by Various
‘There,’ Leoric hissed through clenched fangs. ‘Within that glow our hunt will end.’
‘In victory or disgrace?’ Krom asked.
Ulrik interposed himself between Wolf Lord and Rune Priest.
‘Some questions are best left unasked. If we feed Morkai this day, will knowing it make us retreat from our purpose?’
Krom shook his head at the admonition. ‘You suggest I am either a fool or a coward,’ he grumbled. ‘Only Ulrik would be so bold.’
‘Of all your many faults, my friend,’ Ulrik said, ‘foolishness and cowardice are not numbered among them. I only advise that warriors fight the better if they do not feel the hand of destiny or the claw of doom hovering over them.’
The Wolf Lord pulled at his long beard, digesting his mentor’s counsel. ‘I recant my question, Leoric. Let the future see to itself. Whatever shape it takes, it will bear the marks of our claws!’
The Space Wolves moved out across a blighted plain, shrivelled clutches of cacti the only evidence of life. Gradually, as they drew nearer to the glow, the plain became peppered with jagged heaps of stone, toppled megaliths of almost unfathomable antiquity, their angles contorted to suit the aesthetics of an alien geometry. The scars of an ancient battle marked the fallen constructions, ragged craters blown by missiles and melted pits left by plasma guns. The Space Wolves thought of their Chapter’s history with this world and of Bjorn’s long-ago foray against the xenos inhabitants who claimed Dargur as their own.
Ahead, the Space Wolves could see the desiccated shell of an alien structure, a colossal building with great soaring columns and the decaying fragments of tremendous spires. The moons of Dargur hung in the heavens above, casting their rays down upon the ruin and evoking the eldritch glow from its broken walls. The sight put the Fenrisians on edge, provoking their primal repugnance of all things marked by Chaos.
‘It is a temple,’ Leoric whispered. Blood trickled from the bones he had set into his forehead and there was a ghoulish shine in his eyes, reminding Ulrik of Sathar’s prism. ‘Here the Thnalys held their murderous bacchanals and paid tribute to the Ruinous Powers. Here they sacrificed nations to placate the Dark Gods and preserve themselves from the corruption of the warp.’
‘Bjorn put paid to their xenos wickedness ages ago,’ Krom declared.
Leoric fixed his shining gaze upon the Wolf Lord. ‘Where the Chaos Gods have been honoured once, they may be honoured again.’
Before the Rune Priest could explain more, Lopt came running over to report to Krom. The Wolf Scouts had ranged ahead of the main pack, patrolling the terrain ahead lest Dargur spring still more surprises on them. What he had was a surprise, but for once it was a pleasant one.
‘I’ve caught the Great Wolf’s scent,’ Lopt said, tapping the side of his nose. ‘It hangs heavy about the ruins. The place is thick with the smell of Fenris.’
Krom clapped the scout on the shoulder and smiled at Ulrik. ‘The hunt draws to its end,’ he declared. ‘We’ve found the Great Wolf and his companions.’
‘Yes,’ Ulrik agreed, ‘but we don’t know what holds them here. That is a riddle we’ve yet to solve.’
‘It will be solved,’ Krom growled, drawing Wyrmfang. ‘It will be solved with blades and guns! No, old wolf, do not try to hold me back. For too long our kin have been kept from us. Now let whatever force holds the Great Wolf discover what it means to trifle with the Sons of Russ!’
Ulrik could feel the rest of the Drakeslayers rising to the agitation of their Wolf Lord. The hunt had been long and arduous, dragging them across the stars. Now that the end was in sight, their discipline was being overcome by their more feral instincts. The Wolf Priest made an appeal to Krom, playing upon the respect and admiration in which the young Wolf Lord held his old mentor.
‘Now, at the end of things, is when caution is most needed,’ Ulrik warned. ‘We must spy out the terrain, discover what it is that has kept Logan Grimnar from returning to the Fang. We must learn the challenge that awaits us.’
Slowly, grudgingly, Krom bowed his head and returned his axe to his belt. ‘As ever, old wolf, your wisdom makes me feel like an impetuous Blood Claw fresh from the Trials of Morkai.’
There was still a smell of impatience in Krom’s scent, in the scent of all the Drakeslayers, but for the moment, at least, it was curbed, held in check by their discipline.
