Battle Of The Fang

by Chris Wraight

  As that thought crossed his mind, it forced a weary smile, the grim acceptance brought on by utter desperation.

  Have we been reduced to this?

  ‘If you miss the action, I will claim the primarch as prey,’ said Redpelt. ‘You’ll have to live with that shame.’

  Wyrmblade laughed in his strange, cynical way.

  ‘You deserve it, Blood Claw. But you will not fight Magnus alone. Take my oath on it.’

  Then he turned and strode through the makeshift barricades, pushing his way past the working kaerls. Redpelt watched him go for a while, then cast his eyes back over the remaining defences.

  Twelve Wolves, a mix of Claws, Hunters and Long Fangs. A few hundred kaerls, rammed into the narrow approaches to the Annulus Chamber or taking up positions within it. A couple of heavy weapons, but mostly sidearms, and those low on ammo.

  Then he looked over to the Annulus stones, only a few metres away. The image of the Wolf that Stalks the Stars sat in the centre of the circle, the emblem of the Chapter. Russ himself had stood before that device once, surrounded by his mighty retinue, all warriors without equal.

  So few left. So few, to defend the very heart of our realm.

  Redpelt let out a shuddering sigh. He was in danger of letting the events of the past few hours get the better of him. He could imagine Helfist laughing at that, taunting him as he always had done.

  Not now. There was work to be done.

  ‘You! Mortal!’ he roared, striding over to where a gang of kaerls was struggling to carry a fresh barricade into place. ‘Not there. I’ll show you where.’

  And then he was busy again, consumed by the need to make the Annulus as secure as possible. They did not have long. As the defenders worked, the sounds of the coming storm could be heard, far below them, lost in the endless maze of tunnels. It was still a long way off, but coming closer with every heartbeat.

  Magnus stalked through the corridors of the Aett, pausing only to destroy the meagre wards against sorcery that still lingered in the upper reaches of the Jarlheim. Behind him came the slow-moving squadrons of Rubric Marines.

  There was almost no resistance. The tunnels and shafts were empty, or surrendered quickly by scattered bands of mortal defenders, bereft of hope and leadership. Magnus knew that Wolves still fought on down in the lower levels, pinned back by his troops and suffering a slow strangulation. The few defenders in the upper levels capable of mounting any kind of fight must have retreated to the summit, hoping against reason to hold the last redoubt for a few more hours.

  That defiance did not surprise him, though he couldn’t summon much admiration for it. He’d never expected them to roll over and give up. The Wolves had kept attacking him as he’d swept up the Fangthane stairway, even though they must have known they would die in the attempt. That big warrior, the one with the chainfist and the sound of bitterness in his battle-cry, his strikes had even hurt.

  Magnus looked around him with disdain. These were, he knew, the levels where the Sky Warriors dwelt. The surroundings were as squalid and bare as the rest of the benighted mountain. Though the Fangthane had a kind of bleak grandeur, there was really very little in the Fang to be impressed by. It wasn’t much more than a big rock, half-carved open, cold and shivering with mountain-draughts.

  Czamine, the pavoni sorcerer-lord, came alongside him then, striding hard to match his primarch’s pace.

  ‘Lord, do you have more orders?’ he asked. ‘I have sent squads into the side-tunnels to destroy the remaining wards. We can cause much damage there before we engage the last defenders.’

  Magnus nodded.

  ‘Do that. Burn, crack and maim everything you find. Pay special attention to the totems and charms. The Wolves have an inexplicable weakness for them, and it will hurt their souls to have them broken.’

  ‘It will be done. And then, the summit.’

  ‘Indeed, though you will be alone there, at least for a time.’

  Czamine inclined his helm questioningly, though he didn’t dare voice a query.

  ‘I have an appointment of my own to keep,’ explained Magnus. ‘When you’ve finished smashing what remains of the artefacts, look for me again at the pinnacle.’

  Magnus’s didn’t bother to hide the look of anticipation on his face then.

  ‘Russ’s chamber is close, my son, the one he called the Annulus. You will have the honour of taking it. We will meet again there, once the last hope of this wretched Chapter has been extinguished.’

