War of the Fang - Chris Wraight

by Warhammer 40K

  Bjorn fired it again, engulfing Magnus’s wrist in a searing holocaust of energy. The primarch clung on, absorbing the terrible heat, twisting and crushing the blunt barrel-end into a blocked mess. His gun rendered useless, Bjorn switched to his claws, driving them again at the primarch’s ravaged face. The talons connected, tearing more of the flesh from the daemonic essence beneath.

  Stone pillars broke and crumbled from the cliff-edge, and a filigree of cracks ran under Bjorn’s mighty feet. Both titans teetered on the very lip of the chasm, exchanging blows even as the icy abyss beckoned them down. The harsh wind of Asaheim clutched at them, dragging them closer to oblivion.

  It was then that Magnus, weary, wounded and burned as he was, seemed to remember his dread authority at last. He let fly with a broken hand, and fluorescent warp-energy spat from his outstretched fingers. Bjorn’s claw crumpled, withering amid a storm of varicoloured madness. The talons flexed wildly, then cracked apart.

  Weaponless, the venerable Dreadnought powered in close, attempting to grapple with the primarch and bear him over the edge. Magnus evaded the manoeuvre, punching out with his other hand. Though bereft of a blade, the daemonic flesh was still potent enough to crack Bjorn’s sarcophagus open, rending a jagged tear in the long face-plate. Bone icons shattered, and runes were cloven asunder.

  Bjorn reeled then, finally exposed to the full power of the primarch’s wrath. Magnus cocked a flaming fist, aiming for the eye-slit. Bjorn could do nothing. The blow came in hard, tearing up the reinforced plate, rocking him back on his central axis, forcing him closer to the edge. Magnus swung round, positioning himself on surer ground, pushing the Dreadnought half-over the drop and holding him in place one-handed. The ground supporting Bjorn’s clawed feet gave way, dissolving in a mini-avalanche of rubble and ice-blades.

  ‘You were on Prospero,’ hissed the primarch, his voice a horrific echo of what it had once been. ‘I recognise your soul-pattern.’

  Bjorn tried to reply, but his vox-generators had been destroyed. He could feel systems failing all over his artificial body. At last, the hellish existence he’d been forced to endure for so long looked like coming to an end. He couldn’t be too sorry about that.

  ‘Did you really think you could kill me?’ Magnus rasped, sounding both incredulous and furious. His free hand kindled with fresh witchfire. ‘If my brother could not, what hope have you?’

  It was then that Bjorn saw the shape careering down the slope above. A huge, armour-clad warrior, loping down the sheer ice-face toward them. Far above that was the profile of a drop-pod embedded near the very summit of the Valgard.

  Within his cracked shell, what remained of Bjorn’s ancient mouth smiled.

  Ironhelm pounced, leaping through the air, hurtling fast, arms outstretched. He crashed into the locked figures with a force of a Land Raider at full acceleration. There was a hard clang as armour smashed into armour. The ledge shattered, and all three of them wheeled over the broken edge of the precipice, rolling down the steep slopes in a cloud of broken stone and flying ice.

  Ironhelm’s head snapped back as he hit something at speed, then his arm crashed through a rock outcrop, smashing it open. He slid and tumbled, falling over and over, destroying the flanks of the mountain in his fall. He had the vague impression of Bjorn crashing straight through an ice-field before the Dreadnought’s huge body passed out of view. Showers of snow were everywhere, blinding him. He heard Magnus crying aloud and caught snatches of daemonic flesh flashing close to him before being torn away by the descent.

  He fell, and fell, and fell. There was nothing to break the whistling plummet except loose snow and fire-blacked stone. Ironhelm slammed into a fresh outcrop and felt it shatter before he corkscrewed away. Everything was in motion, disorientating and whirling in a white-out of sensory deprivation.

  Then, with a sickening crash, he hit something bigger. Even cocooned in his Terminator plate, the impact was staggering. Ironhelm blacked out, his body bouncing like a whip-crack before grinding painfully to a halt.

  It was a ledge, one of the thousands of steps in the jagged upper reaches of the Fang, a hundred metres wide and high up the dizzying cliffs of the ultimate peak.

