Sturmhjart stole a glance to his right, over to where the fighting was fiercest. Greyloc was still on his feet, as he had been for days without pause. His Terminator plate was near-black from plasma-burns, his pelts ripped to tatters and the ceramite beneath cut deep by a hundred blades. But still he fought on, cold and clinical, holding the line together by force of example. He was no longer the White Wolf, more like a coal-black shade of Morkai let loose into the world of the living.
You have surprised me, lord. There is iron beneath that pale skin.
Between them, Greyloc and Bjorn dominated the battle for Borek’s Seal. The Thousand Sons were too numerous to be driven back for any length of time, but the invaders had made painfully slow headway since the start of their full-scale assault. The Wolves had forced a deadlock across the barricades, and that in itself, given the numbers of troops in play, was a staggering achievement.
It couldn’t last. Eventually, the line would break and the Rubric Marines would sweep into the chamber beyond. Until then, however, no ground would be ceded.
‘Fenrys hjolda!’ Sturmhjart bellowed, trying, as always, to rouse the Wolves around him to greater heights of heroism. He slammed his rune-staff to the ground, sending up forks of storm-lightning from the cold stone. ‘For Russ! For the–’
He broke off. A shadow passed across his hearts, chilling them. The power that sluiced across his runic armour flickered and died. He staggered, putting a hand out to prevent himself falling.
You feel it too, Priest.
Bjorn’s voice was dominating, even over the comm. Sturmhjart saw black stars spinning before his eyes, and dizziness wrapped itself around him.
‘He is here.’
Greyloc broke from combat.
‘What do you sense, Odain?’ he voxed, breaking from combat and racing back up towards the Rune Priest’s position. Behind him, Grey Hunters struggled to close the gap in the defensive line.
Sturmhjart shook his head vigorously, trying to rid himself of the lingering disorientation.
‘He has been here all along. Everywhere and nowhere.’
The sorcerers’ attack suddenly stepped up in intensity. Crackling aetheric force whipped out from the attacking ranks, wreathing the oncoming Traitor Marines. For the first time in days, the Wolves began to falter in their defiance.
‘He is here?’ roared Greyloc, his voice heavy with loathing. ‘Show me where he is, Priest.’
He assaults the Fangthane. Even now he lays it in waste.
‘Too far away...’ gasped Sturmhjart.
‘We must reach him,’ said Greyloc, his voice urgent. ‘There are routes through the mountain, fast ways up. None at the Fangthane can withstand him.’
‘Nothing on Fenris can withstand him.’
I can.
Sturmhjart whirled round to face the approaching Dreadnought, still feeling groggy and nauseous.
‘You’re deluded!’ he blurted. ‘You cannot sense him as I can. He is a primarch, an equal to Russ himself. This is death, Bjorn! This is the cutting of the thread.’
Ominously, the Dreadnought raised his plasma cannon, pointing the heavy, blunt barrels directly at Sturmhjart’s helm.
You have a heart of fire. If I had not seen that already, you would be dead where you stand for those words.
Greyloc didn’t hesitate.
‘The defence of the Seal will be given to Hrothgar of the Revered Fallen – he can hold the line for a little longer. I will go after the Traitor, as will my Wolf Guard. Bjorn will stand with us, and so will you, Rune Priest – your wyrd-mastery will be needed.’
Sturmhjart straightened, looking first at the lowered plasma barrel at the end of Bjorn’s gun-arm, then at the blackened and ravaged helm-face of his Jarl. The worst of the sickness brought on by Magnus’s translation ebbed. He felt his resolve begin to return, closely followed by shame at his outburst.
‘So be it,’ he growled, taking up his staff in both hands. ‘We will face him together.’
Greyloc nodded, and motioned to his two surviving Terminator-armoured Wolf Guard to follow him.
‘Of course, we have to break out of here first,’ he said grimly.
Do not worry about that, snarled Bjorn, his voice low and resonant like a starship engine. He swivelled on his axis, training his weapons on the enemy once more. Tell the Fangs to lay down heavy cover. Now I have prey worthy of a kill, I feel the need to stretch my claws.
