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  ‘For Russ!’ he bellowed, and the sound echoed from the walls of the Fang’s cavernous entrance chambers.

  Ahead of him were the shattered gates, still burning from the explosions that had destroyed them. Beyond the crushed pillars, partially masked by sheets of smoke and hammering hail, was the advancing enemy. The first lines of invaders were already closing on the opening, emboldened by the devastating power of the gate-breakers. Greyloc’s helm display flickered with signals as his armour’s machine-spirit rapidly made sense of the thousands of life-signs ahead and prioritised them into target-runes.

  Roaring with defiance, he burst out into the open, shrugging off the lines of incoming las-fire, revelling in the cold, sharp air of Fenris once more. Though polluted with engine oil and the acrid tang of spent ordnance, it was still better than being cooped up behind the walls.

  We are predators. This is where we belong.

  As he charged, his squad swept alongside him, their massive Terminator suits ploughing through clusters of smoking metal and ruined stonework. Volleys of armour-piercing fire streaked over their heads, sent by the Long Fangs still in the shadows of the mountain. Kaerls came out in their wake, mortals clad in carapace armour and loosing their heavy projectile guns in controlled bursts. They struggled to keep pace with the Wolves in the vanguard, but Greyloc knew they were just as eager to make contact. Many were knocked from their feet by the rain of las-fire spitting across the storm-whipped earth, but most made ground, rushing to secure terrain before it was seized by the oncoming horde.

  Buoyed by Sturmhjart’s ferocious storm whirling about him, Greyloc thundered into the first ranks of the invaders. They were mortals, decked out like his own kaerls in environment suits and shouldering lasguns. He’d already killed hundreds of such warriors since their drop-ships had first defiled his homeworld. Before they could loose a massed shot at him, he was amongst them, carving his way deeper into the ranks.

  ‘Slay them!’ he roared, feeling the kill-urge distort his voice with its intensity. ‘Slay them all!’

  He barely heard the thud and crash of impact as his retinue slammed into battle beside him, each bellowing his own oath of combat, each tearing a channel through the Thousands Sons vanguard. Bodies were hurled into the air, limbs severed, armour ripped apart.

  Grey Land Raiders lumbered from the ruined gates then, grinding over the broken terrain, laying down heavy bolter fire and sending lascannon beams scything into the sweeping tide of men and armour. More Wolves loped alongside them, Grey Hunters and Blood Claws, their armour draped with gruesome totems of death and vengeance. In the face of their sudden assault, the Thousand Sons’ charge on the gates faltered.

  Greyloc remained at the spear-tip. The wolf within him slavered, hungry for more killing, taking keen pleasure from the men falling beneath his talons. He kept bellowing oaths of hatred and damnation as he slew, each syllable amplified by his armour into a crescendo of savage elation.

  The roars of defiance and anger were not idly made. They were part of the projection of intimidation, the wall of sound that drove lesser men mad with fear. Every blow was aimed to aching perfection, every blade-plunge was judged with accuracy, every bolter discharge was aimed with exacting precision. These Wolves hunted the way their Jarl had taught them to – fast, deadly, efficient. At their head, the White Wolf cut his way through walls of living flesh, his claws drenched in the blood of his prey, energy sluicing from his claws and crackling with cold fury.

  We must make them pay for the passage of the gates.

  Greyloc punched a warrior aside, breaking him in two, before launching himself at the flanks of a troop carrier trying to turn in the churned-up slush and gravel. He was in constant motion, swivelling and scything like a whole pack of predators combined into a single, terrible amalgam. He felt Sturmhjart’s powerful wards protect him as he went, a barrier against the flickering spells of the sorcerers. He knew the value of that protection: for this short time he was free to kill unimpeded, to bathe in the blood of those who had come to his domain to bring death.

  He would use that time well.