  Ironhelm felt awareness return almost immediately, and knew then how much he’d been damaged. Pain surged through his body like a roaring fire, blazing across his tortured joints and spliced bones. He could feel the steel plate in his skull rattle loose. That meant his cranium was fractured, a prognosis consistent with the sun-hot agony that buzzed behind his eyes.

  He snarled with anger, and thrust himself to a half-sitting position. Magnus was there too. The two of them had come down together, kicking and flailing. There was no sign of Bjorn, though there was a long gouge running down the rock behind the primarch, torn out of the stone like a plough’s furrow. Snow and pack-ice still fell in clouds, laced with biting slivers of rock.

  The primarch was on his feet. All semblance of his old form was gone. There was no golden mantle, no bronze plate, no beautifully inscribed greaves with images of the zodiac glinting in the sunlight.

  What remained was a being of energy, a vaguely man-shaped network of pulsating warp-matter, vivid and unsettling. The only fixed point within the skin of shifting aether-essence was a single eye, garnet-red and blazing like a circle of fire.

  The wind skirled around the ravaged primarch, frigid and tearing, trying to snatch him from the mountain-edge and dash him to the ground below. The planet’s soul knew what kind of abomination had been unveiled, and screamed to hurl it back into the warp.

  Magnus took a single, pain-filled step towards Ironhelm’s broken body, and the eye shot a look of distilled venom. He swayed in the wind.

  Ironhelm clambered to his feet, ignoring the blazing agony throughout his mighty frame. He felt blood slosh in his boots, pooling in his armour-joints. The pain kept him conscious, kept him focused. He had travelled across the warp for this encounter with all the speed and fury he could muster. Twice.

  ‘Witch,’ he spat, feeling the blood-rich saliva slap against his face-plate.

  His frostblade had been lost during the crashing descent, but his Terminator armour had other weapons. His right wrist held twin storm bolter muzzles embedded in the curve of the plate, while his left hand was enclosed in a hulking power fist. Trusting in his prowess with both, Ironhelm lumbered into a heavy, rock-fracturing charge towards the wavering form of the primarch. As he powered into the barrelling run, he loosed both bolter barrels. The rounds punched into Magnus’s flesh but didn’t detonate. They seemed to disappear entirely, though the impact clearly hurt the daemon-primarch. Magnus roared with pain and anger, bracing to meet the charge of the Great Wolf with his bare hands.

  Ironhelm felt his legs burn as he thundered into contact. His armour boosted him, propelling tons of dense flesh, bone, ceramite and adamantium into the body of the primarch. As he connected, he swung his power fist in a massive, hammering arc straight at Magnus’s shimmering face.

  Magnus veered from the path of the fist expertly, keeping his body supple, and rammed his own fists into the Great Wolf’s breastplate, slamming him back across the ice. Ironhelm staggered against the slick surface. Magnus swept in for another strike, but Ironhelm managed to get his power fist round in time. It connected on the full, and the blow felt like punching a bag of bones.

  Magnus was hurled away, crashing into the cliff-edge. As his body hit the mountainside it shimmered, like a hololith flickering on low power. The primarch’s expression was a mix of incredulity and anguish.

  He had been diminished. Terribly diminished.

  Ironhelm laughed ferociously, charging again, using his massive bulk to generate momentum. Magnus rose to meet him, his fists blazing with witchlight. The two came together with a sickening crunch. Ironhelm felt his bolter-arm shatter, blasted apart by a discharge of white-hot fire. He also felt his power fist strike home, rocking the daemon-primarch on his flickering heels.

  Ironhelm snarled with the ra
w pleasure of the fight. After so long hunting ghosts and being taunted by apparitions, he was in his element at last. With every fresh strike of his tormented arms he felt a little more alive. The pain was immaterial. The only thing that existed for him was the contest, the test of arms, the exercise of his peerless capacity for controlled violence.

  That capacity was stoked by rage, the rage he had cultivated ever since leaving Gangava. The faces of the Wolf Brothers clustered into his mind, still howling their horror and pain. The faces of the slain on Fenris were among them too, growling in accusation. Greyloc had been right. The dead had all been sacrificed on the altar of his hubris, and now they demanded retribution.

  He intended to deliver it. The power fist crunched again into Magnus’s aether-woven flank, slamming the primarch back against the cliff-face. The one-eyed face blazed with pain as Magnus was crushed against the sword-sharp rock. His whole frame juddered, rippling like a flame caught in the wind. The wounds bit deep, sending shockwaves across his patterned flesh. Far above, the storm crashed in furious triumph, hurling void-cold gales around the mountainside. Ironhelm hit him again, and again, pummelling him against the rock-blades of the Fang’s flanks.

