War of the Fang - Chris Wraight

by Warhammer 40K

  ‘I am merely curious,’ she said.

  ‘A dangerous instinct. Be careful where it takes you.’

  It took nearly ten minutes of solid walking to traverse the yawning forge-halls. Arfang set a punishing pace, one that the servitors struggled to match. Even Freija found her battle-trained muscles aching by the time the far side neared.

  The bridge terminated as it reached a cliff of rough-hewn rock. An iron-lined door had been carved into it, crested with the sign of the two-headed wolf Morkai, the guardian of the dead. The image looked old, far older than anything in the Hould, and the edges were smooth from the hot, wearing winds. The doorway was open and there were no guards. A single, isolated green light winked at the base of the heavy frame.

  Disruptor field.

  Arfang gave a flick of his finger and the light switched to red. He strode on. The tunnel beyond was pitch-dark, unlit by torches, glowglobes or fire-pits.

  Freija adjusted her night-vision visor, and the walls were picked out in a grainy pale green. Though well-used to the cold and dark, she gave an involuntary shudder as she passed the threshold. The chill seemed deeper, somehow, more permanent and invasive. As they walked, the sound of hammers receded, replaced by a dead, frigid silence.

  They went down. A long way down. Freija saw holes loom up in the walls of the tunnel; tributary corridors, from which the air sighed in frozen gusts. Soon the way forward became a choice from many options, and the path began to twist back on itself, writhing through the deep roots of the mountain. At all times the tunnel remained wide and tall, and a Rhino could have been driven along its length with ease.

  She began to lose track of time, and certainly of how far they’d come. The utter dark, and the cold that sank into her bones, gave a strange sense of dislocation to that forsaken place. It was temptingly easy to imagine the rest of the galaxy simply ceasing to exist beside that eternal, primordial darkness.

  When the first noise came, it had her scrabbling for her skjoldtar and her heart hammering. It was unearthly, a low, purring growl that ran down her spine like mercury on glass. She saw her kaerls tense up, sweeping the muzzles of their weapons across the walls.

  ‘What was that?’ she hissed.

  The Iron Priest kept walking, untroubled.

  ‘I told you, huskaerl,’ he said. His booming voice rang from the walls. ‘There are dangers in the dark. Keep your weapons primed, and let no harm come to my thralls.’

  Freija swallowed down her expletive. The Iron Priest was annoying her more than ever.

  ‘Worry not, lord,’ she said, her jaw tight. ‘We are here to serve.’

  ‘I am glad that is how you feel.’

  Freija took a quick look over her shoulder. In the far distance, far up the snaking tunnel, she saw two points of light. She blinked, and they were gone. The chill in her bones intensified.

  What has been done down here?

  And then they were walking again, down and down, further into the deep dark, an island of heart-warmth in an infinite ocean of utter, endless emptiness.

  Morek worked his way up through the Jarlheim levels, keeping his head down as he went. Most of those he passed were heading in the other direction, hurrying to where the fighting was fiercest. The few going his way were mostly gunnery crews heading for their rotations on the anti-aircraft batteries.

  The vibration of the outgoing fire patterns made the elevator shaft shake as he ascended.

  How is that even possible? We are hundreds of metres within the mountain. What forces are being unleashed out there?

  The suspensor floated behind him in the steel cage, carrying the prone body of the Grey Hunter. Though it seemed disrespectful, Morek had failed to resist the urge to look at the fallen Sky Warrior.

  Aunir Frar’s face had been exposed when the Long Fangs had removed his helm in the Land Raider. It was proud, severe, sharp-edged. Mature fangs glinted from his open mouth, and the jawline was extended into the lupine profile of a veteran warrior. Perhaps he’d been angling for elevation to the Wolf Guard. The Red Dream still had him in its grasp, and his breathing was shallow, almost non-existent. Parts of his plate had been ripped away, revealing over a dozen deep stab-wounds, including a horrifying, artery-severing gash across the neck. If Frar had been a mortal, there would have been no life left in him to save.