  Beneath the shadow of the gates, the two armies crunched together, one massive and ponderous, the other swift and feral. As the Fang burned, tortured by the remorseless volleys of long-range fire, its slopes echoed from sound of close-combat killing at last. And as men died and vehicles burned, as the gunships came in low for renewed attack runs, amid all the carnage of the ground assault, every warrior on the field knew the cold reality of the situation.

  The noose had closed, and had begun to tighten.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Freija felt like she’d stumbled into some drug-induced trance. Her body ached from the brief firefight, and she could still feel blood trickling down her ribs. Coming down here had been insane. Three of her men had died, all to protect a bunch of scuttling half-breeds while their master did whatever he had to do in that vault. Even the awesome sight of Bjorn, a figure she’d never been quite sure was more than a myth, had only partially assuaged the sense of futility.

  The Fell-Handed was just one of the Dreadnoughts roused by Arfang. Others had emerged in the time since then, marching in a procession of stately, grinding majesty. Hours had passed as more of the venerable warriors were awakened. All the while, the pack of beasts hung back in the shadows, growling and pacing. It was unclear how many there were – maybe a dozen, perhaps many more.

  Freija didn’t know which to be more wary of, the malshaped horrors of the Underfang or the grim, sepulchral structures of the walking dead. As the Dreadnoughts passed through the doors to the vault, they flexed giant fists and spooled up huge autocannon barrels. Even by the standards of a savage Chapter, they were fearsome in aspect. They hissed and steamed as they moved, throwing up clouds of smoke from exhausts mounted behind layers of thick armour. All were scored with old runes and draped in ancient skins, black from age and as dry as stone. As each one entered the chamber, the air vibrated a little more from the growling judder of their engines.

  Bjorn had said nothing since his arrival, and brooded alone. Every so often he’d raise his vast lightning claw and rotate the blades, as if reminding himself of something from the distant past. None of the mortals dared approach him, though the beasts did. They slunk up to him, heads low, jaws drooling. They were submissive before him, like whelps of the pack paying homage to the alpha predator.

  As they crawled into the scant light of the open vault doors, Freija began to make out more of their outlines. They were a motley assortment of bestial forms, all hunched and awkward. There were glints of metal amid the fur and sinew as they moved. One wolf-shape had no visible eyes in its sleek face at all, another had steel claws, and a third had an almost human smile on its tooth-crammed jaws. All of them were gigantic, as big as the Fenrisian wolves that stalked the high places, though with none of their savage grace.

  Do not watch them. They take it as a challenge.

  The voice rumbled from over her shoulder, almost as deep and machine-thick as Bjorn’s. Freija spun round, seeing the profile of another Dreadnought in the dark. As far as she could see, it looked much the same as the others – hulking, angular, humming with coiled menace. Perhaps this one was a little less battle-scarred, a little cleaner looking, but only slightly. She could make out the rune Jner, Pride, on its massive armoured leg.

  ‘Thank you, lord,’ she said humbly, keeping the bitterness out of her voice. It might have been better to have been told that before she’d been asked to guard this place. The Wolves’ love of exuberant danger was maddening. Why, in the name of all the Hels, were such horrors tolerated within the Aett?

  The Dreadnought clumped alongside her. It stood motionless for a moment, inscrutable behind its blank fascia of ceramite. It stank of oils and exhaust-fumes.

  You are mortal. Why are there no Sky Warriors here?

  A good question.

  ‘They are fully engaged, lord. The Aett is under assault.’

  The Dreadnough
t didn’t respond immediately. Its speech was sluggish and halting.

  Under assault, it repeated, as if the concept was hard to understand.

  The Dreadnought sank into contemplation. A row of lights flickered along its flanks. Perhaps they were some age-slowed systems finally coming online. Every movement it made was heavy, hesitant and cumbersome.

  And I thought I was bad in the morning.

  An Underfang beast slunk up to them then, belly low. Freija stiffened, bringing her sidearm up.

  Leave it.

