The Space Wolf Omnibus - William King

by Warhammer 40K

  ‘Then it’s a good thing we got here in time to save it,’ Nils said with a smile.

  ‘We haven’t saved it yet,’ Karah Isaan cut in ominously.

  The Black Pyramid was not quite as large as Ragnar had expected. True, by the standards of the villages he had grown up in it was huge, easily the size of a hill, but it was dwarfed by the towering structures that surrounded it. Even so, it was the most impressive building out of all those Ragnar could see. Its sides glittered like glass and the crystalline reflections of its dismal surroundings were visible in its shimmering sides. More impressive still was the palpable aura of power that surrounded it. You could tell simply by looking at it that here was a building which held or concealed something of tremendous importance.

  Ragnar watched the shuttle’s reflection grow in its side, and then stabilise as the craft first hovered, then began to descend. He felt relieved at the prospect of setting foot on solid ground after weeks cooped up aboard a starship. The shuttle shivered as its landing gear touched the metal-swathed ground.

  ‘Well, we’re here at last,’ said Nils.

  The first thing Ragnar noticed when he set foot upon the ground was the number of corpses. Bodies filled the whole vast plaza before the pyramid. They lay everywhere, in various states of decomposition. It was only after a few horrifying moments that he realised that some of the bodies were not dead and rotting, but were still alive, albeit barely, in the grip of the terrible plague.

  The second thing he noticed was the pyramid itself. It seemed much larger now than it had from the air. It had a sense of presence, of majesty, that dwarfed all of the much larger buildings around it. Of all the buildings in the area, it alone drew the eye. And yet there was something about it that made Ragnar feel very uneasy indeed. For all its glittering beauty, there was a sense of menace about the pyramid that made his hackles rise. All the misgivings he had felt way back on the Fang and which had haunted him occasionally on their trip, seemed to return redoubled.

  He tried to tell himself that it was simply the presence of all these sick people that made his flesh crawl, but he knew it was not so. There was something about the pyramid itself that filled him with dread and made him want to shout a warning to the others. All his instincts rebelled as he contemplated it. He was surprised that the others did not feel the same way. It seemed so obvious to him.

  Perhaps this was just another symptom of the malaise that had affected his mind ever since he was wounded. Perhaps he was seeing a threat where none existed. Surely this must be the case. Surely the others could not be so blind.

  ‘Look at that,’ he heard Nils breathe.

  He glanced skyward in the direction his comrade was pointing and saw thousands of glittering contrails moving through the upper atmosphere, descending through a gap in the clouds. At first, he thought they were under some form of attack but then he realised that these were falling stars, so many of them that they were visible in daylight. The stars will fall, he thought. As the gap in the clouds widened, he caught sight of something else: a monstrous red comet, dragging a tail of greenish-yellow behind it lit up a fifth of the sky. Ragnar knew without having to be told that he looked upon the Balestar.

  ‘What now?’ he heard Hakon ask.

  ‘We go in,’ Sternberg replied sombrely. ‘The oracle was quite clear on that. To end the plague the talisman must be brought to the hidden chambers within the pyramid.’

  ‘And where is the entrance?’

  ‘We will find it,’ Sternberg said grimly.

  They had to step over the bodies of the dead as they approached the building. To Ragnar they looked almost like sacrificial victims offered up to some evil god. There was something deeply disturbing and offensive to his sense of rightness in the manner in which they simply lay there, sprawled out obscenely.

  Even worse were the groaning half-dead who begged for water, or to be put out of their misery, as the newcomers approached. Ragnar tried to ignore their pleas, but they sank into his mind despite all his efforts.

  He saw Gul bend and snap one’s neck with a chop of his hand. Then the huge warrior looked at all of the folk that lay around him, and then shrugged pathetically, as if overwhelmed by the sheer scale of what they were witnessing.

  ‘Bloody cheerful place,’ Sven muttered, as if sensing Ragnar’s mood and attempting to lighten it. He looked at Ragnar and smiled mockingly. ‘Are you sweating, Ragnar? I hope you are not coming down with a fever.’

