Leman Russ: The Great Wolf

by Chris Wraight

  Teleportation vanes had already been erected around the perimeter of the platform, each one crackling with warp energies and chained to heavy power units. The air itself spat with static, reacting to the approaching tear in the veil and churning like milk in a thrown pail.

  'Loci established,' said the paladin commander, Inardin, and the Lion moved to the centre of the platform. The other knights, Alajos included, took their places around him, and the vanes sent tendrils of aether-force licking and snarling.

  The Lion hesitated then, just for a moment. He looked out eastwards, to where the fortress burned under a lowering night sky. It seemed to him like some immense funeral pyre, rendering itself down to ashes, already condemned to destruction whatever else transpired on Dulan. Somewhere deep inside that enormous heap of iron and rockcrete his brother still fought, with the enemy or with himself. The place had a foul aspect now, more akin to a tomb than a fortress.

  Alajos waited. The paladins waited. The wind screamed around them, hot as a furnace, bearing the screams of the dying on ashen wings.

  Then the Lion stirred himself, planted his feet and grasped the hilt of his sword in readiness.

  'Enact,' he commanded, and the vanes roared into blinding light.

  Jorin and Bulveye raced for the stage, leaping up the steps and opening fire across the empty expanse of the cathedral interior. Their warriors came with them, forming a shield wall across the edge of the dais and laying down bolter-shells.

  The air rang, and the pillars and the walls and the floor blew into spinning shard-fragments. Faash Scarabines advanced into the tempest, their weapon-arms blazing, only to be cut down amid hails of shells. Wolves were thrown down in their turn, caught in the maelstrom as they attempted to reload or push forwards.

  Jorin loosed bolt after bolt. The caged beast howled in its captivity, driven into a fever of insanity by the chaos raging around it. More Scarabines poured into the chamber, kicking the far doors aside. Ammo-counters began to click to empty, and soon bolters were being cast aside in favour of close-combat weapons.

  'We cannot hold them forever,' said Bulveye, pumping round after round into the approaching enemy hordes.

  'Maybe not,' said Jorin, his jaw clenched. The counter on his bolter was rattling down rapidly - soon it would be gone. 'Not alone.'

  He swung his bolter upwards, pointing the muzzle at the chains that held the beast captive, and fired. The coupling blew apart, sending the cage crashing to the ground in front of them. The structure smashed apart, setting the creature free, and it bounded hungrily on all fours towards the approaching Faash.

  It hit them like a storm front, tearing straight into their advancing ranks and laying into them with bestial abandon. It howled as it fought, its movements faster than even its battle-brothers': jerky, frenzied, primordial. Interference bolts smacked into it and made no difference - it ploughed on, tearing them apart, ripping limb from socket, biting into throats and shaking the flesh loose. Against that horror, the enemy wavered, then panicked, retreating back down the length of the nave in disarray.

  Jorin unlocked his axe and charged down to join the beast, and the Wolves with him broke out from the stage, each one mimicking the howls of the creature in their midst. The space became crammed with bodies, locked together in a bloody grapple, and even the beast could only kill so many before its many wounds would eventually bring it down. Jorin fought on grimly, caught between his battle-rage and the horror of what he had let loose, not thinking of anything else but the rhythm of his axe-strikes, one after the other, hewn as if they could somehow absolve him for what had been created within his company.

  But then, just as the creature's roars began to ebb and the tide of battle threatened to turn again, huge explosions boomed from beyond the far wall, accompanied by the unmistakeable growl of gunship engines. The Faash turned, realising the danger too late, only to see the double doors blasted into scrap. Two true-wolves bounded through the gap, leaping up at the throats of the mech-troops and bearing them down. Warriors of the Rout followed them in, launching a hammering tornado of bolt-rounds.

  Then, more terrible than any other, the Wolf King strode into the chamber, his chainsword growling, his countenance as dark as thunderheads.

  And then the slaying truly started.

  * * *

  The world disappeared in a rush and snap of aether-matter, followed by a surge of extreme cold, the sensation of weightlessness and the half-heard howls of the abyss below.

