Now I see into their souls, see what lives they lead, what choices they’ve made... This is what I have come to.
Blood of Russ, I pity them.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
‘Fenrys hjolda!’
Harek Ironhelm charged down the ruined street, uncaring of the small-arms fire clattering off his battle-plate. His retinue came with him, a whole score of elite warriors in Terminator armour. As they thundered onwards, their huge footfalls cracked the tarmac under them. Their pauldrons had been slathered in blood, some of it ritually applied before combat, some of it the result of the heavy killing over the past four local days. None of them had slept during that time; indeed, they’d barely paused in the slaughter. Inexorably, irresistibly, the Wolves’ spearhead had crunched, sliced, shot and hammered its way into the heart of the city.
Ironhelm had fought with all the vigour of his youth during that time, swinging his frostblade two-handed in massive, body-breaking arcs. He’d not even bothered to mag-lock a ranged weapon, preferring to keep the fighting at close range. Most of his guard went similarly, kitted out with claws, blades and axes, whooping and baying as they used the killing edges against the fragile armour of those who dared to stand against them.
‘The tower,’ Ironhelm snarled, nodding to his right as he tore down the roadway. Instantly, his pack adjusted trajectory. ‘Incoming, high up.’
The hunting pack had broken out on to a vast, straight highway overlooked by rows of towering hab-blocks. Once there had been mass-transit rails running down the central reservation and elevated walkways criss-crossing the road below. Now, thanks to heavy aerial bombardment, the entire street had been turned into a smouldering valley of tortured metal struts and melted plascrete craters. Rolling clouds of smoke obscured everything, acrid and tart from heavy bolter-round discharge. The precipitous walls on either side of the burning chasm were eyeless, the windows having been smashed even before the current assault had properly launched. Huge swathes of the city were like this now, a wasteland of broken hopes and balustrades, all after just three days’ intense, brutal activity by the Wolves.
The highway ran straight towards the central pyramid cluster. The huge multi-laned arterial conduit had once reverberated with civilian transports and semi-grav flyers, though now only echoed to the crackle of flames and the distant rumble of tank-tracks. The Wolves tore across the broken terrain like molten metal, swaying fluidly around obstacles, disdaining cover and relying on speed and agility to evade incoming fire.
Ahead of them, on the right-hand side of the highway, a single blunt-faced tower was still occupied by defenders. As the pack neared it, heavy projectile rounds slammed into the tarmac around them, tearing up what remained of the road surface and ripping it to spinning shreds. There were deeper explosions amongst the barking chatter of the man-mounted cannons – artillery pieces were clearly lodged there, all aimed at the fleeting wolf-shapes tearing towards the tower.
The fire-rate was high. Too high. They were squeezing their triggers in a panic, terrified of what the Wolves would do when they reached them.
You are right to be terrified, traitors. And we are thankful for it – your fear draws us to you quickly.
‘Time to silence those guns,’ growled Ironhelm, loping fast toward the tower’s base. Acting purely on instinct, he bounded to one side. A second later and the ground he’d been occupying disappeared in a blast of cordite and promethium. ‘Level Six.’
The Wolves sped up to the base without hesitating, all at full speed. The entrance level must once have been grand, clad in glass and steel and adorned with the Eye emblem that had been daubed all across Gangava Prime. Now it was just a shell, a gaping hole laced with broken panes and charred plascrete pillars.
The Wolves broke inside, racing around piles of rubble and still-burning heaps of refuse. Ironhelm remained at the blade-tip, crashing his way toward the elevator shafts clustered at the centre of the structure.
‘Can we use these?’ he barked over the mission channel.
A Wolf Guard named Rangr snapped open a remote auspex, took a look at it and shook his head.
‘Rigged to blow.’
‘Then take them out,’ commanded Ironhelm, gesturing to Brother Aesgrek, who carried a heavy bolter in his gigantic armoured fists.
The mammoth weapon thundered out, spraying shells into the waiting elevator cages. They exploded in a hail of crashing, tumbling beams and plates. Aesgrek destroyed them all, sending six cages plummeting down the shafts and into oblivion below. By the time he was finished, the rectangular wells gaped like wounds, black and naked.