  Ragnar could tell from his scent that he was joking, but even so he wondered whether Sven had spotted something that he had not. Was he really sweating? A hand to his brow told him he was not. He let out a deep breath and tried to ignore the deep and offensive stench of pestilence that filled his nostrils.

  The pyramid loomed larger in his sight. How were they going to get inside, Ragnar wondered? The prophecy had not exactly been specific on that subject. To tell the truth, he suddenly realised that he had no real idea of what they were supposed to be doing at all. Until now, he had simply been following others who presumably knew better than he did. It was like being a character in one of the old sagas. You did not question the wisdom of what the soothsayers said, you simply did it. Now, he was starting to wonder. What relevance could finding some mystical talisman, however powerful, have to combating death on this scale. The plague was a force that was invisible and yet omnipresent, and it was bringing a whole mighty world to its knees.

  Ragnar felt his lips twist into a smile that might have been a snarl. It was a little late to be having such thoughts now, he realised. He wondered what was wrong with him. Why had his thoughts become so defeatist over the past few weeks? Perhaps it was because of his wounds, or perhaps it was because of some other external reason. But what? And why was he thinking this way now? What influences were at work here?

  They were alongside the pyramid now, walking under its vast shadow. Ragnar could see his reflection mirrored in the black marbling of its side. His image seemed subtly distorted – thinner, weaker, its eyes feverish, its skin blotched as if with plague. For a moment the thought struck him that this was an omen; that he was looking at a picture of his future doom. He pushed the idea aside with a shiver. He noticed his flesh had started to itch. He fought down the urge to scratch and kept marching.

  They were at the exact centre of the pyramid’s west wall now. He noticed that Karah’s eyes were closed and that a nimbus of power played round her head. Tendrils of force ran from it to the amulet and then back again. Questing fingers of power reached out from her and flowed over the pyramid’s side. As they did so, lines of eldritch fire sprang into being, revealing a complex pattern in the curious runic script of the eldar. For a moment the symbol blazed bright as the sun, and the sight of it burned its way into Ragnar’s brain. There was something ominous about it that set his nerves on edge, as if it were shrieking a warning that he did not understand.

  He wanted to go forward and tell the others to stop, that they were disturbing something best left well alone. He wanted to but he could not. He realised that like the others he was caught up by the simple momentum of their quest. He had no reason to stop them, and they had no reason to listen. All he had were his forebodings and what were they when weighed against the chance to save billions of lives?

  Even as he watched the shimmering symbol vanished, and with it went part of the wall of the pyramid. It simply vanished like mist, leaving a gap in the stonework that revealed the maw of a great dark tunnel. Despite himself, Ragnar was impressed by the magic, and he felt a small surge of excitement. Whatever they were doing, they were making progress. They had pierced the wall of a structure that had proved invulnerable for millennia.

  Inquisitor Sternberg produced a glowglobe from a deep pocket in his cloak and they advanced into the gloom. The walls of the pyramid’s interior were not made from the same mystical substance as its outer walls. They appeared to be carved from pure granite, and seemed much older than the external walls. It appeared that they were within the
remains of a much older site.

  The walls were inlaid with frescoes and scrollwork bearing more eldar symbols, and for the first time Ragnar wished that he could read that arcane language. He felt that he might learn at least part of the great secret that was concealed within this structure. What was this place, he wondered? Was it some vast tomb built to protect the corpse of some ancient eldar king? Judging from what he had seen on the space hulk he decided that this was unlikely, but how could he know for sure? He had no idea how typical the eldar on that hulk were of their race in general. He doubted that they would have built anything as crude as this. And then again, didn’t the eldar shun the surface of worlds, and hadn’t they done so since mankind had first encountered them? Was this something from the distant past, from the time before the eldar had abandoned planetary surfaces? Now he truly wished he could understand the writings on the wall.