  Then the nausea ended, the world of the senses clamped back down around them, and they were out The paladins energised their blades, searching for targets, tensed for the inevitable hail of return fire.

  None came. The Lion, positioned in the heart of his warriors, kept his blade sheathed.

  The coordinates were correct Orfeo had sent them directly into the heart of the Tyrant's throne room, right at the topmost pinnacle of the Crimson Fortress. It was suitably vast - a many-aisled complex of rooms and anterooms and alcoves, softly lit, uncomfortably hot. Water trickled from the gaping mouths of gargoyle-fountains. Tall, arched gothic windows glowed hot from the burning outside, but the glass remained intact.

  The paladins moved aside, scanning the rooms beyond the main chamber, their movements watchful. Alajos and the Lion walked forwards, to the centre of the complex. A dome opened up above them, thirty metres high and adorned with a mosaic image of the curled dragon of Dulan. Under the dome was a dais, and upon the dais was a throne of darkest jet. A lone figure sat on the throne: a man, clad in faded crimson robes. He was pale and old, his skin as translucent as parchment.

  The light was low, emanating softly from candles, just as it did in the halls of Caliban. Shadows underfoot slid uncertainly, wavering between soft pools of butter-yellow illumination. A fragrance like sacrificial oils hung in the air, just on the edge of detection.

  The enthroned figure made no move. He looked down at the approaching knights with dark, ringed eyes. At close range, it was clear that he was more than old - he was ancient, and hideous, preserved like a specimen in aspic. His humanity - for he was certainly human - looked as if it had been stretched beyond breaking point, turning him into some monstrous parody of immortality.

  'Then you are the first. Lord of Caliban,' the Tyrant of Dulan said his voice as pale and soft as reeds. 'You need not hesitate. There is nothing in this room that could hurt you. Not yet, anyway.'

  The Lion drew up to the throne, his boots clinking on the dais steps. The paladins fell back. In the refracted light, their armour glinted, and the edges of it were softened. The candles flickered in eddies of hot air, gusted from far below by the pyres of a burning world.

  The Lion did not speak for some time. His helm-face - winged, mirrored with darkness - regarded the emaciated form ahead of him. As ever, he was calculating. The last threads of the aether-passage slithered into the stone at his feet, extinguishing like corpse-dust.

  'I bring judgement to this world,' said the Lion, his voice echoing in the emptiness. 'It is claimed for the Imperium, for the Master of Mankind.'

  The Tyrant looked hollow, exhausted. 'I see and I hear what you have done to this place. Destruction placed upon destruction. Such is the peace your Emperor brings to the galaxy. Such was the offer you placed on the table, and expected me to take, and to be thankful for it.'

  The Lion slowly crossed his arms. Just then, he looked more solid than anything else in the chamber - where every other line was soft, every hue blurred, his outline was as firm and unyielding as his sword's honed edge.

  'You did not need to be thankful,' said the Lion. 'You merely needed to recognise the direction of history. You might have had a role to play, had you understood the new order of things.'

  'A role. For me.' The Tyrant gazed emptily at the massive primarch, his dark eyes moistened by age. His hands trembled a fraction as they clutched the arms of the throne, though from infirmity, not fear. 'No, not now. Too wasted, guiding this realm from barbarism and into a kind of light
. It has drained me, you see this? A hundred of my surgeons labour daily to keep me alive, for without me, only emptiness awaits. We learned this, in ages of horror - which we overcame, and we banished - only for you to come.'

  The Tyrant eased gingerly back in his throne, and as his body moved it seemed as if his bones must break, his skin slough off, his scrawny neck snap.

  'Now tell me, agent of the Emperor,' he said, 'for I truly wish to know - what would you have done, if Dulanian ships had come to Caliban and made such demands as you have made?'

  The Lion remained impassive. His sword remained sheathed. 'I have heard that question posed from rulers of a dozen worlds. And to them all, I give the same answer - it matters not. You did not come to us, we came to you. Fate has given you the only answer you will ever receive.'

  'Ah, then.' The Tyrant smiled wanly. 'Yours is the mightier empire, and so that is all that can be said.'

