by Various
Balthus stood beside one of the plinths. It was the same one upon which the prism had stood. The Dark Angels had seized the dataslates, star charts and other paraphernalia that Sathar had left behind. After permitting the traitor to escape, Ulrik had felt duty-bound to give the Dark Angels every possible clue that might put them back on the traitor’s trail.
Every clue, except one. The prism had been removed before the Dark Angels were shown Sathar’s lair. Even now, it was hidden inside the Stormwolf, the Rolling Thunder.
‘The Angels have ever been a temperamental lot,’ Balthus declared. ‘Some do indeed speak without thinking. It is left to Wolves to act without thinking.’ He spun around, facing Ulrik, the optics of his helm glowing like embers. ‘Sathar was here! So close I could reach out and touch him! You caught his scent, found his lair! We were so close...’
‘Thwarting the ritual the Thousand Sons were orchestrating was more important,’ Ulrik said. ‘Every soul on this world was imperilled. Had we delayed even a moment, there is no saying how dire the consequences would have been. You lost six of your battle-brothers in the fight against House Morvane. How many more would have been slain if we’d ignored the cult and pursued Sathar instead?’
‘Only because he saw no profit for himself in their triumph!’ Balthus scoffed. ‘I tell you, there is no villainy Sathar would not commit. Six battle-brothers, a hundred battle-brothers, they would be a small sacrifice to bring this monster to justice!’ The Dark Angel walked across the chamber towards the entrance where Ulrik stood. ‘Forgive any insult my anxiety draws from my tongue. You cannot understand the frustration, the disappointment this has brought upon me. There is nothing more important to me than putting an end to Sathar’s infamies. Here, the hunt has come closer than ever. I am not too proud to accept that we came so close because of our comrades from Fenris.’
Ulrik clapped his hand on Balthus’ shoulder. ‘I know what you would ask of me, but it is impossible. We are sworn to our own hunt. We have vowed to seek out the Great Wolf and learn what has befallen him. There is nothing that can make us turn away from our purpose.’
The Dark Angel brushed Ulrik’s hand away. ‘Then you have found some new clue to your Chapter Master’s fate. I suspected as much. I will not ask how you came by such information or where.’ He turned around and pointed at the plinth. ‘I will not ask you why Sathar only took with him the object that made that imprint in the dust and left everything else behind for us to recover. No, I won’t ask such things of you.’
Balthus marched past Ulrik. ‘Just as you will not be turned from your hunt, neither will I stray from my own. I will find Sathar. When I do, I will ask him these questions. Then we of Caliban will better understand the ways of Fenris.’
Ulrik watched the Interrogator-Chaplain as he stalked away into the battle-scarred halls of the crematorium. He knew Balthus would be as good as his word.
The corridors of the crematorium were silent now. Save for some enforcers conducting an investigation into the subversion of the facility’s staff, the place was empty of activity. It would be some time before the damage inflicted on the factory could be repaired and the disturbed machine-spirits appeased by the tech-priests. The Ecclesiarchy had already dispatched some of its less influential clergy to begin recruiting a new cadre of laymen to fill the positions vacated by Sathar’s minions.
Emerging from the crematorium, Ulrik made his way back to the Rolling Thunder. The gunship had landed in the centre of the plaza, its formidable grey bulk filling the space. Crowds of nervous hivers were gawking at the ship and the fabled Adeptus Astartes who were making their last inspections before their departure. As Ulrik crossed the square, Krom Dragongaze approached and fell into step beside the Wolf Priest.
‘I’ve stashed that damned curse-stone the traitor gave us on the gunship,’ Krom reported. ‘It’ll take a sharper eye than Balthus’ to find it.’
‘Let’s not put that to the test,’ Ulrik said. ‘He’s just suspicious enough to try.’
‘Once it’s on the Canis Pax and Leoric Half-ear sniffs out what we need from it, I’m of a mind to toss it out an airlock,’ Krom said. ‘The sooner we’re done with the thing the better.’
Ulrik could appreciate the Wolf Lord’s sentiment. The prism was a thing of the warp, thus pernicious and deadly. Before the Rune Priest exposed his mind to the visions locked inside the crystal, Ulrik wanted to sanctify Leoric with prayer and ceremony, to invoke the Allfather’s blessing and safeguard him against the horrors that awaited him.