Wyrmblade let his arms fall slack by his sides. He stood at the summit of the Fangthane stairs, between the massive images of Freki and Geri, the final layer of defence before the hall itself. He was an old warrior, tempered in the fires of a thousand engagements, as inured to surprise or despair as any of the Vlka Fenryka.
And yet he couldn’t move. The presence before him was so dominating, so transcendent, that it filled his veins with lead and locked his superhuman muscles into a horrified stasis.
Magnus had come. The daemon-primarch was at the foot of the stairway, attracting tracer fire in glowing, angry lines. The ordnance seemed to explode before it hit him, blooming in starbursts of angry red and orange around his massive frame. The Long Fangs and heavy weapons squads had unloaded all they had at him, pouring streams of flame at the monster’s head and chest.
It had no discernible effect. Magnus was a giant, a five-metre-tall behemoth striding through the clouds of promethium like a man pushing through fields of corn. He was radiant, as splendid as bronze, dazzling amid the shadows of the mountain. Nothing hurt him. Nothing came close to hurting him. He had been created for another age, an age when gods walked among men. In the colder, weaker universe of the thirty-second millennium he was unmatched, a walking splinter of the Allfather’s will set amid a fragile world of mortal flesh and blood.
As Wyrmblade watched, gripped by a vice of horror, the kill-machine got to work. There were no battle-cries, no shouts of rage. The daemon-primarch had retained his phlegmatic humours of old, and cut threads with a chilling equanimity. Wyrmblade saw his Wolves charge up to the shimmering titan, as immune to fear as ever, hurling their bodies into the path of the monster. They were brushed aside, thrown bodily into the stone where their backs were broken.
Magnus strode forwards, reaching the bottom level of the stairway. The barricades there had held for days, resisting every attempt to breach them. Box-guns spat at the primarch, surrounding him in a curtain of flickering, sparkling impacts. One by one, he tore them down, ripping them up by their roots and dashing them across the trenches.
Magnus came on. Lauf Cloudbreaker stood in his path, arms raised in defiance. The Rune Priest began the summoning, whipping up the storm-wyrd, contesting the advance of the daemon with all the art he possessed. The primarch clenched his fist and Cloudbreaker simply exploded, lost in a ball of blood, his totems scattered amid the fragments of his shattered runic armour. Kaerls scrambled to evacuate the trenches then, all thoughts of resistance quashed by the immense force striding toward them.
Magnus came on. More Wolves charged to meet him, still undaunted by the destruction wreaked around them. Wyrmblade saw Rossek, the grim-faced Wolf Guard, lumber into contact, his Terminator plate streaming with golden flames. Grey Hunters went in alongside, howling with rage. For a moment, the primarch was held, rocked by the sudden assault of so many blades, each of them wielded with passion and courage. Rossek even managed to land a blow, causing Magnus to pause in his rampage.
A single blow. A lone strike with his chainfist, followed up by a hail of storm-bolter rounds. That was all he managed before Magnus’s fists caught him, hurling him back into the ground, pummeling him into shrapnel and crushing him into a slick of gore beneath his ironshod feet. Rossek was gone, taken down in seconds, his proud life snuffed out with the casual descent of a primarch’s boot. The Wolves with him were ripped apart soon after. More fixed guns unloaded their ammunition at the primarch. All were destroyed, torn from their mounts and tossed aside like chaff.
Magnus came on. The Fangthane’s six Dread
noughts waited for him halfway up the stairway, resolute and unmoving. They opened fire as one, launching missiles and plasma bolts in a blistering, crushing flurry of destructive energy. In a few seconds they unleashed enough firepower to level a whole company of Traitor Marines, chewing through heavy bolter ammo-belts and exhausting energy packs. Magnus emerged from the inferno intact, his armour trailing gouts of smoke and flame. As he towered over them, the Dreadnoughts closed up, gunning their massive power fists and lightning claws into life and bracing for impact.