  All around him he felt the swirl of mystical forces. Instinctively he rose on the balls of his feet, ready to meet any threat. Even as he did so, he knew it was a futile gesture. The builders of this complex would not resort to anything so crude as traps and deadfalls and guardians. The things that protected the pyramid would be far subtler. Spells, curses, pure psychic force was what they could expect here, and these were things he was not really equipped to deal with. These were matters for Rune Priests, not simple warriors. For all his inexperience, poor Lars might have been better prepared for this than he. He had at least spent time with the Chapter’s mystic masters.

  Was that why he was dead, Ragnar suddenly wondered? Was there a huge pattern of events at work here of which he had caught only the faintest glimpse? Was this all part of some immense plot, on a scale which he could not begin to comprehend? Had the appearance of the falling stars, and their quest and the death of his comrade all been part of the web of some vast scheme? He shook his head. He was imagining things. This gloomy place was starting to get to him.

  At the edge of his vision, he thought he saw a host of shadowy inhuman figures gathering. He had seen their likeness before. They looked like eldar.

  ‘Be very still,’ Karah said in a voice that carried eerily in the echoing corridor. ‘Be very still if you value your lives.’

  Ragnar could see no threat but her tone and her scent warned him that she was serious, so he froze on the spot. He stretched his senses to their limits and still could detect nothing. So he waited. Karah raised her hands and the amulet blazed bright once more. As she did so, more lines of fire became evident. They shimmered into being in the air before them, millions and millions of beams all criss-crossing in an intricate web of light. At her gesture they blazed brighter and brighter – and then suddenly faded.

  ‘We… we can go on,’ she stammered, in the tone of voice of one who had just seen and avoided a deadly threat by a matter of inches.

  They pressed on into the heart of the pyramid. The aura of gloom deepened. Ragnar’s sense of being surrounded by hidden powers intensifying as they worked their way deeper into the maze.

  Scant moments later, the air ahead of them swirled. A figure materialised, seemingly coalescing out of thin air. Ragnar gazed at the apparition, his mind suddenly filled with stories of ghosts he had heard back on Fenris. It was not an inappropriate thought either. The figure before him might have been the spirit of a warrior returned to haunt the living.

  It was an eldar, inhumanly tall and slender. and garbed in exotically beautiful curved armour. A huge crest rose from its gaunt helmet. Strange weapons dangled from its belt. It stood before them with its arms folded across its narrow chest. It wore an over-tunic decorated with diamond patterns, and the sleeves and leggings of its armour were decorated in gaudy checks. When it spoke its voice was thrilling and musical.

  ‘Go back, humans,’ it pealed. ‘You should not have come here.’

  The alien was not real, Ragnar realised. He could catch no scent, and it shimmered translucently. He knew that if he reached out he could put his hand through it. Still, what was the purpose of this projection? Was it simply a way of communicating with them, or was it a distraction, intended to keep them occupied while something else sneaked up to attack them?

  ‘We go where we will,’ Hakon responded. Ragnar glanced around, sniffing the air to make sure his suspicions were not correct. ‘We are the Emperor’s servants, in the Emperor’s realm, and it is not for any alien to tell us where we may go.’

  The eldar shook its head sadly. ‘I mean you no harm, Space Wolves. I bring a warning. You meddle with things that are best left undisturbed. You seek to awake something that should not be awoken. If you persist along this path, it will lead only to catastrophe on a scale you cannot comprehend.’

  There was an echoing quiet as the alien’s words sank in. What was this talk about warnings and catastrophes? Was the eldar sincere or was this all some sort of trick? Sven stood slack jawed behind him, as well he might. Ragnar himself felt like he was confronting some mythical creature from one of the ancient sagas.

  ‘What is this?’ he heard Sternberg ask. ‘What do you wish of us, ancient one?’

  The eldar pointed to the talisman hanging at Karah’s breast. ‘Do not seek to remake that which was broken. Do not take it to the place of the curse. Do not set the imprisoned one free. You have been warned. Even now the forces that hold it are unravelling and the spell which has kept my brethren and I here to guard it is almost undone. Go back! Go back! Before it is too late, go back!’

