Neiman, the Navigator, was the only one still looking calm. He was also the only non-Fenrisian on the crew, a Belisarian from Terra, and was as slim and cold as his crewmates were stocky and vigorous. It was rare for him to leave his work of guiding the ship through the perils of the immaterium. In the presence of non-mutants, his pineal eye was covered in a wrap of silk over a steel patch.
He didn’t speak. He was staring intently away from the table, toward the kaerls standing to attention around the walls of the council chamber. His natural eyes were unwavering.
Blackwing found this annoying. He’d not summoned the man to this meeting to have him daydream.
‘Is there something you wished to contribute, Navigator?’ he asked.
Neiman didn’t flinch.
‘Who is that man?’ he demanded, his gaze locked on a particularly scruffy kaerl. Blackwing shot a glance at the man in question. He was shorter than the others, a little more hunched, with greasy hair and bruised skin around the eyes. He was a good deal filthier than the rest of them too, but the endless demands of survival had taken their toll on everyone. Strange, though – he didn’t look like a soldier.
At all.
‘Is this particularly important?’ asked Georyth irritably. ‘We have other things to resolve.’
The man in question didn’t respond. He kept staring blankly, his expression totally vacant. On either side of him, the kaerls seemed suddenly to notice his presence. One of them looked at his sergeant in alarm, as if the man had been functionally invisible until that moment.
Blackwing felt the hairs on his back rise. His mood shifted instantly from boredom to high alertness. Why hadn’t he noticed this man before? What had the Navigator sensed?
‘Seize him,’ he ordered, rising from his chair.
The kaerls grabbed the man by the shoulders. As if a switch had been flipped, the vacant-faced man went crazy. He backhanded the kaerl to his left, slamming him into the wall, then grabbed the neck of the other and launched into a vicious head-butt. Still without uttering a sound, the man spun round, making for the exit doors, knocking aside another kaerl who rushed to intercept him.
He moved with astonishing speed. But, for all that, it was mortal speed. Blackwing was quicker, leaping across the table in a lithe pounce and careering into the man as he raced for the door. Together they skidded across the pressed-metal floor. Blackwing seized the man’s hair and crunched his face into the wall, stunning him. He regained his feet quickly, dragging the man up with him.
‘Take care, lord!’ warned Neiman. ‘I sense–’
The injured man turned his bloody face toward Blackwing’s. His eyes suddenly blazed a pale, sickly green.
Blackwing felt the build-up of maleficarum. In a single movement he hurled the man away, sending him cartwheeling through space toward the empty far end of the council chamber. Before the kaerl had landed, Blackwing pulled his bolt-pistol from its holster and squeezed off a single round. The slug punched through the flailing man’s head and detonated, spraying bone and glistening grey matter across the wall.
The ruined, headless body hit the metal with a wet thud. It twitched for a moment, then fell still.
‘Teeth of Russ!’ swore Georyth, superfluously training his own sidearm on the corpse. ‘What in Hel–’
‘It knew how to remain hidden,’ said Neiman, looking at Blackwing in alarm. ‘This is witchery – he was in plain view of all of us.’
Blackwing stooped to pick up something on the floor. A sphere the size of an eyeball had rolled across the metal. It glowed green, and flickered with a ghostly witchlight.
He rose, gazing at the bloodstained ball in his palm. It felt hot to the touch, almost painfully so. As he looked at it, a dull ache broke out behind his eyes.
Blackwing crushed it with a clench of his clawed fingers.
‘It seems we have a new problem,’ he said grimly, turning slowly to face the startled ship’s council. ‘Something else is on the ship. Something that no doubt wishes us harm. And whatever it is, it now knows how weak we are.’
The Iron Priest had gone. In his absence, the dark seemed even colder, even more remote. The concept of daylight was already proving hard to reconstruct, as was the passage of time. Freija had lost track of both. Perhaps the assault had started, or perhaps the Sky Warriors still held the enemy in the mountains. If the battle came to the Aett, would any sign of it penetrate so far down?
