Sharp as a jaw-snap, Wyrmblade had let fly with his left fist, connecting cleanly and sending the Wolf Guard crashing to the floor. An instant later and the Wolf Priest had him pinned, his gauntlet fixed on the exposed flesh of Rossek’s neck, his curved fangs bared.
‘I wanted to have you disciplined for what you did,’ hissed Wyrmblade, his face only centimetres from Rossek’s. ‘Greyloc prevented it. He said your blades would be needed. Blood of Russ, you’d better prove him right about that.’
By instinct, Rossek primed himself to throw the Priest off. He was capable of doing it. His armour was more than twice as powerful as Wyrmblade’s, and the Wolf Priest was old.
Even so, he couldn’t do it. The sacred power of the Priesthood was too strong. Wyrmblade’s face had been the first one he’d seen on entering the Aett as a daunted aspirant. It was likely to be the last face he saw before leaving for the Halls of Morkai, too.
‘So what do you want, lord?’ Rossek growled, tasting his own blood in his mouth. ‘For me to fight you? You would not like the result.’
Wyrmblade shook his ragged head in disgust, and released his grip. He hauled himself to his feet, leaving Rossek slumped against the wall.
‘I wanted to kindle some spirit in you, lad,’ he muttered. ‘To remind you of the fire you’ve had in your blood since you first came here. Maybe I’m too late for that. Maybe you have let failure quench it.’
Rossek clambered to his feet, feeling the stressed servos in his combat-battered suit whine.
‘This melancholy makes you useless to us,’ said Wyrmblade. ‘You think you’re the first Wolf Guard to lead a squad to defeat?’
‘I am coming to terms with that.’
‘I see no sign of it.’
‘Then maybe you should look harder.’
‘At what?’
‘At the warriors I saved,’ snarled Rossek, feeling anger surge up at last. ‘At the Blood Claws I pulled from under the hammer when Brakk was felled. At the Traitors I killed then and after. At the whelp who was taken by the Wolf, who I brought back from the edge.’
Wyrmblade hesitated, and looked at him carefully.
‘You did that? Without a Priest?’
‘I did. And now, with Brakk gone, I will lead the remains of his pack. They need guidance.’ The haunted look returned to his eyes briefly. ‘From one who has learned a lesson in command.’
Wyrmblade still watched Rossek’s face intently.
‘Do so, then,’ he said at last, and his voice had lost its edge of condemnation. ‘But snap out of this melancholy. At the end of all this, I would have Greyloc’s verdict on you proved right.’
Rossek grunted, eager to push past the Wolf Priest and end the lesson. The practice cages beckoned, and he had frustrations to work out in them.
‘One final thing,’ said Wyrmblade, clamping a gauntlet on Rossek’s breastplate to prevent him walking away. ‘The Hunter who lies in my chambers. Aunir Frar. He will live.’
Despite himself, Rossek felt relief flood through his body at that, and had to struggle not to show it. ‘Thank you for telling me.’
‘But you did not bring him to the fleshmakers.’
Rossek shook his head. ‘A rivenmaster brought him.’
‘So I gather. What was his name?’
Rossek recalled it instantly. The mortal in the Fangthane, the one with the honest, tired face.
‘Morek. Morek Karekborn. Why do you wish to know?’
Wyrmblade looked evasive then.
‘For completeness,’ said the Wolf Priest, letting his hand fall to allow Rossek to pass. ‘It’s nothing important. Go now. Remember my words. The Hand of Russ be with you, Tromm.’
‘And with us all,’ replied Rossek, before lumbering off into the dark, back into the Jarlheim, back to where the Wolves were preparing for war.
The beasts prowled in the recessed darkness of Borek’s Seal, hugging the pools of obscurity behind the vast pillars. They went silently, slinking on huge pads and keeping their distorted muzzles low to the ground. Only when they wished to announce their presence did they break cover, with a sudden flash of wide, liquid eyes, or a deep, rumbling growl from within those massive rib-cages.
