The thrall-servitors had certainly known what to do with it. After their master had passed through the doors, they’d got to work, attaching themselves to input valves and initiating obscure sets of protocols. Whatever they were doing, it was noisy and repetitive. Lights flickered across the wall of machines from time to time, glinting painfully in the otherwise perfect dark. The servitors not directly attached to the devices had started performing a series of rites in front of the major machine-nodes – anointing the moving parts with pungent oils, reading long lists of benedictions in flat, metal-dry voices, bowing before the inert iron and steel as if it were an altar of long-dormant gods.
They worked methodically, tirelessly, soullessly. There was no communication between them and the Iron Priest within. Arfang was alone, presumably in a place where only the Sky Warriors were permitted. There was no indication of how long his work would take, whether it was going well, or even what he was planning.
Freija fought against a growing weight of boredom. The oppressive dark combined with the dreary intonations of the servitors made it hard to stay sharp.
‘Keep your focus,’ she warned over the vox-link, speaking to herself as much as her troops.
Four of the six-kaerl squad stood alongside her, facing outward from the machine-wall, the muzzles of their rifles pointing into the dark. Two more were resting, slumped uneasily between their comrades and the unnerving rites of the half-human servitors.
Then she heard the noise again. Instantly all thoughts of boredom were banished, and she felt the prick of sweat under her gloves.
The other kaerls heard it too, and she saw them stiffening. The two on rest-rotation climbed their feet, grasping their sidearms clumsily in the gloom.
It was a low, rumbling growl, glottal and damp, vibrating in the stone of the floor.
‘Hold your ground,’ she hissed over the comm, trying to see something definite in the grainy feed her visor was giving her.
Behind her, the servitors carried on their work. The guns of the kaerls swept the far end of the chamber, moving slowly and uncertainly. She could sense their tension in the tight, nervous movements.
Suddenly, the distinctive rasping bark of a skjoldtar burst out of nowhere, its muzzle flare dazzling in intensity. Despite herself, Freija nearly pulled her own trigger in reflexive shock.
‘Cease fire!’ she shouted, peering into the shadows. Her proximity meter was empty, save for the group of friendly signals around her.
The echoes of the gunfire took a long time to die. The culprit, probably Lyr – she couldn’t tell – shook his head. By now Freija’s heart was properly beating. There was something out there, something she couldn’t see, something that sounded – felt – utterly terrifying.
‘Hold your ground,’ she said again, feeling her stomach twisting.
Get a grip, woman. You are a daughter of Russ, a child of the storm.
‘We’re not getting a good feed from the visors,’ she said. ‘I’m walking out.’
None of her troops responded. They stayed where they were, locked in a semi-circle around the oblivious servitors.
Freija took a deep breath, and began to advance. She went slowly, feeling her heavy breathing quicken. Ahead of her, she could see nothing but static.
Then it came again, nearer this time, thrumming and resonant. It wasn’t emanating from one of the tunnels beyond. It was in the chamber, there with them, watching. Somewhere.
Freija had gone ten metres by the time she stopped. She looked over her shoulder briefly, checking for the presence of her squad. They were still there, still surrounding the wall of machines, still guarding the doors.
She turned back.
Less than a metre away, a pair of golden eyes, pinned with black, liquid and massive, gazed back at her.
Freija froze.
Skítja.
The siege-fire was horrifying, vaporising ice and snow and shattering rock, tearing up ancient outcrops of granite and dissolving them into clouds of scree. The superheavy guns had been dragged into range, and the Fang reeled under the dense volume of ordnance. Its flanks were wreathed in both smoke and steam as the snow was boiled away from the rock and the gun emplacements were picked off, one by one. The entire peak was clothed in raging tongues of flame, blazing as if the magma at the planet’s core had been released and flung into the permafrost of Asaheim’s summit.
