Greyloc looked at Wyrmblade coldly. His thoughts were evident across his lupine face, and he didn’t bother to hide them.
They do not trust me. I am the White Wolf, the ghost, the bloodless one. They sense what I wish to do, how I wish to transform us all.
‘Call the packs back,’ he growled, rolling his head wearily from side to side, stretching the muscles that had been combat-tense for days on end. ‘We’ll meet the attack here. If nothing else, the passage of the Gates will make them bleed.’
The open sky was streaked with the dirty trails of incoming shell fire. The enemy had managed to establish firing positions a few kilometres east of Rossek’s hold-out, and now spearheads had begun to advance out of them.
‘Rojk!’ he bellowed into the comm. ‘Where’s that damned heavy support?’
There was a fizz of static in his earpiece. Either short-range comms were being jammed, or Torgrim Rojk’s Long Fang squad had been forced out of combat. In either case, things were getting difficult.
Rossek’s squad had assaulted six dropsites during the night, destroying all of them utterly before moving on. In four days his ten Grey Hunters had yet to take a casualty despite slaughtering huge numbers of enemy troops. Only gradually had the truth become apparent. The first wave of landings had been fodder – poorly trained and badly equipped conscripts sent to absorb the fury of the Wolves while the real soldiers were landed further out. The mountains were now crawling with enemy squads. Hundreds of them.
Like the one they were closing in on now.
‘Frar, Scarjaw,’ he hissed over the mission channel. ‘Go wide.’
The two Grey Hunters responded instantly, breaking left from the squad and sweeping up the slope of valley. Rossek’s pack had pushed far down a long, narrow cleft in the mountains, using the impenetrable rock cliffs on either side to mask their approach. The broken boulders, some the size of Rhinos, gave excellent cover. At the far end of the valley, only a few hundred metres distant, the enemy was making its advance.
Two tanks were grinding their way toward Rossek’s position, guarding a phalanx of marching troops in their wake. The incoming fire was heavy and accurate, shattering the boulders in front of them and sending shards spinning into the air. The vehicles had an unusual pattern. Leman Russ chassis, by the look of them, with autocannons and heavy bolters. They looked like the Chapter’s own Exterminators. Infantry killers.
‘Eriksson, Vre,’ Rossek hissed.
Two more Grey Hunters peeled right, stooping low as they weaved between the shoulders of rock, leaving seven of the pack still in cover on the valley floor.
A huge boulder cracked open several metres to Rossek’s right, blasted apart by a long range mortar. Heavy bolter-fire from the tanks ran along the valley floor in rows, creeping ever closer to the Wolves’ position.
Rossek checked his helm locator, watching as his troops took up optimal positions.
‘Now,’ he snarled.
The Grey Hunters on the flanks broke cover and raced toward the enemy lines, sweeping across the broken terrain like bolting konungur. They moved incredibly quickly, bounding with assurance across the treacherous landscape. Their boltguns opened up, slamming into the flanks of the swaying tanks and exploding across the front ranks of the infantry beyond.
Rossek watched as the tank-mounted heavy bolters swivelled to meet the flank threats, holding for the few seconds needed to draw fire from the front aspect, then clenched his fist tight.
‘Hjolda!’ he roared, leaping from cover.
His Hunters burst out with him, roaring defiance and letting their pelts stream out from their armour. The time for stealth had passed, and now speed took its place.
Incoming bolter rounds flew past Rossek’s shoulder as he weaved toward his destination, his animal senses keeping him one step ahead of the mortals’ reactions. He fired back from the waist – short, sharp bursts of twin-streamed fire from the storm bolter held in his right hand. As he closed on the first tank, he thumbed his chainfist into whirring, snarling life.
The vehicles were powerful but slow, hindered by the uneven terrain. The Wolves leapt and ducked as they raced toward the enemy. Despite their huge suits of power armour, they went fluidly, fast and low.
Rossek reached the first tank, leaping high on to its roof, boosted by his armour-servos. The turret whirled to face him, but he jammed his chainfist into the metal, carving it open and sending sparks spinning.
Two Hunters pounced on to the other one, with the rest of the squad sweeping past and laying into the supporting infantry. The heavy bark of bolter-fire quickly drowned out the cracks of returning las-beams.