It was impossible to know how many had gathered there. At times it seemed like only a few dozen had emerged from the Underfang; at others, like there were hundreds. Something had attracted them to the living sections of the Aett, and whatever it was, it continued to work its magic. Since Bjorn himself had emerged from the Hammerhold with the retinue of snarling horrors in tow, none could deny that they had some kind of bizarre claim to be there. But that didn’t mean that the kaerls liked seeing them, nor that they didn’t make the sign of the spear whenever they were forced to go anywhere near them.
So the mortal troops stayed far away at the fire-lit end of the cavernous chamber as much as possible. The stairways and elevator shafts leading both up and down were all placed at the western extremity of that space, and so the defences were built there, lit by roaring blazes. As at the Fangthane, gun-lines had been drawn up and barricades erected across the access points. More ammunition, building supplies and armour were delivered with every passing hour, some freshly forged in the angry red depths of the Hammerhold and still hot to the touch.
Freija did her part in the carrying and lifting, though she spent most of her time with Aldr. Like most of the Dreadnoughts, he’d been stationed at Borek’s Seal and now waited grumpily for action. When the enemy came, his guns would be at the forefront, thrust into the inferno again with those of his battle-brothers.
The Dreadnought had become steadily less strange as the memory of his incarceration faded. The maudlin expressions of discomfort and loss had been replaced by a more reassuring resolve. Freija could tell he was looking forward to the combat. To be awakened from the Long Dark only to face days of preparation and waiting was difficult for him – he’d have preferred to have walked out of the vault straight into a firestorm. Instead, he’d had to wait patiently as servitor-thralls had fussed over him, conducting impenetrable rites and preparing his adamantium sarcophagus for war.
‘So what’s it like?’ Freija asked him, chewing on a tough ribbon of dried meat during a rest period.
What’s what like?
‘Having your armour fussed over,’ she said. ‘Can you feel a touch on it, like skin?’
Freija could sense when she’d irritated him. She didn’t know how – there were no facial cues, after all – but the impression was definite enough.
This curiosity. This lack of respect. Where does it come from?
Freija grinned at the Dreadnought’s annoyance. She felt no aura of intimidation from Aldr. Despite his vast killing potential, far in excess of even the Jarl, his moods were strangely immature, and she’d become intrigued by him in a way that she could never have done with a living Blood Claw.
‘My mother. She came from the ice, and passed on its crude ways.’
As she spoke, Freija recalled her face. Heavy-set like hers, blonde hair in messy curls, a tight mouth that rarely smiled, features made harsh by unremitting labour and hardship. But the eyes, the dark, sparkling eyes – they had exposed the bright intellect within, the questioning, rebellious soul that had never quite been ground down. Even at the end, when the punishing demands of the Sky Warriors had exacerbated the illness that would kill her, those eyes had remained alive and inquiring.
You should learn to control it.
‘I know,’ she said wearily. ‘It leads to damnation.’
Indeed it does.
Freija shook her head resignedly, and fell silent. The Wolves’ obsession with ritual, tradition, saga and secrecy was something she’d never understand. It was as if the world they inhabited was frozen in some half-forgotten moment, when all the forces of progress and enlightenment had suddenly been snuffed out and replaced by a numb rehearsal of old, tired routines.
After a while, Aldr shifted heavily on his central drive-column.
It feels like being alive, and yet
not alive. When something touches my armour, I sense it more closely than I could when a living warrior. My eyesight is sharper, my hearing more acute, my muscles more powerful for being plasfibre and ceramite. Everything is more immediate. And yet...
Freija looked at the Dreadnought’s face-plate. The slit in the armour was dark, an opaque well into the ruined corpse within. Though there were no visual signals, no possibility of facial expression, she could feel his misery as acutely as if he’d been weeping. For an instant, she caught the image of a Blood Claw racing across the wind-blasted ice, his blades whirling, long hair streaming, caught up in the feral joy of his calling.
It will never be like that again.
‘I’m sorr–’
Enough questions. There is work to be done.
Freija dutifully shut up. Already she could see a new delivery of medical supplies and field-rations arriving on the back of a transport, all of which would need to be stowed somewhere. She bowed to the Dreadnought and made her way toward the huskaerl in charge of the consignment. As she did so, she stole a look back at the hulking shape of Aldr, motionless in the shadows.