Without waiting for the flames to die away, Ironhelm ran and launched himself across the nearest shaft, clutching the metalwork on the far side of it and clinging on. The steel beams bowed under his weight and began to peel away from the plascrete walls, but he was already moving, clambering up the levels like a giant armoured insect.
The rest of the pack did likewise, throwing themselves into the gaping pits, latching on to other parts of the steel struts and braces, using all the remaining five shafts to distribute the weight better across the damaged structure. Like sewer rats, the Wolves raced up the elevator columns, clamping their gauntlets unerringly to the metal handholds, powering up the sheer paths with contemptuous ease.
As they rose, gunfire began to strafe down from above. The defenders, realising the destruction of the elevator cages had done nothing to slow the closing assault, were belatedly trying to prevent the pack from reaching their position.
Ironhelm laughed rakishly as the first las-beams hit his armoured shoulders.
‘This is warming my arms!’ he cackled, hauling himself over a protruding ledge and thrusting ever higher.
‘Multiple signals approaching,’ voxed Rangr, betraying urgent kill-urge in his voice. ‘Next level is Six.’
The Wolf Guard’s eagerness infected the entire squad, and they tore upwards even faster, gouging huge rents in the walls of the shaft in their determination to reach the murder-ground first.
For all his age, for all his ancient war-tempering, the Great Wolf got there in front, hurling himself over the lip of the floor platform and crashing through the outer doors of the elevator shaft. The ruined panels were shouldered aside, and he waded straight into a torrent of las-fire. The beams cracked against his armour and burned off harmlessly. A whole level of the tower beckoned, open-plan, stripped of civilian trappings and with nowhere to hide.
‘Feel the wrath of the Wolves, traitors!’ Ironhelm bellowed, spittle flying against his vox-grille, plunging straight into the ranks of horrified troopers beyond the broken doors. The booming echo of his challenge shattered what was left of the glass in the windows around the edges of the tower-level. More Wolves emerged from the shafts and charged into the contact zone, smoothly withdrawing power weapons from where they’d been mag-locked and gunning them into life.
The fight was short, brutal, terrifying. There were a few hundred mortal troopers deployed on the level, many with heavy weapons. Some were refugees from earlier fighting who’d survived and fallen back; other were fresh troops from the centre with gleaming armour and fresh lasguns. There were heavy weapons among them, including the artillery pieces the Gangavans had been using to snipe at the hunting packs’ approach. They were busy turning them inwards in an attempt to halt the advance of the horrors coming to kill them.
It did them no good. As Ironhelm crashed in among them, his blade whistling, he began to laugh again. Still amplified by the vox-units in his armour, the horrific sound echoed around the entire level. Rangr joined in, chuckling in a strange, chilling fashion as he mowed down whole swathes of wavering enemy soldiers.
‘Face me, filth!’ roared Ironhelm, ripping a man open with the backswing of his blade even as his free hand punched the chest in of another. ‘Fight like the men you once were!’
At the far side of the level, open to the elements where the shattered windows had once been, an autocannon crew were trying to swing
their weapon round to target the rampaging Wolves. Ironhelm caught sight of that, and roared with pleasure.
‘Well done, lads!’ he bellowed, hurling the broken-backed corpse of a Gangavan defender into a pillar and lurching towards the gun-crew. ‘Now try to get a shot!’
The frantic troopers almost did it. The heavy barrel swung round on its cumbersome pintle-mount, swaying into range and spooling up to fire. The ammo belt was sucked into the slot and the safety indicator blinked off. With an agonised look on his face, the gunner pulled the trigger, wincing as the vast form of the Wolf Lord thundered into swing-range.
As fast as death on the ice, Ironhelm hammered into them, ripping the autocannon barrel from its mount one-handed. He swung it round like a club, knocking three of the crew clean through the empty window-frames. Even before their trailing screams had died away, he’d cut open the rest of them with the frostblade. Then, with a savage kick, he sent the autocannon mount plunging into the chasm of the highway below.