Magnus seized the nearest Dreadnought in one hand and lifted it from the ground. The huge sarcophagus swayed up above the rolling torment of fire, its close-combat weapon flexing impotently, its heavy bolter thudding shell after shell into the impervious hide of the primarch.
Magnus drew his arm back and hurled the Dreadnought against the walls of the stairway. The Revered Fallen hit the surface at speed, shattering the stone and driving a huge rent in the rock. Magnus loomed over the stricken war machine and clenched his fist again. The Dreadnought’s armour cracked open, shearing down the middle with a resounding clap of thunder, revealing the seething amniotic chamber within. The ruined scrap of flesh and sinew inside the tank writhed for a moment, still possessed by some primordial urge to survive, before Magnus smashed the plexiglass and dragged it out. With a flex of his mighty fist, the remnants of the Dreadnought’s body were squeezed into a slurry of blood and wasted muscle.
Then Magnus turned to take on the rest.
Still Wyrmblade couldn’t move. Some power compelled him to stay immobile.
‘Lord.’
His limbs were frozen, heavy and sluggish. His sword was rooted to the ground, a dead weight.
‘Lord.’
A black curtain of despair sunk behind his eyes.
Nothing can stop this. Even Bjorn could do nothing against this.
‘Lord!’
He snapped out of his visions, shaken free by the presence at his elbow. The few surviving Wolves clustered around him at the summit of the stairway. No more than a dozen had escaped the onslaught of the primarch. There were kaerls streaming to join them from the stairway, a couple of hundred perhaps. Below them, the Dreadnoughts fought on, dying one by one under the terrible attentions of Magnus, holding the line for just a few more moments before his relentless march resumed.
The one who spoke was a Blood Claw with blood-drenched armour and teeth studded under the jawline of his helm. Like all the Wolves, he’d seen heavy combat and his plate was dented, burned and blade-scored.
Wyrmblade should have sensed it sooner.
Maleficarum. He is contesting for my mind.
With a huge effort, Wyrmblade fought off the terrible feelings of despair. His troops were looking to him for guidance. The Blood Claw grabbed his arm, yearning for leadership.
‘What are your orders?’ he asked urgently.
Wyrmblade looked across the faces of those around him. Only hours ago, they had still dared to hope. The barricades had been held for so long. Now, in the space of a few terrible minutes, everything had been destroyed.
He didn’t know what to say to them. For the first time since taking the rites of priesthood, he didn’t know what to say.
‘We will hold him here,’ came a clear voice.
All eyes turned to the speaker. It was a mortal rivenmaster with an honest face. Alone among the kaerls, his eyes were not alive with fear. There was a hollowness there, as if the thought of living longer had become somehow abhorrent to him.
‘We mortals will hold him for as long as we can,’ he went on, speaking calmly despite the roiling explosions moving up the stairway below. ‘We are expendable, but you are not. You must go. Seek some way of resisting him in the Valgard. If you hesitate, you will die.’
Wyrmblade looked at the mortal. At last, the final shreds of Magnus’s psychic paralysis left him. The rivenmaster looked back, an expression of defiant insolence on his face.
Morek Karekborn. Ah, how I underestimated you.
‘The mortal is right,’ announced Wyrmblade, recovering his poise and sweeping his blade back into position. ‘We will fall back. Our stand will be at the Annulus.’
He gestured toward Morek.
‘Take command of what heavy weapon squads we still have. Hold him as long as you can in the Fangthane. The rest of you, come with me. The abomination shall not walk into our holiest chambers unopposed.’
Then he turned, his armoured boots scraping on the stone before breaking into the run that would carry him across the Fangthane and to the transit shafts beyond. The rest of the Wolves came with him, none of them questioning the order, though Wyrmblade could detect the stubborn reluctance to depart from combat. The surviving kaerls struggled to keep up behind them, all now racing freely from the horror in the stairwell. As they went, more crashes surged up from the stairs, punctuated with isolated barks of bolter-fire.
Wyrmblade only looked back once. Morek was already busy, organising the mortals who’d been able to stand alongside him, drawing up the final gun-lines and heavy weapons squads at the summit of the stairs, under the shadow of the snarling wolf-images. Beyond them, the bronze leviathan loomed, coming closer.