She swept her gaze across the chamber. It was big, though hard to say how big – even her night-vision visor didn’t pick much out in the far recesses. One wall, the wall her squad had clustered around, had been extensively worked. There were huge doors in the centre of it, once more crested with the twin faces of Morkai. The space around the doors was studded with arcane machinery – coils of coolant piping, statuesque clusters of power transformers, lattices of ironwork covering unidentifiable workings within. Incredibly, given the oppressive cold and distance from maintenance crews, the low hum from the machines sounded healthy.
The thrall-servitors had certainly known what to do with it. After their master had passed through the doors, they’d got to work, attaching themselves to input valves and initiating obscure sets of protocols. Whatever they were doing, it was noisy and repetitive. Lights flickered across the wall of machines from time to time, glinting painfully in the otherwise perfect dark. The servitors not directly attached to the devices had started performing a series of rites in front of the major machine-nodes – anointing the moving parts with pungent oils, reading long lists of benedictions in flat, metal-dry voices, bowing before the inert iron and steel as if it were an altar of long-dormant gods.
They worked methodically, tirelessly, soullessly. There was no communication between them and the Iron Priest within. Arfang was alone, presumably in a place where only the Sky Warriors were permitted. There was no indication of how long his work would take, whether it was going well, or even what he was planning.
Freija fought against a growing weight of boredom. The oppressive dark combined with the dreary intonations of the servitors made it hard to stay sharp.
‘Keep your focus,’ she warned over the vox-link, speaking to herself as much as her troops.
Four of the six-kaerl squad stood alongside her, facing outward from the machine-wall, the muzzles of their rifles pointing into the dark. Two more were resting, slumped uneasily between their comrades and the unnerving rites of the half-human servitors.
Then she heard the noise again. Instantly all thoughts of boredom were banished, and she felt the prick of sweat under her gloves.
The other kaerls heard it too, and she saw them stiffening. The two on rest-rotation climbed their feet, grasping their sidearms clumsily in the gloom.
It was a low, rumbling growl, glottal and damp, vibrating in the stone of the floor.
‘Hold your ground,’ she hissed over the comm, trying to see something definite in the grainy feed her visor was giving her.
Behind her, the servitors carried on their work. The guns of the kaerls swept the far end of the chamber, moving slowly and uncertainly. She could sense their tension in the tight, nervous movements.
Suddenly, the distinctive rasping bark of a skjoldtar burst out of nowhere, its muzzle flare dazzling in intensity. Despite herself, Freija nearly pulled her own trigger in reflexive shock.
‘Cease fire!’ she shouted, peering into the shadows. Her proximity meter was empty, save for the group of friendly signals around her.
The echoes of the gunfire took a long time to die. The culprit, probably Lyr – she couldn’t tell – shook his head. By now Freija’s heart was properly beating. There was something out there, something she couldn’t see, something that sounded – felt – utterly terrifying.
‘Hold your ground,’ she said again, feeling her stomach twisting.
Get a grip, woman. You are a daughter of Russ, a child of the storm.
‘We’re not getting a good feed from the visors,’ she said. ‘I’m walking out.�
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None of her troops responded. They stayed where they were, locked in a semi-circle around the oblivious servitors.
Freija took a deep breath, and began to advance. She went slowly, feeling her heavy breathing quicken. Ahead of her, she could see nothing but static.
Then it came again, nearer this time, thrumming and resonant. It wasn’t emanating from one of the tunnels beyond. It was in the chamber, there with them, watching. Somewhere.
Freija had gone ten metres by the time she stopped. She looked over her shoulder briefly, checking for the presence of her squad. They were still there, still surrounding the wall of machines, still guarding the doors.
She turned back.
Less than a metre away, a pair of golden eyes, pinned with black, liquid and massive, gazed back at her.
Freija froze.
Skítja.
