War of the Fang - Chris Wraight

by Warhammer 40K

  ‘Of course, modifications have been made,’ explained Aphael, motioning toward the drill-arms. ‘If we have to dig the Dogs out, we will.’

  ‘You think it will come to that?’

  ‘I care not,’ said Aphael, and the vehemence of hatred in his voice was unfeigned. For a moment, the timbre was more like Hett’s own. ‘If they meet us on the ice, we will come for them. If they cower in their tunnels, we will come for them. If they bury themselves in stone, we will come for them. We will hunt them out, drag them into combat, and wound them until their blood stains this place so deep it will never be recovered.’

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  ‘For Russ!’

  Rossek flecked the visor of his helm with spittle, jabbing his chainfist, dragging the edge of its blade across the Traitor Marine’s breastplate as his body turned. At the edge of his vision he could see his brothers crash into combat, their bolters falling silent as they brought their close-combat weapons to bear. The remnants of the mortal army were irrelevant now. All that mattered were the Traitors: eighteen Rubric Marines against an eleven-strong pack of Space Wolves with fire kindling in their clenched fists.

  Fair odds.

  The Rubric Marine facing Rossek moved as swiftly as he did. Though the sapphire behemoths walked into battle in stately, patient ranks, as soon as combat was joined their bodies sparked into action. Their reactions were those of the Legions Astartes, swift and sure, poised by gene-forged mastery and that dreadful, arduous conditioning.

  Ceramite crunched against ceramite, gunmetal-grey against sapphire and bronze. The whooping, bellowing pack of Wolves whirled their way into battle, bone-totems swinging wildly, their pelt-draped arms landing punches and hammer-blows with crunching, precision-guided force.

  The Traitors responded silently, eerily matching every thrust with a counter-thrust. They spun on their heels as swiftly, traded upper-cuts and deadeners with equal skill, parried the incoming blade and returned the blow with shimmering crystal-bladed power swords.

  Rossek towered over all the others, resplendent in his las-scorched Terminator battle-plate. He crashed his way through the guard of the Traitor before him, smashing it back through sheer momentum, swinging huge arcs of devastation with his whirring chainfist.

  The Rubric Marine rocked on its heels, stoically fighting against the oncoming storm, driven back, pace by pace, as chunks of its ornate armour were hacked from its frame by the biting blades, never emitting so much as a whisper.

  ‘Death to the Traitor!’ bellowed Rossek, feeling fresh spikes of adrenalin pumping through his battle-primed body. The wolf within was foam-mouthed with battle-frenzy, howling and slavering. The very silence of his enemy fuelled Rossek’s fury, driving the assault to new heights of savagery.

  The Rubric Marine stumbled then, staggering over the rough ground. Rossek pounced, using the brief opening between them to unleash a hail of bolter rounds. As he closed for the kill, the shells impacted, shattering the beautiful armour and smashing the ornamental crests from the Traitor’s helm and pauldrons.

  ‘The wrath of Fenris!’ Rossek thundered, joining the massed howls and battle-cries of his brothers.

  This was life. This was perfection – to bring the battle to the enemy, to fight on the open ice as the Allfather had created him to do. Amid all the anger, the blind fury, the familiar rush of the kill-urge, there was this, too.

  Pleasure.

  Rossek laughed under the heavy Terminator helm, barely noticing the rune-sigils on the lens display showing pack-positions, kill-signs and life-signs. The beleaguered Rubric Marine reeled under the Wolf Guard’s onslaught, unable to answer the raw fury of the charge. What meagre existence it possessed was coming to an end.

  Then, everything stopped.

  Rossek saw Scarjaw bound across the rocks to his right, hurling himself against two Rubric Marines, his black pelts streaming behind him. The Grey Hunter slowed and froze, locked in an impossible, half-completed lunge.

  The rest of the pack succumbed, first dragging as if wading through crude oil, then grinding to a halt.

  Rossek whirled round, aghast, before feeling the heaviness pull on his own limbs.

  ‘Fight it, brothers!’ he bellowed, sensing the taint of maleficarum, tasting the unholy stench of sorcery as it sank into his limbs. The runes on his armour blazed red, flaring in defiance against the incoming waves of corruption. His vision wavered, going cloudy at the edges as if mists had rolled across the valley floor with unnatural suddenness. ‘Fight it!’