In a single movement, Rossek mag-locked his bolter, grabbed a krak grenade and hurled it into the gap he’d opened in the turret armour, before leaping from the roof through a hail of return fire. The tank’s heavy bolters tracked after him, only to be ripped apart by the muffled boom of the exploding grenade. The tank rocked on its tracks, its armoured panels bulging from within as the explosions blossomed.
Then the other tank blew up, knocked from its tracks when its fuel tanks were breached. Black smoke boiled up from the twin cracked hulls, rolling out of the shattered innards.
The mortals broke then, hurrying back the way they’d come so confidently only moments before, some dropping their weapons in their haste to retreat. Rossek roared his scorn, grabbing his storm bolter again and prepared to reap vengeance.
It was only then that his proximity scanner picked up the new signals, masked by the infantry advance. Further down the valley floor, moving slowly but inexorably, a line of sapphire and bronze figures was marching up the valley. Rossek crouched down behind cover, checking the numbers. Eighteen. Two times nine.
‘Comm signal from the Aett, Jarl,’ reported Frar breathlessly, clattering heavily against the rock as he sank beside him, his voice heavy with kill-urge. ‘Orders to fall back.’
Rossek kept low, magnifying his helm-view and watching the line of Traitor Marines advance through the retreating remnants of their mortal allies. They didn’t hide their presence, made no effort to remain in cover. They came silently, arrogantly, as if they’d already conquered the world they walked on.
‘Traitors,’ he spat, feeling his murder-urge sharpen. The mortals were just meat for his boltgun; these were the real enemy.
‘Jarl?’ asked Frar. ‘Will you respond?’
Rossek found the question irritating. He’d only now seen warriors who were worthy of his blades, ones who wouldn’t run like cattle when their cover was broken. Involuntarily, he found himself giving in to a low, wet growl, his finger moving toward the trigger of his bolter.
‘No, brother,’ he snarled, noting the position of his pack as it clustered around him again, gauging the distance to the advancing Traitor Marines, estimating terrain cover and exposure to ordnance on the way in. ‘I will not respond. I would not respond if the voice of the Allfather himself gave the order.’
He turned to the Grey Hunter, sensing the warrior’s own readiness for the murder-make. The whole pack had been fighting for hours, and the kill-scent was heavy in his nostrils.
‘Kill the comm,’ he spat. ‘We’ll take them. On my mark, bring the wrath of Russ to those that dare trespass on his domain.’
The Hunters tensed, ready for the order, bolters and chainswords clutched fast.
‘The wrath of Russ, Jarl,’ acknowledged Frar, and as he spoke there was a brutal, guttural joy in the words.
Ramsez Hett strode through the slush, his pale robes already sodden at the fringes. His golden armour shielded him from the worst of the chill, but the severe cold had a way of penetrating even his atmosphere-sealed battle-plate.
The Heq’el Mahdi dropsite had grown from a few hundred square metres to over a kilometre, a miniature city draped across the ice-bound highlands. It had anti-aircraft batteries, void shield generators, prefabricated assault walls and hastily-dug trenches around the perimeter. Over two thousand Spireguard had been landed and mo
re were disembarking every hour. Among them strode squads of Rubricae, each accompanied by a sorcerer and shadowed by a hundred more mortal troops. Prosperine tanks and mobile artillery ground their way through the grey patches of lingering snow, their engines labouring and letting loose gouts of black smoke in the extreme conditions. Heq’el Mahdi housed a formidable army in its own right, but it was only one of nine secured dropsites. The scale of Aphael’s ambition had never been more apparent.
We will never be able to do this again. On this strike, everything depends.
The Raptora sorcerer lord reached his destination. A Spireguard commander, wearing the heavy armour, full facemask and tactical battle-helm that had been denied to the first landers, approached and saluted.
‘He’s on time, commander?’ asked Hett, his voice as rasping as ever. He’d not emerged entirely unscathed from the Rubric, and his vocal cords had stretched beyond mortal tolerances. If the Spireguard noticed the effect, he made no sign.
‘Perfectly, lord,’ he replied, looking up to the skies.
