The blast was imminent. Krom’s mind filled with jagged fragments of betrayal and mutation.
The wyrd roared with awful birth, and the dread owner of the name howled by the Dark Apostle appeared. It stood before Krom at the edge of the glyph. Majestic in triumph, Tzen’char spread its wings.
‘Stern!’ it roared. The Grey Knight looked up.
Krom charged at the daemon. He rammed his shoulder into the abomination’s back. It was like running headlong into a mountainside. The impact stunned him, but the daemon fell. He emptied his bolt pistol into its skull. Suddenly he was staring at the front of the daemon. The maze of its being reassembled its configuration in the blink of an eye. It was prone, and then it was standing, and its sword had pierced Krom’s left shoulder. His pistol arm went numb. He stepped forward into the blade, moving to within striking distance again, raising his axe.
The daemon laughed. It raised its right hand. Energy danced from the claws, as blinding as the unholy light of the glyph.
Serkir leapt at Tzen’char. His frost axe came down on that right arm. It bit deep. The labyrinthine being shifted again. Serkir’s blade went all the way through and struck the floor. The daemon’s arm was untouched. Serkir’s attack had gained Krom one second more of life.
And the daemon laughed. The sorcery on its talons became a roaring nimbus as it reached for Krom.
He could see nothing except the light. The burning, destroying light.
Except now the light was filled with prayer. And the daemon was screaming.
The malignant jade shattered, replaced by the purity of silver.
The energy of the wyrd came apart, broken from the inside. Stern was there. Stern had entered the eye of the wyrdstorm. Krom had turned the daemon’s attention away, and the Grey Knight had stabbed his holy sword into the centre of the glyph.
Tzen’char screamed. All the daemons screamed.
The build-up of energy was reversed. Even the glyph shrieked.
The light of judgement consumed all that was unholy.
EPILOGUE
It had been Scout Dolutas, wounded almost to death by the savagery of mutated Space Wolves. It had not even had to speak to deliver its message to Araphil, to give him the answers he dreaded. The Dark Angels had seen the images held by the skull. They had been reluctant to draw the terrible conclusions, but their thoughts had been inexorably pulled towards that chasm. They had taken the bait, and the great event had begun.
It had been Master Astropath Asconditus. Into Sammael’s ears it had delivered questions and suspicions, all constructed around the tiny fragments of another lie. It rejoiced in the perfection of its art as Sammael, reluctantly, slowly, but inevitably, had walked still further down the path.
Then that form of Asconditus had served its purpose too. Another kill, another disappearance on the Rock. The little touches gave it so much pleasure. It watched the Dark Angels begin to suspect an alliance between the Space Wolves and a daemonic party. It tried to remember when it had last tasted such delight.
Now it was the seneschal Vox Mendaxis, and it waited upon Grand Master Azrael. Events were proceeding so perfectly, it had no need to act for the moment. There were no messages to twist. No orders to misinterpret. Azrael had the facts: Chaos taint in the entire Fenris system, Space Wolves transforming into Wulfen. Nothing but the truth.
Azrael was still regrettably hesitant. For the moment, though. Only for the moment.
Under the hood of Vox Mendaxis, the Changeling suppressed a smile.
The vox system was working again in the damaged command centre of Morkai’s Keep. The unit was a powerful one, and some of the interference had diminished. Harald established contact with Sven Bloodhowl, holding the World Wolf’s Lair on Svellgard. The Iron Priests of both companies used the signals from the two fortresses to amplify each other.
And now he heard Krom Dragongaze’s voice, too.
Harald stood at the gaping hole in the command centre’s wall. He looked up into the night sky of Frostheim while he spoke to Dragongaze.
‘Brother,’ he said, ‘it is good to speak to you.’
‘And you. What news of the Great Wolf?’
‘None. Communication with Lord Iron Wolf has been fragmentary. The situation on Midgardia is dire. All contact with Grimnar’s strike force has ceased.’ He paused. ‘The Iron Wolf says there was an earthquake…’
‘I will not believe it,’ said Dragongaze. ‘We have hope now. Let us use it well. We purged Valdrmani. We will free our other worlds too.’
