Russ drew in a deep, deep breath, tasting the flavour of the world he was about to slaughter, feeling its fear on his lips. Freki and Geri bounded across the earth before him, slaver dripping from their open jaws. Bloodhowl had already commenced his advance up on the right flank. Helmschrot had run into heavy fighting on the left, but was forcing his way towards the first of the fortress gates. Russ' own forces were where he liked them to be - the centre, surrounded by the clamour of war on all sides.
Grimnir Blackblood was forging ahead, swinging his great maul in widening circles. Others of the Einherjar went with him, laying into the approaching enemy with waves of precise bolter fire. Lines of Scarabines became visible in the smog ahead, and beyond them the hazy outlines of towering walkers, their cockpit lights glowing through the kicked-up murk.
Russ broke into a heavy run, drawing Krakenmaw. The first of his prey emerged, lumbering into bolter range of Blackblood's packs, their shield units flexing and flaring. They didn't see his charge until it was too late, and then he was among them, laying about him with the growling chainsword. Krakenmaw sliced through both shield and armour, trailing electric explosions across the wide parabola of the strike. Russ started to laugh, though the sound erupted from his helm's vox-unit as a kind of bestial slurring, thick with white-noise He killed and killed, smashing the bodies aside and hurling them into the air. Every kill-stroke brought forth a fresh cry of triumph, radiating out like a shock wave.
He drove the vanguard onwards, and they reached the foot of the causeway. The tank-groups had reached their forward positions by then, and were sending waves of shells slamming into the fortress' walls. All the while, heavier ordnance was trundling into range - siege guns, bombards, graviton platforms and ever-heavier tracked units. The enemy gun-points, mounted high up along the distant ramparts, returned sporadic fire, hurling mortar shells and interference clusters into the oncoming tide, but the volume of it did little to dent the massive and growing momentum of the Wolves' charge.
The first hunt-packs reached bolter-range of the first gates - vast creations of granite and banded adamantium, framed by columns the width of a Titan and capped by the immense icon of the Tyrant Thickets of las-fire angled down from shielded points, forming a lattice of intersecting crossfire that punched through smoke and made the air boil. A squadron of Land Raiders attempting to force a passage towards the sealed doors was caught in the maelstrom and cut apart, their armour plate buckling and their tracks sliced to ribbons. The ground beyond them boiled with fresh Scarabine divisions, swarming out of hidden bolt-holes and lumbering up to engage.
'Hold!' roared Russ, reaching a low ridge to the south of the gates.
His forces formed up around him, raising the banners of the VI Legion against the precipitous heights. Fresh squadrons of armour ground as close as they dared, opening up against the surrounding wall sections but remaining wary of the kill-zone in front of the portal itself.
Blackblood limped up to his primarch, his armour covered in scorch-marks. 'It'll take some cracking,' he said.
Russ checked the battlefield schema on his helm display, assessing the deployments, the drop-zones, the forward movements. The Dark Angels were making impressive progress, locking down their beachheads and spreading out to take new ground. Both Bloodhowl and Helmschrot were moving towards their respective flank targets at speed, carving up territory as if in a bid to out-do one another. Both jarls were sweeping back inwards now, devouring the ranks of enemy infantry out in the open before aiming to join up with their primarch. All that speed would be wasted, however, if the gates remained shut.
'Oh, they'll break now,' said Russ, noting the set of runic location-markers creeping up on his tactical display. 'You'll enjoy this.'
As the words left his mouth, the ground beneath them began to vibrate. This wasn't the erratic rhythm of shells exploding, but the growling hammer-strike of engines, huge engines, massed and overlapping in a gathering crescendo of earth-shaking intensity.
The first rank of them swaggered into view - thirty Typhon siege tanks, their smokestacks belching as they reached their designated fire-points along the crest of the ridge. In their wake came the truly enormous fortress-reducers - ten Legion Shadowsword units, each one bearing a single Volcano cannon, shrouded in ribbons of smoke and swaying heavily. The superheavies crunched and crushed their way across the fields of the fighting and the slain, propelled onwards through the ash and mud by their enormous drive trains.
