by Ben Counter, Guy Haley, Joshua Reynolds, Cavan Scott (epub)
He could feel the low thrumm of orkish minds, bestial but united in purpose. And beneath that, the dark foundation of their rage, the echo of their leader’s mind.
‘By Magnus’s broken teeth,’ swore Tanngjost, watching from the doorway beside Ulli. ‘They didn’t waste any time. Where do they get all this junk from?’
‘Some build, some lead, most fight,’ said Ulli. ‘It is as if someone created the greenskins for war. Their mechanics can make a gun or a war machine from a handful of nuts and bolts. Their leader is more adept than most, it seems. Blackmane was wise to send us here. If it continues, it could turn the battle below.’
‘Pack leader,’ said Fejor. ‘I would cover their assault from above us. I can take out a driver or gunner.’
‘Agreed, brother,’ said Aesor. ‘But do not give yourself away for the sake of one more shot.’
Fejor left through the door, staying low as he ran for the snarl of broken rock and fissures that led to the uppermost slopes.
The grinding of the rock-crawler’s engine changed pitch and the machine slowed to a halt, the orks on board hurling grappling hooks to keep it chained to the slope. The host of warbikes behind it gunned their own engines, whooping with the anticipation of speed and destruction.
‘They’re insane,’ said Tanngjost.
‘Their rank and file are,’ said Ulli. ‘Their leader knows exactly what it is doing.’
The first warbikes screamed up the few metres of slope that remained, reaching the sliver of level ground on which the bunker stood. Snow sprayed out behind them as the orks crouched over their handlebars, lips peeled back over yellow fangs.
Tanngjost ducked back into the bunker and manned the heavy bolter. Aesor and Starkad aimed their guns through the firing slit beside him. Ulli stayed by the door, using the rockcrete construction for cover and drawing his bolt pistol.
The heavy bolter opened fire. The lead bike was struck in the front wheel and fairing, pitching nose-first into the snow and catapulting the rider from his saddle. His body impacted against the rocks near Fejor with a crunch of bones.
The survivors drew cleavers and clubs, whooping as they banked to sweep around the bunker. Another fell, caught through the forehead by a shot from Starkad’s pistol. Heavy bolter fire took down another before the bikers roared around to the other side of the bunker.
Ulli held his rune axe tight, feeling the psychic circuitry of its blade echoed in the shape of the sigils he drew in his mind. He judged the tone of the shrieking engines and leaned out from the doorway, bringing his axe up just as the first ork rounded the bunker.
The rune axe hacked into the ork’s chest and shoulder. Ulli didn’t need to force his willpower into the axe to shatter bone and shred neurons – the ork’s own speed buried the axe deep enough to cut through heart, lung and spine, and the body that thumped into the wall of the bunker beside Ulli was dead before it hit. Ulli wrenched the axe out and brought it up in time to parry the swing of a cleaver from the next biker.
This one wore a mass of teeth hanging from leather strips around its neck, its muscular body cut deep with ritual scars. Its face was painted with blue skull markings. It slewed around to charge at Ulli again, as Ulli knew it could not resist doing.
The ork expected Ulli to duck, so it brought its cleaver down low as it swung. Ulli jumped instead, with an agility granted by the muscle-fibre bundles that let his power armour echo his every movement. He crashed into the ork knee-first, throwing it off the back of its bike and landing on top of it in the snow. He drew back his axe and brought it down into the ork’s skull, splitting its surprised face in two.
More bikes were cresting the slope, mounted with cannon slung on either side of the rider. They were slower and their aim was wild as they sprayed shots almost at random. Splinters of rockcrete rained down as they peppered the bunker’s side with fire. Tanngjost ignored the incoming fire, loosing off bursts from the heavy bolter to claim two, three more as they roared towards him.
One bike careered out of control and pitched over the side of the mountain. Two more crashed into one another and as the surviving rider got to his feet, Fejor sniped it through the throat from his hiding place above.