  Wyrmblade entered the chamber of the fleshmakers. He went hurriedly, passing through the many interlinked rooms swiftly. The vacated spaces were still brightly lit, but looked mournful in their emptiness. He hadn’t encountered enemies in the tunnels leading from the Annulus to his own domain, but he knew it was only a matter of time before they arrived. He had precious moments; moments he could use to salvage the essential elements of his research before all was destroyed. He had little idea what to do with it after that, but something would occur to him. It always did.

  Wyrmblade strode through the empty fleshmaker labs, hardly seeing the bare metal slabs where the bodies had lain. After so long detained in the Fangthane, it felt odd to be back in those antiseptic spaces, bathed once more in the harsh light of medicae glowglobes reflected from the walls of white tiles.

  Wyrmblade approached the inner sanctum, the place where the Tempering programme had been conducted in secrecy for so many years. The blast doors were shut, just as he’d left them. He prepared to issue the voice-activation release, forcing his pulse to lessen as he did so. Agitation would only interfere with the mechanism.

  It was then that he stopped. He looked around, down the long rows of silent machinery, the pristine operating slabs.

  There were no bodies. Frar, the Grey Hunter who’d been brought here by Morek, was gone. All the others were gone. It was as if no trace of them had ever existed. It was then that he realised the truth.

  He’d not arrived at the laboratorium first.

  Turning slowly, knowing the consequences of what he did, he opened the doors.

  The Tempering chambers lay beyond. They were in disarray. The birthing tubes were shattered, their contents dribbling across the tiled floor. The corpses of the experimental Sons of Russ lay on the floor, trampled and torn apart. The vials were all destroyed, broken into glistening shards of glass. In the rooms beyond, the cogitators crackled, consumed by flames. Irreplacable equipment, some of it dating back to the days of Unification on Terra, had been entirely devastated, and priceless inner mechanics were now strewn open like entrails.

  It was gone. All gone.

  Wyrmblade took in the ruin of his life’s work in an instant. Then his amber eyes flickered up. Most of his attention was drawn to the man standing in the centre of the destruction.

  No, not a man. He was smaller in stature than he had been on the stairs of the Fangthane, but still greater than any Space Marine. His golden mantle hung from three-metre-high shoulders, encasing a breastplate of bronze. Amniotic fluid dripped from his fingers. His single eye glistened with triumph.

  Wyrmblade drew his sword, and the dragon-edge slid from the scabbard with an empty hiss.

  ‘Do you really intend to fight me, Thar Hraldir?’ asked Magnus calmly.

  ‘With all my hearts,’ said Wyrmblade, igniting the blade’s disruptor field.

  The primarch nodded.

  ‘Of course you do. But know this first, old man. The future you envisaged was worth striving to prevent, and so what remains of my Legion has been sacrificed for it. There would have been no invasion of Fenris without your meddling, Wolf Priest. In the last moments you have alive, reflect on that. ’

  Then Wyrmblade roared with all his old, bitter fury, charging toward the giant primarch and sweeping the blade towards his neck. The dragon-sword, carved with the flowing image of the wyrm, screamed in its turn, hurtling over the bronze breastplate and toward its target.

  Magnus drew his own weapon in an instant. His movements
seemed casual, unhurried, but they somehow had effect instantly. One moment, he was unarmed and relaxed; the next, he was restored to the fiery angel he’d been in the Fangthane.

  The swords clashed, and the clang of the metal edges resounded from the walls.

  Wyrmblade moved as if he were a Blood Claw in the prime of conditioning, twisting his blade in tight, sharp arcs, crying aloud with every strike. The weariness of the long battle fell away from him, freeing his limbs to move with their old crushing, dazzling speed.

  In all his hundreds of years of service, he had never fought more finely, had never perfected the channeling of kill-urge more completely. Wyrmblade whirled, ducked and thrust with sublime energy, driven by an anger and loss that consumed him utterly; a burning, terrible grief that, for a few moments, lifted his artistry beyond even that of the Wolves of Fenris and into the category of legends.

  Magnus parried him with an unconscious ease, moving just as smoothly, deploying his blade with all the remorseless skill of his heritage. It was almost as if he were allowing the Wolf Priest his last moment of perfection, gifting him a final flourish of martial sublimity before the end had to come.