‘Let us move swiftly,’ Ulrik advised. ‘Leave this planet and set Leoric to his ordeal. The sooner we can find Logan Grimnar’s trail, the sooner we can reclaim our honour.’
It had taken Leoric Half-ear considerable effort to unlock the secret of the prism. The process had been far more difficult than Sathar had implied, and Leoric had discovered the prism to be a treacherous and conniving thing. It put visions and distractions in his mind, continually trying to tempt him away from his purpose. Every fleeting glimpse he was afforded would be smothered beneath a flood of noise and distortion. Whispers scratched at his brain, voices clawed at his soul, intelligences malignant and inhuman tried to reach into him from the warp-tainted glass. A less disciplined will than that of a Space Marine would have collapsed under the strain – driven to madness or worse. But Leoric was able to prevail against the deceits of the prism and at length unlock the knowledge the Space Wolves needed.
In the prism, Leoric saw the planet to which Logan Grimnar’s strike cruiser, the Eternity Fang, had gone after it left Dactyla. He saw the ship apparently destroyed, annihilated by some cosmic force, but he also saw that the Great Wolf and his companions hadn’t shared their ship’s fate. They’d made planetfall. What became of their brothers after that, Leoric couldn’t say. Even his stamina had reached a point near collapse. It was enough for their purposes that the Space Wolves had managed to identify the planet.
Dargur was a world recorded in the sagas of the Fang. The blighted, forsaken planet had played a role in the first Great Hunt. A wasted sphere orbiting a crimson dwarf just within the Eye of Terror, it had been the place of battle and horror for millennia. The Great Wolf Bjorn had led his warriors there in search of their primarch, finding instead only daemons and the remnants of a debased xenos civilization.
Now it was to this desolate world that Logan Grimnar had led his own Great Company. Ulrik wondered if his old friend had discovered new evidence that Russ had visited Dargur or if he had been led here by the same broken trail Bjorn had followed so long ago. That the Great Wolf had failed to return to Fenris, or at least send word back to his Chapter, was proof enough that some distress had befallen the Champions of Fenris.
Penetrating the Eye of Terror was formidable enough a task. Even the most powerful navigators didn’t risk straying too close to this cosmic blight. It was a place where the energies of the warp bled out into physical space, distorting the laws of reality and providing sustenance for all manner of daemonic horrors. Complicating the ordeal still further were the jumbles of asteroids littering the system, the shattered remnants of Dargur’s sister worlds. Around Dargur itself there was a ring of semi-daemonic satellites, perverse constructs of a vanquished xenos’ science.
Ulrik was impressed by the skill Rogan Bearsbane exhibited as he steered a path through the satellites. Rogan displayed an uncanny facility for detecting which of the defence drones were inactive and which yet possessed a flicker of malignance within their corroded frames. Only twice was the ship hit during its descent to Dargur’s surface. The damage wasn’t sufficient to cripple the ship, though Rogan was leery of tempting the fates again until full repairs were made. Some of the other Stormwolf gunships were battered far worse before they reached the surface.
Making planetfall on Dargur was an accomplishment devoid of victory. Ulrik could smell the uneasiness that gripped his warriors as he watched them ready themselves to disembark. They couldn’t forget that this was the world Bjorn had vis
ited in search of Leman Russ. They couldn’t forget that his hunt for the primarch had failed. Would they too find only defeat here?
‘All is in the hands of the Allfather,’ Ulrik told his warriors as he moved among them. ‘If you prove yourself worthy of triumph, then he will grant it to you.’ He reached out and took a wolf-tail talisman a Blood Claw held towards him, bestowing his blessing upon the totem before returning it.
Near the hatchway, Ulrik found Leoric waiting for him. The Rune Priest had driven wolf-bone talismans into his forehead, the runes etched into each marked with his own blood.
‘The dreams are quiet,’ Leoric told Ulrik when he felt the Wolf Priest’s eyes on him. ‘The spirits of Fenris have subdued the cries of Chaos.’
‘For how long?’ Ulrik wondered, unconsciously brushing his fingers across the heft of his crozius.
Leoric closed his eyes and bowed his head. ‘Long enough to lead us where we need to go,’ he vowed. Blood trickled down his face and over his lips. Dragging one finger across his mouth, he daubed the image of claws across his cheeks. It was an almost forgotten custom, sealing his promise in blood.