She didn’t look long. She felt like she’d violated his privacy enough. In any case, she didn’t like the emotions their conversations were engendering in her. For years, stung by what had happened to her blood-family under the harsh regime of the Aett, she had resented the Sky Warriors almost as much as she had been awed by them. Now that war had come to Fenris, those old feelings were being tested, and in ways that she found surprising.
She had learned to live with disliking them. She could, perhaps, have learned to live with loving them, as Morek did, or even despising them, as did the Thousand Sons. What she couldn’t resign herself to was the way she felt then. She knew she had to shake those feelings off, or they would compromise her role in the fighting to come. They were alien to her, un-Fenrisian, weak and foolish.
But it was no good. Try as she might, Freija couldn’t help it.
Now I see into their souls, see what lives they lead, what choices they’ve made... This is what I have come to.
Blood of Russ, I pity them.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
‘Fenrys hjolda!’
Harek Ironhelm charged down the ruined street, uncaring of the small-arms fire clattering off his battle-plate. His retinue came with him, a whole score of elite warriors in Terminator armour. As they thundered onwards, their huge footfalls cracked the tarmac under them. Their pauldrons had been slathered in blood, some of it ritually applied before combat, some of it the result of the heavy killing over the past four local days. None of them had slept during that time; indeed, they’d barely paused in the slaughter. Inexorably, irresistibly, the Wolves’ spearhead had crunched, sliced, shot and hammered its way into the heart of the city.
Ironhelm had fought with all the vigour of his youth during that time, swinging his frostblade two-handed in massive, body-breaking arcs. He’d not even bothered to mag-lock a ranged weapon, preferring to keep the fighting at close range. Most of his guard went similarly, kitted out with claws, blades and axes, whooping and baying as they used the killing edges against the fragile armour of those who dared to stand against them.
‘The tower,’ Ironhelm snarled, nodding to his right as he tore down the roadway. Instantly, his pack adjusted trajectory. ‘Incoming, high up.’
The hunting pack had broken out on to a vast, straight highway overlooked by rows of towering hab-blocks. Once there had been mass-transit rails running down the central reservation and elevated walkways criss-crossing the road below. Now, thanks to heavy aerial bombardment, the entire street had been turned into a smouldering valley of tortured metal struts and melted plascrete craters. Rolling clouds of smoke obscured everything, acrid and tart from heavy bolter-round discharge. The precipitous walls on either side of the burning chasm were eyeless, the windows having been smashed even before the current assault had properly launched. Huge swathes of the city were like this now, a wasteland of broken hopes and balustrades, all after just three days’ intense, brutal activity by the Wolves.
The highway ran straight towards the central pyramid cluster. The huge multi-laned arterial conduit had once reverberated with civilian transports and semi-grav flyers, though now only echoed to the crackle of flames and the distant rumble of tank-tracks. The Wolves tore across the broken terrain like molten metal, swaying fluidly around obstacles, disdaining cover and relying on speed and agility to evade incoming fire.
Ahead of them, on the right-hand side of the highway, a single blunt-faced tower was still occupied by defenders. As the pack neared it, heavy projectile rounds slammed into the tarmac around them, tearing up what remained of the road surface and ripping it to spinning shreds. There were deeper explosions amongst the barking chatter of the man-mounted cannons – artillery pieces were clearly lodged there, all aimed at the fleeting wolf-shapes tearing towards the tower.
The fire-rate was high. Too high. They were squeezing their triggers in a panic, terrified of what the Wolves would do when they reached them.
You are right to be terrified, traitors. And we are thankful for it – your fear draws us to you quickly.
‘Time to silence those guns,’ growled Ironhelm, loping fast toward the tower’s base. Acting purely on instinct, he bounded to one side. A second later and the ground he’d been occupying disappeared in a blast of cordite and promethium. ‘Level Six.’
The Wolves sped up to the base without hesitating, all at full speed. The entrance level must once have been grand, clad in glass and steel and adorned with the Eye emblem that had been daubed all across Gangava Prime. Now it was just a shell, a gaping hole laced with broken panes and charred plascrete pillars.
