by Ben Counter, Guy Haley, Joshua Reynolds, Cavan Scott (epub)
‘And now there will be greenskin filth running all over this place,’ said Fejor, who was listening in from his place in the lead a few paces ahead.
‘I cannot think of it,’ said Frith, ‘I must not.’ Ulli noticed the labour of his breath and remembered that while a Space Wolf did not care about altitude, an unaugmented human would suffer as the air got thinner. Without rest Frith would probably die before the sun rose the next morning, and he would not get any rest.
‘I smell smoke,’ said Fejor. Aesor held out a hand and the pack halted. They were in the lower reaches of the long snowy ascent, a trudge of perhaps two hours up to the rocky spike of the summit. Ulli followed Fejor’s gaze and saw a smudge of grey against the ice-blue sky.
‘It’s the ork aircraft,’ said Tanngjost. ‘The one Sigrund shot down. Our greenskin pilot made friends with the side of this mountain.’
‘Take a moment to think,’ said Aesor. He kneeled in the snow and ran his hand through it, picking up a handful. ‘This is fresh snowfall, on top of old. See up ahead. Near the peak? The snow is cracked where the slope has shifted. It won’t come down with our movement but it wouldn’t take a lot more.’
‘An avalanche,’ said Tanngjost. ‘Wouldn’t mind dropping half the mountain on a few orks.’
‘There,’ said Aesor, pointing to the side of the pack’s path, where a dip in the slope formed a snow-choked valley. ‘The orks are many but they are slow and move at different speeds. They will gather there before striking out for the peak. And above them is an avalanche begging to be set off.’
‘Set off by us,’ said Fejor. ‘That ork death trap never dropped its bombs. If they didn’t go off on impact then they’ll still be there.’
‘A fitting tribute to Brother Starkad it would be,’ said Tanngjost, ‘if we could set off a few more explosions in his name.’
Starkad’s death flashed in Ulli’s mind. He did not dwell on the deaths of brothers, setting those thoughts aside to be unravelled at the mourning rituals back at the Fang where the fallen were remembered. But the sight of Starkad’s body disappearing down the greenskin’s gullet, the alien’s growl of satisfaction at the taste of a Space Wolf’s flesh, those came to Ulli’s mind unbidden.
‘We have to take out their leader,’ said Ulli. ‘If that thing lives, it’ll bring its warpcraft to the battle and the Imperial Knights will become weapons in its hands.’
‘Leave that to me,’ said Aesor. ‘Fejor speaks true. Between Sacred Mountain and the greenskins we have everything we need. We will not make our last stand on this peak, brother. The greenskins will be making theirs.’
FOUR
The pilot’s body was a tangle of skin and flesh, torn open first by gunfire and then by the impact that pancaked the fighter craft’s nose back into the fuselage. Smoke was coming from one of the engines that had been torn clear of the main body and burst into flames. The snow was stained a dirty grey by the spill of fuel and oil.
‘How can they get anything like this to fly?’ asked Tanngjost, peering into the wreck’s innards. ‘It’s just flotsam and junk.’
‘The greenskins believe it will fly,’ replied Ulli. ‘Maybe that’s enough.’
Fejor wrenched a sheet of steel away from the hull, revealing the bomb load crushed into the fuselage. ‘A couple look intact,’ he said. ‘Tanngjost, your help, brother.’
Aesor and Ulli kept watch as the packmates unloaded the intact bombs. The bombs were as crudely made as the rest of the craft, just metal barrels with fins welded on and filled with explosives. It was a miracle they had not all detonated on impact.
‘Do you see them?’ asked Aesor.
All Ulli could see was the long white expanse of the slope, then the snarl of frozen rock that led down to the ruined bunker and eventually the distant blue glimmer of the lake. ‘No,’ he said, ‘but they are there.’
‘Greenskin scouts,’ said Aesor, pointing towards a dark cleft in the rock where Ulli could just make out movement. ‘Received wisdom states the ork is too stupid to scout ahead. That it simply charges headlong into anything put in its way. But you noted the cunning in the creature that leads them, Rune Priest. What you sensed, I now see with my own eyes. When the assault on the bunker failed, it changed plans. Now it seeks to trap us and hunt us down, and leave us no hiding place. It has its scouts pick out the best routes up the mountain, so its forces will not become bottled up and congested.’