At the augur bank behind Harald, Feingar shouted, ‘Vessels translating in-system!’
Harald rushed back inside. ‘Who?’ he asked.
‘Dark Angels,’ Feingar said. He tapped the augur network’s pict screen. One reading after another appeared. ‘Ultramarines. Iron Hands…’ More than a dozen different Chapter runes appeared over the vessel signals. Then came those of Knightly houses. Then mass transporters of the Astra Militarum. The fleet was immense.
‘Dragongaze,’ Harald said, ‘Are you picking up the same signatures?’ He had so many doubts. There had been so much deception. He had to be sure.
‘We are,’ the Fierce-eye said. ‘It looks like a substantial portion of the Dark Angels fleet before we even count the rest.’
‘It is their fleet,’ Feingar said. Then his eyes widened. He pointed to a rune many times larger than the rest. ‘Russ,’ he swore. ‘That’s the Rock!’
Doubts. Patterns. Dooms within dooms. Harald felt the events click together like the gears of a terrible machine. As Feingar updated the positions of the fleet minute by minute, Harald returned to the breach once more. He watched the sky.
He witnessed the passage of a moon, one that did not belong in the Fenris System.
He saw the movement of stars he knew to be warships.
He was still watching when the sky flared, and the bombardment of the Fenris System began.
LEGACY
OF RUSS
ROBBIE MACNIVEN
THE LOST KING
The World Wolf’s Lair, Svellgard
Logan Grimnar – the Fangfather, the Old Wolf, the High King of Fenris – was dead.
So the daemons said. They howled and shrieked and gibbered the news from warp-spawned throats that shouldn’t have been capable of intelligible words. But the servants of the Dark Gods had never concerned themselves with nature’s constraints.
Logan Grimnar is dead!
‘They lie,’ Sven growled. The young Wolf Lord was clutching his doubled-headed battleaxe, Frostclaw, with such intensity that his whole armoured body was shaking. ‘They lie.’
‘They are warp-scum,’ Olaf Blackstone said. ‘Lying is the sole reason for their existence.’ The white-pelted Bloodguard stood behind and slightly to the right of his lord, yellow eyes surveying the bleak hills that lay barely a mile across the icy sea. Those hills now undulated with a living carpet of daemons, like an infestation of lice swarming over a rotting skull. They had appeared not half an hour before, crawling like primordial nightmares from the depths of Svellgard’s oceans. They were massing for an attack, cohorts of lesser daemons marshalling beneath the nightmarish banners of their gods, and as they did so their deranged shrieks carried across the cold waters to Sven and the rest of his Firehowler Space Wolves.
‘They’re trying to provoke us,’ Olaf said. ‘Hoping we divide our forces.’
Sven Bloodhowl opened his mouth to reply, then paused as the hammering of bolter fire broke out behind him. His Great Company were still purging the last of the defences at the heart of the World Wolf’s Lair, burning the shrieking daemons from their holes with gouts of blazing promethium before mowing them down with bolter fire.
Progress reports trickled back constantly over the vox as the noose tightened around the last wyrdspawn left in the depths of the fortified missile control nexus. Nine packs, the entirety of Sven’s Great Company, were stalking the bunkers, redoubts and weapon emplacements arrayed in concentric circles around th
e rockcrete keep dominating the island’s centre. They would not stop until they had hunted down every last creature from the first daemonic wave to have overrun the island.
‘I’m provoked,’ Sven said as the bolter echoes were snatched away by Svellgard’s cruel wind. ‘What’s the status of the Drakebanes?’
‘Ten of the pups still able to wield a chainsword.’
‘And the Firestones?’
‘Only five. Wergid is among the dead. The survivors are still hungry though. As are our Wulfen.’
‘Then you shall lead them, Olaf. Vox Torvind, Kregga, Uuntir and Istun. Have them return from the central bunkers and assemble here. And two Thunderhawks.’
‘The Godspear and the Wolfdawn have both refuelled and rearmed. They are inbound from the fleet, expected arrival in ten minutes.’
‘Then they shall be the vehicles of our wrath. A wolf should never suffer a liar.’
