‘What is it?’ asked a young kaerl, a blond-haired recruit called Lyr, hoisting his rifle to his waist instinctively. He was fearless in a human scale firefight, but the vast energies colliding only a few hundred metres away clearly unnerved him.
‘Standard bombardment pattern,’ said Freija, who had no idea what manner of forbidden technology had been unleashed. ‘Stand down, trooper. Until we get the order to fall back, we don’t move.’
‘Quite right, huskaerl,’ came an amused, metallic voice.
Freija whirled around to find herself facing the towering outline of Garjek Arfang, the Twelfth’s Iron Priest. She swallowed reflexively, and instantly berated herself for her weakness.
How do they do it? How do they project this aura of intimidation?
‘Lord,’ she acknowledged, and bowed.
‘That’s not capable of hurting us,’ continued the priest, speaking through his slatted vox-grille. Like all his kind, he had a hulking servo-arm sprouting from the back of his strange, gothic armour. Instead of the usual totems and trophies strewn across the ceramite, he wore the skull and cog of the Adeptus Mechanicus on his breast, interleaved with iron renditions of the cardinal Fenrisian runes. His dark battle-plate was heavy with the patina of wear and combat, and looked like it hadn’t been removed for some time. Freija had certainly never seen any of the Iron Priests out of their shells, and it was easy to believe the rumours that what was left of their mortal bodies had irretrievably melded with the arcane technology within. He carried a heavy staff as the badge of his priesthood, crested with the adamantium head of a hammer forged into the likeness of a snarling muzzle.
‘They do it to prevent us firing back.’
He walked past her and stood facing the open launch bays, watching the rain of blazing plasma slam into the void shield barrier beyond.
‘Our shields are fed by thermal reactors buried kilometres down,’ he said, half talking to himself. ‘This will do no more than stress the voids, but we won’t be able to send any ship-killers up through it.’
He turned back to Freija.
‘Inconvenient, no?’
There was a low grating sound from somewhere below his armour.
Growling? Clearing his throat? Laughing?
‘Enlightening, lord,’ she said. ‘Then we are safe to remain on duty here.’
‘Perfectly, huskaerl. For the time being.’
The Iron Priest looked from one kaerl to another, assessing Freija’s squad for some kind of suitability. He had a strange, clipped manner, and his movements were oddly stilted for a Sky Warrior.
Metal-heads. Even more void-touched than the rest of them.
‘I have chosen you,’ Arfang announced. ‘I will have need of an escort for my thralls, and my tech-priests are fully engaged.’
‘At your command, lord,’ said Freija, uncertainly. Anything would be preferable to killing more time in the hangars, but he hadn’t said what he wanted yet.
The Iron Priest nodded to himself, evidently satisfied. He placed his hammer-headed staff on the ground in front of him, and several hunched figures scuttled out of the shadow of a nearby Thunderhawk. They were servitor-thralls, the half-man, half-machine semi-automata that provided the menial labour for the armoury. Some still had their human faces in place, drooped in a lobotomised, vacant expression of emptiness. Others had rigid iron plates instead of features and their hands replaced with drills, vices, locks, ratchets and claw hammers. Some had bundles of vat-grown plastek muscles bunched across their wasted natural frames, bolted in place with rivets and governed by a tangle of wires and control needles. They were a motley collection of horrors, the result of the dark union of Machine-God and the Fenrisian aesthetic of savagery.
‘There are preparations to make. It will take days. When I call you, come without delay.’
‘Forgive me, lord. Where?’
The Iron Priest turned his armour-plated head to look at her. His helm-lenses glowed a deep red, as if opening onto smouldering coals within.
‘Where else, huskaerl? Have you not heard the war-seers’ counsel? The battle-outcomes do not cogitate well. There is mortal danger here.’
That, for him at least, seemed to answer the question. He strode past her, clanking his hammer-staff on the floor as he went. Then he paused, as if considering the possibility that he may not have been entirely clear.
He turned, and Freija thought she detected something like excitement in that flat, unearthly voice.
‘Jarl Greyloc has ordered it, huskaerl. We go to wake the dead.’