  Magnus cried out then, a cry of pain that had not been heard since the Wolf King had destroyed his first body. It echoed from the rock, outmatching the wind, outmatching the thunder of artillery from below as the Wolves tore through into the mortal troops on the causeways. In that cry was the weariness of ages, the despair of a demigod bred to fathom the deep mysteries of the universe and instead locked in grubby conflicts amid the dirty snow of a world of barbarians. It was a cry of loss, and of waste, and of the infinite futility of an endless war that he had never wanted.

  Ironhelm heard that cry, and grinned savagely. He kept going, hammering away at the abomination before him, his limbs working like a mighty engine, lost in a storm of blood-frenzy.

  ‘Fight me, witch!’ he roared. ‘Raise those hands and fight me!’

  For a moment, it looked like Magnus had lost the will to. He absorbed the punishment, his back arching against the cliffs. Trails of fire still clung to his ravaged outline, the residue of his tortuous ascent through the Jarlheim. His eye was open, staring with pain. He looked lost, cast adrift on the summit of the deathworld he had sworn to ruin.

  But then, just as before, he began to remember himself. From somewhere deep within, a new flame kindled. The primarchs had been bred, above all, to survive, to endure all that an immeasurably hostile galaxy could throw at them. Their residue of power was near-inexhaustible, a well on to the deep ocean of the Emperor’s matchless potency. Even now, even after enduring so much, having absorbed so much pain, his essential strength, the core of fire that fuelled him, remained inviolate.

  His back straightened up. Magnus caught one of Ironhelm’s incoming punches with his palm, clutching at the power fist and holding it in fingers of fire. With his free fist, he lashed out, catching the Great Wolf full in the face. Ironhelm reeled, and staggered backwards.

  Magnus raised himself up higher. The wounds on his body flared crimson as they healed themselves. Aether-born lightning crackled where his feet trod. The single eye burned again, an ingot of molten iron amid the ice. He opened his fist, and a neon deluge burst from his palm, dousing Ironhelm in consuming, wracking electric fire. The Great Wolf was driven back toward the edge and beaten down to his knees, wrapped in the raw quintessence of the immaterium.

  The torrent broke off. Ironhelm rocked to the ground, his armour charred and smoking. He didn’t get up.

  Order had been restored. The demigod looked down at the broken challenger, the last of the many Wolves who had stood up to face him.

  ‘You should have stayed on Gangava,’ Magnus rasped, his fractured voice playing across insubstantial vocal cords like the fingers of Hel’s harpist. To the extent he still resembled a human at all, he looked exhausted.

  ‘Gangava no longer exists,’ coughed Ironhelm, tasting cloyed blood in his mouth as he tried to rise. ‘Orbital bombardment. Atoms now.’

  His bolter-arm had been twisted out of shape, and hung limp. His power fist smoked from the ruinous touch of the primarch, and the ceramite cover was blistered and cracked. All he had left was his native strength. They both knew that would not be enough. He clambered to his feet with slow, agonising effort.

  Magnus drew closer. The patterns on his warp-wound flesh were gyrating faster, spinning into new and strange formations. Something was changing within him again. His brief sojourn into physical space was coming to an end.

  ‘Gangava served its purpose,’ he said.

  Then the primarch launched himself at Ironhelm, sweeping at him like a vengeful bird of prey. His arms stretched wide, bursting with more neon blades of aether-matter.

  Ironhelm had nothing left to counter the assault with, and no time to evade the embrace. He stood up to the onslaught, and when it hit him his fangs were bared under his helm, his fists clenched, raging in defiance.

  The world disappeared in pain. Ironhelm felt his armour torn open, cut into ribbons by the rending power of the warp. Dimly, he was aware of his organs breaking open, bursting with hot, wet pops. He could hear the sound of cracking across his chest, and only half-knew it was his own ribcage. His vision swam out of focus, replaced by a white wall of searing, writhing witchlight. The hurricane of power, the full and final expression of the primarch’s mastery, tore through him like a tempest of the Helwinter, terrible, frigid and inexorable.

