War of the Fang - Chris Wraight

by Warhammer 40K

  Helfist landed heavily, crushing the spine of a retreating trooper with his power fist, now crackling with its blistering disruption field. He swung round, taking another two clean off their feet, tearing open their masks and leaving them to choke on the thin air. With his free hand, he unleashed a stream of murderous bolter fire from his pistol, carving a corridor of blood through the close-packed soldiers, then bounded after it.

  ‘The wrath of Russ!’ Helfist whooped in kill-pleasure, picking his targets among the morass of turning, running figures.

  By then Redpelt and the rest of the pack were in the midst of them too, hacking and chopping, releasing short, precise bursts of bolt-rounds. Muzzle-flares and energy-fields lit up the gloom of the dusk, outshining the wayward las-beams as the enemy did its best to do more than expire under the onslaught.

  ‘Come to my blades, traitor scum!’ bellowed Redpelt, barrelling over the rocks as sure-footedly as a true wolf. ‘Feel my–’

  A lucky las-beam hit him full in the chest, upending him and sending him sprawling on his back.

  The Blood Claws roared with laughter as they swept past him, butchering the mortals beyond with a casual, chilling abandon.

  ‘Feel your what, brother?’ taunted Helfist, eviscerating a trooper with his bolt pistol before seizing another in his power fist to crush.

  Brokentooth chortled even as he whirled his chainsword through a whole cluster of terrified, crawling soldiers, the monomolecular edges slicing apart the plate armour as if it were fabric.

  Redpelt clambered back up heavily, emanating embarrassment and fury. Smoke rolled from the black burn on his breastplate.

  ‘Who in fekke was that?’ he roared, striding back into range, his booming voice rising above the screams and gasping sobs of the fleeing mortals. He sprayed bolt-pistol fire in vicious swathes, cutting down the soldiers by the dozen. ‘Try that again. Try that again.’

  Helfist grinned as he punched a soldier’s faceplate in and spun round to pick off more with his pistol.

  ‘I wish someone would,’ he said over the mission channel. ‘We’re running out of things to kill.’

  It was true. Brakk had cut a swathe through the enemy, killing with a precision and skill that surpassed even that of his Blood Claws. As ever, the Wolf Guard had remained grimly silent during the butchery, letting the young bloods get the savagery out of their system while he ensured no escapees. By the time he’d swept round to close on Helfist’s position, the terrain was strewn with quickly freezing bodies. The last of the standing enemy were cut down with disdain.

  ‘Enough,’ barked Brakk once the tide of murder-make had subsided. He slammed a fresh clip into his boltgun. ‘That’s completion. We’re heading back to the Aett.’

  Redpelt was still bristling.

  ‘Why?’ he spat, letting his chainsword continue to whirr. ‘We could fight all night.’

  Brakk snorted. Unlike the other packleaders he’d remained in standard format power armour rather than the bulkier Terminator plate, but somehow he still dominated the warriors around him.

  ‘We’re not staying out here for you to fall on your arse again,’ he snarled. ‘I’ve got recall orders from the Aett – we’re going back.’

  Helfist drew alongside Redpelt. His body was still flooded with endorphins. The blood-tally had been high, though the quality of kills had been low. There was still work to do, and being dragged back to the lair was insulting.

  ‘We should stay,’ he said, almost without meaning to.

  The pack fell silent. Brakk slowly turned to face him.

  ‘Really? And what piece of tactical genius makes you say that?’

  Helfist was stung by the sarcasm. He felt retorts running through his mind, sentiments he’d been bursting to express for months.

  Our Wolf Lord is too cautious. His blood does not run hot. He keeps us from glory, and makes us the whelps of the Chapter. It should have been Rossek. He would have thrown us at the enemy, unfurled our claws, given us the murder-make we need.

  But no words came. Brakk was an old Wolf Guard, adamantium-hard and broken over the anvil of countless campaigns. He was the apex predator, the undisputed master of the pack. The Blood Claws were free to mock that power when their youthful passions drove them, but they would never defy it.

  So Helfist bowed in submission, feeling his cheeks burn as he did so.