  But it couldn’t last. Wyrmblade, for all his furious energy and control, was to a primarch what a mortal was to a Space Marine. As even his age-hardened muscles tired of their furious assault, the dragon-blade dipped for an instant, leaving an opening. It only took one stroke from Magnus’s sword, just a single thrust aimed directly at Wyrmblade’s chest. The primarch’s eldritch blade passed through the armour smoothly.

  Impaled on the metal, Wyrmblade spasmed. He struggled for a little longer, desperately trying to pull himself from the bite of the sword. His own blade fell from his fingers, its energy field still fizzing angrily.

  The Wolf Priest coughed up blood, hot and black, and it sprayed across the inside of his helm.

  For a final time, his vision came to him. Space Wolves, as numerous as the stars, bringing war to the darkest reaches of the galaxy, shaping the Imperium in the image of the Wolf King and making it as vital and powerful as Russ had been.

  ‘It was... done... for Russ,’ he gasped, feeling the cold clutch of death steal upon him.

  Then he went limp, slumping heavily on his enemy’s sword.

  Grimly, Magnus withdrew the blade, letting Wyrmblade’s body crumple to the floor.

  ‘If that is so, then you failed him,’ remarked the primarch, looking down at the ravaged corpse impassively. ‘This struggle is over.’

  ‘Not while you live, betrayer!’

  Magnus snapped his gaze up. Amazingly, there were warriors charging towards him. A Terminator-clad giant, his wolfclaws blazing with angry lightning. A Rune Priest, flanked by two bodyguards, his staff crackling with forks of aether-born power. And behind them, moving more slowly, something massive and ponderous. Something he recognised from long, long ago.

  The Russvangum hurtled into the orbital engagement zone, its lances blazing. The escorts flew hard in its wake, opening fire with every weapon they possessed. The arrival of the Wolves’ battle fleet was devastating, wrapped in fire and fury.

  The Thousand Sons fleet did not engage them, but began to pull away from Fenris in a move that had clearly been planned for. The Herumon, the only vessel in the armada capable of taking on Ironhelm’s flagship, powered out of harm’s way smoothly, turning on its axis and heading directly for the jump-points.

  Space Wolves frigates and destroyers headed straight into the heart of the enemy, throwing broadsides against the flanks of the ponderous troop-ships as they screamed past them. The golden vessels began to burn, their shields buckling under the fury of the assault.

  But an orbital war was not what Ironhelm had come for. He could see the dark circle of destruction about the Fang even from the realspace viewers. Kilometres-wide, it stained the pristine reflective expanse of Asaheim like a wound in pale flesh.

  As he looked at it, his mind was taken back to the ranks of Wolf Brothers, howling in mockery and anguish even as they were cut down. The air of the Gangava pyramid had been noxious, infused with madness and horror. Breaking free of that battle had been the hardest decision he’d ever made. Lost in a world of rage, he’d barely recognised Kjarlskar when the Wolf Lord had fought his way to his side. Even then, even after he’d heard what had happened on Fenris, a part of him had resisted the call to come back.

  The depth of his folly had been revealed in an instant. It would have been less painful to have kept on fighting, to have lost himself in the kill-urge, to have gloried in the righteous drive to purge the tainted from existence.

  He still saw the faces of those he’d killed. Tortured faces. Faces that masked a dreadful awareness. Somewhere deep down, the Wolf Brothers knew what they’d been twisted into.

  We keep the danger close.

  ‘To the pods,’ he growled, stomping from the bridge and down to the launch bays. On every ship of the fleet, Jarls of the Great Companies did the same. Hundreds of drop-pods were already primed for planetfall, each one carrying a full payload. Thunderhawk engines thrummed into life in the hangars, waiting for the all-clear to burst out into the troposphere and into cannon-range.

  The entire Chapter had achieved orbit, sweeping away resistance with the same contemptuous ease as the Thousand Sons had, so many days ago. The massed landings were only moments away.

  Ironhelm boarded his pod impatiently, leaned back against the adamantium walls and felt the restraint cage slam into place. The shell-doors hissed closed, and launch klaxons began to blare.

  ‘Land me on the summit,’ he snarled over the comm.

  That would be dangerous, with no margin for error – the bulk of the pods were being sent down to the causeways. The operators of the bays knew better than to argue, though, and the coordinates were duly set.

