The Space Wolf Omnibus - William King

by Warhammer 40K

  Already the huge Earthshaker assault guns battered at the enemy position, sending monstrous shells smashing into the walls of the distant keep, not even visible through the snowy mist of the Garmite dawn. The weather diviners on the fleet had prophesied that the mist would clear soon. Ragnar hoped so. The weather here was a two-edged sword. It would slow down most of the vehicles save for the largest tanks and Titans, but at the same time it would help shield their advance. It was not the best of days to try and break into Sergius’s stronghold, but it was as good as they were likely to get given the season. And the runes had assured them that time was getting short, whatever the heretic leader was up to, he would do it soon.

  Most of the infantry below were in the Rhinos, ready to move into the battle zone. The Imperial Guard might lack the skill and superhuman ferocity of the Space Wolves but it made up for it with numbers. Tens of thousands of men were down there, ready to do battle in the Emperor’s name. As Ragnar watched he saw more tanks drive through the snow. They were Baneblades, so large that not even the Titans could dwarf their massively powerful presence. He saw Shadow Swords too, ready to engage any enemy armour that might show. Not that any was expected at the moment. Today they were assaulting a fortress, moving in to liberate Trainor’s home keep from the grip of Chaos and reclaim the Spear of Russ.

  At least that was the message the Imperial forces intended to send to the enemy.

  If the attack was a success and the keep was taken, well and good, but that was not really expected today. The defences were powerful, and the heretics numerous. The real purpose of the exercise was to give the Wolves a chance to infiltrate the fortress, spread fear and terror among their enemies, and locate and reclaim their artefact. After hearing Trainor’s tale, the Great Wolf had decided this was what must be done. The Imperial general, seeing that the best chance of crushing the heresy was by striking off its head, had given his support. The death warrant of Sergius had been signed. Now all they had to do was capture the arch-heretic.

  Ragnar glanced around the interior of the Thunderhawk. His squad was there along with several others. There was Sergeant Joris, Hakon’s replacement and Ragnar’s new superior. He was short and squat for a Space Wolf, but his arms were thicker than Ragnar’s thighs. He was reputed to be the strongest man in the company and Ragnar saw no reason to doubt it. His head was half bald, leaving only a crescent of hair around the crown of his skull. Joris made up for this by having exceedingly long sideburns and long braided moustaches. His cheeks were ruddy, and his manner was deceptively pleasant and cheerful. He grinned, showing exceedingly long fangs.

  Ragnar had been surprised to find the sergeant consulting with him. It seemed he was still regarded as something of a leader for the Blood Claws.

  It was the Wolf’s way. Once you were in a position, you stayed there until you were promoted or proved yourself unfit for it. If a man can lead, let him lead.

  ‘This is it,’ muttered Sven from Ragnar’s side. ‘This is when I make Grey Hunter. Now is the day, now is the bloody hour.’

  ‘You think so?’ asked Strybjorn. Even the prospect of battle did nothing to light his grim visage.

  ‘Yes. Today begins a new chapter in the saga of Sven.’

  ‘Sven the Boastful’s saga,’ said Ragnar. ‘I like the sound of that.’

  ‘You’re lucky,’ muttered Torvald gloomily. ‘There’s no chance anyone will make me a Grey Hunter. It must be my curse at work again.’

  ‘It’s because you’re just out of bloody Russvik,’ said Sven.

  ‘Look on the bright side,’ said Aenar. ‘Our day will come.’

  ‘Yes, when we’re old enough to be Long Fangs,’ said Torvald. ‘If I live that long. Which is not likely.’

  Troll loomed over him. ‘Don’t worry, little man, I will protect you.’

  Ragnar closed his eyes and offered up a prayer to Russ. This did not feel right. There was something missing. He glanced over again at Joris. It was odd to see him sitting there. Ragnar half-expected to be looking at Hakon’s scarred face. He shoved the thought aside. Never again in this life. Well, he had fought beside other sergeants than Hakon. There was Hengist who had led them into the Chaos temple beneath the Fenrisian mountains for one. There had been Lothar, that time on Xecutor. Doubtless there would be others in the future.