The defenders waited within the walls, letting the fortress defences do their work for as long as possible. Static gun emplacements thundered with lethal force, chewing their way through whole loops of ammunition in moments, cutting down oncoming armour and leaving the tilting wrecks blocking the advance. Teams of kaerls worked ceaselessly to keep the death-dealers fed and operative.
It would not last forever. The Thousand Sons were advancing, claiming each metre of land in blood and fire. Only when the doors were broken would the Wolves take to the field again, welcoming the invaders with the embrace of Morkai.
Until then, there were other powers in play.
Odain Sturmhjart was angry. His habitual bluster had gone, shaken by his inability to predict the attack of the Thousand Sons, rocked by his failure to see the deception as it unfolded. He no longer laughed with the savage glee of the coming battle, but glowered under his arcane psychic hood, his eyes blazing. To make matters worse, he had failed to watch Wyrmblade as he had been commanded to do, and knew the Tempering was still proceeding behind closed blast-doors. He had failed in everything that mattered, and the trust the Great Wolf had placed in him had gone unrewarded.
So far.
Sturmhjart had worked with fanaticism since the revelation of failure, driving himself close to the limits of even his battle-hardened frame. The wards throughout the Aett had been reinforced. He had worked until his hands were raw, rubbing the stone figures with his own vital blood, instilling the power of the world-soul within them. Now that the enemy was here, the time for such preparation was passed.
He stood encased in his runic armour high up in an observation chamber of the Fang, watching as the fire rebounded from the void shields before him. No missile would survive passage through that curtain of immolation, but there were other weapons to wield.
Sturmhjart slammed his staff on the floor, and the iron shaft shivered from the impact. The soul of the storm began to quicken around him. He felt the air race, felt it grow colder and keener. His rage at himself fuelled the brewing tumult. He could use that anger, turn it into something of terrible, terrible potency.
The winds ran round the horned summit of the mountain, whining through the plasma-boiling air, whipping against the red-hot rocks. The sky, which had been pure blue and empty, began to pucker with clouds. A low rumble echoed between the encircling peaks.
Feel this. Feel the coming of the world-soul. This is power the like of which no witch will ever wield.
Sturmhjart screwed his eyes shut, clutching the staff tight. His second heart broke into a steady rhythm. The summoning was painful. He relished the pain. Like the searing irons, it cauterised the deeper pain within.
More clouds rolled into being, tumbling from the crown of the mountains to the north, their skirts flickering with lightning. In their shadow came the hail, a sweeping wall of ruin, slamming and bouncing into the ground below.
Raise your eyes to the heavens, Traitors.
He saw the sorcerers amid the hosts of the enemy like stars, their psychic essences standing out even through the noise and confusion. They were powerful, steeped in sickening energies. He could see their arrogance, their confidence. Some were physically corrupted, giving in to the terrible flesh-changes that blighted all their kind. One of them, the brightest star of all, was far down the roads of ruin.
You are many, and we are few. But this is our world, and we wield its power.
The storm spread, breaking across the summits, sweeping toward the Fang in a howling, screaming gale. The sky darkened, making the explosions around the mountain look like embers in a fire pit. The ha
il hammered down, cracking and bouncing on the stone.
You think you come to fight mortals, like yourselves.
The wind picked up speed and power, growing to a crescendo of whirling, horrific destruction. The pinions of the blizzard closed, fed by the surging energy of the storm. Tanks were upended, knocked from their tracks. Flanking columns of troops were swept away, dragged to the precipices at the edges of the causeways and thrown to their deaths.
You think we will succumb to witchery as you did.
Sturmhjart felt blood well in his mouth, trickling down to the mass of his slicked-down beard. He ignored it. The sharp pain was lost in the whirlwind of psychic power flooding his body. He was nothing more than the conduit, the vessel through which the untamed fury of the maelstrom passed. The raw howl of the wind became a bellowing roar. The flames around the Fang were lashed and pulled into dazzling flares of energy, ripped across the air by the scouring gales.
You are wrong.