Ulrik slammed his hand against the stud that controlled the Rolling Thunder’s hatch. The rumble of groaning plasteel and servo-motors filled the hold as the doors opened. The lower ramp shuddered outwards, folding upon itself as it slammed down on the surface of Dargur.
Ulrik recalled vividly the data recorded about Dargur in the sagas. He remembered, too, listening to Bjorn describe the place when the Dreadnought was roused from his rest. The descriptions hardly compared to what he saw now. The caprices of the Eye of Terror had wrought awful changes upon the cursed world. The sky was a purple bruise blotched by ugly stains of black and ochre, smudges too nebulous to rate being called clouds. The earth was a waste of black dirt, parched and barren. It lay around the gunship in an undulating course of hills and gullies. Beyond, in the distance, scabrous formations reared up into the sky, monstrous growths of rock that might have been the skeletal echo of mighty mountains. The sun, sullen and spiteful as it loosed its crimson glow upon the planet, reminded Ulrik of a kraken’s eye – watchful and fearsome.
The other gunships were landing nearby. Scarcely had the Wolfhowl settled upon the desolate ground than the ramp came slamming down and Krom Dragongaze launched himself forwards in a great leap that carried him several feet from the hatchway. He crashed down in the grimy black dirt, a cloud of dust rising all around him.
Krom rose from his crouch, Wyrmfang clenched tight in his right hand while a fistful of dirt trickled through the fingers of his left.
‘Daemons of Dargur!’ he bellowed. ‘Cower in your lairs! Hide in your holes! The Space Wolves have returned and I, Krom Dragongaze, have brought them!’
The defiant howls of their lord brought Krom’s Wolf Guard charging down the ramp. Ulrik and Leoric adopted a more measured pace. The horrors of Dargur, they were sure, would still be waiting for them.
As he reached the ground, Leoric fell to his knees. Carefully, the Rune Priest reached into a wolfskin bag hanging at his side. Muttering an invocation to the spirits of Fenris, he cast a handful of tiny bones onto the ground, then leaned over them, studying them with a cautious eye before probing them with one armoured finger, turning them from side to side, examining each angle as it was exposed.
Other Space Wolves came over to observe Leoric consulting the bones. Wherever they fought, however far they travelled, the traditions of Fenris bound them, gave them the strength to defy any adversity. When Ulrik looked into the exposed faces of Blood Claws and Wolf Scouts, he saw the uneasiness of tribal superstition there, but he also saw a gleam of hope.
‘Well, do the spirits tell you anything?’ Krom asked as he stood above the Rune Priest.
Leoric looked up, snatching the bones from the ground in one fist. He pointed towards the horizon. ‘The howl of Fenris is strongest in that direction,’ he said. Each word seemed to fight for purchase on his tongue and his face was marred by the strain his divinations had inflicted.
Krom nodded. He brought Wyrmfang up and pointed the blade to the west. ‘Lopt and the scouts to the fore!’ he commanded. ‘Keep your noses keen for the scent of our brothers! Keep your eyes sharp for the claws of our enemies!’
Forming up around their Wolf Lord, the Drakeslayers set out across the desolate wastes of Dargur. Ulrik gathered his strike force and followed Krom towards whatever doom lay before them.
‘Troll-sucking vermin!’ Krom bellowed as his axe swept through the ropey neck of a shrieking slytherfang. The twelve-foot reptile slopped away from Wyrmfang, splashing across the rocks in writhing sections. All around him, the Space Wolves were beset by a swarm of the mutated creatures, a slithering horde that had erupted from the ground in a seething mass of fangs and coils.
Ulrik slammed his foot down on the neck of one reptile, breaking its spine and pushing organs out of its mouth. A second creature perished as the field of his crozius blackened its scales and vaporised its blood. The thing flopped about for a moment in a mindless display of agony.
Beasts though they were, the attack was staged like a carefully planned ambush. Not until the Space Wolves were in the very midst of the swarm did they crawl out from between the broken rocks. They’d waited until they could bring their full strength against the Fenrisians, displaying a patience beyond simple vermin. That fact troubled Ulrik immensely. Throughout their trek across the wastes of Dargur, from the hills of dirt to the scummy swamps of amber slime and now these flatlands of stone slabs, creatures of every description had harassed and tormented them. Not with the stubborn tenacity of beasts, but with the deliberate persistence of a higher intelligence.
