War of the Fang - Chris Wraight

by Warhammer 40K

  They knew what the cry meant. The Wolf had come, and claimed one of them for its own.

  Wyrmblade paused before speaking again.

  ‘The Wolf,’ he said at last. ‘The curse and the glory of our kind. For a generation of mortals, I have worked on a cure for it. No fleshmaker has ever discovered more than I of the ways of the Canis Helix, perhaps not even those who arrived on Fenris with the Allfather himself. It became clear to me the curse could be eradicated while preserving the glory. This work has been my calling.’

  ‘The Tempering,’ breathed Morek.

  ‘Indeed. I have refined the Helix, altered it to deliver the supernatural strength of the Adeptus Astartes without the ravages of the beast within. The products are as powerful as I am, as quick in the hunt and as skilled with a blade, but they do not degenerate, nor do they fall prey to the Wolf. They take the qualities that make us superb, and purge the factors that prevent us from creating successors.’

  Morek began to understand. The sickness he’d felt ever since stumbling across the bodies in the laboratorium came rushing back to him.

  ‘The bodies...’

  ‘The ones who came closest to my ideal. They lived for a short time. As of yet, none have survived for more than a matter of hours. Their deaths are... difficult. And yet I have demonstrated that the goal is within grasp. Given more time, just a little more time, I will have set us on a new path, one that promises domination over the stars, the domination of the Sons of Russ.’

  Wyrmblade lifted his head proudly.

  ‘Do you see this future, Morek Karekborn?’

  Morek struggled to find the words to answer with. Images of Space Marines in gunmetal-grey armour were flitting through his mind, thousands of them, each Great Company drawn from a different Chapter. They fought the same way, killed the same way, swept their enemies before them in a tide of tightly-controlled murder-make. Fenris became just one world at the heart of a sprawling confederation, a temporal power within the greater circuit of the galactic Imperium, a power so mighty that even the Gods of Ruin hesitated as they saw its potential.

  And then the vision was gone. The chamber endured, as dark and cold as all the chambers were under the mountain. The Wolf Priest stood before him, waiting.

  ‘It horrifies me, lord.’

  Wyrmblade nodded.

  ‘Of course. You are a good Fenrisian. You do not see the alternatives, nor indulge your curiosity about what might be. All that matters to you is what is, what you can hold in your hands now. The horizon of the future is very close for you. You might die today, or tomorrow, or in a single season, so why spend time worrying about the passage of centuries?’

  Morek remained impassive. Wyrmblade wasn’t mocking him, just stating the facts of the matter. Until very recently, he’d have taken such a litany as a source of pride.

  ‘But I cannot indulge those comforts,’ said the Wolf Priest. ‘We are the keepers of the flame, charged with ensuring there are always executioners for the Imperium to call on, always warriors capable of meeting the brutality of our enemies with an equal brutality.

  ‘And, as I look over the runes with the scryers, as I listen to the pronouncements of Sturmhjart and the other Priests, I have no confidence in that future. I see a dark time ahead, an age when the Vlka Fenryka are too few to contain the legions of darkness, when we are mistrusted by the masters of the Imperium and feared by its citizens. I see a time when mortals will issue the words “Space Wolf” not as the embodiment of an ideal, but as a byword for backwardness and mystery. I see a time when the institutions of the Imperium will turn against us in their ignorance, believing us to be little more than the beasts we draw our sacred images from.

  ‘Mark these words, rivenmaster: should we survive now, but fail to complete our apotheosis, this is not the last time Fenris will be besieged.’

  Wyrmblade looked away from Morek, and gazed at the crozius arcanum at his belt. It hung next to his power sword, the symbol of his office, the mark of his stewardship of the ancient traditions of the Chapter.

  ‘That is why we dare this thing. We can grow. We can change. We can escape the curse of the past. We can move from the margins of the Imperium to become the power at its centre.’

  Morek felt the nausea swelling in his stomach, poisoning him and making him dizzy. He’d seen heretics before on other worlds, and always despised them. Now the madness came from the mouth of a Wolf Priest, the very guardian of sanctity.

  ‘And this troubles you, Morek?’ asked Wyrmblade.

  Tell the truth.