‘Hjolda!’ he roared, throwing his arms into the air, frostblade in one fist, autocannon barrel in the other.
From that high vantage, right on the edge of the tower, Ironhelm could see out across the city. In every direction, fires were burning out of control. He saw other towers reel on their foundations, stricken with explosions. The sky was tattooed with the contrails of his gunships. The boom of ordnance made the ground drum, punctuated by the unmistakeable growl of advancing Land Raiders.
The city was being destroyed, block by block, district by district. No matter how many troops were thrown into the meat-grinder, the end was coming swiftly now.
He glanced at the mission schematic overlay on his helm display. Objectives were being captured in every theatre. Like a giant pair of claws, the Wolves were closing in on the principal targets. The void shield generators would be down before dawn, and the power stations wouldn’t be far behind.
His brothers had excelled themselves. Never had their perfection in war been quite so brazenly on display. Ironhelm grinned, feeling his curved fangs scrape the inside of his helm.
It was then that the curtains of smog and fuel-smoke cleared to the west, exposing the vast, hunched outlines of the pyramids on the horizon. They were much closer now, dark and massive, ringed by the heaviest defences left in the city.
‘They won’t help you,’ growled Ironhelm, lowering his frostblade in the direction he knew he must travel. ‘Nothing can help you now, faithless ones. You have played fire with the Wolves of Fenris.’
His lupine grin returned. Kill-pleasure surged through his body.
‘And now they are biting at your heels.’
The Cataphracts were awesome machines, fusions of cybernetic technology and weapons research from a more capable age. The huge figures, vaguely humanoid but far broader and heavier, worked tirelessly, hacking and drilling at the rockface of the tunnels, hammering away with their enormous drill-arms without pause or complaint. Their heavy segmented legs braced against the recoil, shrugging off the storm of emerging rock-fragments and wading through the piles of rubble created. In their wake came hundreds of Prosperine engineers, hauling away the broken stone, shoring up the tunnel roof, adding bracing pillars and knocking the jagged stone walls smooth. The work progressed like everything else did in the Thousand Sons fleet – calmly, efficiently, expertly.
It wasn’t fast enough. Aphael found himself increasingly unable to control his frustration at the pace of excavation. Already days had passed, days he could not afford to lose. The tunnels had not just been filled with loose rockfall, but had been cemented closed with melta blasts. At times the residue was as hard to dig out as the living rock would have been. The crust of Fenris, as might have been expected, was as unyielding as iron. To make matters worse, the Dogs had placed mines and unexploded fragmentation bombs within the fused stone, and several priceless Cataphracts had been lost as their drill-arms had set off the residual traps.
The delays infuriated him. Aphael knew that Temekh was drawing closer to his goal. If the Fang was not compromised and its wards of aversion destroyed by the time he did so, then Aphael’s position as commander of the army would be under threat. All of them, the sorcerers in charge of the invasion fleet, knew the stakes.
From his position inside the tunnel, Aphael watched as a trio of Cataphracts carved their way further into the heart of the mountain. Glowglobes hovered around them, bathing the robots in a dull orange light. The roof of the tunnel was barely above their massive shoulders as they worked. They were already knee-deep in broken stone, and the scurrying lines of mortal workers struggled to keep up with the task of removing it.
Aphael’s neck began to itch again. The sensation was maddening, as if tiny clawed hands had lodged themselves under his skin and were scraping to get out. When he turned his head he could feel the fingers and spurs of the feathers rustle against the inside of his armour. Something else had been growing on his face for some time, pressing against the plate of his helm. Soon, he knew, the cracks would begin to show. Already his right gauntlet wouldn’t close.
Aphael turned away from the rockface and stalked back the way he’d come, past the waiting rows of haulage transports, their hopper doors open and load-cranes extended. As he went, the men in the tunnels were quick to get out of his way. They’d grown wary of his erratic moods since the assault had ground into the sand.