  Even as it spoke the figure shimmered and vanished. The inquisitors and the Space Wolves stared at each other. No one spoke. There was nothing to say. All of them knew they had come too far to turn back. All of them considered the ghostly eldar’s words.

  What was the thing that should not be awakened? Was this a sincere attempt to avert their doom on the part of the alien, or was it some unfathomable attempt to manipulate them for its own purposes.

  He did not know. He only knew that if they did not bring the talisman back to Aerius in one piece the whole world would die. And that if they did, the plague would end, although he suspected at terrible cost. The Oracle had said this. The Space Wolves’ own Rune Priests had confirmed it. Surely, even though the eldar possessed their own dark wisdom, and possibly an ability to see the pattern of the future, it could be no greater than that of the Imperium’s own sages?

  Ragnar’s head swam from trying to understand the swirling complexities of the situation. He pushed all thoughts aside, glad for the moment that he was not the leader here, that he did not need to make decisions, that it was not his task to wrestle with the mysteries that surrounded him. All he needed to do, at this moment, was fight when called on to, and win if it were humanly possible.

  He smiled as this knowledge lodged itself in his brain. It was good to reduce things to such elemental simplicity. It was even better to be able to find something to concentrate on that kept his mind from pondering on things of which he had no understanding.

  As they ventured further into the heart of the pyramid, Ragnar realised that the corridors were laid out like a maze. They twisted and turned with neither rhyme nor reason, and did so in such a manner as to befuddle the head of any normal man.

  ‘Why is the place like this?’ he heard Nils ask.

  ‘Russ take me!’ Sven snapped back. ‘Can’t you see they were just trying to confuse any fools who came in. Fools like us actually.’

  ‘No, Space Wolf. You are wrong,’ Karah said. ‘The maze is set out according to some kind of arcane geomantic principle. The runes in the wall and the layout of the corridors are all part of a pattern designed to funnel unseen energies. I can sense the flow all around us, being channelled and directed.’

  ‘Why?’ Ragnar asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she responded. ‘Maybe it is all part of the system that has kept the pyramid inviolate for all these centuries. Maybe it’s something more. I sense that there is something powerful at the centre, though. I can feel that too.’

  Not a tomb then, Ragnar though
t. A temple? A nexus of mystical forces? A machine that focussed power? Who could guess why the aliens had built this place here.

  Three more times they stopped, and waited anxiously while Karah dispelled the lines of fire. Then suddenly it was over. They had reached the end of the tunnel and the end of their journey.

  In an open chamber which echoed hollowly with their footsteps, they came to stand before an immense stone door covered in runes. Ragnar wondered what lay beyond.

  ‘How are we going to open this?’ Sven asked, his voice too loud in the echoing chamber.

  ‘Explosives,’ Nils suggested.

  ‘Don’t have any,’ Strybjorn sniffed.

  ‘We’ve got our grenades.’

  ‘Won’t make a dent in this. Unless I miss my guess, it must be ten strides thick and weigh tons.’

  Ragnar contemplated the immense weight of dressed stone standing before them. It seemed as massive and immobile as the pyramid itself had from the outside and just as unbreachable. Yet now they were here, in the centre of the vast, ancient monument. He knew that given time they would find a way into its secret heart.

  Karah Isaan walked up to the vast stone door and placed her hands flat upon it. As she did so, lines of brilliant white light emerged from her palms and spread like a web of fire across the stone. This time the pattern did not fade away, but flashed and sparked for several long moments.

  There was an earthquake-deep rumbling and a sudden swirling cloud of dust. In one motion, the stone descended into the floor, leaving the way clear into the chamber in the heart of the pyramid.

  As it did so, Ragnar felt a sudden terrifying feeling of utter dread, and an overwhelming sense of evil.

  Barely a heartbeat later, a deep rolling laughter, wicked and yet strangely jovial, boomed out around the chamber, and then a mighty voice spoke.

  ‘Greetings, fools! In the name of beloved Uncle Nurgle, I, Botchulaz, favoured spawn of the most disgusting Lord of Disease, bid you welcome. I thank you from the bottom of my heart for freeing me.’