  Freija kept the muzzle pointed at the mass of fur and tooth. It had pale amber eyes, shining in the dark. She felt her jaw tighten.

  I said, leave it.

  Slowly, she lowered her weapon. The beast paid her no attention, but performed the same abasement before the Dreadnought as the others had done before Bjorn.

  ‘What are these things?’ she asked, staring at the bizarre scene.

  You are curious.

  Freija winced inwardly.

  ‘I am told so, lord. It is a weakness, and I will work to correct it.’

  So you should.

  The beast shot a single, unreadable glance at Freija, than crawled back into the gloom. As it went, she saw bands of dull metal around its foreleg. There were steel tendons there, pistols moving smoothly as the beast walked.

  They are weapons, mortal. We are all weapons. Even you, in your own way, are a weapon. Let that be enough for you.

  ‘Yes, lord,’ said Freija, bowing. She could feel her cheeks flushing with irritation at the evasion.

  My men have died for your damned mysteries!

  I am called Aldr. In life I was a Blood Claw, though the Long Sleep has... changed that.

  That admission came as a surprise. Freija didn’t know what to say in reply. Making smalltalk with a Dreadnought was not something she’d been trained for. Russ, it was hard enough speaking to regular Space Marines.

  This is my first awakening. The process is difficult. Tell me of the world of the living. That will help.

  ‘What do you wish to know, lord?’

  There was a pause. Deep in the vaults, Arfang was still busy. Freija had no idea how many of the Revered Fallen were kept down here, nor how many more he planned to awaken. The process might nearly be over, or there might be hours still to go.

  Everything, said Aldr, his ponderous voice touched with a note of eagerness. Or perhaps it was desperation. The yearning was almost childlike.

  Tell me everything.

  ‘Fenrys hjammar koldt!’

  Odain Sturmhjart bellowed out the curses until his mighty lungs were raw. He stood before the ruined Bloodfire Gate, his staff clutched in both fists, marshalling the fury of the maelstrom. The battlefield was darkening as the Fenrisian sun, that old ball of blood that gave the portal its name, sank slowly to the sawtooth horizon. The sky was already a dark wine-red, streaked with trails of smoke and the flickering illumination of promethium fires. Hail continued to hammer down in a blur, whipped into deadly eddies by the mastery of the Rune Priest.

  ‘Hjolda!’ he roared, fangs bared, feeling the awesome power of his calling answer the summons. Lightning, ice-white and blazing with spectral energy, lanced down in the wake of the hail, ripping through enemy formations and tearing up whole columns of men and vehicles where it landed.

  Ahead of him, the Wolves infantry had charged into the foremost formations of the invaders, hurling them back from the breach. Grey Hunters hacked and punched their way through whole regiments of Prosperine mortal troops, backed up by the ranged fire of the Long Fangs and the kaerl heavy weapon squads. Blood Claws raced into battle alongside them, howling in a frenzy of distilled kill-urge, flanked by growling Land Raider formations and whole rivens of kaerls. Protected and warded by Sturmhjart’s peerless control of the storm, the Wolves had room to kill, and they did so eagerly. The magicks of the sorcerers in the Thousand Sons had failed to do anything to answer the Rune Priest’s onslaught in the hours since the gates had gone down, tied up as it was defending their own troops from the elemental fury.

  For all that, the Fenrisian position was precarious. The Wolves fought like the demigods they were, laying waste to whole companies of mortals, but there were thousands upon thousands of troops in the enemy vanguard alone. Every so often, a massed thicket of las-beams would down a Hunter in his tracks, or a tank shell would find its mark with armour-cracking force. Each time a Sky Warrior fell, a pang of frustrated anger swelled within Sturmhjart’s breast, and the swirling majesty of the storm was raised to an ever higher level of lethality.