The Fang was merely the greatest of the many huge peaks that clustered together in the centre of Asaheim. Other summits reared their heads into the icy air around the World Spine, scraping the atmosphere as it thinned toward the void of space. They were piled atop the shoulders of each other, all encroaching on the space of the rest, fighting like the dark ekka pines of the valleys to climb toward the light. Everything on Fenris was in conflict, even the tortured, broken land itself.
The peaks closest to the Fang had entered the legends of the Vlka Fenryka, etched on their communal consciousness since the Allfather had led them there in the half-remembered twilight of the founding. To the south was Asfryk, white-sided and blunt, the Cloudtearer. To the east were soaring Friemiaki and Tror, the brothers of thunder. To the west was bleak Krakgard, the dark peak where heroes were burned, and to the north were Broddja and Ammagrimgul, the guardians of the Hunter’s Gate through which aspirants passed to take the trials of passage.
The ways between the peaks were treacherous and known only to those who’d trodden the paths as aspirants. All were scarred with precipitous drops and deep crevasses. Some hunt-ways were built on solid stone, whereas others were on bridges of ice that would crumble to nothing with the first application of weight. Some led true, taking the hunter from the clefts in the shadow of the summits down to the plains where the prey dwelt; others led nowhere but into darkness, to the caves that riddled the bowels of the ancient landscape, full of nothing but ice-gnawed bones and despair.
For all its majesty and terror, there were islands of stability in that savage land, places where gigantic outcrops of rock created broad plateaux amid the plunging cliffs. These were the sites where the Wolves came to commune with the savage soul of the mountain country. In the Summers of Fire, when the ice was broken across the planet and war came to the mortal tribesmen, great fires were lit in such places and sagas declaimed by the skjalds. Then would the warriors of Russ put aside the demands of battle for a short time and remember those who had fallen in the Long War, and the Rune Priests would delve far into the mysteries of the wyrd, attempting to discern the Chapter’s path into the unknown landscape of the future.
It was at such a gathering that a younger Ironhelm had announced the first of the many hunts for Magnus. Further back into the past, the same location had played host to the decision to form the Wolf Brothers, the Space Wolves’ ill-fated successor Chapter, now disbanded and a source of hidden shame.
For the Thousand Sons, who knew and cared nothing of this, the plateaux were merely landing sites, places to disgorge the troops and vehicles from their cavernous landers ready for the land assault to come. So, forty-eight hours after the destruction of the orbital platforms, they came in spiralling columns, darkening the skies with their numbers. Heavy, lumbering drop-ships disembarked from the holds of the troop carriers above and thundered down to the embarkation points, guarded by wings of gunships and shadowed by the void-to-surface batteries of the warships in orbit. One after another, the bronze and sapphire vessels broke into the atmosphere, streaking trails of fire as they plummeted.
By nightfall, dozens of them had come, just a tithe of the many that would follow. Wolf Guard Sigrd Brakk watched the twinkling lights of the latest drop-ship fall toward his position, hard under the shadow of the Krakgard, and his lips pulled back from his fangs. Like the rest of his pack, he was shoulder deep in snow, crouching in the lee of an overhanging drift-curve, wait
ing for the moment when the plateau he was overlooking was picked by the enemy commanders.
‘That one, lads,’ he hissed, satisfied, motioning toward the descending ship. ‘First kill of the night.’
Assault-Captain Skyt Hemloq kept a sweaty grip on his lasrifle. Despite his armour and environment bodyglove, the air was terrifyingly cold. That didn’t stop him sweating.
His feet crunched through the snow, illuminated by his helmet-lumen, sweeping across the blue-white surface. His squad, thirty strong and all equipped for the soul crushing climate, fanned out beside him.
So this is Fenris, he thought, gazing up in awe at the dark shapes of the peaks above. The nearest of them soared into the night, far larger than anything he’d seen on his home world of Qavelon, and that was reckoned a planet with many mountains.
There was something about the air. It wasn’t just the cold – there was something sharp, savage, about it. Even modified through his rebreathers and boosted with oxygen-mix from his backpack, it was thin and caustic. Perhaps it was the alt-clim drugs still swimming through his bloodstream.