‘Then let us find what has befallen the Great Wolf and see for ourselves how this hunt will end,’ Ulrik said. He motioned for Lopt to lead them towards the ruins, to follow Logan Grimnar’s scent into the alien temple.
It was only a matter of minutes before the Space Wolves stood beneath the temple’s shattered roof. They crept around the cyclopean columns, slipping into the shadows of broken walls. To their right rose a great shelf-like tier of platforms, to the left the crumbling rubble of a gargantuan altar. Before them, arrayed in a great concentric spiral, were jagged pillars, their capitals still supporting fragments of the collapsed roof.
Details of the architecture held the interest of the Space Wolves for but the briefest moment, however. It was the figures chained to the pillars that claimed their attention – massive, hulking shapes far larger than the hooded men that pranced around them with gleaming knives. The hearts of each Space Wolf froze when their eyes settled upon one of the captives. None of them could mistake the snowy mane of hair or the long pleated moustaches, the sharp hawk-like nose and thick craggy brow. They had found Logan Grimnar and some of his warriors. The missing Space Wolves had been taken prisoner, stripped of their armour and readied as sacrifices. The Fenrisians had been savagely beaten, many of them slumping unconscious in their chains.
‘The ritual on Stratovass Ultra,’ Leoric hissed. ‘They are seeking to perform the same rite, using the lives of our brothers to fuel their spell!’ Blood stained his face, bubbling up from the runes etched into the wolf bones piercing his flesh. ‘There is something more. A presence...’
The Rune Priest’s distress was unnoticed by the Drakeslayers. Krom and his warriors had heard Leoric’s words, and that had been enough for them to abandon all restraint. Seizing their weapons and howling their battle cries, the pack rushed towards the pillars, intent upon freeing their captured brothers and annihilating the enemies who dared to hold them prisoner.
Ulrik cried out to Krom, urging the Space Wolves back. His words were too late, however. They were already committed, and hurled themselves upon the foe with the ferocity of thunderwolves. Axes and swords sheared through the hooded men, and claws slashed the cultists to bloody ribbons. Bolt pistols barked, exploding heads and chests with each shot. The cough of a flamer was punctuated by the shrieks of burning heretics.
The Wolf Priest rose from the stricken Leoric, shaking his head in dismay. Lost in their fury, the Drakeslayers were oblivious to the ease of their combat. They didn’t question how such feeble foes could have overcome Logan Grimnar and his warriors. The realisation would come to them soon, but by then Ulrik feared it would be too late.
Below, Krom had reached the pillar to which Logan Grimnar was chained. Casting aside the gory remains of a cultist, the Wolf Lord brought his axe whipping around to sever the Great Wolf’s bonds. As he did so, there was a thunderous crash and a blinding flash of purple light. Wyrmfang was torn from Krom’s hand and sent clattering across the ground. He glared at the pillar, then barked a warning to his warriors. So near to their comrades, so close to victory, and their triumph was being snatched away from them. Some infernal barrier surrounded the captives, a sorcerous shell they couldn’t pierce.
Anger and frustration gripped the Drakeslayers. They lashed out at the corpses around them, venting their fury. As their rage swelled, monstrous laughter rippled through the temple.
Upon the tiers, armoured shapes appeared, manifesting with such suddenness that it was as though a veil had been thrown aside. There was no mistaking their gilded armour and the vane-like crest that framed their helms. They were Traitor Space Marines of the Thousa
nd Sons. Dozens of them spread out across the tiers, their guns trained upon the Space Wolves below.
Towering over the Thousand Sons, a malicious cackle still bubbling from its blackened beaks, was an even more monstrous foe, an enemy steeped in the worst infamies recorded in the sagas. It had the withered body of a colossus, great wings stretching out from its back, mighty talons tipping each of its shrivelled claws, and two heads perched upon scrawny, vulturine necks, their eyes swirling pits of magic and madness. Clasped within one monstrous fist was a massive staff of ivory and gold, a monstrous tome of obscene lore chained at its apex.
Ulrik felt a surge of loathing and horror rush through him. The thing was nothing less than the Oracle of Tzeentch, the daemon known as Kairos Fateweaver.
The daemon lord’s mockery reverberated through the shattered temple, each echo adopting fresh nuances of cadence and tone. Kairos stretched forth its staff, the pages of the ghastly book rustling in an arcane wind. It pointed the staff downwards at Krom.