Brave. Horribly brave. Once the last of the Dreadnoughts was taken down, he’d be lucky if he lasted more than a few seconds.
The Wolf Priest turned back quickly, switching his mind to the present, to survival.
I cannot feel guilt for this. There is more at stake than the lives of mortals.
But as Wyrmblade raced across the empty Fangthane, leaving the rampaging primarch behind him, accompanied by the dregs of his command, retreating ignominiously upwards in the hope, the faint hope, that things would go differently at the Annulus, a single nagging thought wouldn’t leave him alone.
I have no idea how to fight that monster. No idea at all.
The Rubric Marines were on the rampage. With the departure of Bjorn, Greyloc and the Rune Priest, their powers had been greatly enhanced. Phalanxes of sapphire-clad warriors plunged into battle, surrounded by eldritch whips of energy and spitting cold fire from their gauntlets. Even the remaining Wolves on the barricades were no match for such powers, and fell back in a fighting retreat, pulling back across the rows of trenches to the refuges beyond.
They were covered by the continual fire of the fixed guns and protected by the indomitable presence of the five remaining Dreadnoughts. Hrothgar led them, a huge war machine scarcely less imposing than Bjorn. Under his command, Aldr and others stayed firm in retreat, keeping up constant volleys of fire against the oncoming tide, slowing it down though not halting it. The beasts still fought with undented savagery, launching themselves at the throats of the silent killers, tearing at armour and steel with their strange augmented claws.
Freija could see that it wasn’t enough. The departure of the bastion’s command squad had robbed the defenders of their most potent weapons. She had watched them fight their way free with growing disbelief, gaping openly as Bjorn had carved a path through the milling hordes and into the tunnels beyond. Russ only knew whether they’d made it to the far side, nor what terrible errand had called them away from their duty on the barricades.
To make things worse, the Thousand Sons seemed to have been filled with a new zeal for combat. They charged into contact faster, their reactions were sharper and their blows landed more heavily. Something had happened to give them new momentum, and the current of the battle had decisively swung their way.
Freija fell back, as ordered, retreating through the massive portals of Borek’s Seal and into the cavernous space beyond. Her squad remained in tight formation around her, all of them facing the enemy, all of them firing non-stop. Heavy impacts crashed all around them, many of them bolter-rounds loosed from the approaching Rubric Marines. As the defenders withdrew from their long-held positions at the portals, the guns within Borek’s Seal itself opened up, throwing new crashes and explosions into an already deafening storm of sound and light.
; There were trenches dug further back, and more lines of barricades. They would fall back and regroup, then fall back again. This was all part of the plan. As long as the Dreadnoughts lasted and the Wolves stood up to fight, they still had a chance. She had faith. After so many years of cynicism, it was a nice feeling to have.
Then she staggered, crying out with pain.
One of her men reached for her, trying to haul her back to her feet. Stumbling again would be fatal – none of the squad could afford to wait for her to catch up if she fell behind.
Freija’s world tilted on its axis. For a moment, she thought a las-beam had hit her, but then realised the pain was internal. Like a spike through her heart, a sharp wave of agony swept through her.
‘Rise, huskaerl!’ urged her trooper, yanking hard at her armour.
Freija barely heard him. The only thing she saw was a fleeting vision of a bronze-armoured giant striding through curtains of flame, tearing down everything in range of its terrible grasp. Then there was a man in front of him, a mortal, standing defiant as the inferno came for him. On either side of him were wolves, massive and carved from granite. Though their muzzles were locked in snarls, they were static and impotent.
The vision faded, and the rush and fury of the fighting in Borek’s Seal returned.
‘Father!’ she cried, realising what she’d seen.
Her weapon clattered to the ground, dropped from shaking fingers. The trooper made a final attempt to haul her along with him. The rest of the squad was now many metres away, falling back to their assigned muster-point under heavy fire.
War of the Fang - Chris Wraight Page 44