The orks were seeking to encircle the bunker, but they had to slow down to negotiate the wreckage of the bikes whose riders Ulli had killed, and soon Starkad was beside him, wielding chainsword and bolt pistol to bring down the bikers. When cornered like this, the level-headed nomad of the Gautreksland glacier vanished and pure Space Wolf came to the surface. Starkad fought with his teeth bared and hands bloody. He rammed his chainsword through one ork’s chest, ripped the blade out and threw the wounded greenskin to one side. Another ork leapt down from its bike to leap on Starkad from behind, but Ulli willed a wave of psychic power into the rune on his axe that represented the Fenrisian word for flight and swiftness. A crescent of glowing energy swept out from the blade as he swung it, its leading edge as keen as the axe itself, slicing off the ork’s arm at a distance of several paces.
Orks were scrambling from the wreckage of their bikes, taking cover from the heavy bolter fire in the rocky slope. Some refused to leave their machines, slewing around to hammer fire at the bunker even as they were shot down and wrecked.
Ulli was finishing off an ork on the ground with the spike on the butt-end of his axe when he caught a scent on the cold wind. It was one he had smelled before, a mix of old blood and chemicals, decaying flesh and dense, choking musk. He yanked his axe out of the ork’s chest and raised his nose to the sky, trying to catch the scent again.
‘What is it, Rune Priest?’ asked Starkad.
‘I smell warpcraft,’ growled Ulli.
‘We have them scattered,’ voxed Aesor. ‘Hold your ground and break them against us.’
‘They are not finished,’ replied Ulli.
The clanking of great metal feet rang off the rocks, and Ulli saw a huge armoured hand finding purchase at the top of the slope. The orks clinging to the back of the rock-crawler machine whooped and cheered as the face-mask of a massive steel head rose up behind it. The face was wrought into the shape of an eagle with deep green lenses for eyes. Its shoulder guards were in the shape of golden-feathered wings and the torso was inlaid with the intricate heraldry of an ancient and powerful house of Alaric Prime.
It was an Imperial Knight.
THREE
Ulli had never seen a Knight in the steel before. Once whole legions of them strode at the head of Imperial armies in the ages of the Great Crusade, the Heresy and the early centuries of the Imperium. Now the secrets of their construction were known only to the Adeptus Mechanicus and only a few aristocratic houses maintained and piloted them. They were bipedal war engines that echoed the enormous machines of the Legio Titanicus, but smaller and more agile, the linchpin of a way of war that was almost extinct.
This one was sick. Ulli could tell that at the first glance. Glistening black oil ran from its joints, like corrupted blood, running from its eyepieces and the joints of its armoured body. The green and gold paint was blistered as if by disease, with pits and craters like old wounds turned bad.
Behind it clambered the giant ork mechanic, and in one hand it held a chain hooked to a collar around the Knight’s neck. It was a master leading a slave, and it brought with it the stink of witchcraft and that upwelling of rage that seemed to shake the mountain under Ulli’s feet.
‘Is that the Dominus Vult?’ demanded Aesor inside the bunker.
A shuddering Frith appeared at the firing slit. ‘No,’ he said, his eyes wide with horror. ‘It’s the Aquila Ferox. Emperor on high, they got the Aquila…’
‘Whatever it is,’ said Tanngjost, ‘this heavy bolter won’t dent it and that thing on its arm is a battle cannon. It will crack this bunker open.’
Ulli ducked back into the doorway to shelter from the fire still coming down from the scattered orks. The bikers
had been sent to keep the Space Wolves pinned down in the bunker while the Knight reached them. The greenskin was not stupid, and it could call upon the corruption of the warp.
‘Rune Priest,’ said Starkad, sheltering beside Ulli, ‘we have need of you.’ He was holding out the final demolition charge, a spare in case the detonator failed on one of the charges they planted at the dam.
‘Brother,’ said Ulli, ‘I cannot…’
‘We will all die,’ said Starkad, ‘if you do not.’
Ulli looked into Starkad’s face. He was one of the newer members of the pack, and had not been a Space Wolf when Ulli had fought alongside Tanngjost and Saehrimnar at Phalakan. Ulli did not know the young Grey Hunter well, but he had seen in him a calm and analytical war mind that could turn to a Fenrisian fury when cornered, a pathfinder who could pick out a trail through the roughest terrain and scout the most cunning enemy. The Chapter would do ill to lose him. But there was no regret in his face, and no pride at being the one to stand alone. There was just the certainty at what had to be done, and that he was the one who had to do it.