‘Thirteen to feed the spell,’ the daemon’s left head cried while its counterpart shrieked the same words in reverse.
From the heights of the tiers, the Thousand Sons opened fire upon the Space Wolves. Ambushed by the Chaos Space Marines, the Drakeslayers scrambled for cover, seeking shelter behind the pillars and the shattered rubble from the altar.
Still on the periphery of the temple, Ulrik and his strike force seemed to have gone unnoticed by the Thousand Sons and their daemonic master. Hastily, Ulrik split his command into two forces, sending half the warriors to circle around the temple and strike the opposite flank. He would lead the rest against their foe from the nearer side. He had no delusions about the kind of damage they could inflict upon so many Chaos Space Marines and a greater daemon, but he hoped they might sow enough confusion to grant Krom and his warriors enough respite to recover.
As Ulrik led his handful of warriors towards the side of the temple, he found that their presence wasn’t as unnoticed as he’d hoped. Spheres of purple light crackled through the air overhead, swiftly coalescing into vicious ray-like shapes. Swimming through the air on lobed flukes, the grisly daemons shrieked wrathfully.
Knowing the daemons had taken from them the element of surprise, the Space Wolves unleashed a fusillade of bolter fire into the monstrosities. Ulrik blasted his plasma pistol into the flying daemons, burning one of them from the jaundiced sky. For every daemon they brought down, it seemed there were two left to swoop down upon them. The Wolf Priest saw one Grey Hunter crushed to the ground beneath a screaming fiend. A Blood Claw had one of his arms bitten in two by the snapping jaws of another.
Ulrik met his own attackers with his crozius. The maul crackled as it tore through one diving daemon, exploding it in a burst of ichor and light. A second monstrosity had its fanged maw ripped open by the weapon, its mangled form lifting back into the air with broken fangs dripping from its mouth. The third daemon-ray, however, prevailed where the others had met failure. Its hurtling mass slammed into Ulrik, smashing him to the ground. The Wolf Priest could feel its jaws snapping against the back of his helm, trying to find some weakness it could exploit.
A fierce howl rang out and the daemon’s crushing weight no longer pinned him. Rolling onto his side, Ulrik saw a feral shape of fangs and claws ripping into his daemonic adversary. He blinked in disbelief at the battered war-worn armour that clung to the savage figure, recognising it to be an old pattern of power armour.
Similar fearsome creatures were helping the others, springing up from behind the rubble to pull daemons out of the sky. Hairy, half-human brutes crushed the daemons to the ground and savaged them with flashing claws, ripping gibbets of corrupt flesh from their monstrous bodies. One of the daemons, seeking to flee, was burned from the sky by a bolt of crimson lightning.
Ulrik turned from the grim spectacle of the feral creatures to see the warrior who’d saved him. He found himself gazing upon an old Rune Priest, his patched armour displaying a riotous disarray of styles and patterns, each piece daubed with protective marks and runes.
As for the bestial fighters, Ulrik wondered, could they be Wulfen? The afflicted beasts were rarely seen. Driven wild by the fault in their gene-seed, they were a secret source of shame that the Chapter usually tried to keep hidden. Ulrik had never heard of the creatures amassing in such a number – apart from in the case of the fabled Thirteenth Company...
‘My thanks for your intervention, but my brothers are beset by enemies within the temple,’ Ulrik told the Rune Priest.
The old warrior nodded his head. Turning towards the ravening Wulfen, he uttered a sharp bark. The half-human creatures swung around, locking eyes with the Rune Priest before loping off once more. They hurled themselves at the walls, digging their claws into the old masonry and pulling themselves upwards. Ulrik watched them climb for a moment, then rallied his own men and hurried to the gap that had been their objective.
When the Wolf Priest reached the base of the tiered platforms, he found the Thousand Sons slowly advancing upon Krom’s besieged forces. The twin-headed Kairos hung back from the fighting, content to direct its minions and loose the occasional spell against a hapless Drakeslayer. The ambush was slowly closing around Krom, forcing his warriors to abandon the cover of the altar as the Chaos Space Marines brought their heavy weapons to bear.
