by Ben Counter, Guy Haley, Joshua Reynolds, Cavan Scott (epub)
The fire sparked off the armour and thudded into its flesh, but the ork was not even pushed onto the back foot. Explosive bolts were swallowed up by the mass of scar tissue and muscle, and the barrel of its cannon came down to aim at Saehrimnar.
The return fire was scattered wild. One shot caught Saehrimnar in the thigh and blew the ceramite open, revealing the wet redness of muscle underneath. Saehrimnar sprawled, his blood spraying onto the white snow.
Ulli was closest to Saehrimnar. He broke cover and sprinted to his fallen packmate, before the ork could bring its cannon to bear again. It could throw out a massive wall of fire but its recoil was such that the ork had to brace itself before it could finish off Saehrimnar. It would be enough time, Ulli was sure of that. He had the instinct of a seasoned warrior; he knew the cruel science of bullets and bodies. It would be enough.
Ulli grabbed Saehrimnar around the waist and hauled him off his feet. He backed towards the rock he had tagged as cover – it wasn’t much against the air attack but it would provide shelter from fire at ground level.
Ulli saw the ork out of the corner of his eye, leaning into its gun to keep it level. It was even stronger than Ulli had imagined.
There would not be enough time.
The gun roared. Ulli felt the massive calibre shells ripping past him. The ork’s face was illuminated in the muzzle flare.
Saehrimnar’s head and upper chest burst. Ulli was thrown back, a torrent of blood and gore hitting his face. The weight he carried was suddenly less, for a good portion of Saehrimnar’s body was gone.
The ork turned back to the gunship, which was rotating in place to aim its nose cannon. The ork brought its weapon to bear first. The barrels blazed and a dozen shots punched through the cockpit, stray rounds bursting among the fan blades of one engine. The engine tone rose to a scream and the craft wheeled out over the lake, belching smoke.
‘Sigrund!’ voxed Aesor. ‘Brother Sigrund!’
The Skjaldi’s Lament pitched into the lake and vanished, drawn under and out of sight by the currents rushing towards the breached dam.
Across the lake, a flotilla of craft had set sail. They were ramshackle motor launches and hovercraft, wreathed in oily smoke, teeming with greenskins from the camp. They held tribal banners high and waved their cleavers and guns, eager to clean up whatever the air assault had left alive.
‘Fall back!’ ordered Aesor. ‘Take to the peak! The upper slopes!’
The ork turned back to the Space Wolves. It shouldered its gun and drew from among the machinery on its back a blade as long as an oak trunk and as wide as a Space Marine. The jagged length of the weapon was corroded and spattered with old black bloodstains. The time for killing from a distance was gone – it wanted its next kill up close.
Ulli hefted Saehrimnar’s body onto his shoulders and vaulted over the boulder behind him. The lakeside slope became jagged and broken a good long sprint away, the gradient increasing sharply as the knife-like ridges and outcrops rose towards the mountain’s peak. The giant ork could take any of them it wanted if it could outpace them, but that would limit it to one or two. If the pack of Wolves stayed where they were and fought it, they would still be on the shore when the rest of the greenskins arrived.
The scream of tortured engines reached Ulli’s ears. The Skjaldi’s Lament rose from the waters, lurching like a wounded sea creature. Behind the shattered windshield, Brother Sigrund wrestled with the controls as he forced the gunship’s nose to point at the ork. A handful of shots blasted at the beast, most missing, one burning through an armour plate and into the greenskin’s flank.
The ork bellowed and took up its cannon again, and with a final volley shattered the front end of the gunship. It vanished into the waters, Brother Sigrund having got in a final insult to the creature that killed him.
Ulli used the seconds Brother Sigrund had bought him. He ran for the cover of the rocky slopes, willing his body to ignore the weight of Saehrimnar’s corpse on his shoulders and the heat of the blood that ran down his face.
The ork’s frustrated roar echoed around the mountainside, mingling with the tumult of the new waterfall and the grinding of the ork flotilla’s engines.
It hurt Ulli to flee. But the pack would not survive a battle here, exposed, one of their number down and the orks assaulting in full force. Their shame would burn hot, but it would not go unanswered. In that moment, Ulli knew the giant ork had to die, or the stain on Pack Aesor’s honour would never be washed away.