  The elevator rattled to a halt. Morek hauled open the doors and exited, pulling the suspensor along behind. Ahead of him were the chambers of the fleshmakers. There were signs of aversion etched into the stone lintels. A caustic, antiseptic smell stung his nostrils. Ahead, the dull red firelight of the Aett was replaced with harsh white lumen-strips. There were tiles on the wall and metal tables covered in instruments of surgery. Unlike the rest of the Wolves’ lair, which was littered with totems and bleached animal skulls, the Wolf Priest’s dwellings were pristine, cold and unadorned.

  Morek entered, squinting against the bright lights, keeping the suspensor close. There was noise from further in, but no immediate sign of anyone about. He kept walking, passing more rows of metal tables, walking through more rooms full of equipment he could barely guess the purpose of. Alongside the machinery of surgery and physical augmentation, there were long banks of ancient-looking cogitators, lined with bronze cases, humming gently.

  The noises grew. He was getting closer to activity. As he turned a corner, he entered a larger chamber, domed-roofed and even brighter than the others. There were huge, heavy tables there too, and some were occupied. Two Sky Warriors lay on them, both conscious, both being operated on by teams of leather-masked thralls. The mortals worked quickly and deftly, slicing open flesh, pinning back muscle, working at the wounds with needle-probes and pain-suppressants. They all wore iron visors with bottle-green lenses, each of them flickering with points of light.

  ‘Mortal,’ came a deep voice, and Morek turned to face it. A Wolf Priest, one of Wyrmblade’s acolytes by his look, strode up to him in night-black armour, his exposed hands covered in blood. ‘State your business.’

  Morek bowed. ‘I was charged to bring this warrior, Aunir Frar, into the care of the Lord Wyrmblade.’

  The Wolf Priest snorted.

  ‘You think he’d be here? When the Aett is under assault?’ He shook his head. ‘We’ll take him. Go back to your station, rivenmaster.’

  Even as the Priest spoke, thralls flocked around the suspensor, dragging it alongside one of the metal tables. Steel threads were inserted into the prone body and scanning devices angled over the wounds. The Wolf Priest turned to his new charge and began to direct the operation.

  Morek bowed. He turned and withdrew, walking back through the empty chambers of the fleshmaker’s domain as quickly as he could. Something about the place unnerved him. The aromas were foreign, utterly unlike the smells of hide and embers he’d been born into.

  Too much light.

  He went through another room, then turned left, passing between open slide-doors. He went several more paces before realising he’d come the wrong way. The chamber he’d entered was smaller than the others, though still lined with clinical white tiles. There were three huge tanks in the centre of it, each filled with a translucent fluid. The vessels were cylindrical, no more than a metre wide but running the whole height of the room. Machinery clustered at the base of them, ticking and rattling rhythmically.

  He knew he should look away, but the contents of the tanks held him. There were bodies floating in them, dark outlines of men suspended in the liquid. Huge rib-cages, bunched-muscle arms, thick necks. The profile was that of a Space Marine, heavy and powerful. They didn’t move, just hung, swaying slightly. Dimly, Morek could make out snaking coils of respirator tubes hanging down and covering their lower faces.

  He turned away, knowing he’d come too far, suppressing his curiosity.

  The curious mind opens the door to damnation.

  It was as he did so that he saw the metal table, over to the left, away from the main beams of the strip-lumens. His eyes locked on what wa
s on it, and stayed there.

  Slowly, almost unconsciously, Morek felt his feet propelling him towards the table. He passed the tanks by, their contents forgotten. He couldn’t look away then, couldn’t turn back.

  On the metal slab was a body, or perhaps a corpse. There was no breath in its gigantic lungs – at least, not one he could discern. It was like the others, naked, stretched out on its back, arms straight by its sides.

  Morek felt the sense of wrongness immediately. For a moment, he couldn’t work out what, precisely, was so troubling about the corpse – he’d seen many before – but then he paid more attention.

  The forearms were smooth, almost hair-free. The fingernails were no longer than his own. The jawline was square-cut and blunt, but with no signs of lupine distension. There was no room in that mouth for fangs, just mortal dentition.

  Morek moved closer, feeling his breathing quicken slightly. The corpse had its eyes open, blank and unseeing.