  The Rubric Marines suffered no ill-effects. They pressed on with remorseless efficiency, plunging their blades into the static Wolves emotionlessly, ripping open neck-guards to expose the pale flesh beneath, indifferent to the muffled cries of pain as the Hunters died.

  Rossek could still move, though slowly. Every gesture was cloying, crushed by a dead weight of heaviness.

  Too slow to save them.

  ‘Hnnn-urgh!’ he growled, forcing his body to keep fighting through strength of will alone. Perspiration burst out across his tattooed brow, running down his clenched cheeks. Just keeping his fists aloft was a mammoth effort; using them even more so.

  Three Rubric Marines closed on him. The one he’d been fighting was among them, looking neither vengeful nor shaken despite its savaged armour. Bringing its sword into a stabbing position, it advanced coolly for the kill.

  Agonisingly, Rossek saw the pack-runes on his helm-display wink out, one after another. The warriors he’d led into battle were being butchered, not in the heat of honourable combat, but like cattle.

  He clenched his chainfist, gritted his fangs, and raged against it. He felt as if his hearts would burst, his muscles prise from his bones, but he somehow forced his weapons into position.

  Then, for the first time, he saw the master of the sorcery. Only metres away, his outline blurred and shimmering, a Thousand Sons magus emerged from cover. Rossek could smell him, feel the pungent sweetness of corruption in his nostrils. There was a flesh-and-blood warrior under those robes, a heart that beat and a mind that could feel malice.

  The sorcerer held a golden staff, and pearlescent lightning quickened to its sigil-crowned head.

  +As you die, Dog-warrior, know this,+ came a thin, hatred-distorted voice within his mind. The sorcerer lowered the point of the staff at him. +We will do this to every one of you.+

  Then Rossek’s world filled with pain and light. A vast force threw him from his feet, ripping him from the rocks and hurling him far into the air. He felt his body recoil from the explosion, shocked hard even under the protection of his armour. The impact when he hit the earth again was heavy, dull and crippling. He smelled the sharp tang of his own blood in his mouth, as well as the pungent aroma of burning krak-discharge.

  He lifted his head painfully, his vision blurred and shaky, struggling to remain conscious.

  Krak-discharge?

  ‘Jarl, do not move.’

  It was the voice of Rojk over the comm. Rossek’s vision began to clear, just in time to see fresh heavy weapons fire slam into the Thousand Sons squad. The standing Traitor Marines were thrown aside just as the others had been. Huge, rolling balls of fire flared up from the shattering boulders as krak missiles and heavy bolter rounds rained down on the Rubric Marines. He saw Traitors torn apart in the inferno, their armour spinning into shards as the hail of fire detonated across the ceramite. The survivors withdrew, falling back in disciplined silence to escape the torrent of incoming fire.

  A few moments later there were sets of hands on Rossek’s armour, dragging him from the scene, hauling him across the broken ground.

  ‘My... pack...’ grunted Rossek, his vision blurred and groggy.

  The motion ceased. A familiar helmet loomed in front of him. Bone-white and carved into the gruesome image of a bear-skull, it was more like a Wolf Priest’s than a Long Fang’s.

  ‘Only one other life-sign,’ reported Torgrim Rojk. There was accusation in the old warrior’s voice. ‘We’ve got yo
u both, and we’re leaving.’

  From somewhere close by, Rossek made out the thudding growl of a Land Raider engine. There was more bolter fire, and the rush of the Long Fangs’ volleys streaking through the air.

  Rossek shook the hands off him and staggered to his feet. He felt sick. Corrupted.

  ‘The gene-seed,’ he slurred, thinking of his fallen brothers. The world still swayed around him, rocking in a hail of contrails and echoing explosions.

  Rojk ordered his men to fall back to the open maw of the waiting Land Raider. The veterans withdrew without panic, firing as they went. They carried Aunir Frar’s body with them, unmoving and dripping with dark blood.

  ‘We stay here, we die,’ Rojk said coolly. ‘Use your eyes.’