  ‘Clear to launch, lord,’ came a voice over the comm.

  ‘Do it,’ ordered Ironhelm, bracing for the release of the clamps, and then the dizzying, whistling descent towards the surface. It could not come soon enough.

  I am coming for you.

  The launch-tube doors flew open, and the pods began to fall. In every direction, Wolves vessels powered into battle, tearing apart any enemy ships too slow to evade their guns.

  He knew what the enemy would be thinking now. He knew that, all along the causeways, entrenched Spireguard battalions would be looking up, realising that their fleet was deserting them and that they were being left to fend for themselves. It was then, as they watched the skies darken, that the same terrible thought would enter every one of their terrified minds. He took a cold pleasure in that.

  This is the planet of the Wolves. And they have come to take it back.

  Sturmhjart spread his arms wide, kindling a rage of storm-energy. Fists of lightning raced out, engulfing Magnus in a nimbus of coruscating brilliance. The sigils on the Rune Priest’s armour exploded into life, burning heartblood-red.

  Greyloc and his two Wolf Guard leapt into action, snarling with pent-up rage. They went for Magnus like a pack taking down a konungur – one at the throat, one at the breast, one at the legs. Their armour shimmered from Sturmhjart’s protective aegis as they charged into combat.

  Greyloc was fastest. He got his talons fast up into the primarch’s face, raking and tearing. Magnus fell back, rocked by the speed of the assault. Though he stood over a metre taller than the Terminator Marines, the pace and ferocity of the attacks pushed him on to his heels, and he stumbled.

  Magnus the Red, son of the immortal Emperor, primarch of the Thousand Sons, stumbled.

  ‘For the Allfather!’ roared Greyloc in triumph, his whole being consumed by the awesome, feral power of the hunt. Like Wyrmblade before him, the absolute hatred engendered by Magnus lent him, for a time, truly astonishing power. ‘For Russ!’

  Greyloc bludgeoned the primarch back another pace, howling his hatred in scarcely intelligible frenzy. Magnus got his sword in place, but it was cracked aside by a savage swipe of wolfclaws.

/>   A Wolf Guard made contact, plunging his talons into Magnus’s leg. Sturmhjart bellowed with kill-pleasure at that, and his wyrdfire roared with even greater intensity. The other Wolf Guard crunched his claw into the primarch’s chest. The Wolves had the scent of blood in their nostrils, and it made them awesome.

  Magnus staggered again, crashing into the wall behind him, breaking it open, demolishing it as he passed through. Greyloc leapt after him, closely followed by the others. Sturmhjart kept on their heels, consumed with an inferno of raging wyrd-flame. The four Wolves harried, stabbed and hammered at the retreating daemon-primarch, their fists flying and blades biting. There was no let-up, no respite, just a flurry of horrifying blows, each one sent hurtling into contact with a visceral, remorseless passion.

  They drove the daemon-primarch back further, tearing through another wall, laying waste to everything around them. The noise of roaring and slavering was deafening, a hideous cacophony of hate-filled defiance that rose, booming, into the narrow space of the fleshmaker halls.

  ‘Death to the witch!’ bellowed Greyloc, utterly possessed by kill-urge, his whole body pumping with furious energy.

  He was fighting at such a pitch of perfection that it made him want to scream aloud. Greyloc could feel himself burning up as he fought on, damaging himself irretrievably through the very action of such unrestrained violence. There was no retreat from this, no possibility of recovery. He was fighting himself to death, using up every gram of potential in his mortal body.

  I am the weapon.

  Nothing less would do. He was contesting a living god, and only his indomitable faith, his unshakeable certainty, his complete commitment, would possibly match up to that awesome task.

  My pure state.

  So he pushed Magnus back again, giving him no time, no space. Another wall crashed into ruins, destroyed by the lightning-crowned rampage of their furious progress.

  They burst through the rubble into a wide, open space. They’d broken out of the laboratorium and into a hangar of some kind, one of the many hundreds that studded the mountain near the summit. There was a single gunship left on the apron, ruined and black from heavy battle-damage. At the far end of the launch bay, a gale roared past. The thundering of the vengeful wind boomed around their ears, fresh from the frigid airs of Asaheim, harsh and howling.