It was an impression that Ulrik couldn’t shake as he watched the swarm of reptiles crawl from their burrows and hurl themselves at the armoured Space Wolves. The beasts attacked without fear or hesitation, dying by the droves on the blades and claws of the Fenrisians.
Ulrik smashed another of the reptiles with his maul. The vermin didn’t represent a real threat to the Space Wolves, at least not one that could drag them down in battle. It was the constant harassment that was taking its toll, wearing away at the discipline of the Space Wolves, provoking more and more the savage instincts that were the legacy of the Canis Helix. With each attack they became that little bit more reckless and feral in their reactions. Bit by bit, the cohesion that made them a company of warriors was being eroded.
The last of the slytherfangs perished upon Krom’s axe. The Wolf Lord glared at the dying creature, then flung its carcass from him and threw his head back in a victorious howl. The cry caught in his throat as he spotted something in the sky overhead.
‘Beware, brothers!’ Krom shouted. ‘The enemy falls upon us from above!’ Ripping his bolt pistol from its holster, he sent a burst of fire streaming upwards.
From the sky, a great flock of ebon-winged horrors swooped downwards. Heedless of the bolter fire that rose to greet them, the monsters descended, sickening shrieks rising from their misshapen beaks and fanged jaws. Fiery ichor dripped from their torn flesh, sizzling as it struck the rocks below. Like the mutant lizards, the winged fiends threw themselves at the Space Wolves with an amok ferocity, but unlike the reptiles there was a malicious determination burning in their eyes. More than mere beasts, the foes the Drakeslayers now faced were entities of the warp – daemons.
One of the furies fell upon a Blood Claw, raking the warrior’s exposed face with its claws, tearing away great ribbons of flesh. Another sank its talons in the shoulder of a Grey Hunter, seeking to drag the armoured Space Wolf with it as it rose back into the sky. Both daemons soon discovered the folly of their efforts. The Blood Claw, ignoring his ghastly wounds, caught the flying foe with his chainaxe, ripping it apart in a welter of gore. The Grey Hunter, lifted a few feet into the air, fired a burst from his boltgun that exploded the fury’s head and sent fragments of its skull clattering across the rocks.
Everywhere, the Space Wolves were wreaking
havoc upon the daemons, yet still more of the horrors came. Ulrik swept his crozius into the faces of shrieking furies, the sanctified field of energy shattering their obscene essence and exploding them in bursts of sizzling ichor. Leoric, raising his rune staff, drew upon the ancient powers of Fenris, calling lightning from the diseased sky to immolate clutches of winged daemons. Krom, roaring his defiance, brought axe and bolt pistol against the flock of enemies that dived down upon him, littering the rocky shelf with dismembered fragments that slowly steamed away into crumbling bits of cinder.
Amidst the carnage, a sudden impulse gripped Ulrik, drawing his attention to one of the furies. The daemon soared about the periphery of the fray, but unlike its fellows, the fiend refused to commit itself to the battle. A primal instinct of warning flared through Ulrik’s mind, crying out to him that the circling fury represented a threat greater than the entire flock. Ignoring the daemons swarming around him, the Wolf Priest aimed his plasma pistol at the soaring creature and sent a ball of fire blazing towards it.
Either by chance or infernal design, one of the other daemons dropped down between Ulrik’s shot and his intended target. The stricken fury exploded in a dazzling coruscation of fire and light, the charred remnants of its wings flittering to the ground like falling leaves. Ulrik’s target dropped down, streaking for the earth some distance from the battle. Ulrik saw it shift and change as it fell, transforming into one of the slytherfangs before hitting the ground and slinking away into a rocky crevice.
Ulrik knew that this creature was the guiding intelligence behind all the harassing attacks the Drakeslayers had endured. He had seen for himself the formless doppelgangrels of Asaheim, shape-shifting haunters of the forests. This, however, was something even more dangerous, a malignant entity that could both change its form and command lesser creatures to obey its commands. His thoughts turned back to the daemonic Changeling, the monster that had mocked them within the Great Hall itself.