It was quiet. The only consistent sound came from the whining engines of the drop-ship. The hulking lander, twenty metres tall and much broader, squatted on the meltsnow-streaked rock, gradually unloading its cargo of ordnance and manpower. Already over a hundred Spireguard had emerged from the cavernous interior, marching with false bravado on to a world that obviously wanted to kill them and looked perfectly capable of doing it soon. They were the first, the ones in the line of fire, the ones charged with establishing the bridgehead.
And yet, there had been no resistance. No movement. Nothing detected on the surveyors.
The silence.
‘Stay tight,’ Hemloq voxed, fixing his gaze back on the scene before him.
The plateau was over eight hundred metres across on the flat. It plunged down into a chasm on three sides; on the fourth, the rock rose steeply in broken, tumbling terraces. Negotiable, but difficult.
He swallowed, trying not to let his vision get clouded by the myriad points of light across the flat landing site. Fixed lumen-arrays had been erected after planetfall and all the troops disembarking had helm-lights on full-beam. The effect was confusing rather than helpful, as the night was broken by hundreds of star-like points and banks of eye-watering brilliance.
The drop-ship sat in the centre of the open space, smoke and steam gushing from its exhausts, a dark outline ringed with whirling tracer lights. Hemloq knew the pilots were eager to take off again. Despite the gunships patrolling the dropsites, they were vulnerable while on the ground, like a prey-bird crouched on its nest.
Even as he watched, another company of troops disembarked, some of them with heavier weapons in tow. A cumbersome lascannon was unloaded, flanked by a dozen gunnery crew, ready for deployment at the site edges. In time, portable void shield generators and proper anti-aircraft defences would be deployed. When that happened, the place would be something like secure. Until then, they were vulnerable, and all of them knew it.
‘Sweep complete,’ came a vox from the far side of the dropsite.
‘Anything?’ demanded Hemloq, speaking more urgently than he’d meant to.
Damn it. Keep it cool in front of the men.
‘Nothing, sir.’
‘Then hold position. Until we get fixed surveyors online, your eyes are all we’ve got.’
The vox-link crackled out. Hemloq tried it again, and there was no response. That was just damn rude.
‘Keep tight,’ he said again. He was beginning to sound ridiculous with his military platitudes. The whistle of the wind in the high peaks, the lack of any response from the defenders, the bone-aching cold. It would have unnerved a man of far greater combat readiness than Skyt Hemloq.
‘Trust in the Masters,’ he murmured.
On the far side of the plateau, a lumen-bank winked out.
Hemloq stiffened.
‘Stand fast, men,’ he said, checking on his helm-display to see who was responsible for that section of perimeter.
Another one disappeared.
Shit.
‘They’re coming!’ he cried, uncaring of how shrill his voice had become. ‘Pick your targets!’
He hoisted his lasgun to his shoulder, sweeping it round as he peered out into the gloom. Dimly, he was aware of his men doing likewise. His proximity meter was blank. There was no chatter, no feedback.
They’re as terrified as I am.
Then, from over to his left, lines of retina-burning las-fire blazed out, followed by the whip-crack noise of their discharge. It was madly angled, fired in haste. Briefly, from the corner of his eye, Hemloq saw something huge and shadowy flit across the snow.
He whirled to face it, firing his lasgun indiscriminately at nothing. There were shouts of outrage as other beams lanced through the night, some of them striking the flanks of the drop-ship.
Hemloq dropped to a frightened crouch, feeling his heart hammer in his chest.
This is a farce. They’ve got us jumping at shadows.
Then, and from somewhere, from a place he’d never have guessed existed, Hemloq found resources of stubbornness. A defence had to be organised, some structure imposed. The Wolves had a reputation, but they were only men, just as the Masters had promised.
‘To me!’ he roared, leaping back to his feet, a new note of determination entering his voice. ‘Form ranks, and get those–’
A face flashed across his field of vision, something out of a nightmare. He saw two glowing shards of red, a gunmetal-grey helm studded with teeth, hulking pauldrons daubed in blood.