  ‘It makes me sick,’ said Morek. ‘It is wrong. Russ – honour to his name – would never have allowed it.’

  Wyrmblade chuckled, an iron-hard rasping sound that limped out of the helm-grille.

  ‘So you speak for the primarch now, eh? You’re a brave man. I’d never presume to guess what he’d have made of this.’

  Morek did his best to maintain a steady gaze, but the fatigue and the stress were getting to him. He felt faint, even while seated. For a fleeting moment, he saw the skull on the Wolf Priest’s armour leer into a broken, toothy snarl.

  He blinked, and the vision faded.

  ‘Why are you telling me this, lord?’ Morek asked, knowing he could not stand more revelations. His world had already been destroyed.

  ‘As I said,’ replied Wyrmblade calmly. ‘To punish you. You have trespassed, thinking yourself equal to the secrets held in the fleshmakers’ chambers. Now that arrogance is exposed, and you have tasted just a sip of the terrible knowledge that I bear daily. If I served you the whole cup, you would drown in it.’

  ‘So is that what you wish for me?’

  ‘I do not. I wish you to rest, as you have been ordered. Then I wish you to fight, to hold the line against the Traitor, to sell your position in blood if it comes to that. You will do this in the full knowledge of what has been done in the Valgard.’

  The Wolf Priest gestured with a finger, and the fire behind Morek flickered out. Absolute darkness filled the chamber, and the rivenmaster felt his consciousness begin to slip away almost immediately.

  I welcome it. I wish never to wake up.

  ‘We demand that you die for us, mortal,’ said Wyrmblade, and his receding voice was as cold as the grave. ‘We will always demand that you die for us. It is as well, then, that you know what you’re dying for.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Temekh looked into the eye of his primarch. Magnus had a strange expression on his face, part expectant, part resigned.

  ‘The Fang is open to me,’ he announced.

  Temekh felt a sudden spike of eagerness, quickly suppressed. ‘Aphael has been working hard.’

  ‘Yes. He has done well.’

  Magnus turned away. In the flickering light of the sanctum, Temekh could sense the raw power bleeding from his image. So much, it was hard to contain. Since casting aside his mortal flesh, the primarch required vast amounts of energy merely to exist on the physical plane. It was like trying to squeeze a sun into a wineglass.

  ‘I’ll protest again,’ said Temekh, knowing it was useless. ‘I could be of help down there. The Wolves are still fighting, and you could use another sorcerer.’

  Magnus shook his head.

  ‘I’ll not tell you a third time, Ahmuz. You have a different fate.’

  He looked back at the sorcerer-lord.

  ‘You have your orders for the fleet. Do not deviate from them, whatever happens on Fenris.’

  As he spoke, Magnus’s outline was curling into nothingness like smoke.

  ‘Of course,’ said Temekh. ‘But be careful – we have roused a nest of hornets down there.’

  Magnus laughed, and the sound rang around the chamber like pealing bells. His body was rapidly extinguishing, sighing out of view and falling into the shadows.

  ‘Careful? I’ll take that as a joke. That’s good. There was a time when there was more than gallows humour in the galaxy.’

  Temekh watched the final shreds of Magnus’ visi
ble form slide away. The last element to fade out was the eye, ringed with scarlet and alive with amusement.

  As soon as the apparition was gone, Temekh turned away.

  +Lord Aphael+, he sent.

  +Good to hear from you+, came the reply, sarcastic and weary. +The wards are much weakened. Tell him he may–+

  +He knows. He’s on his way. Get into position. You don’t have long.+

  Aphael didn’t respond at once. Temekh could tell he was stung by the tone in his sending. Even now, the pyrae still thought he was in charge of the operation. That was pitiable, though Temekh didn’t feel much like pitying.

  +I am close to the bulwark they call the Fangthane+, sent Aphael eventually. +I can be there in moments. It will be good to witness our father in the material universe once again.+

  Not for you, I fear, brother.

  +He commended you on your labour,+ sent Temekh.

  He had the faint impression of a bitter laugh, and then the link between them broke.

  Sighing, Temekh withdrew from the altar. The air within the chamber felt cold and thin in the primarch’s absence. It resembled his own state. He was exhausted by the work of so many days, and his fingers trembled from a long, low-level tiredness.