The Wolves broke inside, racing around piles of rubble and still-burning heaps of refuse. Ironhelm remained at the blade-tip, crashing his way toward the elevator shafts clustered at the centre of the structure.
‘Can we use these?’ he barked over the mission channel.
A Wolf Guard named Rangr snapped open a remote auspex, took a look at it and shook his head.
‘Rigged to blow.’
‘Then take them out,’ commanded Ironhelm, gesturing to Brother Aesgrek, who carried a heavy bolter in his gigantic armoured fists.
The mammoth weapon thundered out, spraying shells into the waiting elevator cages. They exploded in a hail of crashing, tumbling beams and plates. Aesgrek destroyed them all, sending six cages plummeting down the shafts and into oblivion below. By the time he was finished, the rectangular wells gaped like wounds, black and naked.
Without waiting for the flames to die away, Ironhelm ran and launched himself across the nearest shaft, clutching the metalwork on the far side of it and clinging on. The steel beams bowed under his weight and began to peel away from the plascrete walls, but he was already moving, clambering up the levels like a giant armoured insect.
The rest of the pack did likewise, throwing themselves into the gaping pits, latching on to other parts of the steel struts and braces, using all the remaining five shafts to distribute the weight better across the damaged structure. Like sewer rats, the Wolves raced up the elevator columns, clamping their gauntlets unerringly to the metal handholds, powering up the sheer paths with contemptuous ease.
As they rose, gunfire began to strafe down from above. The defenders, realising the destruction of the elevator cages had done nothing to slow the closing assault, were belatedly trying to prevent the pack from reaching their position.
Ironhelm laughed rakishly as the first las-beams hit his armoured shoulders.
‘This is warming my arms!’ he cackled, hauling himself over a protruding ledge and thrusting ever higher.
‘Multiple signals approaching,’ voxed Rangr, betraying urgent kill-urge in his voice. ‘Next level is Six.’
The Wolf Guard’s eagerness infected the entire squad, and they tore upwards even faster, gouging huge rents in the walls of the shaft in their determination to reach the murder-ground
first.
For all his age, for all his ancient war-tempering, the Great Wolf got there in front, hurling himself over the lip of the floor platform and crashing through the outer doors of the elevator shaft. The ruined panels were shouldered aside, and he waded straight into a torrent of las-fire. The beams cracked against his armour and burned off harmlessly. A whole level of the tower beckoned, open-plan, stripped of civilian trappings and with nowhere to hide.
‘Feel the wrath of the Wolves, traitors!’ Ironhelm bellowed, spittle flying against his vox-grille, plunging straight into the ranks of horrified troopers beyond the broken doors. The booming echo of his challenge shattered what was left of the glass in the windows around the edges of the tower-level. More Wolves emerged from the shafts and charged into the contact zone, smoothly withdrawing power weapons from where they’d been mag-locked and gunning them into life.
The fight was short, brutal, terrifying. There were a few hundred mortal troopers deployed on the level, many with heavy weapons. Some were refugees from earlier fighting who’d survived and fallen back; other were fresh troops from the centre with gleaming armour and fresh lasguns. There were heavy weapons among them, including the artillery pieces the Gangavans had been using to snipe at the hunting packs’ approach. They were busy turning them inwards in an attempt to halt the advance of the horrors coming to kill them.
It did them no good. As Ironhelm crashed in among them, his blade whistling, he began to laugh again. Still amplified by the vox-units in his armour, the horrific sound echoed around the entire level. Rangr joined in, chuckling in a strange, chilling fashion as he mowed down whole swathes of wavering enemy soldiers.
‘Face me, filth!’ roared Ironhelm, ripping a man open with the backswing of his blade even as his free hand punched the chest in of another. ‘Fight like the men you once were!’
At the far side of the level, open to the elements where the shattered windows had once been, an autocannon crew were trying to swing their weapon round to target the rampaging Wolves. Ironhelm caught sight of that, and roared with pleasure.
War of the Fang - Chris Wraight Page 34