The siege-fire was horrifying, vaporising ice and snow and shattering rock, tearing up ancient outcrops of granite and dissolving them into clouds of scree. The superheavy guns had been dragged into range, and the Fang reeled under the dense volume of ordnance. Its flanks were wreathed in both smoke and steam as the snow was boiled away from the rock and the gun emplacements were picked off, one by one. The entire peak was clothed in raging tongues of flame, blazing as if the magma at the planet’s core had been released and flung into the permafrost of Asaheim’s summit.
The defenders waited within the walls, letting the fortress defences do their work for as long as possible. Static gun emplacements thundered with lethal force, chewing their way through whole loops of ammunition in moments, cutting down oncoming armour and leaving the tilting wrecks blocking the advance. Teams of kaerls worked ceaselessly to keep the death-dealers fed and operative.
It would not last forever. The Thousand Sons were advancing, claiming each metre of land in blood and fire. Only when the doors were broken would the Wolves take to the field again, welcoming the invaders with the embrace of Morkai.
Until then, there were other powers in play.
Odain Sturmhjart was angry. His habitual bluster had gone, shaken by his inability to predict the attack of the Thousand Sons, rocked by his failure to see the deception as it unfolded. He no longer laughed with the savage glee of the coming battle, but glowered under his arcane psychic hood, his eyes blazing. To make matters worse, he had failed to watch Wyrmblade as he had been commanded to do, and knew the Tempering was still proceeding behind closed blast-doors. He had failed in everything that mattered, and the trust the Great Wolf had placed in him had gone unrewarded.
So far.
Sturmhjart had worked with fanaticism since the revelation of failure, driving himself close to the limits of even his battle-hardened frame. The wards throughout the Aett had been reinforced. He had worked until his hands were raw, rubbing the stone figures with his own vital blood, instilling the power of the world-soul within them. Now that the enemy was here, the time for such preparation was passed.
He stood encased in his runic armour high up in an observation chamber of the Fang, watching as the fire rebounded from the void shields before him. No missile would survive passage through that curtain of immolation, but there were other weapons to wield.
Sturmhjart slammed his staff on the floor, and the iron shaft shivered from the impact. The soul of the storm began to quicken around him. He felt the air race, felt it grow colder and keener. His rage at himself fuelled the brewing tumult. He could use this anger, turn it into something of terrible, terrible potency.
The winds ran round the horn-summit of the mountain, whining through the plasma-boiling air, whipping against the red-hot rocks. The sky, which had been pure blue and empty, began to pucker with clouds. A low rumble echoed between the encircling peaks.
Feel this. Feel the coming of the world-soul. This is power the like of which no witch will ever wield.
Sturmhjart screwed his eyes shut, clutching the staff tight. His second heart broke into a steady rhythm. The summoning was painful. He relished the pain. Like the searing irons, it cauterised the deeper pain within.
More clouds rolled into being, tumbling from the crown of the mountains to the north, their skirts flickering with lightning. In their shadow came the hail, a sweeping wall of ruin, slamming and bouncing into the ground below.
Raise your eyes to the heavens, Traitors.
He saw the sorcerers amid the hosts of the enemy like stars, their psychic essences standing out even through the noise and confusion. They were powerful, steeped in sickening energies. He could see their arrogance, their confidence. Some were physically corrupted, giving into the terrible flesh-changes that blighted all their kind. One of them, the brightest star of all, was far down the roads of ruin.
You are many, and we are few. But this is our world, and we wield its power.
The storm spread, breaking across the summits, sweeping toward the Fang in a howling, screaming gale. The sky darkened, making the explosions around the mountain look like embers in a fire-pit. The hail hammered down, cracking and bouncing on the stone.
You think you come to fight mortals, like yourselves.
The wind picked up speed and power, growing to a crescendo of whirling, horrific destruction. The pinions of the blizzard closed, fed by the surging energy of the storm. Tanks were up-ended, knocked from their tracks. Flanking columns of troops were swept away, dragged to the precipices at the edges of the causeways and thrown to their deaths.
You think we will succumb to witchery as you did.