'Iron Priest,' voxed Russ. 'Is all to your satisfaction?'
Kloja's voice crackled back over the link. 'Comms are jamming, lord. But I work on it, and I hear you now.'
'Then give the order.'
The last of the tanks sank down into position, their tracks locking tight and their core power shunting from forward motion to gunnery control. The enemy spied the danger, and the density of las-fire picked up, but it merely pinged and skipped across the superheavies' thick armour, doing little to hamper their preparations.
Then Kloja gave the command.
Even through reactive helm lenses, even with auditory feeds dampened, the detonation generated sensory overload. The air blazed white; the ground reeled; towering plumes of smoke erupted from every barrel, swirling up into towering columns of darkness, under which leapt spears of fire, one after the other, a symphony of repeated, hammer-hard cannonades.
The fortress gates disappeared behind a roiling swell of explosions. Their foundations shivered and their ramparts crashed into toppling cascades of rockcrete powder. The las-fire kept coming back, piercing through the cavalcade of destruction, but it was now swamped by the maelstrom being unleashed ahead of it. Round after round struck home, then another, then another, each dispatched with fearful, metronomic timing. Smoke-trails boiled and multiplied, clogging everything with ash.
Still the gates held. The iron bands melted, the granite blew apart, the mighty door-shafts cracked, but the core remained defiantly intact.
'More!' laughed Russ, revelling in the display of power, the unfurling of the Legion's awesome potential. The long months of pursuit of engagement after engagement on other worlds, each one getting them only slightly closer, accompanied by the taunts and goads of the self-styled Tyrant, were coming to an end. He could almost feel that throat within his grasp now, and the sight of terror in the mortal's eyes as Morkai came for him. Everything else - the conquest of the Dulanian worlds, the extension of the Imperium, the long process of compliance and restoration - all of that meant nothing. As it ever was for him, the fight was personal, a settling of scores, the blood-debt of ages.
The barrage at the gates accelerated further, making the adamantium shimmer with heat. More cracks snaked across the main panels, glowing from within as the superheated structure began to buckle.
Helmschrot's location markers were closing fast, sweeping under the shadow of the western wall and driving all before them. Bloodhowl was not far behind - he would be at the head of the causeway within minutes.
Then, with a deep, earth-juddering boom, the first break came. More shells lanced in, smacking hard up against the fault-line, and the breach widened. Flames spilled from the gap, tumbling in liquid clots down the shaking walls. Snaps rang out sharp and resounding. The right-hand pier collapsed, blasted apart, showering the approach with a rain of heavy masonry-clumps. Bereft of support, the left-hand pillars went next, imploding under the ceaseless barrage and crumpling like hammered steel. The gun-points on the ramparts plummeted in the gates' ruin, the screams of the operators lost in the sliding tumult.
Then the bombardment stopped.
For a few moments, as the mountainous palls of smoke drifted upwards, the air was thick with sudden silence, only broken by the distant sounds of approaching warfare. A vast cloud of dust and debris drifted lazily back to earth, slowly dissipating. As the clouds parted, the vista of ruin was revealed - a gaping hole where there had earlier been turrets, choked with the blown, charred wreckage of the fortress' defences.
&
nbsp; Russ was first up, brandishing Krakenmaw.
'To me, Vlka Fenryka!' he thundered, racing down the ridge's slope with his true-wolves in train, his pelts flying behind him.
Like a rising surge of winter seas, the Rout answered the call, swarming across the still-burning terrain and clambering up the thickets of struts and bracings. The Legion's artillery fire recommenced, angled more steeply now and sent spinning over the heads of the onrushing infantry. The tanks started their remorseless crawl again, hauling their way through the residue of their earlier ranged assault and tracking for targets in the murk ahead. The gunships pulled up higher, heedless of the weakened gunnery still tracing them and sending heavy bolter fire scything into the fortress' exposed innards.