  'It is not might that separates us. I have witnessed the Emperor's vision. Only in Unity are we strong. Only through His guidance can the old terrors be banished for eternity. Should we fail, they will return, so I have no guilt in ending your obstruction. As I say, you were given the chance.'

  'Yes, I had the chance to submit to the yoke of another,' said the Tyrant. 'Some chance. I know what you call me - 'tyrant'. You summon up the spectre of tyranny to justify your actions, and yet my people fight for me You noticed that? They see you come to tear down all we have built, and they recognise the hand of the oppressor. So do not tell me that you come to bring enlightenment for that is an illusion. We endured the long aeons here when Terra was but a myth or childish dream. We looked out at what you name terror, and we learned to keep it beyond the walls. We had our kernel of knowledge from a deeper past. You have seen what we can do, and in certain ways it surpasses even your own capability, and that should not surprise you, for we would do anything to protect our home And now you come again, like a nightmare that persists on the waking. So I am glad that we fought you, primarch. It will ease the passage of my soul, when all is done.'

  'You need not die,' said the Lion. 'Give the order to your armies that remain. Your empire is taken, your capital world fallen. We control your power generation, and my brother's warriors are even now taking your fortress apart. Consider it a last scrap of fortune to find yourself debating with me rather than him, for I do not think he would have extended you such indulgence.'

  The Tyrant smiled again, nodding, his thin lips extending over yellowed teeth.

  'Say the word,' the Lion went on. 'Lives can be saved. You will be taken from here and judged for your crimes, but your world will be received into the Imperium, its people preserved.'

  The Tyrant lost his smile. 'No, I do not think you understand what is happening here,' he said. 'You see the passage of years, of decades and centuries, and think that this is somehow significant, and that Dulan matters, or that Terra matters. And yet an entire empire may be suffered to endure for a single test.'

  The Lion made no move.

  'Perhaps one day, far from now, you will encounter an enemy that you cannot best,' the Tyrant said. 'There was an edge of malice in his words now, the first trace of bitterness. Then you will know what we know now. You will peer into your soul as your walls come down around you, and you will gaze out across armies too vast to count, and you will be faced with the impossible test - what to do? Run? Concede? Fight, though it will do nothing but spill more blood onto a galaxy that already swims in it?'

  The Tyrant struggled to his feet then, swaying unsteadily over the throne and supporting himself with switch-thin arms.

  'Only then will you understand, Lord of Caliban,' the Tyrant said, his old eyes flashing. 'Only then will you know yourself, and what matter you are made of. This is what we have discovered, in these last years of torment. I might even thank you, for giving us this. You have shown us what we are. That we are better The Lion drew his sword, and as the steel slid from the scabbard, candlelight capered along its edge. He swung the heft of it expertly, silently, bringing it into guard with a duellist's liquid artistry.

  'Yet it always comes to this, in the end,' the Lion said, his austere voice impassive. 'Do you yield?'

  The Tyrant looked up, his sunken features barred by the Lion Sword's shadow. Slowly, as if performing the movements of a ritual, he drew a dagger from his cloak.

  'What do you think?' he asked.

  Once the last of the screams had echoed away, Russ stood in the heart of the cathedral, his chainsword dripping lengths of blood, his breath coming in great heaves. The stone floor was piled with the corpses of the Faash, and the Wolves stood among them like butchers, their ceramite dripping thickly.

  The press of the fighting had kept primarch and jarl apart, and only now, with the last of the enemy slain, did the way become clear between them. Jorin let his axe frill, its disruptor field shuddering out. The come-down from the intensity of his battle-rage was heavy, and a dull pain broke out from behind his temples.

  Between the two of them, draped atop a tumbled heap of limbs and broken armour, lay the creature that had once been a Wolf of Fenris. Like Haraal before him, the warrior had taken massive damage. A few plates of armour still hung in place, but most of it was gone, replaced with a thickly furred mass of muscle fibre. A stiff crust of blood, nearly as black as mjod, caked everything, most of it the creature's own. Las-burns, projectile wounds, knife-tears all overlapped across tormented flesh, though that was nothing compared to the wounds he had inflicted on the enemy. Heads had been ripped from shoulders, limbs torn free, torsos disembowelled. More corpses surrounded the beast than any other fighter. He had created heaps of the slain, mountains of them, such as a warrior of old Asaheim would once have dreamed of creating.