  ‘There are witches among the Traitors now,’ explained Brakk, addressing the whole pack. ‘So far from Sturmhjart’s wards, we’re vulnerable. So we fall back to where we can fight them better. The Jarl knows what he’s doing.’

  The pack stowed their weapons then, preparing for the loping run back to the Aett. One by one, keeping close together, they broke off, streaming across the terrain as the last of the dusk light faded.

  As Helfist made to follow, Brakk came up to him. He laid a gauntlet on the Blood Claw’s arm. Not gently.

  ‘I know how you feel,’ he said over a closed channel. ‘Your fire commends you, Kyr Aesvai. There will be more killing yet, and the glory you crave.’

  The grip tightened.

  ‘But question an order again,’ he growled, ‘and I’ll tear your cocky throat out.’

  Ahmuz Temekh looked over the chamber. He was deep in the heart of the Herumon, shielded from the void by kilometres of the ship’s structure. The room was nine metres in diameter and perfectly circular, its walls polished to a mirror-sheen. Even Temekh’s eyes, attuned to imperfection in all its forms, could see no flaw on the surface, the result of decades of labour by his neophytes before they’d even been told about the mission to Fenris. The floor was similarly smooth and reflective. The ceiling, some twenty metres distant, was decorated extensively. Zodiacal figures and the five Platonic Solids were picked out in lines of gold and amethyst, all arranged around the central device of the Eye.

  The Eye. When did that become our emblem? Did any of us think about what it says, what it means?

  Temekh looked upwards with his mind’s psi-sight, scrutinising the design. The images, though rendered beautifully, were not mere decoration – they were placed precisely at certain points in relation to the centre of the chamber, points determined by the harmonics they induced within the aether and the resonances that created.

  It was sometimes assumed by practicae and other neophytes that the immaterium and the materium had no precise relationship, and that what happened in one was only imperfectly mirrored in the other. That wasn’t true, despite how hazy those relations could appear to the uninitiated. The causal links were more constant and more concrete than any existing purely in the physical realm, though it look a lifetime of study to see how the infinite elements of the sundered universes harmonised with one another. Even master sorcerers needed symbols in order to make sense of those deep meanings; images were a part of that, as were names. So it was that the chamber also had words of power inscribed across the walls, scripted in atom-perfect lines by machinery long forgotten and forbidden in the mortal Imperium.

  In themselves, the names had little significance. Placed in the proper order, and treated with the proper reverence, the significance could be terrifying. It was all about relationships, connections, cause and effect.

  At the centre of the chamber was an altar, cast in bronze and gilded with more esoteric devices. Temekh stood before it then as he had done for the past twelve hours, motionless, hands clasped, head bowed, in an attitude of silent contemplation. He was high in the Enumerations, as close to disembodiment as he dared to go, mindful of the dangers even as he relished the opportunities.

  Above the altar, something was taking shape. Though his violet eyes were closed, Temekh could see the form of it growing. At present there was virtually nothing to take note of. A shimmer here, a flicker there. From time to time, the air would tremble, writhing as if in a heat-haze.

  The task was difficult, despite the long preparation, the painstaking researches, the sacrifices made. Once certain states had been achieved, once a certain degree of p
hysicality had been relinquished, reassuming it was an arduous process. The universe had learned over the aeons to resist the imposition of pure psychic essence. The materium had a soul of its own – this, too, was not widely known – a generalised ability to defer incursions from the other side of the veil. If it had not, then the power of the daemonic would long since have run riot across the mortal galaxy.

  In order to do what his master wished, that power had to be neutralised, to be gently, carefully prised apart. Ahriman had once called it singing the universe to sleep. It was an apt description.

  At the memory of his old friend, Temekh felt his heart slowing, his pulse dropping to a faint beat every hour. The recollection helped him. The procedure was working.

  Above the altar, for a brief moment, a pupil flickered into being, deep as the pits of the void, ringed with red. Then it was gone, just an echo amid the other half-recognised shapes swimming above the bronze and gold.