In truth, Sven had not killed enough today. His heart still raced and his fingers itched. The thought of wyrdling filth defiling not just Svellgard, but all the worlds of his home system, brought up an instinctive urge to lash out. He had not had word from any of the other battle-zones for hours – as far as he was aware Harald Deathwolf was still consolidating on nearby Frostheim, while Egil Iron Wolf and the Great Wolf were engaged on Midgardia. The daemonic taunts reached him again from across the narrow sea, and he shuddered.
They were wrong. Logan Grimnar was not dead. He couldn’t be.
‘To attack is unwise, my jarl,’ Olaf said, still watching the nearby island. ‘There are doubtless more such filth spawning from the rifts below the waves all about us. If we split our forces we invite annihilation.’
Sven turned to face his old packmate, and although rage still burned in the Wolf Lord’s grey eyes, his tattooed features and strong, stubble-lined jaw were clenched with a tight smile.
‘Are your fangs getting too long for all this, Olaf?’ he asked. The Bloodguard champion returned his gaze levelly, without expression, too old to be so easily drawn.
‘Don’t tell me a hundred-odd kills are enough to sate you for one day?’ Sven pressed. ‘If the Bloodguard aren’t with me I’m sure the Oathbound would take your place? Or the Firewyrms?’
Olaf still said nothing, but there was a chill whisper of naked steel as his wolf claws slid free from his gauntlets.
‘If you wish to teach monsters not to lie,’ the Bloodguard said, ‘then I will be as happy as ever to assist with the lesson.’
Seven miles south of the Magma Gates,
Midgardia
‘Logan Grimnar is dead.’
The daemon choked on the words, a flood of writhing maggots spilling from its locked jaw. Egil Iron Wolf slammed his boot down on the fallen plaguebearer’s skull, smashing it to a grey, squirming pulp.
‘Strike Force Morkai, come in,’ the Iron Wolf snapped into the vox. His only answer was static discord. It had been the same for over an hour now. He fought back the urge to stamp down again on the plaguebearer as it sank back into the ooze that had once been the jungle floor.
‘My jarl, we must return to the Ironfist.’ The voice of Conran Wulfhide, the pack leader of his Ironguard, cut in over the link. ‘We can’t stay out here. This entire place is toxic. It will eat us alive.’
Egil knew Conran was right, but still he hesitated. The purple spore jungles of Midgardia had been transformed beyond all recognition by Nurgle’s rotting touch, once-mighty trunks now swollen with blight and infested by gigantic maggots, their leaves turned black with decay. The ground underfoot had been reduced to a foetid, cloying pus-bog that writhed with worms and sightless, snapping maws. Egil’s Great Company had been battling through the corruption for hours, part of the two-pronged counter-attack designed to sweep the wyrdlings off Midgardia and retake its subterranean cities. The offensive, however, was becoming bogged down in every sense of the word.
Even worse, the runic Juvjk script that flashed across Egil’s visor warned him that the poisonous fug clouding the air was rapidly stripping away layer after layer of his power armour. Even reinforced ceramite, sealed by the Iron Priests and blessed by the Wolf Priests, was no match for Midgardia’s acidic air. The rest of Egil’s Great Company was faring no better – howls of agony occasionally interrupted the vox chatter as the nightmarish atmosphere penetrated an unfortunate warrior’s armoured joints or ate through his visor’s lenses, causing flesh to blister and slough away in just a few heartbeats. Egil had ordered all packs to withdraw to the sealed interiors of their transports while he continued to try to make contact with Strike Force Morkai. With the Great Wolf, Logan Grimnar.
‘Back to the Ironfist,’ Egil finally said. Around him heavy bolters and lascannons hammered and cracked as the armoured might of the Ironwolves sought to keep the shuffling, slime-soaked Nurgle Tallybands at bay. For the past hour the droning wyrdspawn had showed little desire to close with the spearheads of Egil’s stalled advance, apparently content to soak up their firepower among the blighted trees and let the spores of the infested jungle do their work for them. Egil had been forced to halt his grinding offensive when the vox had lost all contact with Grimnar’s own thrust, which was supposed to have been keeping pace below, following Midgardia’s labyrinth of underground tunnels and passageways. Communication had been intermittent right from the beginning, but now it was gone entirely. And the counter-offensive wasn’t even a day old.