  They were grey like his, with a pupil like a mortal’s. There was no extraneous facial hair across the thick-set face, no heavy bone-ridge across the brow. The musculature was still there, rigid and heavy-set across an outsize skeletal frame, but it was blank and featureless.

  Whatever this thing was, it was no Space Wolf. It was a sham, a simulacrum, a mockery.

  Morek felt sickness well in the back of his throat. The Sky Warriors were sacred to him, as sacred as the world-soul, as the spirits of the ice, as the life of his daughter. This was an abomination, some dreadful meddling in the changeless order of things.

  He took a step back. From behind him, back in the operating theatre, he heard the movement of thralls as they struggled to save the life of Aunir Frar.

  This is forbidden. I should not be here.

  His sickness was replaced by fear. He’d seen the look in the eyes of the leather-masked thralls, and knew the reputation of the fleshmakers. They did not forgive trespasses.

  Morek turned and hurried back the way he’d come, averting his eyes from the floating figures in the tanks, ignoring the banks of strange equipment that lined the walls beyond them, hardly seeing the rows of tiny vials arranged in careful order under the controlled lights.

  There were heavy footsteps somewhere behind him, and his heart jumped. He kept going, kept his head down, hoping whoever owned them was headed somewhere else. The linked chambers were confusing, hard to find one’s way around, and the sound could have come from anywhere.

  The footsteps faded. Morek was back in the reception chambers, the ones with the empty metal tables. Ahead of him was the exit, and the corridor to the elevator shaft.

  His heart was beating hard.

  The curious mind opens the door to damnation.

  He looked down at his hands. They were rough, calloused, hardened by a lifetime of service to the Sky Warriors. They were trembling. For a moment he paused, uncaring if the thralls saw him now.

  What was that thing?

  He stood still for a few more heartbeats, rendered indecisive by what he had witnessed. The Wolf Priests were the guardians of the Aett, the keepers of the traditions of the Vlka Fenryka. If they had sanctioned it, then it must be permitted.

  It was an abomination.

  He looked back over his shoulder. The tile-lined chambers stretched away from him, each one leading to the next, each stinking of antiseptic and blood. He felt the nausea rise up again, catching in his gullet.

  In the Hall of the Fangthane, he had shouted himself hoarse with devotion to the Sky Warriors, the embodiment of the divine savagery of Fenris. As hard as he tried, he couldn’t summon that spirit back up.

  Shakily, with none of the purpose that had brought him to that place, he walked back to the elevator shaft. Across his open, loyal face the certainty had gone.

  In its place, and for the first time in Morek’s life, there was doubt.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Blackwing sat slumped at the metal conference table, ignoring the dozen figures seated around him, running his hands through his matted hair. He ignored the flickering strip-lights, he ignored the dozen or so kaerls standing to attention by the walls in their dirty uniforms, and he ignored the sclerotic grind of the damaged engines from below.

  He felt cramped, dirty, cooped-up. Each day since the escape from Fenris had been a wearying round of emergencies and repairs, all in the cause of keeping the Nauro from breaking open and spinning into the void.

  It was demeaning work, fit perhaps for mortals, but not for him. He was bred for higher things, for expert slaying in the shadows, for glorying in the contests of void-war. Having to listen to the counsel of greasy enginarium workers and the doom-laden pronouncements of the ship’s tactical crew bored him supremely.

  Not that the situation wasn’t dire. He knew enough of starship mechanics to recognise when things were about to fall apart. Frankly, they ought to have done so already – the ship was still at least twelve days out from Gangava, and that schedule was only possible because he’d continued to thrash the warp drives over the protests of the ship’s Master. A few days ago, he’d made the mistake of asking the Nauro’s Enginarius, a mortal who’d had extensive training from Adeptus Mechanicus tech-adepts, what the machine-spirit was doing during all of this.

  ‘Screaming, sir,’ he’d replied in his gruff, practical voice. ‘Screaming like an ungor with its throat cut.’

  Blackwing had given thanks then that he was insensitive to such things.