‘But you do not have any admiration for it,’ said Ulli.
‘No, brother,’ said Aesor, ‘for it tries to match wits with a hunter of Fenris. Better for it that its greenskins charged blind and raging up at us, for then at least they would have the advantage of shock and fury. No, it has never hounded a quarry like us. It has no trick or tactic that I did not learn as a child of my tribe, let alone a warrior of the Space Wolves.’
‘It left no gene-seed for us to take from our dead,’ said Ulli. ‘Not from Starkad or Saehrimnar.’
‘You think that was deliberate?’
‘I can conceive of few better ways to dispirit Space Marines than to kill our brothers in such a way that the flesh of Russ cannot be passed on.’
‘A coincidence,’ said Aesor. ‘And crimes for which it will be punished. It should be grateful that we are visiting no more than death on it.’
‘There is more going on in that creature’s skull than you realise,’ replied Ulli. ‘The machine-virus was born of warpcraft, and wielded with deliberation and focus. Our enemy is no greenskin brute that rules by size and strength alone. That is why it must die, Aesor Dragon’s Head.’
‘And so all discussion of our foe will be rendered irrelevant,’ said Aesor, ‘for die it shall, and then there shall be nothing going on in its skull at all.’
Tanngjost trudged towards them from the wreck. ‘There are two bombs that are still intact,’ he said. ‘Fejor’s rigging a detonator. They were using a chemical mix as explosives, and bloody volatile too. If it wasn’t so cold here it would go up if you breathed on it.’
‘Thank Sacred Mountain, then,’ said Aesor, ‘for another weapon.’
Ulli thought of the cold, and looked around for Frith. He saw the man crouching out of the wind by the side of the wreck, holding the lapels of his uniform around his face. He was going to die, and Ulli thought about mentioning that fact to Aesor – but there was nothing the Space Wolves could do to prevent it, no shelter to provide for him or fuel to build a fire.
Ulli wondered if Sacred Mountain was an auspicious place to die, if it would be a failure in the eyes of the Omnissiah or a blessed end under His gaze. The Space Wolves did not cleave to the Imperial church or the many variations of the Imperial creed, or to the worship of the Omnissiah, that facet of the Emperor as a god of knowledge and revelation. Ulli did not understand religion of that kind – he had read the runes from tombs of Fenrisian kings venerated as ancestors by the people of his home world, but he did not himself believe their ghosts came to lead the souls of fallen warriors to the afterlife as many tribes did. And the Emperor, while the greatest man who had ever lived and the father of the Space Marines in a literal and figurative sense, was not a god in his mind as the Imperial church would have it. Did it bring comfort or dread to imagine the Omnissiah glowering down to judge at the moment of death? Was there even room in Frith’s frozen mind for matters so weighty?
It was not long before Fejor and Tanngjost had buried the bombs at the top of the fractured snow field, where the upper layer sat precariously on an older fall of icy snow. The detonation would bring it all down, sweeping into the narrow defiles that would serve as paths upwards for the greenskins. More of the orks were gathering now, the hardiest and fastest climbers, lurking behind ridges of stone ready to make the final push upwards. Behind them smoke rose from the engines of bikes the other orks were manhandling over the rough climb, ready to scream up the flat slope.
‘The bombs need
no help this time,’ said Tanngjost, ‘and our pack leader’s frost blade is as keen as it ever will be. But alas, the heavy bolter was destroyed at the bunker and all I have is my darling Frejya. Rune Priest, would you?’
Tanngjost held out his bolter to Ulli. It was a heavily customised model, an older marque from some ancient armoury of the Fang. Its casing was inlaid with red and gold, marked with silver eagle’s heads to mark notable kills the weapon had taken. Tanngjost had even had the weapon’s name inscribed on it.
‘It has been too long, Lady Frejya,’ said Ulli. ‘Last time I saw you, you were out of shells and Tanngjost was beating an eldar about the head with you.’
‘She might not be refined,’ said Tanngjost, ‘but she’s still my girl.’
‘What does she wish of me?’