Egil was the last member of the Great Company to return to his transport, slamming the sealing rune on the hatch behind him. Within Ironfist’s red-lit hold Conran and the five other members of his pack waited, their grey battleplate befouled with a thick layer of pestilential filth. They were all that remained of Egil’s Ironguard. His Terminators had been lent to Grimnar when he had descended into Midgardia’s depths with the Champions of Fenris. He felt their loss almost as acutely as he did that of the Great Wolf himself. He activated the cogitator monitor bolted above the hold’s crew hatch, uploading the latest combat schematics to its gently pulsing screen display.
His Great Company had been divided into four Spears of Russ, one for each point on the map. Fists of Predator and Vindicator battle tanks supported Rhinos, Razorbacks and Land Raiders filled with the foot-packs. They’d punched out from their base at the Magma Gates and swept all before them. Now, they were stalled and separated, the blinking runes representing each Spear static and beset by assaulting icons.
The Midgardian defence forces acting as their reserves were suffering even worse, their fragile human physiologies no match for the deadliest of the Plague God’s diseases. Egil watched their casualty percentages for a moment, seeing them tick up steadily with each passing second. Even the most basic military mind would have acknowledged that their position had become an impossible one. The Iron Wolf activated his vox, blink-clicking to add the Ironwolf pack leaders from all four Spears to the channel.
‘This is Egil,’ he said. ‘Without word from Strike Force Morkai the gains we have made over the past two hours are no longer tenable. We must assume it is possible for wyrdspawn to infiltrate our interior lines through the unguarded tunnels below us. If they successfully break our Midgardian defence force reserves then each Spear of Russ will be cut off from the Magma Gates’ landing zones, as well as each other. I am therefore ordering Strike Force Fenris to withdraw by packs towards the Magma Gates. Once there we will commence a staggered withdrawal into orbit, starting with the defence forces and ending with my own Spear. Pack leaders, acknowledge.’
As confirmations trickled back down the link, Egil had to fight to stay silent. His cold, calculated orders, so characteristic of the Iron Wolf, concealed the war which raged in his armour-plated breast. Logically a staged withdrawal was the only option. Strike Force Fenris had stalled deep inside an utterly inimical environment, was on the brink of overstretching even as it was outflanked, and the enemy’s numbers showed no sign of decreasing. To continue to advance ran the risk of seeing his entire Great Company overrun and an
nihilated, their remains eaten up by Midgardia’s hideous plague jungles.
But the Old Wolf was missing, somewhere below. If Egil took a backwards step now he knew he would be forever remembered as the one who had abandoned Logan Grimnar. If he saved his Ironwolves by ordering a retreat, he damned himself forever in the eyes of his brothers. He snarled with frustration and keyed the vox again.
‘An addendum to the previous orders. Conran Wulfhide of my own pack will be assuming command of the Strike Force with immediate effect, until my return.’
Conran’s head snapped up, and he began to protest. Egil carried on, speaking over him.
‘I will be taking the remainder of my Ironguard underground, to re-establish contact with the Great Wolf. The evacuation from the Magma Gates is to proceed as previously outlined. Within that framework, all pack leaders are to defer to Conran as though he speaks with my own voice. Is that clear?’
More affirmations, and now complaints too.
‘Let the Cogclaws come with you, lord,’ Kjartan Stone-eye said over the vox. ‘My pack have been firing blind into spore clouds and wading through daemon spoor all day. Let us continue the Iron Hunt, lord, I beg you.’
‘Is what the wyrdlings are chanting true?’ Nokdr Iceclaw of the Snowfangs asked before Egil could respond. ‘Is the Great Wolf dead?’
‘That is what I’m going to disprove,’ Egil said. ‘And the rest of you will follow my orders, or Russ help me I will tear the fangs from the jaws of each and every pack leader in this Great Company. Show some discipline, Ironwolves.’
Legacy of the Wulfen - David Annandale & Robbie MacNiven Page 16