  Rossek whirled round, nearly falling as he did so. A few hundred metres away, past the kill-zone where his slaughtered pack lay amid the stone, he saw the surviving Rubric Marines begin to regroup. Behind them, further down the narrow valley, more troops were hurrying to join them, mortal and Traitor. Beyond that, hazy in the distance, were tank groups, far larger vehicles than the ones he’d destroyed, grinding up the boulders under massive treads.

  The spearhead had been caught up by the main battalions; the Thousand Sons advance was now underway. He’d lingered too long. Above it all the stink of maleficarum was still strong in his nostrils, pungent and cloying. They couldn’t fight that witchery.

  Numbly, he let himself be half-led, half-dragged to the waiting transport. Thick smoke was pouring from the exhausts as it powered up for withdrawal. The Land Raider’s bolters were already firing constantly, covering the retreat.

  Rossek barely felt himself clang to the floor of the troop-bay, barely felt the grinding thrust of the drives as they powered the transport back along the rubble-strewn valley floor. The lingering pall of corruption ran through his mind, merging his thoughts, jumbling his instincts.

  The Land Raider pulled clear, riding out the storm of fire as it picked up speed. Rossek dragged himself to his knees, his ravaged body working hard against the damaged servos of his armour. Only then did clarity begin to return, some sense of what had just happened.

  I killed them.

  Then the amber-eyed wolf within him howled, not with battle-lust or glory, but with the horror of grief.

  Crewman Reri Urfangborn liked the void. Even when the ship was in the strange hiatus of warp travel with all its sickness and nausea, being a crew member on an Adeptus Astartes vessel was a step up from the average life of a mortal within the Imperium. He knew this because he’d seen other worlds and witnessed the horrors and wonders of the galaxy first-hand. He’d seen hive-cities of metal and plascrete that reared their heads through acid atmospheres, enormous agri-combines plagued with dust and ceaseless labour, forgeworlds covered in continent-sized manufactorums, choked with oily smoke and riddled with pollution and disease.

  So, for all its trials, being stationed for a lifetime in the enginarium of the Nauro wasn’t a bad result. It was dark and cold, but then Fenris was too. It smelled bad most of the time, but after a few years you stopped noticing it. The kaerls were rough-spoken and didn’t think twice about landing a punch with a rifle-butt for sloppy work, but were humane enough beyond that – the current ship’s Master had even ordered distribution of demi-mjod, the heavily alcoholic imitation of the Sky Warriors’ sacred battle-stimulant, after the escape from the orbital blockade. That had been good. It had made everybody happier, despite the accidents afterwards.

  In the time since then, the work-rate had been punishing. It was hard to tell how much time had passed – the internal chronos were unreliable in the warp, and only the Navigator had any real sense of how long it had been since they’d reached the jump-point and powered up the warp drives. Certainly days, as least as Reri’s body measured it. The time had been filled more than was usual with work – he’d slept no more than a couple of hours in every cycle before being roused back for the next task. Something was making the commander drive the ship hard, squeezing out more speed even in the face of the damage they’d taken over Fenris.

  As a lower deck-worker, Reri had no real overview of the whole repair process, but he knew something about engines, and they were still in a bad way. There were leaks all over the place, and three of the four major fuel-conduits leading from the tanks to the drives had been ruptured beyond repair. Seven decks were entirely sealed off, making travel between the various levels difficult and time-consuming. That said, the faces of the senior crew had reverted from extreme anxiety to merely grim. Morkai was still hard on their heels, but perhaps not quite as close behind as he had been.

  Which was good news for Reri Urfangborn. He liked life, even more so since Anjia in the quartermaster’s section had finally shrugged off the worst of her diffidence and seemed genuinely willing to spend some time behind the bulkheads with him. He didn’t fool himself that there was much affection there – his hunched frame and grey skin, a product of his life’s work, didn’t exactly make him stand out as paragon of virility – but it was amazing what a near-death experience could do to soften a woman’s resistance.

  He slunk down the service tunnels expertly, conditioned by years of rattling around in the bowels of the Nauro. The light was weaker than normal. Whole sections were liable to be plunged into darkness when the powergrid took a sudden demand from the labouring engines, so he’d strapped two torches on either side of his rusty helmet. As he scuttled, he could hear his own breath, heavy and expectant. It had been a long time, and his palms were greasy with desire and engine lubricant.