‘Shush,’ came a wet growl, impossibly deep, sounding more like a leopard’s than a human’s.
In the instant before Ogrim Redpelt’s gauntlet smashed in on Hemloq’s vocal cords and ripped them out, the novice assault-captain had time for a realisation that might have been helpful if it had come earlier.
These are no men.
Helfist tore across the landing site, swaying between the flickering las-beams more skilfully than his armour-clad bulk would have suggested possible.
There was little in the arsenal of such mortals that could have hurt him, but he maintained the absolute stealth of the approach and kept his bolter silent. It was a matter of pride – a clean kill, a minimum of fuss. His helm’s night-vision showed up the scene in clear lines. It was evident from the confused response of the enemy that they were using no such technology.
A lumen beam swept across him, briefly showing him up against the dark. His helm runes showed six beads locking on to his position, and he checked his barrelling run and turned to face them.
Six mortals, twenty metres off, all dressed in pale grey camouflaged armour, masked and helmeted, with lowered lasguns.
‘Fodder,’ spat Helfist under his breath, already running fluidly toward them, already relishing the splash of their blood against his armour, already bringing his power fist into the optimal swing-pattern.
One panicked beam got away before he crashed among them. It glanced from his sigil-carved vambraces harmlessly. His fist crunched into the face of one of the warriors, throwing him far into the night. The carry-through crushed the chest of the one behind him.
Helfist spun tautly on his left boot, using the grip of his bolt pistol to smash the visor of a retreating mortal. The air howled in and the man fell to his knees, gagging on a shattered jawline.
The others broke, scrabbling to get away.
‘Filth,’ Helfist growled, grabbing the closest and snapping his spine with a whiplash shake of his power fist.
His helm showed the position of his battle-brothers carving their way toward the drop-ship. There was las-fire everywhere, cracking and snapping in an ill-focused storm of fear. More of the mortal soldiers had taken up positions across the plateau, trying to organise the defence into something that had a hope of stopping the Wolves. It would do them little good. Helfist could see the incoming signals of gunships, and could sense the charging up of
lascannons, but neither would change the odds much now.
Pitiful. It enraged him.
‘You come here,’ he snarled, decapitating a mortal with a contemptuous uppercut. ‘You defile this place.’ Disembowelled another with his power fist. The energy field wasn’t even activated. ‘You dare this.’ Ripped up breathing gear, tore open breastplates, broke limbs. ‘You insult me with your weakness.’ Crushed skulls, blinded faces, ripped out spines, bathed in the blood of the invader. ‘This is making me very angry.’
A swooping shape rushed past him on his left flank. Redpelt had made a break for the drop-ship. Helfist shook the life out of the man he held in his grasp, cast him aside and joined his battle-brother in the chase. The wolf-spirit within, the avatar of the kill-urge, uncoiled and stretched its claws.
‘Fired your bolter yet?’ voxed Redpelt over the comm-link, gunning his chainsword and drawing a splatter-filled arc across the panicked mortals in his way.
‘No need,’ replied Helfist with disgust, shouldering up to a barrage of las-fire at full sprint and ploughing into the terrified snipers. ‘They just don’t deserve it.’
Redpelt laughed, punching the butt of his pistol heavily into his next target’s midriff. The man flew back in agony, stomach burst, blood spilling across the churned snow.
‘No argument, brother.’
By the time they reached the open maw of the drop-ship the slush beneath their boots was rose-red. Brokentooth was still some way behind, detained with tearing apart a row of semi-prepared lascannon batteries. Somewhere further back, Brakk was dealing out silent death in impressively brutal quantities. He’d maintained comm-silence since unleashing his pack on the landing site, content to let the Claws take out the principal target while he maximised devastation amongst the infantry.
Caught in mid-deployment, the pilots were trying to take off. Enemy troops were scrambling to get back into the false safety of the interior, driven to a state of blind terror by the armoured shades sweeping through them.
‘They sicken me,’ continued Helfist, leaping up into the huge loading bay and plunging into the terrified huddle of men within.
Space Marine Battles - the Novels Volume 1 Page 143