous converters and channelling it through to the devastation engines.

  The escorts withdrew, opening up a gap of several hundred kilometres. The entire fleet kept its distance, like a crowd of frightened prey huddling out of range of the hunter.

  From his observation cell onboard the Herumon, Temekh watched the accumulation of titanic energies gain pace. The gathering of power was heady, and he could sense the bulging, raging torment locked within the weapons as the limits of containment were reached.

  ‘Lord, your chambers have been made ready.’

  The Spireguard equerry standing at his elbow broke Temekh’s concentration, and he had to suppress an urge to lash out at the mortal. He closed his eyes for a second, maintaining his position within the Enumerations. Some old habits died hard.

  ‘Thank you,’ he replied. ‘I will observe this before leaving.’

  Even as he finished speaking, the planet-scourers reached their firing level.

  Massive, snaking columns of gold-silver energy thundered down to the target below, twisting and blazing as they sliced through the atmosphere and slammed into the continental shelf. The torrent kept up steadily, a seamless rain of millions upon millions of plasma projectiles, melded into two pillars of withering, draining power and focused on the apex of the mountain ranges below.

  ‘By the Crimson King,’ breathed the equerry, forgetting himself as he watched the lethal quantities of energy unleashed.

  Temekh smiled.

  ‘You think that lightshow will hurt the Dogs? Don’t fool yourself – this is just to keep them busy while Lord Aphael oversees the landing.’

  He turned away from the portal and darkened the viewers with a mental command.

  ‘There are other ways to tear the pelt from them,’ he said, walking from his cell toward the chambers that had been prepared for him with so much labour. The equerry trotted after him. ‘It is now time to set them in motion.’

  Freija Morekborn heard the impact before she saw any evidence of it.

  ‘Hold your positions!’ she barked at her six-strong squad of kaerls, keeping the surprise out of her hard-edged voice.

  They were operating in the upper levels of the Valgard, assigned to the hangars to assist the armoury staff in preparing the remaining Land Raiders and Rhinos for deployment. The work mostly involved standing guard while interminable Mechanicus rites were performed to prime the machine-spirits, and the waiting around while other squads had been sent to forward combat stations was maddening.

  Then the fire came. The hangar was one used by the Thunderhawk transporters and opened directly out to the atmosphere of Fenris. There were powerful shields across the gaping launch bay, both to protect from bombardment and to retain a breathable environment so high up. One moment, the sky outside was the dark blue of the short Fenrisian dusk; the next, it blazed with a seething kaleidoscope of colours, the result of a torrent of hyperenergised plasma hitting the surface of void shields and going crazy.

  The hangar, which had been filled with the clang and grind of mechanical equipment and lifting gear, was suddenly dominated by the high-pitched hiss and fizz of the shields taking the strain. Warning klaxons from far above their position blared out again, breaking the concentration of the tech-priests huddled over their incense and sacred oils.

  ‘What is it?’ asked a young kaerl, a blond-haired recruit called Lyr, hoisting his rifle to his waist instinctively. He was fearless in a human-scale firefight, but the vast energies colliding only a few hundred metres away clearly unnerved him.

  ‘Standard bombardment pattern,’ said Freija, who had no idea what manner of forbidden technology had been unleashed. ‘Stand down, trooper. Until we get the order to fall back, we don’t move.’

  ‘Quite right, huskaerl,’ came an amused, metallic voice.

  Freija whirled around to find herself facing the towering outline of Garjek Arfang, the Twelfth’s Iron Priest. She swallowed reflexively, and instantly berated herself for her weakness.

  How do they do it? How do they project this aura of intimidation?

  ‘Lord,’ she acknowledged, and bowed.