Then, from their rear, the Thousand Sons found themselves beset by a foe even more ferocious than the Drakeslayers. The Wulfen came charging down the platforms, flinging themselves upon the stunned traitors with animalistic viciousness. Bestial claws ripped into gilded armour, tearing it from the ancient traitors. Finding only emptiness within the armour increased the frenzied wrath of the Wulfen.
The Thousand Sons retaliated with emotionless precision. While a few of their warriors moved to form a perimeter, those behind unleashed a withering stream of fire into the feral warriors. Two of the Wulfen were ripped apart under the salvo. A third was reduced to a mangled pile of meat even as he was pulling down one of the Chaos Space Marines.
It was Ulrik and his warriors who now aided the Wulfen. Their fire served as a distraction to the Thousand Sons, diverting some of their attention away from the feral creatures. When Leoric and the rest of the Space Wolves appeared at the far side of the temple, the fire from the Thousand Sons was split still further. Unlike their monstrous allies, the Space Wolves were able to duck back down behind the outer walls and gain some protection from the vengeful attentions of their foes. Even so, the Chaos Space Marines were leeching away at their strength, picking off the odd Grey Hunter or Blood Claw who was too slow to seek the protection of the walls.
With their foes reeling from the surprise assault of the Wulfen, Krom rallied his own warriors. Rushing out from behind the pillars, the Drakeslayers added their fire to the savage assault unfolding in the tiers. It was the Thousand Sons who now found themselves trapped. They fought with the determination of the damned, but their casualties were mounting. One after another their shattered armour was clattering down from the tiers and the dust of their mortal essence was drifting away on the wind.
Kairos glared with its gibbous eyes at the packs ravening all around it. A spell from one of its talons reduced a Grey Hunter to a charred smear. A bolt of flame from one of its beaks transformed a Long Fang into a pile of steaming meat. From its staff, a crackling whip of power flayed flesh and fur from one of the Wulfen, leaving its bloodied carcass strewn across the temple. More and more, however, as its minions fell, the daemon was compelled to employ its magic to defend itself, to ward away the salvoes of missiles and bolter fire that were directed against it.
In the midst of the carnage, Ulrik spotted one of the Thousand Sons turning to fire at a chained Space Wolf. The Chaos Space Marine blew apart the captive’s head. The sight filled Ulrik with rage. Snapping a shot from his plasma pistol, he blew apart the murderous traitor.
Ulrik turned to the nearest of the Wulfen, locking eyes with the ferocious creature. More by gesture than word, h
e indicated to the feral warrior his plan.
‘Try to break their chains,’ he told the half-beast. The Wulfen growled, but to his relief went loping down towards the pillars. Ulrik prayed to Morkai that these strange warriors would be able to succeed where Krom had not before any more of the Thousand Sons decided to kill their prisoners.
‘Krom,’ Ulrik called out across the vox. ‘Have your warriors cover the Wulfen. I’m hoping he can break the chains.’
Ulrik’s command was quickly executed. Krom’s Drakeslayers concentrated their shots on the Thousand Sons who were trying to bring down the Wulfen loping towards the pillars. The Chaos Space Marines were forced back, denied the opportunity to pick off their target. The Wulfen reached the temple floor and sprang to the nearest pillar. As Ulrik had predicted, his claws had no problem seizing hold of the chains and breaking them. The first of Logan Grimnar’s companions was free.
Other Wulfen now seized upon Ulrik’s idea. Great as their savagery towards the Thousand Sons had been, loyalty to their pack was an even greater force within them. In ones and twos they broke away from the fighting, rushing down to free the Champions of Fenris.
A grisly shriek of rage rose from the beaks of Kairos. The huge daemon lunged for the Wulfen, seizing the warrior moving to break the chains binding Logan Grimnar. Fateweaver’s clutch transformed the snarling fighter into a bloody paste. While the Wulfen perished, Krom rushed to finish the job, Wyrmfang once more in his hands to strike a blow against the Great Wolf’s chains. Kairos saw him and lashed out, seeking to seize hold of the Wolf Lord.
Before it could act, Kairos was assaulted by an elemental storm. Thunderous bolts rained down upon the daemon, driving it back. The fiend fixed its baleful gaze upon Leoric. The instant Leoric faltered, Fateweaver sent magic of its own blasting into the Space Wolf. He cried out as the destructive energies seared through him. His eyes exploded in a blaze of fire, the flames swiftly reducing his face to a leering skull.