But none were faster than their master. Leman Russ ascended the last slopes of detritus, Freki and Geri loping beside him, his chainsword whining, and broke through the ruined gates. Ignoring the thinned-out clouds of las-fire that danced across the rubble, he angled his blade towards the topmost tower, still standing proud above a sea of flame and smog.
'Cower now. Tyrant of Dulan,' Russ snarled, striding across the threshold and into the Crimson Fortress. 'Your slayer has your scent - no hiding place remains.'
Jorin buried his axe deep into the chest of a Scarabine mech-warrior. The shields blew out at last, and the warrior spasmed on the blade, limbs twitching. The jarl wrenched back, only for the Faash trooper to clutch at him, reaching for his weapon arm with a sparking gauntlet.
Infuriated, Jorin lashed out again, severing the arm at the elbow. He hacked down, then once more, pummelling the Scarabine and reducing it to a broken collection of armour-shards.
'What do you have to do?' he growled, striding clear of the debris.
'Something like that,' observed Bulveye, fighting at his shoulder.
The two of them pushed onwards, poised at the head of the company's advance. The fortress' smouldering gates reared up above and around them, shrouded in burning clots of dust. A Fire Raptor thudded overhead, blazing steadily from its gun-mounts as it pushed on into the semi-ruined citadel.
Ulbrandr led a pack up towards the right flank, skirting the ruined feet of the gate-edges and driving hard into the debris beyond. Hjalmar took another pack up the opposing flank, hunting for Scarabine units still dug-in to the ruins. The earlier bombardment had been thorough and sustained, reducing even the most stalwart edifices to little more than heaps of rubble, but the mangled terrain slowed the infantry advance, and it offered a thousand hiding places for snipers and counter-attacking kill teams.
Jorin crouched down behind a Rhino-sized lump of toppled rockcrete, taking a moment to assess the tactical schema. Bulveye ordered the pack to run ahead, then came to join him.
'The primarch makes swift progress,' said Jorin, studying his augur-lens and noting the rune-dusters advancing across the city map. 'Helmschrot will be with him soon.'
Bulveye glanced at the data, then bobbed up above the cover-line to loose a series of bolt-shells. He slid back down as the return fire came in, now poorly aimed and panicky. 'Then we need to be quicker.'
Jorin nodded. 'That can be done.'
He pushed out of cover, leaping over the rubble-screen, and sprinted out into open ground. On either side of him, rubble-slumped towers marched up the steep inclines, some now levelled to half-height, others tottering on their mauled foundations. Russ had driven a line of fire straight up the centre, making use of his tanks to smash through the solid defences before sending the infantry in to clear out the ruins.
Roofless buildings reared up around them, black-edged, most burning. The streets ahead were narrow and treacherous, carved out of the red stone and the red dust that made the whole planet seem like a wound. The company filtered through the myriad paths, forced to fight at every crossroads and open plaza. Resistance became dogged as the surviving defenders rallied ahead of them, and the pace slowed, degrading into an exhausting grind of heavy axe-work amid the barricades and fox-holes. By the time the sector was cleared out and the next advance under way, Ulbrandr had returned to Jorin's side. The priest's crozius was black with carbonised bloodstains.
'Jarl, I have what you asked for,' he said.
Jorin paused, drawing closer. 'Tell me where.'
Ulbrandr ducked down to avoid a rogue flash of las-fire from the battle-lines further up.
'The sensors are scrambled,' he said, crouching down in the lee of a half-demolished wall. 'Comms are poor, but I found a life-marker.'
'Where?'
Ulbrandr showed him the augur-scan. A blip, no more than a tiny point of light, glowed less than five kilometres away to the east, still within the fortress limits but buried in its labyrinthine outer levels. 'It'll take us out of our way.'
Jorin calculated the distances. The scan showed a route - a difficult route, but a possible one - snaking under the battlements of the higher levels, overlooked by much of the citadel's surviving gun-towers. 'Hel,' he breathed.
'You have to decide now,' said Ulbrandr. 'Russ has already reached the inner gates. He'll want us with him.'
Jorin wanted to be there too, right at the culmination of the months-long hunt, but he had already sworn. 'And this signal, it endures?' he asked.