  ‘That’s not capable of hurting us,’ continued the priest, speaking through his slatted vox-grille. Like all his kind, he had a hulking servo-arm sprouting from the back of his strange, gothic armour. Instead of the usual totems and trophies strewn across the ceramite, he wore the skull and cog of the Adeptus Mechanicus on his breast, interleaved with iron renditions of the cardinal Fenrisian runes. His dark battle-plate was heavy with the patina of wear and combat, and looked like it hadn’t been removed for some time. Freija had certainly never seen any of the Iron Priests out of their shells, and it was easy to believe the rumours that what was left of their mortal bodies had irretrievably melded with the arcane technology within. He carried a heavy staff as the badge of his priesthood, crested with the adamantium head of a hammer forged into the likeness of a snarling muzzle.

  ‘They do it to prevent us firing back.’

  He walked past her and stood facing the open launch bays, watching the rain of blazing plasma slam into the void shield barrier beyond.

  ‘Our shields are fed by thermal reactors buried kilometres down,’ he said, half-talking to himself. ‘This will do no more than stress the voids, but we won’t be able to send any ship-killers up through it.’

  He turned back to Freija.

  ‘Inconvenient, no?’

  There was a low grating sound from somewhere below his armour.

  Growling? Clearing his throat? Laughing?

  ‘Enlightening, lord,’ she said. ‘Then we are safe to remain on duty here.’

  ‘Perfectly, huskaerl. For the time being.’

  The Iron Priest looked from one kaerl to another, assessing Freija’s squad for some kind of suitability. He had a strange, clipped manner, and his movements were oddly stilted for a Sky Warrior.

  Metal-heads. Even more void-touched than the rest of them.

  ‘I have chosen you,’ Arfang announced. ‘I will have need of an escort for my thralls, and my tech-priests are fully engaged.’

  ‘At your command, lord,’ said Freija, uncertainly. Anything would be preferable to killing more time in the hangars, but he hadn’t said what he wanted yet.

  The Iron Priest nodded to himself, evidently satisfied. He placed his hammer-headed staff on the ground in front of him, and several hunched figures scuttled out of the shadow of a nearby Thunderhawk. They were servitor-thralls, the half-man, half-machine semi-automata that provided the menial labour for the armoury. Some still had their human faces in place, drooped in a lobotomised, vacant expression of emptiness. Others had rigid iron plates instead of features and their hands replaced with drills, vices, locks, ratchets and claw-hammers. Some had bundles of vat-grown plastek muscles bunched across their wasted natural frames, bolted in place with rivets and governed by a tan
gle of wires and control-needles. They were a motley collection of horrors, the result of the dark union of Machine God and the Fenrisian aesthetic of savagery.

  ‘There are preparations to make. It will take days. When I call you, come without delay.’

  ‘Forgive me, lord. Where?’

  The Iron Priest turned his armour-plated head to look at her. His helm-lenses glowed a deep red, as if opening onto smouldering coals within.

  ‘Where else, huskaerl? Have you not heard the war-seers’ counsel? The battle-outcomes do not cogitate well. There is mortal danger here.’

  That, for him at least, seemed to answer the question. He strode past her, clanking his hammer-staff on the floor as he went. Then he paused, as if considering the possibility that he may not have been entirely clear.

  He turned, and Freija thought she detected something like excitement in that flat, unearthly voice.

  ‘Jarl Greyloc has ordered it, huskaerl. We go to wake the dead.’

  The Fang was merely the greatest of the many huge peaks that clustered together in the centre of Asaheim. Other summits reared their heads into the icy air around the World Spine, scraping the atmosphere as it thinned toward the void of space. They were piled atop the shoulders of each another, all encroaching on the space of the rest, fighting like the dark ekka pines of the valleys to climb toward the light. Everything on Fenris was in conflict, even the tortured, broken land itself.

  The peaks closest to the Fang itself had entered the legends of the Vlka Fenryka, etched on their communal consciousness since the Allfather had led them there in the half-remembered twilight of the founding. To the south was Asfryk, white-sided and blunt, the Cloudtearer. To the east were soaring Friemiaki and Tror, the brothers of thunder. To the west was bleak Krakgard, the dark peak where heroes were burned, and to the north were Broddja and Ammagrimgul, the guardians of the Hunter’s Gate through which aspirants passed to take the trials of passage.