  He didn’t fall. Somehow, he maintained his position on the edge of the drop, dug into the shattered stone and beaten down across it. When the agony ended, he was on his back, broken open, prone before the wrath of the Emperor’s son.

  One eye still worked to see his death come for him. In that sense, if in no other, the two of them were equal.

  Ironhelm coughed a gobbet of something slimy and hot from his mouth. From far below he could hear the distant thunder of his Chapter’s war machines. Already he knew they must have penetrated the Aett. His Wolves would hunt down every invader in those halls, one by one, driven by the remorseless focus that had always been their badge of honour. The fact that they would come too late to save him was unimportant.

  ‘The Aett endures,’ he rasped, his voice a wet scraping whisper. ‘You ran out of time. I’ll take that victory.’

  Magnus’s body loomed over him. The patterns on his flesh were still moving, still whirling. He was less than opaque now, and the wind snatched at him. For the moment, he held back from the killing blow. He looked death-cold.

  ‘What victory?’ he said. ‘You wished to kill me. Such as you could never kill such as me, Harek Ironhelm – I am beyond your vengeance now.’

  Then Ironhelm laughed, despite the fact it made his punctured lungs flare with fresh agony.

  ‘Kill you? No. I failed in that.’ The choking laughs died out. ‘But I hurt you, Traitor. We hurt you here. We cut the threads of your sons and broke your witches’ sticks. We tore that smile off your face and ripped the skin from your back. And I have lived to see it. That’s worth losing some bottles in a fleshmaker’s tray for. Blood of Russ, you bastard, I lived to see you howl.’

  Then Magnus spoke no more, but pulled his fist back. By the time he released the blow that would kill Harek Ironhelm where he lay, the Great Wolf was laughing again, hacking up blood against his vox-plate, strung out on the spikes of pain all over his body, crushed against the side of the mountain with no hope of recovery, but laughing like old Russ himself in the morning of the galaxy.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Forty days.

  From the first arrival of the Thousand Sons in orbit over Fenris to the slaying of the last Spireguard mortal within the Aett, forty days had passed. That number was given to the skjalds, who implanted it into the sagas. Those sagas were declaimed, and the Dreadnoughts took them down into the cold vaults of the Underfang with them so they were never forgotten.

  Alongside that number were the names. Vaer
Greyloc, the White Wolf. Odain Sturmhjart and Lauf Cloudbreaker. Thar Ariak Hraldir, the one they called Wyrmblade. Tromm Rossek, Sigrd Brakk, Hamnr Skrieya and the other Wolf Guard. Garjek Arfang of the Iron Priests, and eight Dreadnoughts of the Revered Fallen.

  Of the Grey Hunters, Long Fangs and Blood Claws of the Twelfth Great Company, twenty-two lived. Twenty-one of those had been in Borek’s Seal, still fighting when the relieving forces arrived at the portals. The only survivor in the Valgard was a Blood Claw, Ogrim Raegr Vrafsson, the one they called Redpelt. When Egial Vraksson of the Fifth broke into the Annulus Chamber with his Wolf Guard, Redpelt was standing over the central stone, surrounded by Rubric Marines, guarding the sacred image with his own body. He had been long in the Red Dream after that, but lived.

  Countless kaerls had given their lives in the defence of the Aett. Their names were not recorded.

  It was not known by what means the Traitor Marines escaped vengeance. Many did not, it is true, and were killed in the tunnels. But others, including most of the sorcerers, disappeared from Fenris at the same time their fleet achieved the in-system jump-points. The Wolf Priests speculate that Magnus himself departed in the same manner, though there were no witnesses to his leaving. When Harek Eirek Eireksson’s body was discovered, there were some who believed the Great Wolf had indeed killed the primarch. Though the rumours persisted for many years, the wisest among the Rout knew that it was not in Ironhelm’s wyrd to do such a thing, and prepared for the day when evidence of the Crimson King would emerge once again.

  None of the mortal soldiers brought to Fenris by the Thousand Sons were saved by their fleet. When the returning Wolves made planetfall, the troops were slaughtered in their thousands. The fires of their destruction darkened the air of the planet for a month, so that the tribes out on the ice cowered in their shelters and cried out against the coming of Morkai.

  But the darkness passed. In time, the Sky Warriors came among them again, taking the best and bravest to fight for the Allfather.