  He rounded a corner, bent double in the cramped interior, careful to avoid the protruding clumps of exposed wiring. The metal around him vibrated constantly, driven by the heartbeat of the titanic engines above.

  Just as he reached his destination, a store-chamber buried deep within the labyrinth of service-tunnels, the faint strip-lights fizzed out.

  Reri grinned as he flicked his torches on. The twin beams were watery and flickering, but they exposed the way ahead well enough. He dropped down from the service tunnel into the chamber he’d picked, knocking aside a crate of worn-out bearings as he landed. He looked around, his torch-beams running over the chaotic pile of boxes on the metal-grid floor.

  Anjia was there already, slouched in front of a pile of old machine-parts, waiting for him in the dark, her head lowered. Reri saw her red hair flash in the torchlight and felt a pang of excitement ripple through him.

  ‘So you came,’ he said greedily, scampering over to her.

  She made no reply, and Reri hung back for a moment. Was she ill? Having second thoughts? He crouched down in front of her, gingerly extending his scrawny hand to her fringe. He hesitated, fingers trembling. She was sitting awkwardly.

  ‘Anjia?’

  He pulled the hair back, exposing her pale face. Where her eyes had been, there were black holes, running with lines of blood like tear-tracks.

  Reri screamed, leaping up and away, blundering wildly into the wall at his back.

  Except it wasn’t a wall. It was a metal giant, a monster with gilded power armour and a high, crested helm. The behemoth reached down and grabbed him by the shoulder, squeezing the flesh until the blood welled up.

  Reri kept screaming until the other one emerged. The second monster had long flowing robes draped over similarly ornate armour-curves, though he limped and stooped as if badly injured. His helm had been carved into the likeness of a cobra-head, surmounted by a hood of gold. The one with the robes gestured casually and Reri found he could no longer scream. His open mouth made no sound at all, even through the screaming continued inside his head. He struggled, more out of instinct than anything else. He’d begun to recognise the figures for what they were – some kind of debased Space Marine. That told him all he needed to know about his survival prospects.

  The one with the robe loomed up over him. Reri’s torchbeams flickered across the gold cobra-hood, sparkling from the jewels studded in the metal. Like some half-reme
mbered nightmare, no sound would come out of his mouth. His facial muscles gradually relaxed, until his features took on an expression of mild boredom.

  The one with the robes said something to the silent one, but it wasn’t in a language Reri could understand. Then the golden helm turned to Reri.

  ‘I am glad you came,’ said cobra-mask, this time speaking in strangely accented Fenrisian. The voice was surprisingly soft. Kind, even. ‘Your friend did not survive this process. I assume that you are made of stronger stuff.’

  His two gauntlets rose. In one he carried a curved scalpel. In the other were two orbs, glistening with an unholy, pale-green light. Aside from the sheen of witchery, they looked a lot like eyes.

  Reri kept screaming. He kept screaming as the torchlights were doused, and he kept screaming as Master Fuerza went to work, and he kept screaming until the Thousand Sons sorcerer-lord had finished. Indeed, though his features remained slack and emotionless, locked into surface equanimity by magicks more powerful than he’d ever be able to comprehend, there was a part of Reri Urfangborn that would never stop screaming again.

  Helfist leaped high into the air, the dying light glinting from his armour, snow showering from his body in heavy slabs.

  ‘The Wolves are among you!’ he roared, breaking the long, patient silence.

  Five metres below him, the column of marching mortals spun round, staring up in comical terror. It had been foolish of them to march so close to the ledge, so enticingly swathed in deep drifts and well-situated for an ambush.

  Two metres to Helfist’s left, Redpelt burst from the snow, roaring with his own note of feral enthusiasm. The rest of the pack broke out with him, led by the bellowing shape of Sigrd Brakk, a looming nightmare of blade and armour in the gathering dusk. The Wolves dropped together like a landslide, crashing into the unprepared forces below.

  Las-fire cracked up at them as the mortals raced to withdraw, out from the shadow of the ledge and over the broken, treacherous ground beyond. Many stumbled, breaking ankles and wrists as they fell among the knife-sharp rocks. There must have been over a hundred of them, all well-armed, all well-armoured. For mortals.