‘She is jealous of Brother Fejor’s range,’ said Tanngjost. ‘Not his bite, for sure, for she can blow a hole in any greenskin big enough to spit through. But she’d rather not have to wait until I can see the reds of their eyes.’
Ulli laid his hand on Frejya’s casing. He could feel the years on the weapon, the countless alien and heretic lives taken by her, the joy that a Space Wolf took in the decimation of his enemies. Such a weapon took the runes well because half the work was already done – it was already infused with meaning and history, with a patina of age and bloodshed. Ulli created the rune in his mind, taken from the tomb of a long-dead Fenrisian prince who could shoot a snow hart through the throat from leagues away. Distance, accuracy and cold-heartedness were enwrapped in the symbol now being raised up in light and steel.
‘Fine raiment,’ said Ulli, ‘for a fine lady.’
Gunfire was stuttering up from below. The orks weren’t trying to hit anything, or even fire ranging shots. The noise and the fury was its own reward, raising the blood of the greenskins until they were in a raucous battle-frenzy, with war-cries echoing up from the throng. They were starting the climb up the slope, falling over one another in their eagerness to get to grips with the Space Wolves.
‘Can you see their leader?’ voxed Aesor.
‘Not yet,’ replied Fejor, who was crouched in the wreckage of the crashed aircraft, surveying the enemy through the scope of his sniper rifle.
‘Not right,’ said Aesor. ‘Greenskins lead from the front.’
‘This whole army could be swept away,’ said Ulli, ‘but if that creature survives, all our work here will be undone.’
‘Is it among them?’ asked Aesor.
Ulli knelt in the snow and put a hand to the ground. Though his psychic discipline was not the reading of minds or the perception of the warp, his psychic sense could still react when the touch of the warp was strong enough.
It was there. The dark and monstrous stink of warpcraft, filtered through the mass of hatred that each ork possessed in place of a mind. It pulsed through the rocks and the air. It stained the clear sky. Ulli felt filthy just to perceive it.
‘It’s here,’ said Ulli.
‘Much as I would love to try,’ said Fejor, ‘I doubt we can wade through this many greenskins to get to it.’
‘Then as Russ hauled the Iron-Scale Kraken from the ocean to best it on land,’ said Aesor, ‘just as Hef Shattertusk lured forth the Beast of the Black Fjord, so shall we bring the enemy to us.’
Above the Space Wolves’ position was a promontory of rock, sprouting from the base of the rocky spindle that formed the mountain’s peak. Aesor ran to it and stood on the edge, drawing his frost blade. Ulli could imagine that image in stained glass adorning a chapel, built by Emperor-fearing citizens to honour some act of deliverance from the Space Wolves. Very few of the Chapter were handsome, but Aesor was definitely among that few.
‘Beast of Sacred Mountain!’ Aesor bellowed. ‘I know you can hear me! You have slain my brothers and I have slain yours, and who is either of us to leave such work undone?’
Aesor’s words echoed up and down the mountain, as if Sacred Mountain itself were calling out the greenskin. A few whooping war-cries reached Ulli’s ears from below.
‘My frost blade has not drunk its fill!’ continued Aesor. ‘And there is space for another skull above the fire of the Great Hall! I think yours will fit perfectly, greenskin. And so I call you out! You will find no fiercer quarry on this planet, you will find no sword keener than mine to test your own! I call you out, and I know you hear me true!’
The orks howled and bellowed, and fired randomly up in the air. And then the din subsided.
Ulli had never seen greenskins cowed into obedience, not when they were chanting their war-cries and ready to spill blood. But these threw themselves face-down into the snow or scurried to the side as the horde parted.
The greenskin leader walked out from the throng. The mountain seemed to shake under its feet. It pointed up at Aesor and bellowed, the sound carrying on the wind like a roar from the warp itself.
‘Do it!’ yelled Aesor.
Fejor shouldered his rifle and jumped down from the wreckage, where the detonator had been rigged to the bomb load.
The ork grinned and the contraptions on its back glowed blue-white, spraying sparks and arcing into the ground. With a sound like a clap of sudden thunder, it vanished.
The orks around it were thrown aside by the shockwave. A blast of air tinged with the steely taste of ozone and blood hit Ulli, heavy with the greasy feel of warpcraft.