  Russ stalked over to the creature and gazed down at it. He remained motionless for a long time, vapour escaping in gouts from his helm's vox-grille. His warriors shook down their blades, and dared say nothing. Jorin waited where he was, a few paces away.

  Then the Wolf King reached for his helm and twisted it free. Only then could the look of deep anguish on his face be seen - a twisting of iron-hard features, a torture of their blunt lines. Russ knelt, lifted the head of his fallen son, narrowed his eyes, studying the changes that had been wrought. Then, slowly, he let the beast's mane slump back, its jaw fall open, its bloodshot eyes stare sightlessly up at the cathedral roof.

  His gaze swept up towards Jorin.

  'Why didn't you tell me?' he asked.

  By then Freki and Geri had picked their way to their master's side. No other soul stirred.

  'I…' Jorin started. 'I was waiting.'

  'For what?'

  'A cure. Understanding. Something to tell us—'

  'That it wouldn't happen to us all.' Russ drew himself to his full height again. His charred pelts slid across his heavy armour, exposing the heart's-blood pattern of runes. The primarch looked haggard. 'You know there are no promises.'

  He lumbered slowly towards Jorin, treading down on the limbs of the slain and snapping bones under his boots.

  'Look at it,' Russ said, grimly, as he advanced. 'What do you see?'

  'I see what we were,' said Jorin.

  'And what we will be.'

  'Did you know?'

  Russ halted, less than an arm's breadth from his jarl.

  'I knew the risks. I knew what was in the Canis Helix. I know why it was made I have seen the place where the draught was created, and the ancient bio-forges necessary to formulate it. Other Legions have their own poisons - this is ours. And, yes, I have seen those that do not return from the wilds. I have gone out there, sometimes, alone, and ended their agony. They looked no different to this one. But in the Legion… No, I did not know. I had hoped, perhaps, that it would remain at bay. Malcador warned me, but who of us ever listened to the Sigillite? We might have to start doing so now.'

  Jorin bowed his head. 'Lord, I am—'

  'Do not apologise to me!' roared Russ, rage kindling suddenly. 'You knew
what had to be done. You have let this thing grow within your company, and you have thought to keep secrets from your liege lord, judging yourself wiser. Those images were beamed out across this entire fortress. We all saw it. The enemy saw it. My brother will have seen it. If you were trying to keep it hidden, you could not have failed more completely.'

  Jorin felt the blood in his cheeks spike. 'I thought…' he began, but the words failed him.

  'You thought it was Dekk-Tra, the Thirteenth, alone,' said Russ, bitterly. 'You thought you had the fault within you, and none other suffered. You were wrong. It will be worse for you, perhaps, but we all carry it. It is what we hear in the chill of the night, when the sounds of war are banished and all we have left is ourselves. Best to keep fighting, eh? Never have to hear it, then.'

  Russ drew closer to his jarl, reaching out for him with both hands, seizing him by the shoulders and dragging him closer.

  'And I did not want to think it,' he breathed, so softly that only the two of them heard the words. 'You, above all, you. When I saw you pass the test, when the Terrans told me it was impossible, my hearts leapt, for I knew that I could trust my shield-bearer in all things. None, I told myself, none of Terra or Fenris, would match you. All others would fail me, in the end, but not you, for we were both of the same hall, and Thengir was our sire, and we had trod the ice together before there was anything else.'

  Jorin looked up into Russ' grief, held fast, his lean face as pale as bleached bone.

  'What must I do?' he asked.

  If he had been told to fall on his axe, he would have done it.

  Russ let him go. The primarch pulled his furs about him, hawked up a gobbet of spittle, let it fly, then shook his head wearily. 'No more commands. It's out, we know the truth of ourselves. There's no cure for this - none that I'd countenance anyway. The wolf makes us strong. We can't complain when it bites us.'