The two of them stood on the edge of a wide landing platform, cleared by meltas and with the irregular rock smoothed with plascrete. Rubricae stood on guard around the perimeter, as unmoving as the stone about them.
Hett followed the commander’s eyeline, seeing Aphael’s ship descending toward their position. It was a Stormbird, one out of many the Legion had once operated, gilded and decorated with images of fabulous mythical beasts. The cockpit was lost in a riot of baroque bronze symbols, geometric and mystical. Above them all was the Eye, picked out in a mosaic of garnet, ruby and beryllium.
Looking at the lander as it touched down on the platform, Hett found himself wondering if Temekh was right about the Legion’s loss of taste. The vessel was gaudy. Outsized. Vulgar.
When we lose our judgement, our ability to discern, we lose everything.
The passenger ramp descended, touching gently on the slushy filth beneath it. Lord Aphael strode down it casually, flanked by six towering Terminator Rubricae. His bronze helm, carved with an elongated vox-grille, looked self-satisfied. Every movement the commander made was smug, content, in control.
‘Congratulations, brother,’ Aphael said as he came up to Hett. ‘You have given us the platform we need.’
Hett bowed.
‘We lost many men, lord. More than I made allowances for. The Wolves responded quickly.’
Aphael shrugged.
‘It is their world. We should have been as eager to defend ours.’
‘Nonetheless,’ said Hett, turning to walk with Aphael. ‘Mortals cannot take on Space Marines. There have been sites of slaughter.’
Hett detected a flicker of irritation from Aphael. For all the commander’s surface equanimity, there was something underneath, something fragile. If Hett had been of the Athanaeans, he might have been able to tell what it was.
Not fear, but possibly something like it.
‘That is why the Rubricae go to war,’ Aphael replied. ‘Thanks to our Lord’s deception, there can be no more than a hundred Dogs left in their lair. We bring six hundred of our silent brothers. We have two million mortal troops against a few thousand. What numbers would make you more content, brother?’
Hett felt the urgency in the commander’s words.
Does he fear failure? Is that it? No. The unease is more subtle. It’s something else, something within him.
‘I did not presume–’
‘Yes, you did,’ said Aphael wearily. ‘As is your right. You’re a commander as much as I am.’
He stopped walking and looked over the expanse of the dropsite, teeming with massed ranks of infantry and the rumble of tank-groups. A wing of gunships flew low across them, some bearing the scars of recent combat. It was an impressive vista, a show of force few adversaries in the galaxy would have been able to stand against.
‘If this were not Fenris, I would say that we already have what we need,’ Aphael said. ‘Complacency in this place, though, will get us all killed.’
He looked back at the Stormbird, where the dorsal loading bay doors had been lowered. Something was emerging down the ramp. Something huge.
‘So you’ll see, Ramsez, that all precautions that could have been taken, have been taken. We will go into this battle with every weapon the Legion still has in its possession.’
A massive structure lumbered out of the shadow of the loading bay. It stood twice as tall as the Rubricae around it, a mobile mountain of curved metal. Its head was placed directly in the centre of its vast barrel chest, surrounded by tracery of bronze. Outsized arms hefted a cannon on one side and a gigantic mining drill on the other. It moved with crushing, deliberate strides, compensating perfectly for the flex of the loading ramp. The gilded monster exuded a pungent aroma of heavy oils and coolant as it came, but nothing else. It had no soul. Even the Rubricae had more presence in the warp.
Hett gazed at it in shocked surprise.
‘Cataphracts,’ he breathed, seeing another follow the first down from the open hold. ‘I thought they’d all been–’
‘Destroyed? Not all. These are the last.’
Hett watched the enormous battle-robots, the product of ancient cybernetic tech-sorcery, reach the perimeter of the landing site and come to a mute standstill. They looked formidable, utterly unshakeable. More followed, a whole squad of death-dealing engines.
‘Of course, modifications have been made,’ explained Aphael, motioning toward the drill-arms. ‘If we have to dig the Dogs out, we will.’
‘You think it will come to that?’