The sorcerers responded, guarding what vehicles they could, sending flickering lightning and translucent kine-shields of their own to combat the danger from the skies. They were mighty, and there were dozens of them. Even so, they struggled against the elements, and the assault faltered. Gunships blazed to the ground like comets, torn apart by the electric sky. The screams of the dying and the terrified echoed through the rippling currents of the storm.
Sturmhjart relished the cries. They fed his power. They fed the planet’s power. The invaders had brought maleficarum with them, and righteous punishment was the consequence.
Even as they bled and scrambled for cover, the witches were learning a lesson; the same lesson that had been learned by every Rune Priest since the Allfather had first brought the way of the wyrd to the frozen death world.
Sturmhjart knew it. He had known it for centuries, and took delight in making it as clear as the ice itself to those who dared defy him.
We do not defend Fenris. Fenris defends us. The world, the people, are one. We share a soul, a soul of hatred, and now it comes to you, dark on the wings of the storm.
Learn it well, for soon this truth will kill you.
The shadow in the dark reared, and the dreadful eyes disappeared. Freija scrambled backwards, snatching her rifle up clumsily, letting fly with a burst of eye-watering gunfire. Skjoldtar rounds did more damage than Imperial Guard autoguns when handled right, and a howl of inhuman pain echoed around the chamber.
‘Huskaerl!’ came a cry to her left.
There were fresh muzzle-flares from her left as her men ran forwards, firing from the waist and spraying rounds at the space recently occupied by the... animal that had been in front of her.
‘Get back!’ she roared, ceasing fire and trying to make sense of the signals on her visor display. There had been nothing on the proximity scan. Nothing.
Her troops withdrew alongside her, still firing. The bursts were poorly controlled, driven by fear.
Russ, where is our courage?
‘Get a grip!’ she shouted, cuffing the nearest trooper. ‘Fire when you have a target.’
He kept firing, his finger clamped to the trigger. Beneath his mask, Freija could see a pair of eyes, wide with fear.
‘It’s coming!’ he screamed. ‘It’s coming back!’
Then Freija saw it, a huge, bounding shape eating up the ground, bursting out of the gloom like a nightmare. The guns kept firing, lighting up its hunched, powerful body in a tracery of lightning-white. She only had time for impressions – yellow eyes, incredibly powerful shoulders, blood-red jaws – and then she was firing back too, retreating until she felt the metal limbs of the servitors at her back.
There were more of them, more terrible forms leaping out of the dark, slinking along the ground, limping into range. They were all different, all horrifying, like the dreams of fleshmakers taken apart and reassembled into jumbles of canine horror.
‘Hold the line!’ she bellowed, emptying her magazine and scrabbling to load a replacement. ‘Keep them back!’
She saw one of the monsters recoil as multiple streams of gunfire slammed into it, knocking it into a pain-clenched crouch. It screamed in a mix of fury and pain, then made another lunge toward them.
Blood of Russ – it’s still not dead.
Then another beast broke into the open, bursting through a torrent of fire, shrugging off the impacts like they were a light rain. It was gigantic, a hulking brute of muscle and thick, wiry fur. A long, grinning face leered up, lined with fangs and containing a glistening, lolling tongue. It went on four legs, but had reared on its huge haunches in a bizarre mockery of a man.
Freija whirled round with her reloaded weapon, got her shot and fired.
The gun coughed and jammed.
Cursing, she fumbled in the dark to fix it, hearing the screams of her men as the horror got among them. It picked one up and threw him across the chamber. There was a sloppy crunch as the trooper slammed into the rock wall and slithered down. As fast as thought, other creatures bounded over to him, slavering and wheezing.
Freija crouched low as she slammed the clip back in place, risking a quick look at the servitors. They were working as if nothing were going on around them, polishing and tending, bowing and chanting. The doors to the chamber beyond remained shut.
Curse him.
Then she was back on her feet, firing wildly. She heard another of her men being dragged back into the dark, and her fear dissolved in the face of impotent rage.