TWO
Pack Aesor gathered an hour later. The way had been hard going, the steep slope forcing them to climb as much as run. But Space Wolves trained in the treacherous foothills of the Fang – they lived in a mountain and it was natural for them to negotiate such terrain. Even before they had been chosen by the Wolf Priests to undergo the tests that made them Space Wolves, some of the pack had lived among tribes who hunted and made war among Fenris’s mountain ranges. It was difficult, but it was more difficult for the greenskins, who pursued them slowly up the slopes in an ill-disciplined throng with their enormous leader at their head.
Starkad was waiting for the rest of them on a shoulder of rock where they could gather, snatch a few moments of rest, and plan their next move. He was a natural pathfinder and had made the best progress. Ulli, weighed down by Saehrimnar, was last.
Saehrimnar’s head and neck were gone, and most of his chest. The gene-seed organs, which could be preserved and implanted into new aspirants, were gone as well. They had been seated in his throat and chest, from where they regulated the many augmentations of the Space Wolf’s body. Saehrimnar would not give those sacred organs, crafted from the flesh of the primarch Leman Russ himself, to the next generation. His legacy had come to an end. It was the worst coda to a bad death.
There was little time for words, and none of the packmates had much inclination to say them. Saehrimnar had been the quickest among them to speak. Without him, the silence he left said more than any of them could. The pack buried Saehrimnar under a cairn of loose stones, and Aesor took up his heavy bolter.
Starkad pointed up the slope, to where a squat rockcrete bunker occupied a ledge. It was the best shelter they would find up here, probably built by the Knight Houses of Alaric Prime to aid their exploration of the vast mountain.
As the pack made their way in silence towards the bunker, Ulli hoped the orks would not think to search the pile of stones and defile what they found there.
In the light of the guttering fire, the man’s eye seemed to be sunk so far into his head that his face was little more than a skull with the skin stretched over it. He wore a rebreather mask, adding oxygen to every breath to compensate for the thin air at this altitude. Looking at him, Ulli thought how easy it was to forget that an environment like this, so natural to a Space Wolf, could be lethal to an unaugmented man.
Pack Aesor had found the man in the bunker, huddling by his fire. It looked like he had been there for days, living off a few packs of emergency rations, waiting to die up there on Sacred Mountain. His name, he had told them, was Frith.
‘Time was,’ he was saying, his voice almost lost in the shrill wind outside the bunker, ‘they were kings of this world. My masters were this world’s master. You see this?’ he held out an emblem pinned to the lapel of his tattered uniform, a pair of compasses on a field of red enamel. ‘House Varlen. Their sons had the most resplendent Knights on Alaric Prime. I, we, we would have followed them through the warp and into the heart of Chaos itself. But now?’ The man coughed out a laugh, and Ulli wondered how old he was. He could have been anything from twenty to sixty. ‘Now these… these animals have come down from the sky and made us all into normal men.’
Tanngjost looked down from the bunker’s firing slit, where he had mounted Saehrimnar’s heavy bolter. ‘The greenskins don’t have your world to themselves any more,’ he said. ‘The Space Wolves have come to Alaric Prime. Tw
o companies of us. There’s not an ork in this galaxy that can stand up to Blackmane and the Great Wolf.’
‘And how many of you are there?’ said Frith. ‘A hundred? A thousand? The orks are vermin. They breed! There will always be another one around the next rock. You could kill a million of them and there would always be more.’
Behind Frith, Starkad drew the long, thin spike he used to clean the barrel of his bolter.
‘You were a mechanic?’ said Ulli hurriedly. ‘For the Knights?’
‘A retainer,’ said Frith. ‘Like all the line of my father. I served Baron Vigilus Varlen, Second Son of his House. I kept his steed, the Dominus Vult. Never did a finer Knight walk this world! I hung her with banners of Varlen’s victories and polished her crimson flanks! But she has fallen, Angels of Death. She fell and is gone! How can this world prevail if even the Dominus Vult can be prey to the vermin?’
‘How did you lose her?’ asked Aesor.
‘The ork,’ said Frith. ‘The one ork.’
‘You saw it?’ asked Ulli. ‘Their chief, from the camp by the dam?’