‘I care not,’ said Aphael, and the vehemence of hatred in his voice was unfeigned. For a moment, the timbre was more like Hett’s own. ‘If they meet us on the ice, we will come for them. If they cower in their tunnels, we will come for them. If they bury themselves in stone, we will come for them. We will hunt them out, drag them into combat, and wound them until their blood stains this place so deep it will never be recovered.’
Chapter Eight
‘For Russ!’
Rossek flecked the visor of his helm with spittle, jabbing his chainfist, dragging the edge of its blade across the Traitor Marine’s breastplate as his body turned. At the edge of his vision he could see his brothers crash into combat, their bolters falling silent as they brought their close combat weapons to bear. The remnants of the mortal army were irrelevant now. All that mattered were the Traitors: eighteen Rubric Marines against an eleven-strong pack of Space Wolves with fire kindling in their clenched fists.
Fair odds.
The Rubric Marine facing Rossek moved as swiftly as he did. Though the sapphire behemoths walked into battle in stately, patient ranks, as soon as combat was joined their bodies sparked into action. Their reactions were those of the Legiones Astartes, swift and sure, poised by gene-forged mastery and that dreadful, arduous conditioning.
Ceramite crunched against ceramite, gunmetal-grey against sapphire and bronze. The whooping, bellowing pack of Wolves whirled their way into battle, bone-totems swinging wildly, their pelt-draped arms landing punches and hammer blows with crunching, precision guided force.
The Traitors responded silently, eerily matching every thrust with a counter-thrust. They spun on their heels as swiftly, traded upper-cuts and deadeners with equal skill, parried the incoming blade and returned the blow with shimmering crystal-bladed power swords.
Rossek towered over all the others, resplendent in his las-scorched Terminator battle-plate. He crashed his way through the guard of the Traitor before him, smashing it back through sheer momentum, swinging huge arcs of devastation with his whirring chainfist.
The Rubric Marine rocked on its heels, stoically fighting against the oncoming storm, driven back, pace by pace, as chunks of its ornate armour were hacked from its frame by the biting blades, never emitting so much as a whisper.
‘Death to the Traitor!’ bellowed Rossek, feeling fresh spikes of adrenaline pumping through his battle-primed body. The wolf within was foam-mouthed
with battle frenzy, howling and slavering. The very silence of his enemy fuelled Rossek’s fury, driving the assault to new heights of savagery.
The Rubric Marine stumbled then, staggering over the rough ground. Rossek pounced, using the brief opening between them to unleash a hail of bolter rounds. As he closed for the kill, the shells impacted, shattering the beautiful armour and smashing the ornamental crests from the Traitor’s helm and pauldrons.
‘The wrath of Fenris!’ Rossek thundered, joining the massed howls and battle cries of his brothers.
This was life. This was perfection – to bring the battle to the enemy, to fight on the open ice as the Allfather had created him to do. Amid all the anger, the blind fury, the familiar rush of the kill-urge, there was this, too.
Pleasure.
Rossek laughed under the heavy Terminator helm, barely noticing the rune-sigils on the lens display showing pack positions, kill signs and life signs. The beleaguered Rubric Marine reeled under the Wolf Guard’s onslaught, unable to answer the raw fury of the charge. What meagre existence it possessed was coming to an end.
Then, everything stopped.
Rossek saw Scarjaw bound across the rocks to his right, hurling himself against two Rubric Marines, his black pelts streaming behind him. The Grey Hunter slowed and froze, locked in an impossible, half-completed lunge.
The rest of the pack succumbed, first dragging as if wading through crude oil, then grinding to a halt.
Rossek whirled round, aghast, before feeling the heaviness pull on his own limbs.
‘Fight it, brothers!’ he bellowed, sensing the taint of maleficarum, tasting the unholy stench of sorcery as it sank into his limbs. The runes on his armour blazed red, flaring in defiance against the incoming waves of corruption. His vision wavered, going cloudy at the edges as if mists had rolled across the valley floor with unnatural suddenness. ‘Fight it!’
The Rubric Marines suffered no ill-effects. They pressed on with remorseless efficiency, plunging their blades into the static Wolves emotionlessly, ripping open neck-guards to expose the pale flesh beneath, indifferent to the muffled cries of pain as the Hunters died.
Space Marine Battles - the Novels Volume 1 Page 145