  They seek you on Gangava, my lord, thought Temekh, letting a part of his mind play over the irony of it. As if you were any longer restricted to physical geometry. They do not know how powerful – and how weak – you have made yourself.

  There was a ripple in the warm air then, a backwash of something like irritation, the trivial inflection of some vast, magisterial being, still capable of being offended, still able to have its wounded pride pricked.

  Temekh reined his thoughts in. Concentration was required. It would be required for many days yet. Every material atom in the chamber would resist him, every law of physics would flex and struggle as it was violated. The materium could sense the enormous outrage he wished to perpetrate, and so it raged in still-potent fury.

  Be still, commanded Temekh, exerting his subtle power across the chamber silently. My voice is law in this place. My will is ascendant. I am here to do the bidding of my master. I am here to put you to sleep.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Dawn broke over Asaheim, throwing weak golden beams through the mountains, gilding the long kilometres of unbroken snow with a faint sheen. The light ran down the flanks of the Fang as the shafts broke clear of the shoulder of Friemiaki.

  It showed up a scene of desolation. The Thousand Sons leaguer was complete, a ring of steel around the isolated peak. The rain of plasma from the fleet in orbit continued without pause, smashing into the fortress’s void shields and cascading through the empty air. All passes to and from the Fang were now sealed, blocked by the swollen host of infantry and mechanised units. Heavy artillery had been dug into the cliffs facing the Fang, and every barrel pointed at the lone profile of the Wolves’ bastion. Ranks of men were still moving, taking up forward positions, covered by flanking columns of tanks and low-flying squadrons of gunships. Heavy ordnance had already been broken out, and a steady torrent of shells whined across the frozen sky to crash against the distant stone and ice of Russ’s citadel.

  From a viewing platform high above the Sunrising Gate, Greyloc, Sturmhjart and Wyrmblade watched the unfolding deployment of the enemy. From below came the sound of drilling and hammering, punctuated by the flares of arc-welders and las-burners. The huge batteries above and alongside the gate were being augmented by extra troop-killing arrays dragged up from the armouries. The Gate itself, wide enough for a hundred men to walk through abreast, had been sanctified by the Rune Priests and painted with fresh signs of aversion. The colossal structure of adamantium, granite and ceramite bristled with linked boltgun turrets, rocket-launchers and static plasma cannons. The firepower collected there was vast, the kind of arsenal more suited to a battlecruiser group than a land-bound citadel. Within the locked doors of the gates stood the defenders, housed in power armour or sealed within the holds of Land Raiders, waiting for the moment to be loosed from cover. Across the entire structure stretched the shields, glistening faintly as the oblique sunlight slanted through clouds of burning engine oil.

  Greyloc augmented his scan of the enemy host, assessing the numbers, the distances, the power they could bring to bear.

  We must make them pay for the passage of the gates.

  He felt calm, alert, poised. The raids on the landing sites had given his warriors their haul of bodies and delayed the onslaught of the main mass of troops. There had been losses, but nothing like those suffered by the enemy.

  ‘How have they amassed such an army?’ asked Sturmhjart, looking impressed. ‘The sagas say we crippled them.’

  ‘More of them to kill,’ observed Wyrmblade dryly. ‘Be glad of it.’

  ‘They have been planning this for centuries, Rune Priest,’ said Greyloc. ‘Ironhelm should have seen this coming. We all should have seen this coming.’

  Sturmhjart’s nostrils flared under his helm. He had worked with incredible energy over the past three days to bolster the Fang’s wards against sorcery, and was still smarting from his failure to read the runes.

  Recognising this, Greyloc turned to him. ‘I make no criticism of you, brother. Their power to corrupt the wyrd is their infamy.’

  ‘They do not corrupt the wyrd,’ Sturmhjart insisted.

  Wyrmblade laughed harshly.

  ‘You know what, brother? I really don’t give a damn where their witchery comes from. They can burn in the fires of Hel like mortal men well enough, and that’s all that matters.’

  Sturmhjart gave the Wolf Priest a long look, as if he wasn’t sure whether he was being mocked or praised.