‘They must have their gods,’ said Frith, ignoring Ulli. ‘They must look like that ork did. The baron faced him on the mountainside. I watched from our command truck. Already I was thinking how I would bleach the vermin’s skull and hang it among the battle honours. But it was not just a brute! A brute, the baron could have killed. It was cunning. It did not fight an honourable duel.’
‘It’s one of their engineering caste,’ said Aesor. ‘But I’ve never heard of one the size of their warlords. Not an auspicious combination.’
‘There were more of them,’ continued Frith. ‘We saw them sneaking up but we were too slow. They infected my master’s steed.’
‘Infected?’ asked Ulli.
‘With a disease,’ said Frith, leaning over the fire, the flame glinting off his sunken eyes. ‘A disease of the metal. The Dominus Vult went mad! I heard the master screaming. She stalked off into the mountain, and blackness bled from her. Then she was gone, and the vermin was laughing. We fled and scattered. I ended up here. I know not where the other retainers are – most likely they are dead. Perhaps I will walk out and take the mountain’s embrace. This is holy ground, Angels of Death. That was why my master took to these slopes, in case the greenskins defiled it. And they have. The mountain weeps.’
‘A machine-virus,’ said Aesor. ‘I have never known an ork to employ such a thing.’
‘Orks are animals,’ said Fejor. Ulli noted with some gratitude that Starkad had put his blade away. ‘That is beyond them.’
‘They are animals who can cross interstellar distances,’ said Ulli, ‘who can capture a hydroelectric dam and use it to churn out war machines within hours. There is a cunning to the creature we faced. It is not like the other greenskins. Its hatred masks it, but there is a… a depth there. An intelligence.’
‘I have known you a long time, Ulli Iceclaw,’ said Tanngjost, ‘ever since Phalakan. But even now, knowing that you see what you see, it raises my hackles.’
‘Well, you aren’t the one who has to see it,’ replied Ulli.
Tanngjost grunted in agreement, and turned back to the firing slit to keep the watch.
Frith’s chin sank down to his chest and he closed his eyes. Only the misting of his breath on the inside of the transparent rebreather mask suggested he was alive.
‘I take it we cannot raise the Great Company,’ said Ulli.
‘Not with the gunship gone,’ said Aesor. ‘Its communicator could reach Blackmane’s command. Our vox-net is not strong enough. On level ground with no interference, yes, but up here we are on our own. They will realise when we do not return, but I doubt our brothers will have the warriors to spare to come and rescue us.’
‘Then we are on our own,’ said Ulli.
‘When are we not?’ replied Fejor.
For a long moment the only sound was the crackling of the fire and the whistling of the wind.
‘Tell me of Phalakan,’ said Aesor, looking at Ulli across the fire.
‘Your packmates must have spoken of it,’ said Ulli.
‘I would hear of it from you,’ said Aesor. His voice was level and Ulli could read nothing from it.
‘A battle against the eldar,’ said Ulli. ‘Tough going. We lost many brothers. I was apprenticed to the Rune Priest Torgrim Splitbeard. We were cut off and I found myself fighting back to back with this ingrate here.’ Ulli jabbed a thumb at Tanngjost. ‘And Saehrimnar. The eldar made Tanngjost rather more handsome.’
‘I shall ever be grateful to whatever alien it was,’ said Tanngjost, idly scratching the spiral scars on his face as if they itched with the memory. ‘I paid him back in kind but I was a bit too generous. There wasn’t much left of his head at all.’
‘Saehrimnar broke his axe in the fight. The xenos were damned fast, backflipping and dancing all around. So he picked up a heavy bolter from the ground and shot them all down. We called him the Broken Axe after that.’
‘And you?’ asked Aesor.
Ulli knew Tanngjost from Phalakan, but that had been a long time ago and Aesor had become their pack leader after that. Aesor didn’t know Ulli, and it seemed that the word of his older packmates wasn’t enough for him. Ulli bristled at that, a little of Russ’s blood reminding him that he was still a Space Wolf, even if he studied in the Rune Halls instead of feasting in the Great Hall. But he could not blame Aesor for his caution. They would have to rely on one another up here, each one placing his life in the hands of all his packmates. Trust had to be earned hard in such circumstances.