'For now.'
'Then lead the company,' he said. 'I will take Bulveye and three packs. Fight to the primarch's side - I will join you when I can.'
Ulbrandr nodded. 'Be swift then. This thing draws to its closing.'
Helmschrot led his vanguard into the carcass of the broken hall. The space had once been large - a wide floor had been flanked by rows of supporting pillars, each draped with the ubiquitous dragon banners. Perhaps it had been ceremonial, a place to bring the vaunted Dulanian warrior cadres to receive honours, though now its lustre had departed forever. The roof had been blown open, exposing warriors gathering within to the burning skies above. They trod now around a jumble of collapsed girders and pulverised marble; the walls pockmarked from bolter-impacts, the banners ripped away or burned from where they had been hung.
From beyond the broken walls, the heavy growl of tank engines could be heard heading up the steep and winding streets, grinding the stone flags under their tracks. The thud of mortar fire was now remorseless, punctuating the staccato rattle of small-arms fire.
Russ was waiting for his jarl. His true-wolves were with him, their fur thick with dust, their jaws glistening. Ogvai saluted, then looked around him at the full extent of the devastation. 'Enjoyable, lord?' he asked.
Russ crunched his way across the rubble. 'Immensely. How goes it?'
'They don't run,' said Ogvai, shaking his axe blade down. 'That saves time.'
From higher up the fortress' precipitous slopes, muffled booms rang out, making the floor shake and the walls shower down more debris. Russ started to pace, impatiently, reaching out to his wolves.
'No Bloodhowl,' he muttered, perturbed. 'Why are the pack-comms blocked? Has he voxed you?'
Before Ogvai could answer, the Rune Priest Heoroth arrived, striding through a bombed-out doorway on the eastern edge of the hall complex. 'Hailir, Wolf King,' he said, bowing.
'And?' asked Russ, impatiently. 'My jarl?'
'Ulbrandr approaches.'
Russ gripped Freki's nape, and dug his fingers in deep. 'I asked for Bloodhowl.'
'The jarl is not with him.'
Helmschrot issued a low snarl of frustration. 'He'd better be dead, then. If he's gone his own way—'
'I need him here,' said Russ, simply.
'His forces are advancing.'
'I don't need his forces, I need him. Morkai's bones, he has been in strange temper from the start of this.' Russ whirled around, issuing more orders over the comm, which hissed with the interference that had dogged them since landing.
'We need not wait,' said Helmschrot. 'The last tier is within our grasp.'
Russ looked up at him. 'You asked if I saw some fault in them,' he said. 'I hoped not to. I hoped that this would make me surer of it.'
He spat out a curse. 'How far back has he fallen?'
'He's taken his retinue into the eastern quarter,' said Heoroth.
'Then not far,' said Russ, summoning Blackblood with a wave.
'Lord, let him go,' said Helmschrot. 'We have the numbers. We cannot risk—'
'Letting the Tyrant out?' Russ laughed. 'Where will he escape to? His skies are ours, his walls are gone. He will keep. I have my own house to put in order first.'
Blackblood stomped over, along with the rest of the Einherjar. 'Your command?'
'You, with me,' ordered Russ, indicating Blackblood and the two packs with him. 'And you,' he said to Helmschrot, 'secure this sector. Bring the armour up to the next level and commence bombardment of the upper dry, but do not break in. Not yet.'
The primarch started moving, his wolves slinking along with him, a dangerous urgency in his gait.
'He was given a command,' Russ growled. 'If I have to crack his skull open to do it, he will learn to obey it.'
Chapter Master Alajos brushed the residue of combat from his pauldrons before entering the chamber. Everything within the citadel's upper tiers was now coated with bloody dust. The air was thick with it, a cloud of filth that dogged rebreathers and made vehicle engines stutter. The Dark Angels had reduced half of the structures around them to craters, and the rest stood starkly amid a wasteland of corpses and burned-out tank hulls, their symmetry gone and their empty hearts exposed to the flame-laced wind.
Leman Russ: The Great Wolf Page 11