  ‘They’ll burn,’ he muttered, turning his rune-engraved helm to face the distant enemy. ‘Oh, they’ll burn.’

  Then there was a thud of fist against breastplate from behind them, and Hamnr Skrieya joined them on the viewing platform. Like all the Wolf Guard he bore the signs of recent conflict on his armour – his power fist was charred from energy field burn and the pelts on his Terminator suit were no more than scraps of tangled fur.

  ‘Skrieya,’ acknowledged Greyloc. ‘Is the recall complete?’

  ‘It is, Jarl.’

  ‘The tally of blood?’

  ‘We hurt them, Jarl. Casualties were minimal, but... not insignificant. One pack was lost.’

  Greyloc raised an eyebrow. The recall order had been given before the advent of the sorcerers had made the field deadly for his kill-squads.

  ‘A pack? Whose?’

  Skrieya hesitated for a heartbeat.

  ‘Tromm Rossek’s, Jarl.

  Greyloc felt as if Skrieya had kicked him in the stomach.

  Rossek. Of all my elite, Rossek...

  ‘He was recovered, but his pack is gone.’

  Greyloc suppressed the rush of conflicting emotion at the news. Even in armour, his pheromone state was still open to the others.

  The true Son of Russ, the headstrong warrior, the unstoppable one. My brother, this is why you could never be Jarl.

  ‘He must be disciplined,’ said Wyrmblade, coldly. ‘His pack would have fought alongside us.’

  ‘Not now,’ snarled Greyloc. ‘We will need his blades.’

  For a moment Wyrmblade looked like he would protest, but then bowed his head.

  ‘As you will it, Jarl.’

  There was a frosty silence. In the distance, the marshalling of the enemy forces continued. With every passing moment, the valleys leading to the gate causeways were filling with the Traitor vanguard. They would be unleashed before the sun reached zenith.

  Greyloc looked back out across the battlefield to come. Under his helm, his pale face was fixed in a grim mask of bitterness.

  ‘I will nothing but for this fight to begin,’ he growled, and the hairs on his body rose in readiness. ‘Blood of Russ, let them come to me now, and I will show them the meaning of agony.’

  Arfang had taken longer than expected to make the summons. For a while, Freija had begun to hope that he’d found someone else to guard his precious servitors, and had concentrated on her other huskaerl duties single-mindedly. There had been plenty of those, including weapons drills with her squad, many of whom weren’t nearly at the standard she’d have hoped for.
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  But the Iron Priest had not forgotten, and even as the Thousand Sons army began to close the stranglehold on the Aett, painfully establishing their forward positions in the surrounding peaks, he came back for her.

  ‘The time has come,’ he’d said, and that had been all. So she’d left the Valgard with her squad, asking no more questions, ready for wherever Arfang would take her. Soon enough it became clear. They were headed down. A long way down.

  Mortals like Freija, for all their Fenris-born prowess, weren’t able to plummet unaided down the vertical shafts that linked the levels of the Fang. Even if she could have done it, the servitors certainly couldn’t – those plunging drops were only possible for the Sky Warriors. So the journey down the many hundred levels from the Valgard at the summit of the Fang to the lower reaches of the Hould took a long time. The motley company rode on more than a dozen clattering turbo-elevators, tramped down several long spiral staircases hewn from the stone and marched across countless rough-cut chambers glowing with the embers of old fires. With every level they passed, the decorations in the rock became less ornate, the glowglobes a little less close together, the voices a little more hushed.

  They’d swept quickly through the Fangthane, now teeming with thralls. Freija knew her father had been charged with its defence, but there was no sign of him amongst the milling crowds when she and Arfang got there. Squads of mortals were busy installing gun turrets at the far end, and there were heavy lengths of waist-thick cables strung along the floors. That alone made her blood run a little more chill. The Fangthane was a sacred chamber, and if the Jarl expected to make war here then the carnage of the coming assault would surely be greater than anything unleashed on Fenris before.

  Freija found herself wondering if the Sky Warriors felt even the smallest fragments of trepidation at that. They’d have to be inhuman not to.

  But of course, they were inhuman. Not so much a different class as a different species.