‘I put the runes on their guns,’ said Ulli. ‘When their bolters ran dry, I put them on their knives and chainswords. When their blades were dull, I put them on the rocks, and we dashed out the aliens’ brains. Few of us lived, but live we did, and Ulli Iceclaw became worthy of the Blood of Russ. I might not boast like the Wolves of your pack, Aesor Dragon’s Head, but I have earned the armour that is my pelt and I am proud of it.’
Aesor nodded, the ghost of a smile on his face. It struck Ulli then how, unlike the older Space Wolves who were covered in scars, Aesor was unblemished by war. Almost unblemished, that is.
‘Tell me of your ear,’ Ulli said.
Behind him, Tanngjost chuckled quietly. Starkad, who was resting in a dark corner, broke a smile, which did not happen very often.
Aesor looked for a moment as if he would curse out Ulli for his presumption, and perhaps if Ulli had been a member of Pack Aesor he would have. But the moment passed and Aesor shrugged.
‘You have good eyes,’ he said.
‘You would not hide your scars by choice,’ said Ulli. ‘You are not some perfumed Blood Angel ashamed of the marks of battle. It is something that weighs on you. And if you would know about me, then I would know about you.’
Aesor swept the hair back to reveal the dark red snarl of scar tissue where his left ear had been. ‘Before my Blooding,’ he said, ‘many of us were taken to the foothills of the Fang to look on the place where we would be tested. One of the other aspirants joked he would bet his kraken-tooth knife that I would be the first corpse brought back. I lost my temper, Ulli Iceclaw, and in the scuffle I bit off his ear. My people took tributes from the barbarian tribes of the Shark’s Reach fjords, and we did not take kindly to insults. And I was young.’
‘I see,’ said Ulli. ‘And he took your ear in recompense?’
‘Ulli, Ulli,’ said Tanngjost. ‘I thought you were supposed to be the smart one?’
Aesor shook his head. ‘No. I tore it off myself. I was taught to pay my debts, and not to visit on any man an insult we would not accept ourselves. My Blooding was delayed a week and I stood guard on the walls of the Fang in only a loincloth as punishment. I hide this scar because I would not have it bandied about that Aesor Dragon’s Head is not to be insulted, for if that happened I would not know what
my brothers truly thought of me. But I could not have it repaired either because then I would not bear the wound I had earned as one I dealt to my brother. So I hide it as best I can, until some sharp-eyed and inquisitive soul decides to point it out.’
‘Then I would say we have both satisfied our curiosity,’ said Ulli.
Starkad snapped to alertness, his bolt pistol suddenly in his hand.
‘What is it?’ asked Aesor.
‘I can hear them,’ said Starkad.
Starkad was from the nomad tribes who walked a belt of glaciers on Fenris, carving survival from the endless ice. They were trackers and pathfinders without compare, many of them serving as Wolf Scouts unless they were too pack-minded, like Starkad. Their senses were considered exceptionally sharp, even amongst a Chapter who could hunt by scent alone. When something caught Starkad’s senses, the pack paid attention.
‘Footsteps?’ asked Fejor, unshouldering his rifle ready to set up at the firing slit. ‘War-cries?’
‘Engines,’ said Starkad.
Ulli pushed open the bunker door as Starkad stamped out the fire. The wind was a thin, shrill whistle but underneath was the grinding of many engines, low and throaty. On a lower slope he could make out a lumbering shape, and as it came closer it resolved into a squat, ugly machine crawling up the rocky slope towards the shoulder of rock on which the bunker sat. The machine was something like a huge, flattened tank, but in place of tracks it had sets of rotating bladed wheels that dug into the rock and hauled it upwards. A crew of orks scrabbled across the machine’s hull, throwing out chains with grappling hooks to draw tight and keep the tank stable as it climbed.
Hitched to the back of the rock-crawler machine, dragged by ropes and chains, followed dozens of orkish warbikes being towed in the machine’s wake. The warbikes were painted in red with the sigils of a crude skull painted in blue. Their riders’ leathers and goggles were well stained with oil and smoke. Some of the bikes were fitted with sets of cannon, the kind of crude, loud weapons that orks loved. Ulli guessed about thirty of them were being towed up the mountain.