Ulli placed a hand on the casing of the demolition charge. He formed the sigils of strength and reckless fury on it, indiscriminate destruction and anger without form. It was not a complicated symbol but it was one that needed raw power, dredged up from the well at the back of Ulli’s mind that was usually kept sealed by the mental discipline of a Rune Priest.
The glowing rune in the shape of a fist was etched onto the explosive’s casing, and Ulli’s hand smouldered with the effort.
‘Cover him,’ ordered Aesor.
The Knight reached the top of the slope, its gait lopsided and uncertain. One arm ended in a battle cannon, a weapon normally carried by the main battle tanks of the Astra Militarum. The mountainside shuddered under its feet.
‘Metal beast!’ bellowed Tanngjost from the bunker. ‘Steel will melt and bend in the forge of war, but flesh and bone will not! And greenskin filth! Your kind are a disease, and in my hands I hold the cure!’
The ork mechanic turned at the sound of Tanngjost’s voice, its face creasing with hatred. It pointed and bellowed towards the bunker and the enslaved Knight followed it, the battle cannon turning to aim. Tanngjost opened fire and heavy bolter fire spanged off the Knight’s armoured chest, throwing out sparks but doing no damage.
Starkad sprinted from the doorway, pistol in one hand and the demolition charge in the other. Ulli’s rune left a glowing trail in the air as Starkad ran.
If Ulli could bury his axe in the ork’s skull, would he kill it? Even if he channelled every drop of psychic power through the blade, was that well of warp-born darkness too great for a Rune Priest to overcome? Ulli had never encountered an ork corrupted in this way before. He had never even heard of such a thing. How could he fight it?
Starkad reached to within a few metres of the Knight before the ork saw him. It roared and stomped up proud of the rocks, drawing the rotator cannon it had strapped to its back to make the climb. Ulli broke cover and ran at an angle to Starkad’s path, letting a white-hot flow of power course from his mind into the axe. The weapon was hot in his hand and it was suddenly heavy, the strength of his arm temporarily drained as it was forced out of his body and into his mind.
Ulli leapt and brought his axe down, as if delivering a killing blow to the back of a prey-animal’s neck. The blade of psychic energy was projected from the axe, a crescent of white light. It hammered into the ork’s gun and shattered its casing, sending components spinning everywhere.
Ulli gulped down air. He abhorred the moment of weakness that followed such use of his power. He saw the ork throwing the broken weapon aside and growling in frustration – but it was not stalking towards Ulli for revenge. Instead it stayed fixated on Starkad, who was now in the shadow of the Knight.
‘Here!’ yelled Ulli, knowing it was useless. The distraction had bought a few seconds, but not enough for Starkad to do his work. Instead Ulli ran for the ork, his axe for the moment just a mundane weapon until he could catch his breath and feel the psychic power flowing through him again.
The Knight’s cannon hammered a volley of shots into the bunker. Unaugmented hearing would have been deafened by the din – as it was Ulli’s senses were overloaded for a moment by the noise. Chunks of the bunker vanished in bursts of flame and debris, laying open the interior.
Silhouetted by the muzzle flare of the battle cannon, Starkad clamped the charge to the leg of the Aquila Ferox. The ork loomed down on him, bringing his cleaver up to hack Starkad in two.
Ulli dived into the ork’s side, tackling the alien shoulder-first. It was an unyielding wall of muscle and scar and Ulli barely knocked the ork back half a pace. He hacked at it with his axe and buried the weapon deep in the ork’s shoulder, but the ork flexed the muscle of its arm and forced the blade out. For a moment Ulli was looking into the ork’s eyes, and behind them he saw the infinite darkness of the warp, tinted red and boiling over with hate.
The ork aimed a backhand swipe at Ulli and caught him square in the chest. Ulli was thrown off his feet, head reeling with the impact, and it was instinct that made him throw his hands out to find some purchase in the snow and rock. He arrested his momentum just as his feet swung out over the precipice, a moment before he would have slid over the edge and into a fall hundreds of metres down through the clouds.
The charge detonated. The concussion wave hit Ulli before the sound and nearly threw him the rest of the way off the edge. The impact slammed against his ringing head and everything went red for a moment as the mountain shuddered.