‘Damn you!’ she screamed, keeping the trigger depressed, hurling her abuse half at the creatures of the Underfang, half at the Iron Priest who’d dragged them down to their deaths.
Dead for nothing. I could have fought alongside my father.
One of the monsters, a gigantic brute looking like some tortured cross between a wolf and a grizzly bear, towered in front of her, bellowing a spittle-flailing blast of fury and challenge. The stink of animal breath washed over her, making her gag even over the rebreather.
She fired at point blank range, loosing everything she had left in a thudding stream of bullets. The beast recoiled, flinching from every hit, but did not withdraw. When the skjoldtar was empty, it came back at her, jaws open, eyes wide with alien hatred.
Freija shrunk back, more out of instinct than anything else, reaching for the knife strapped to her boot.
Look it in the eye.
She forced herself to keep her head up, the knife held shivering in her fists, as the horrific creature leapt at her.
Look it in the eye.
But the impact never came. It was only then that she realised her eyes had screwed shut after all. She opened them.
The creature was hanging, suspended by the neck, writhing in some kind of lock under its jaws. The gunfire fell silent, plunging the chamber back into utter darkness.
Then, slowly, a red light bled into the shadow. From somewhere, illumination had come back. There were echoing yelps and growls. The creatures were all still there – they just weren’t attacking.
Freija looked up at the beast in front of her, following the curve of its ribcage to the stretched sinews of its neck. A vast, clawed, metal fist held it tight between curving talons. Incredibly, something more powerful had emerged. She realised then that the doors had opened. Whatever was in the chamber beyond, the things Arfang had come to rouse, they had broken the threshold.
You disturb my slumber for this, Iron Priest?
The voice was resounding, a deep bass, and it came from over her shoulder. It reverberated through the rock around her, running down her spine and making her hair stand on end. It was far deeper than Jarl Greyloc’s, far deeper than Ironhelm’s. In that voice was an ancient dignity, a magisterial self-assurance, a profound melancholy edged with eternal bitterness. Even mediated by coils of inert machinery, it was the most powerful, most disturbing voice Freija had ever heard.
‘You were long in the waking, lord,’ came Arfang’s reply. It was uncharacteristically apologetic.
Moving slo
wly, driven by the curiosity that was always her undoing, Freija turned her head to look at what had come through the doors.
Long indeed, came the voice of Bjorn, called the Fell-Handed by the skjalds when declaiming the sagas, the last of the Chapter to have walked the ice with Russ, the mightiest of all the Wolves, a living link to the Time of Wonder.
The dead had been woken.
Bjorn cast the wolf-creature aside as if it were a pup, and the mass of fur and fang tumbled, yelping, into the shadows. With a grind of servos and a hiss of pneumatics, the huge mass of metal and weaponry took a single, heavy step into the chamber. Freija felt her jaw sagging, and snapped it shut.
But now that I am restored, I remember what my purpose has become.
The venerable Dreadnought strode past Freija, seemingly unaware she was there. Before his massive profile, the beasts withdrew, lowering their heads in submission. Even Arfang seemed little more than a whelp beside that figure of legend.
I am here to kill. Show me to the enemy.
Part III:
The Closing Noose
Chapter Eleven
Aphael looked up. The storm-fury hammered at the kine-shield above him. The translucent barrier buckled, flexing like fabric under the repeated impacts. The power of the Dogs’ priests was impressive, but then this was their world, and who knew what crude powers existed here, ready to be dragged up by the savages in half-understood rites. The maelstrom could cause the fringes of his army some harm, but it would do no more than slow the advance on the gates.
A fresh wave of burning hail slammed into the shield, stressing the protective sorcery further. Aphael glanced at the position locators on his helm display. His sorcerers were evenly spaced throughout the host, feeding power to the wards across the army. Hett, the most powerful of the Raptora, was nearby, working with calm expertise, maintaining the domes of warding magicks that kept the command clusters of troops safe as they crawled into range.
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