  ‘You’re looking pretty bloody cheerful,’ said Sven, nudging him in the ribs. ‘What’s the matter? Missing the thrill of command?’

  ‘Something like that.’ Ragnar considered this for a moment. Was that part of his strange mood, he wondered? Did he miss the thrill of command? His initial reaction was to say that he did not. Part of him was glad that someone else was now responsible for the lives of his comrades. Reflecting further, he thought that maybe part of him did. There was something heady about being the leader, about giving orders and having them obeyed, about being master of your own destiny and the destiny of those about you.

  Was that why Berek had made him the patrol leader, Ragnar wondered? To give him a taste of command, to see how he reacted, to let him see for himself what it felt like? Had it been some sort of test? It was certainly possible. For all his bluff manner, Berek was a good leader.

  Ragnar glanced over at Trainor, glad that the young officer had been assigned to their pack. All of the surviving militiamen had been divided up and assigned to the companies going in. Their knowledge of the inside of Ironfang Keep might prove invaluable.

  Trainor did not look well. He seemed to have aged ten years over night. Ragnar guessed that his investigation by the Rune Priests had done that. The ancient sorcerers had deep probed his mind and those of all of his men. They were taking no chances of a traitor leading the Wolf companies into an ambush.

  Ragnar felt a surge of sympathy, remembering his own ordeal at the hands of those terrible old men when he had passed through the Gate of Morkai. He doubted that facing Inquisitor Gideon would have been any easier.

  Trainor must have passed with flying colours otherwise he would not have been here. One of his men had not been so lucky. Ragnar was not sure he wanted to know what had happened to him. Trainor met Ragnar’s gaze levelly with his haunted, suffering eyes. This could not be easy for him, going back to his lifelong home as part of an invasion force, preparing to fight former friends and neighbours who had turned against him. A warrior’s lot was rarely easy.

  Ragnar thought back to the long hours in Grimnar’s throne hall, as the various Imperial commanders had thrashed out their plan of attack. It was an inspiring thought that Trask, who notionally had supreme command of that vast force on the ground down there, had deferred to the Great Wolf’s wishes and gone along with the plan to attack the Chaos stronghold and recover the Spear of Russ. It seemed that the worth of the Wolves counter-balanced all of the massive Imperial force.

  Of course, Ragnar quickly realised that things were not quite as they seemed. Trask might well be the Imperial Guard commander, but neither the Wolves nor the Titan legion were bound to obey him. Both were proudly independent forces and had let him know it. The Princeps Maximus recognised no authority but the Grand Master of his order. Logan Grimnar recognised none save that of the Emperor. This made Ironheart and the Great Wolf natural allies. It seemed to Ragnar that Trask had gone along as much to keep the peace, and his force concentrated, as to get the sacred artefact back.

  In a way, it was a very sensible decision politically as well as militarily. Once the Wolves had recaptured their treasure they would be far more likely to go along with the rest of the general’s plans, and if the Wolves went, that made Ironheart more likely to. It seemed that one had to be as much a diplomat as a strategist to lead Imperial armies. Thinking about the rival Wolf Lords in the Chapter, that probably applied to the Great Wolf too. A man would have to be skilful in negotiation as well as war to lead a Space Marine Chapter. It was something that bore thinking about.

  Ragnar guessed that Trask too had his own problems. Certainly some of his field commanders had seemed just as k
een as Logan Grimnar to attack the Ironfang Keep. Doubtless they wanted the glory, to write their names in Imperial history alongside those of the Chapter. And doubtless they too were as keen to outshine their rivals as Berek and Sigrid. War among the stars was not quite so simple as it was back home in Fenris. There it had simply been a case of the jarl lining up his warriors and ordering the charge. Or perhaps he had simply been too young to understand then. Perhaps all forces of men were like this. Sometimes he felt like he had aged a hundred years since being chosen.

  Nearby he saw other Thunderhawks circling. Most of the Chapter’s gunships were in the air this day, which was hardly surprising. The plan was a bold one, and it required extreme mobility, the sort that only Thunderhawks could provide. Once they were within the keep then it would be pure infantry work, there would be no room for land speeders, assault bikes or dreadnoughts. There would not even be any use for Terminator armour. This operation required speed, stealth and extreme precision – a series of hit and run attacks on major enemy communication centres, power cores and weapon emplacements, a set of attacks that would demoralise and terrorise the enemy. They would need to locate entrances to the Chaos cult shrine, and then enter it to reclaim the Spear.