Fragments of rock rained down over Ulli. Through the dust and snow thrown up by the blast he saw the Aquila Ferox listing to one side, one leg completely gone below the knee where Starkad had planted the charge. It put out a hand to steady itself but the ork’s corrupting machine-sickness had made it slow and ill-coordinated. It toppled to the ground beside Ulli, the greater part of its weight hanging over the edge. It slid across the icy rocks and fell. Ulli heard the sound of stone on steel as it was battered against the side of the mountain and plunged through the cloud layer.
Ulli shook the sense back into his head. Somehow he still held onto his axe – another warrior’s instinct. He used it to push himself to his feet.
The shape of the ork emerged from the smoke. In one massive paw it held Starkad up in the air, brandishing him towards the ruined bunker. Starkad’s face was streaked with blood and his armour was torn and cracked, but he was conscious. He saw the ork’s maw opening wide.
The ork bit down on Starkad’s upper body. Its fangs sheared through ceramite and bone. Starkad’s head and shoulders disappeared down its gullet. Blood and organs spilled down its chest as the ork threw the body aside.
Ulli could feel its glee. It relished this, not just killing, but killing a foe in front of that foe’s allies. The very hatred Ulli felt for the ork brought it joy.
‘To the slopes,’ said a voice behind Ulli. In the chaos it took him a moment to recognise it as Aesor. ‘Upwards. More are following.’
Ulli could hear the engines now, more bikers and war machines crawling up the slope towards the ruined bunker. Through the smoke of the Knight’s assault he could see Tanngjost, the insensible Frith thrown over his shoulder, breaking from cover to join Fejor in the rocks above.
‘We’re running out of mountain,’ said Ulli as Aesor helped him to his feet.
‘Then we will make our stand at the top,’ said Aesor, ‘and bleed the greenskins white as they follow us. Move, Rune Priest. Move!’
For the first time, what remained of Pack Aesor could appreciate just how many greenskins followed the mechanic who led them. They had swarmed out of the camp by the mountain lake, thousands of them, released from the workshops to take up whatever weapon they could find and hunt down the Space Wolves.
Two more crawlers ground their way up to the ruined bunker, on
e bringing more bikers, the other scores of orks clinging to its upper hull. Other orks made the journey on foot, clambering through the ice and snow. From the glimpses of the greenskins massing below, Ulli estimated three to four thousand of them, many hauling their bikes after them, others loaded down with heavy weapons. Ulli saw no more corrupted Knights, for which he dared to be grateful.
Above the Space Wolves now was nothing save for a long snowy climb up to the very peak of Sacred Mountain, a gnarled spear of rock pierced with black caves. When the pack reached that peak, there would be nowhere left to climb.
Frith trudged alongside the pack as they moved. He was slow, but his weight was a fraction of a Space Marine’s and he did not have to watch his footing so carefully in the snow.
‘I should not look upon it,’ said Frith, pointing up at the peak. ‘It is a sacred place. Only those who pilot their own Knight may make this journey. We are unworthy.’
‘Speak for yourself,’ growled Tanngjost.
‘What is in there?’ asked Aesor.
‘In there?’ said Frith.
‘This is more than just a mountain. It might be the tallest on this world but the Knight Houses are not cowering savages to bow before a mere mountain. I have heard tell the lower reaches were opened up, and there was found the means to summon us to Alaric Prime, but the peak is a mystery.’
‘We keep it to ourselves.’
Aesor paused in his climb and turned to Frith, fixing the retainer with a look that Frith couldn’t return. ‘We could leave you,’ said Aesor, ‘if you would rather keep it to yourself.’
Frith squirmed for a moment, but Aesor did not have the air of someone who let such things slide. ‘It is said that the Omnissiah put his greatest secrets in the peak,’ said Frith. ‘He walked here before men did. And when the Knightly Houses came, He left them ninety tablets of pure carbon carved with the admonishment never to tread upon the peak. When we are worthy, when we can hear the Omnissiah’s truths and not corrupt or abuse them, then the peak of the mountain will open up to us. That is why our noblest sons make this journey and halt at the threshold, to show the Omnissiah they still hold true to his commandment.’