Sturmhjart felt blood well in his mouth, trickling down to the mass of his slicked-down beard. He ignored it. The sharp pain was lost in the whirlwind of psychic power flooding his body. He was nothing more than the conduit, the vessel through which the untamed fury of the maelstrom passed. The raw howl of the wind became a bellowing roar. The flames around the Fang were lashed and pulled into dazzling flares of energy, ripped across the air by the scouring gales.
You are wrong.
The sorcerers responded, guarding what vehicles they could, sending flickering lightning and translucent kine-shields of their own to combat the danger from the skies. They were mighty, and there were dozens of them. Even so, they struggled against the elements, and the assault faltered. Gunships blazed to the ground like comets, torn apart by the electric sky. The screams of the dying and the terrified echoed through the rippling currents of the storm.
Sturmhjart relished the cries. They fed his power. They fed the planet’s power. The invaders had brought maleficarum with them, and righteous punishment was the consequence.
And even as they bled and scrambled for cover, the witches were learning a lesson; the same lesson that had been learned by every Rune Priest since the Allfather had first brought the way of the wyrd to the frozen deathworld.
Sturmhjart knew it. He had known it for centuries, and took delight in making it as clear as the ice itself to those who dared defy him.
We do not defend Fenris. Fenris defends us. The world, the people, are one. We share a soul, a soul of hatred, and now it comes to you, dark on the wings of the storm.
Learn it well, for soon this truth will kill you.
The shadow in the dark reared, and the dreadful eyes disappeared. Freija scrambled backwards, snatching her rifle up clumsily, letting fly with a burst of eye-watering gunfire. Skjoldtar rounds did more damage than Imperial Guard autoguns when handled right, and a howl of inhuman pain echoed around the chamber.
‘Huskaerl!’ came a cry to her left.
There were fresh muzzle-flares from her left as her men ran forwards, firing from the waist and spraying rounds at the space recently occupied by the... animal that had been in front of her.
‘Get back!’ she roared, ceasing fire and trying to make sense of the signals on her visor display. There had been nothing on the proximity scan. Nothing.
Her troops withdrew alongside her, still firing. The bursts were poorly controlled, driven by fear.
Russ, where is our courage?
‘Get a grip!’ she shouted, cuffing the nearest trooper. ‘Fire when you have a target.’
He kept firing, his finger clamped to the trigger. Beneath his mask, Freija could see a pair of eyes, wide with fear.
‘It’s coming!’ he screamed. ‘It’s coming back!’
Then Freika saw it, a huge, bounding shape eating up the ground, bursting out of the gloom like a nightmare. The guns kept firing, lighting up its hunched, powerful body in a tracery of lightning-white. She only had time for impressions – yellow eyes, incredibly powerful shoulders, blood-red jaws – and then she was firing back too, retreating until she felt the metal limbs of the servitors at her back.
There were more of them, more terrible forms leaping out of the dark, slinking along the ground, limping into range. They were all different, all horrifying, like the dreams of fleshmakers taken apart and reassembled into jumbles of canine horror.
‘Hold the line!’ she bellowed, emptying her magazine and scrabbling to load a replacement. ‘Keep them back!’
She saw one of the monsters recoil as multiple streams of gunfire slammed into it, knocking it into a pain-clenched crouch. It screamed in a mix of fury and pain, then made another lunge toward them.
Blood of Russ – it’s still not dead.
Then another beast broke into the open, bursting through a torrent of fire, shrugging off the impacts like they were a light rain. It was gigantic, a hulking brute of muscle and thick, wiry fur. A long, grinning face leered up, lined with fangs and containing a glistening, lolling tongue. It went on four legs, but had reared on its huge haunches in a bizarre mockery of a man.
Freija whirled round with her reloaded weapon, got her shot and fired.
The gun coughed and jammed.
Cursing, she fumbled in the dark to fix it, hearing the screams of her men as the horror got among them. It picked one up and threw him across the chamber. There was a sloppy crunch as the trooper slammed into the rock wall and slithered down. As fast as thought, other creatures bounded over to him, slavering and wheezing.
War of the Fang - Chris Wraight Page 27