He ignored them. As he got nearer the tunnel exit, the marks of excavation gave way to a rough roadway and permanent lighting. The tunnel roof and walls had been carved wide enough to allow Rhinos and Land Raiders to enter, which was one of the reasons hollowing it out had taken so long. Light armaments were already being shipped into the enclosed space. As the Cataphracts drew closer to their goal, they would be augmented with heavier weaponry. By the time the final walls were breached, whole companies of rubricae would be waiting to pile in.
Aphael reached the tunnel entrance and stepped into the bright, harsh light of the Fenris morning. His eyes seemed to have lost their usual photo-reactive speed, and for a moment he was half-blinded by the glare. Fresh snowfalls had covered over much of the devastation, but the causeways were still jammed with men and materiel. Plumes of smoke were everywhere, either from labouring vehicle engines or from fires lit by the troops to banish the worst of the chill.
A Prosperine captain hurried up to him. The man’s face was hidden behind his environment mask, but Aphael could already sense his fear. This would not be good news.
‘Lord,’ the man said, bowing clumsily.
‘Make it quick,’ snapped Aphael, wishing he could scratch his flesh for just a moment.
‘Captain Eirreq has voxed from the flagship.’
‘If the Lord Temekh wishes to speak to me, then he can do so himself.’
‘It’s not that.’ The man swallowed. ‘Lord Fuerza. His life-signature has departed from the aether.’
Aphael felt his heart jump a beat.
‘Out of range?’
‘I do not believe so, lord. I was told to inform you that, as far as the scryers can ascertain, he is dead.’
Aphael felt the dam of his pent-up fury break then. The frustration, the irritation, the fear of what he was becoming, all came to a head. Without thinking, he grabbed the warrior by his chestplate, holding him aloft in one hand.
‘Dead!’ he roared, uncaring who heard him. At the edge of his vision, he could see soldiers putting down their weapons and staring. ‘Dead!’
Let them stare.
‘Lord!’ cried the captain, struggling ineffectively against the power-armoured grip. ‘I–’
He never had the chance to finish. Aphael swung round, hurling the fragile body against the near wall of the tunnel entrance. It impacted with a thick, sickening thud, and slid down into the slush. Once there, it didn’t move again.
Aphael whirled round to face the rest of his men. There were hundreds of them close by, all staring at him. For a moment, a single, terrible moment, Aphael felt like launching into th
em too. His gauntlets crackled with the first sparks of his sorcerous fire, the deadly trade of the pyrae.
Slowly, with difficulty, he reined himself in.
What is happening to me?
He knew the answer. Every sorcerer in the Legion was schooled to know the answer to that. In time, the Changer of Ways always extracted the price for the gifts he bestowed, and even the Rubric was no guarantee of escaping it.
I am being turned into the thing that I hate.
‘Get back to work!’ he bellowed at the men.
They hurried to comply. None of them made any move towards the prone body of the captain. Perhaps they would later, when Aphael was gone, moving furtively and in fear of what the Masters would do to them.
Aphael looked up. Far, far into the hazy distance, the pinnacle of the Fang soared into the icy air. Even after being blackened by days of bombardment, it was still magnificent. It rose defiant, as immovable and gigantic as the Obsidian Tower on the Planet of the Sorcerers. For the first time, Aphael noticed the similarities in the structures. It was just one more mockery.
‘I will break it,’ he muttered, uncaring that he spoke out loud. His left hand clenched into a fist, and he hammered it against his helm. The pain of the impact helped to dull the incessant itching.
So he did it again. And again.
It was only when he felt the warm trickle of blood down his neck that he stopped. The sensation was strangely calming, as if the crude medicines of the old leeches had been applied, relieving the pressure within his tortured body.
The respite was fleeting. Even as he turned away from the mountain, ready to walk back to the command platform above the causeway, he could feel the burning start to return. It would never leave him alone. It would plague him, torment him and goad him until it got what it wanted.
‘I will break it,’ he mumbled again, hanging on to the thought as he limped away from the Fang.
As he passed from the front, the mortal soldiers looked at one another, startled. Then, slowly, they returned to their duties, readying the army for the assault to come, trying not to think too hard about the behaviour of the warrior they had been taught to revere as a god.
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