  He gestured to the doors, and they slid open smoothly. In the corridor beyond, a silhouette waited for him, a mortal wearing the uniform of a Spireguard captain.

  ‘Have you been waiting long?’ asked Temekh, stepping out of the sanctum.

  ‘No, lord,’ came the reply.

  You wouldn’t have told me even if you had.

  The man looked strangely nervous, and handed Temekh a data-slate.

  ‘These are reports from the ship-seers,’ he said. ‘I thought you should see them as soon as possible.’

  Temekh glanced at the runes, taking in their import in an instant. The ship-seers had powers beyond those of any loyalist Navigator to see the approaching bow-waves of starships powering through the warp. The signals recorded on the slate, however, could have been picked up by a deaf-blind child in an isolarium. The fleet coming towards them was approaching fast. Recklessly fast.

  ‘Thank you, captain,’ said Temekh calmly. ‘Impressive. I didn’t believe the interceptor could possibly have made it to Gangava.’

  He handed the slate back, and rolled his head stiffly to relieve the ache in his shoulders.

  ‘Very well. Prepare the fleet to break orbit.’

  The captain started.

  ‘You cannot mean–’

  Temekh’s glare silenced him.

  ‘I am tired, captain; you really do not want to test my patience further. Prepare the fleet to break orbit, and wait for my command.’

  He flicked a finger, and the doors to the empty sanctum slid shut.

  ‘This game is coming to an end.’

  Aphael strode toward the Fangthane, his bitterness fuelling him as powerfully as any chem-stimulant. The tone in Temekh’s voice had been unmistakable. While the corvidae sheltered on the bridge of the Herumon in safety, he was once more being thrust into the position of danger.

  He didn’t mind the danger. He relished combat, as all the pyrae did. What bothered him was the peremptory manner of his assignment, the assumption that Temekh was calling the shots now.

  Of course, Magnus had always had a soft spot for the corvidae – the seers and mystics. The more belligerent cult-disciplines had always been the ones that had been reined in and curtailed. Much good it had done. The corvidae were wayward. If the Thousand Sons had trusted more in the straightforward application of warp-power, perhaps they would have prevailed on Prospero rather than being hamstrung by doubts and visions.

  He arrived at the chamber leading to the battle-front. Ahead of him, squads of rubricae were waiting to enter combat, interspersed with larger formations of mortal infantry. Sorcerers, some of them limping from terrible wounds, walked among them. Far off, hundreds of metres down the tunnels leading to the stairway, came the sound of crashing explosions. The Wolves were being hit hard, but they evidently still held the Fangthane approaches.

  ‘Greetings, lord,’ came the reedy voice of Orfeo Czamine, the pavoni commander of operations.

  Aphael felt his face distort into an expression of contempt. It was entirely involuntary – his facial muscles were now wholly fused with the internal workings of his helm and had a mind of their own. Possibly literally.

  ‘How goes the assault?’ asked Aphael, gesturing for his retinue to stand down.

  Aphael knew his own voice now resembled a whole choir of speakers, each fractionally out of sync with one another. There was no hiding it, and no hope of the condition improving.

  ‘We are grinding them down, as instructed,’ replied Czamine, sounding unsurprised by the bizarre inflections.

  ‘They should have been cleared out of their hole by now,’ Aphael said. ‘You’ve had days to wipe them out. I may–’

  He broke off. Czamine looked at him quizzically.

  ‘Are you all right, lord?’

  Aphael found he couldn’t reply. The words formed in his mind, but his mouth no longer obeyed him. He felt the frustration of weeks burn up inside him. Furiously, he clutched his staff with both hands, not yet knowing what to do with it. As his armoured fingers closed over the shaft, witchfire sparked along its length, blazing with a painful, searing light.

  Czamine fell back, radiating alarm.

  ‘Lord, you are amongst brothers!’

  By then Aphael’s movements were no longer his own. The staff began to spin, hand-over-hand, picking up speed with every revolution. The iron whirled, shimmering in the dark from a nimbus of racing witchfire.

  He wanted to scream. He wanted to explain.