  Then again, he was insensitive to most things. He’d never gelled with his battle-brothers, had never forged the friendships that tied squads together. He’d despised his superior officers, chafing against the discipline they’d imposed. Even in the Space Wolves Chapter, famous across the Imperium for its loose attitude toward the Codex Astartes, that discipline was severe.

  Blackwing had always been different, subject to dark moods and bouts of a manic, dangerous over-confidence. The Scout corps had been perfect for him, allowing him to perfect the arts of lone killing far from the raucous brotherhood of the Aett. It was in such isolation that he’d found a kind of contentment.

  Now, however, he began to wonder whether that choice had always been such a good one. None of the mortals on the Nauro were capable of making the command choices he had to, of taking the difficult decisions on which their lives all depended. It might have been preferable, perhaps, to have had a brother warrior to consult, someone to share the burden with for a short while.

  Not that any of his battle-brothers would have willingly come with him on a mission. Blackwing had created a near-perfect bubble of solitude around him, alienating even those who had no prior dislike of the Scouts.

  So be it. That was the path he’d chosen, and it had suited him well enough before now. Not all of Russ’s sons could be hollering berserkers.

  ‘Lord?’

  The voice was that of the ship’s Master, a grey-haired man called Georyth. Blackwing looked up to face him. Even out of armour, the Space Marine dominated the chamber. As his yellow eyes, sunk into their dark-ringed sockets, clamped on to the mortal, Georyth swallowed.

  ‘You asked for a report on the fires.’

  ‘So I did, Master. Tell me the latest good news.’

  ‘I have none to give. Three levels are still out of bounds, even to thrall-servitors. The burning has spread to the drive chambers. As supplies run low, our ability to contain it will diminish.’

  ‘And I know what you recommend.’

  Georyth took a deep breath.

  ‘It hasn’t changed, lord.’

  ‘You wish us to drop out of the warp, open the levels to the void, flush out the area and make repairs.’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘And how long would such a manoeuvre take, assuming optimal performance?’

  ‘A week, lord. Perhaps less.’

  Blackwing shot him a cold, superior smile. There was no humour in it, just a kind of knowing disdain.

  ‘Too long.’

  ‘Lord, if the promethium lines are–�
�

  Blackwing sighed and pushed himself back in his chair.

  ‘If they’re breached? Then we die, Master. Even I, an ignorant warmongering savage with zero enginarium training, know that.’

  He fixed his pin-pupil gaze on the man.

  ‘But reflect on this,’ he said. ‘Without the Great Wolf’s forces to relieve it, the Aett will fall. Lord Ironhelm’s ships must still be in the warp. If we keep travelling at our current pace, with no pauses or slowdowns, we will arrive at Gangava many days after them. And then, even if I can pass on Lord Greyloc’s message swiftly and persuade Ironhelm to return to Fenris, it will be another twenty days before he can possibly do so. Which means that Lord Greyloc, whom I know is held in such unflinching esteem by all this Chapter, will have to hold the citadel, with a single depleted Great Company, for at least forty days. You saw the forces in orbit, Master. You saw what they did to our defences there. Now tell me, speaking honestly, if you really think that army can be defied on land for forty days.’

  The Master’s face went grey.

  ‘If Russ wills it...’ he began dutifully, but his voice lost its certainty, and he trailed off.

  ‘Precisely. So perhaps you will now understand my insistence that we reach Gangava as soon as we can. We have cheated Morkai already on this voyage, and we will have to cheat him for a little longer. Count yourself lucky you’re commanded by a Scout, Master. That’s what we do. Cheat.’

  The Master didn’t reply, but slumped in his chair, his expression hollow. Blackwing could see his mind working, already trying to figure out some way of keeping the raging fires from reaching anything explosive. He didn’t look confident.

  Blackwing turned to look at the rest of the command crew, none of whom had yet spoken.

  ‘Anything else we need to discuss?’ he asked drily.

  The Tacticus said nothing. The man had been driven hard, and his eyes were red-rimmed from fatigue. The Enginarius had already given his assessment of repair work needed in the hold, and the Armourer was dead, killed by an exploding bulkhead hours after translation from Fenris.