‘It exploded,’ said Tanngjost.
‘It teleported,’ replied Ulli.
The air was torn apart. The ork appeared on the promontory a few paces from Aesor, bellowing as it brandished the massive cleaver in its fist.
Aesor saluted with his blade – a foolish gesture, but a feint. The ork lunged at him, bringing the cleaver down to cut the pack leader in two. Aesor dodged to the side and turned the cleaver with his frost blade – a mundane weapon would have been shattered but the kraken-tooth blade turned the cleaver aside and the weapon was driven into the rock beside Aesor’s foot.
Aesor leapt into the ork, planting a foot on its knee to propel himself upwards. He grabbed one of the beast’s fangs with his free hand and headbutted it in the bridge of the nose. Cartilage cracked and the ork reeled.
‘Say the word,’ voxed Fejor from the wreck.
‘Stand by,’ replied Ulli.
Aesor vaulted off the ork before it could tear him off and dash him against the rocks. The separation was enough for Tanngjost to draw a bead with Frejya and blast a volley of shots into the greenskin. Shots punched into the mass of gnarled green scar tissue, but only angered the creature more. It hauled the cannon off its back, the barrels cycling as it levelled the weapon at Tanngjost. The ork had patched the weapon back together using ill-matched spare parts and chunks of welded steel plating. There was no way it should have worked, but there had been no reason for the ork aircraft to fly either.
The cannon blazed. Tanngjost sprinted for the rocky base of the mountain spire as shots erupted around him, throwing columns of snow into the air.
Aesor lunged at the ork. His frost blade was aimed at the place where its heart should have been. But the ork was fast, far too fast for a creature of its size. It brought its cleaver down into the path of the blade and caught Aesor’s arm in the crook of its elbow, levering Aesor to the ground. It let its cannon fall to the rock as it drew its fist back.
Ulli’s axe was in his hand. He had not willed it – it was a reflex action, wired into his hindbrain. Psychic power was pooling into the weapon, illuminating the runes on its blade. They were runes from the ancient peoples of Fenris, sigils of keenness, valour and ferocity, glowing bright against the dark steel.
The ork drove its fist into Aesor’s chest. Ulli heard the ceramite buckling and the stink of warpcraft was suddenly sharp and real, the savage joy of the ork making its corruption flare up.
Ulli charged at the ork. This time he dropped at the last instant,
knowing the ork had the cunning to anticipate the attack. The ork’s cleaver swept over Ulli and he hacked the axe deep into the ork’s thigh.
A force weapon, such as the rune axe, was not just a badge of a Rune Priest’s rank. The psychic circuitry built into it was attuned to the wielder’s mind, a conduit for the raw psychic power created by accident of birth and merciless training under the Rune Priests of the Fang. When that power flowed through the blade, it killed. It did not wound or sever – it sheared the enemy’s soul away, annihilated his mind in the torrent of willpower.
Ulli let his mind flow through the axe now, the killing wave, the flood of mental fire, to shred the greenskin’s mind from the inside.
A great black wall of hatred met his mind. The psychic force crashed against it like an ocean against a cliff. Ulli was thrown back, mentally and physically, hurled onto his back with his vision greying out and fireworks of shock bursting in his mind.
The mass of warp-born corruption had welled up and thrown him aside. The darkness inside the ork was more powerful than Ulli had realised. It was not an ork at all – it was a vessel for that darkness, brimming over with raw hatred that found form in the greenskin’s savagery and lust for war. Ulli had faced daemons and witches, and sorcerers of the dark gods on the battlefield, but he had never felt such a magnitude of raw corruption.
‘Fejor!’ gasped Ulli into the vox, and his own voice sounded far away. ‘Do it!’
‘Thirty seconds!’ came the reply.
Aesor was on his feet. The breastplate of his armour was crushed and split, and blood ran from his mouth. The ork lashed at him with its cleaver and Aesor parried, duelling with the creature blow for blow. They were both fast, both strong. The ork had the greater reach and power, but Aesor’s frost blade was the finer weapon and he had the skill of a Space Marine and master swordsman. Ulli rolled onto his front and pulled himself to his feet, picking up his axe from the ground – the weapon’s blade was smouldering and the snow around it had melted away.