  This isn’t me! Help me! Sweet Magnus, help–

  But then his thoughts were taken over by another. The presence in his mind that had been growing for days suddenly asserted itself.

  +Why should I help you, my son? This is what you were born for. In what time remains to you, relish the moment.+

  The staff spun quicker, generating a vortex of rotating energy in its centre. Aphael’s hands became a blur, turning over like engine pistons, driving the staff into a whirlwind of dizzying momentum.

  Aphael’s awareness was now almost gone. What remained of him spied Czamine hurrying backwards, saw squads of mortals running from him in horror. He watched as the rock walls of the Fang glowed white, before realising that he was lighting them up himself. He was on fire, a caustic, dry fire that drenched the chamber in brightness. Warp-energy was bursting from his eyes, from his mouth, from the chinks in his armour. The flesh-change snarled into overdrive, warping his body into impossible contortions, breaking open the hard shell of his battle-plate and shedding it in rattling slivers.

  With all the power that he still had, Aphael somehow dragged three words up from his receding consciousness.

  Punish them, lord.

  +Oh, I will+, came the response.

  Then he was gone. The blaze of light and movement was no longer Herume Aphael. For a few moments, it was nothing at all, just a disparate collection of aether-born energies, wild and inchoate.

  Then there was a massive bang, causing the air to ripple and dust to rain down from the chamber roof. Cracks snaked along the floor, radiating out from the rapidly transforming cocoon of light and noise.

  From that point, the whirling gradually wound down. The light faded, burning into a single point of brilliance. As it slowly died, a figure was revealed within it, taller than Aphael had been and far more beautiful. With the final diminishment of the portal, the newcomer stepped clear of the flickering tendrils of illumination.

  As soon as he emerged, all those closest fell to their knees in awe. Czamine bowed low, letting his staff scrape along the ground in submission.

  ‘Father,’ he said, and his voice was choked with joy.

  ‘Son,’ acknowledged Magnus the Red, flexing his muscles and smiling. ‘You have been held up in this stinking place for too long.’<
br />
  He turned toward the Fangthane stair, and there was a greedy light in his eye.

  ‘Time, I think, to show the Wolves the true meaning of pain.’

  Odain Sturmhjart roared his defiance again, his voice cracking under the strain. He’d been summoning the power of the storm for days, using it to divide and demoralise the forces besieging Borek’s Seal, and the pressure was beginning to show. His lips were cracked and calloused under his armour and his throat was raw.

  There was no let-up. The sorcerers were powerful, even more so since so many of the wards against maleficarum in the Hould had been taken down. Sturmhjart had little support, and carried almost all the burden of protecting the defending troops from sorcery. A lesser Rune Priest would have given up days ago, overwhelmed by the need to maintain the steady rain of wyrd-sourced power. Only one such as he, steeped in the bottomless reserves of energy gifted by the strange ways of Fenris, could have maintained his position for so long. While he stood, the devices of the enemy were blunted, allowing the warriors of the Aett to charge into battle unhindered. If he fell, their witchery would come into play, turning the tide irrevocably.

  And so he stayed on his feet, hurling invective at the silent Rubric Marines as they marched into view, maintaining the flurry of lightning into their ranks, countering the varied powers of the enemy spell-casters and taking the bite out of their aether-born attacks.

  It made him proud. After his failure to predict the coming of the enemy, he was able to reflect with satisfaction on what he had done since. The Aett would have fallen already without his untiring efforts. Even if it was still overwhelmed, he had given it precious extra days of life. To fall in battle after inflicting such pain on the enemy was honourable; only an easy, fragile death was a cause for shame.

  Sturmhjart stood in the centre of the defensive lines, partially sheltered by the barricades. On either side of him were the gun-lines, still manned by mortal kill-squads. The Wolves’ packs roamed ahead of them, preventing the invaders from reaching the trenches. They were supported by the hulking outlines of Dreadnoughts and the strange, darting runs of the Underfang beasts. The creatures of the night instilled terror in the mortal Prosperine soldiers, even more so than the Wolves themselves. Many of the creatures had been killed during the repeated actions, but whole packs remained in action, fearless, tireless and horrifying.