  To be honest Ragnar was not so sure that the followers of the Dark Ones could be terrorised. He doubted that anything would scare a man who had already given his soul up to the powers of Chaos, not even the righteous wrath of the Emperor’s chosen. Fortunately though, they would be in the minority. The deluded fools who had chosen to follow Sergius and his acolytes were not so nerveless. And they still provided the bulk of the enemy’s troops. Or so Ragnar hoped.

  Once more he ran through the holomaps he had memorised. All of them were stored within the matrix of his armour, but in the heat of battle they could not always be called up, and sometimes armour got damaged. It was better to carry the information in your head. Ragnar visualised the keep as it had first been shown to him. It was a huge structure of the type favoured by humanity on these industrial worlds, basically a cube, a kilometre per side. The cube was joined to the earth by a tangled web of pipes and cables that resembled the root structure of some massive plant. These were power systems drawing thermal heat from Garm’s fiery core, and water from underground reservoirs and transit tubes for grav-trains. The tubes clambered up the side of the structure like vines clinging to the walls of some ancient stronghold.

  At each corner of the keep’s roof, four enormous towers thrust into the sky like spears aimed at the belly of the clouds. These towers were part fortification and part chimney, venting enormous clouds of pollutants into the sky. From the centre of the roof jutted a truncated pyramid, as massive as many islands back home on Fenris. This was the place where the keep’s nobility dwelled and where many of the control systems for the entire structure terminated.

  He reviewed the access points to the keep that had been overlaid on the holomap. One of them was going to be the entrance for his pack. Below them, the army had started moving forward across the icy plain. In the distance, plumes of smoke, ash and snow rose where the shells impacted. Hell touched Garm there.

  The Thunderhawk began moving forward in formation with the rest of the Chapter’s gunships, keeping pace with the army, flying so low that the scars on the shoulder carapaces of the Titans were visible. As far as the enemy was concerned, the Wolves would just be part of the attacking force. Looking down, Ragnar got some idea of the scale of the great machines. Close up they seemed even larger than he had imagined.

  ‘Now that is what I call a bloody gun,’ said Sven, pointing to the massive cannon clutched in the Titan’s enormous metal fist. Ragnar nodded. In all the days since he was chosen he had never wished to be anything but a Wolf, but at that moment, he thought if he had to choose to be something else, it would be the Princeps of a Titan. He tried to imagine what it would be like to control that behemoth of steel and ceramite. It must be the closest thing to being a god that any man could ever experience.

  ‘I don’t think you could lift it,’ said Torvald gloomily.

  ‘I don’t think the entire Chapter put together could lift it.’

  Sergeant Joris heard the exchange. ‘One Marine in the right place can do ten times the damage one of those things can.’

  He spoke with the utter certainty of a man who had experienced the truth of his words. Ragnar supposed it was true.

  ‘Aye, but it’s a bloody lot more difficult for us to get to that place,’ said Sven.

  ‘And I have a sore foot already,’ said Torvald.

  ‘You’ll have a sore head as well if you don’t stop whining,’ said the sergeant.

  Torvald grinned to himself. The Thunderhawk juddered and shook as it turned into the wind for a moment, and then slipstreamed the Titans.

  ‘Could they fly any slower?’ Torvald asked.

  ‘They could but we would be going backward,’ said Sven.

  ‘Like your brain,’ said Ragnar. Despite the banter, the tension within the cabin was rising. The words had a brittle quality, and the scent of his pack spoke of excitement and anxiety in equal measures. Aenar had closed his eyes. His lips moved in silent prayer. Trainor had joined him. Strybjorn stared bleakly off into the distance like a man with a premonition of his own death.

  Joris moved along the line, checking weapons and armour, making sure the Wolves were ready for battle as soon as they deployed. Ragnar felt a slight surge of resentment. Sergeant Hakon had never done that, at least not so obviously. He had trusted them to look after themselves. With Joris, it was obvious that they were mere Blood Claws, and that he was the veteran. Ragnar found himself looking forward to the day when he became a Grey Hunter, and would be beyond such things.

  Suddenly there was the sound of an explosion. To the left a plume of black smoke arose. Ragnar glanced out of the porthole and saw that one of the tanks had been hit. He had no idea by what. As he watched a few tiny crewmen bailed out, and ran for cover. A few seconds later, the tank exploded, sending metal debris fountaining skyward.

  ‘Looks like the heretics finally woke up,’ said Sven. ‘I was starting to wonder if they were all asleep.’

  The other Baneblades started blasting away in response, although Ragnar was not sure what they hoped to achieve. No matter how powerful those guns were, they could do little damage to the walls of the keep.

  ‘Look at that,’ said Aenar, pointing out of the right porthole. Ragnar glanced over. He could see that a Warlord Titan was bringing its weapon to bear. The air was filled with an enormous humming sound as the Titan’s generators peaked at maximum energy, and then its gun sent a spear of energy lancing at the distant building with a sound like a thunderclap. The sound reverberated like thunder as the rest of the Titans opened up. Ragnar wished he were up in the cockpit now, so that he could get a view looking forward. It would be interesting to see the effects of the Titan’s incredible firepower on the enemy.

  The battle had begun in earnest now. The Imperial army was firing at will, and their enemy responded in kind. A wave of explosions ripped through the Imperial line as some kind of multiple rocket launcher targeted the onrushing Rhinos. Looking down into the maelstrom of explosions, it seemed impossible that anything could have survived, but when the dust and snow settled Ragnar could see that not a single Rhino had been touched, and all were now far beyond the point of impact. Such were the fortunes of war, he thought.

  ‘My grandmother could bloody well shoot better than that,’ said Sven conversationally. ‘And she was blind.’

  ‘It would be just my luck to be targeted by the only heretic with a decent aim,’ said Torvald. ‘I’ve never been lucky, you know.’

  ‘It’s those who know you who are unlucky,’ said Strybjorn.

  ‘My mother was cursed by a Bear Clan witch woman before I was born. Have I mentioned that before?’

  ‘About a hundred times,’ said Strybjorn.

  ‘What was the curse? That she would have to put up with the gloomiest bastard on the
face of Fenris?’ asked Sven.

  ‘She would never tell me. She would just look at me and shake her head sadly.’

  ‘I can understand that,’ said Sven. ‘I do the same myself.’

  ‘Maybe the same witch woman cursed your mother, Sven,’ said Ragnar. ‘There has to be some reason her son was born so ugly.’

  Another explosion sounded. A huge crater appeared in the carapace of the Titan in front of them. Chunks of ceramite flew past the Thunderhawk.

  ‘That was close,’ said Aenar.

  ‘It’s going to get closer yet,’ shouted Joris. ‘We’re going in.’

  TWENTY-ONE

  The Thunderhawk rose above the shoulder of the Titan, and Ragnar caught sight of the Ironfang rising out of the snow and mist. All along its sides, huge guns blasted away. City defence missile launchers sent payloads of death smashing into the Imperial army. It was an imposing sight.

  ‘Less than half of the turrets are firing,’ said Ragnar.

  ‘There must still be fighting going on in the city,’ said Trainor.

  ‘Unless it’s a trap,’ said Torvald with a certain amount of relish. ‘That would be just like my luck.’

  The Imperial barrage was taking its own toll. Many turrets on the keep had been blasted into smithereens. Flames leapt from their hardpoints. Pools of steaming metal marked where some had been reduced to slag by the Titans’ firepower. Massive explosions carved huge chunks from the sides of the building, exposing twisted girders. Steam poured from broken pipes large enough for Rhinos to drive inside.

  Now components of the Imperial force raced ahead, Rhinos and lighter tanks hurtling towards the holes in the lower walls. Land speeders and battle bikes probed even further forward, plumes of snow and ash rising in their wakes. Tens of thousands of autorifles and bolters opened up, as infantry within the building joined the fray. Ragnar saw the contrails of rockets from man-portable launchers as their projectiles tore through the Imperial ranks.