  They were losing ground. They would lose ground through the night and they would lose ground for as long as they fought into the dawn. Traitor Marines had made their way to the front ranks and joined the battle. They were mirror opposites of the Vlka Fenryka, equal in deadliness but utterly different in method. Whereas the Wolves fought with an exuberant, flamboyant skill, exulting in their raw prowess, the Thousand Sons came to the battlefield silently, marching like strangely animated bronze-crested ghosts. There were already too many of them to hold back, dozens more than the defenders could bring to bear in response, and additional troops were coming into the contact zone with every hour.

  Faced with such odds, the warriors of the Twelfth fought with a zeal that made Sturmhjart’s hearts swell with savage pride. No quarter was given, asked for or contemplated. The Wolves hurled themselves into combat with an utter disregard for anything other than the pain they could inflict on a foe they hated more than there were words to express. As the sun finally sank below the horizon, Sturmhjart saw a lone Grey Hunter barrel into a whole squad of Rubric Marines, his power-axe blazing in the dark before disappearing into a forest of sapphire amour. The manoeuvre cost him his life, but it gave an entire company of kaerls time to withdraw to higher ground and establish new firing positions.

  It was bitter, as bitter as gall, to lose brother warriors in such a cause. Full retreat would come in time, and then the ground would be yielded to the enemy.

  But they all knew the score. Every metre of stone, every rock, every patch of blackened ice, would be fought over until the blood of the enemy ran in rivers across it. Such was the way of Fenris, just as it had been since the dawn of the Imperium, just as it ever would be.

  Sturmhjart stole a quick glance over his shoulder, back toward the gaping gate-ruins. The proud arches slumped into rubble, studded with gigantic fallen lintel-stones like megaliths. In the light of the fires he could see squads of kaerls hurrying to the front, many carrying fresh ammunition crates. Some of those contained boltgun magazines. Those carriers would sell their lives to get them to the Wolves on the front line.

  Strumhjart saw the look of fierce determination in their mortal eyes.

  No fear. Blood of Russ, they have no fear.

  Further back, under the sagging arch of the Bloodfire portal, more kaerls were working furiously in the halls beyond. Sturmhjart knew what they were doing, and it chilled his heart.

  It was worth it. The sacrifices were worth it. These were the fires in which faith was forged.

  He turned his attention back to the battlefield. For as far as he could see, the vast causeway swarmed with the enemy. His entire visual field was filled with ranks of infantry, studded with the hulking formations of mobile armour.

  Inexorably, inevitably, the enemy was driving them back to the gates.

  ‘You’re not here yet, you faithless bastards,’ growled Sturmhjart, spinning his staff round and drawing down more power from the storm. Lightning arced through the air, tearing apart a column of lumbering troop-carriers and throwing the vehicle-shells high into the hail-wracked wind.

  For the first time since the orbital war, Sturmhjart began to feel himself again. For too long, he’d been mired in guilt and the need to atone. The failure to predict the attack had hit him hard, driving his ebullient wolf-spirit into an unfamiliar realm of doubt.

  Enough. My soul lives for this.

  It was cathartic, this
exercise of power. As he governed the elements in the cause of righteous murder, his blood ran as hot as mjod. He felt the avatar of the Helix, the grey-flanked beast that prowled the corridors of his mind, flex its claws in savage pleasure.

  He looked up. From out of the darkening night, a formation of enemy gunships was swooping low, engines burning and weapons spooling up to fire. They’d failed to take him out by sorcery, and now more conventional weapons were being employed.

  ‘Bring it on,’ growled Sturmhjart, summoning up the inferno that would rip the squadron out of the skies. His staff erupted in wyrdfire, possessed by power of such raw savagery it made him grin just to feel it.

  By the time the gunships were in range to fire, Odain Sturmhjart, High Rune Priest of the Space Wolves Chapter, was laughing with all his old, battle-tempered might.

  Twelve Dreadnoughts had emerged by the time Arfang had finished his rites. They lurked in the dark, their engines drumming. The servitors fussed around them, adjusting bearings and oiling exposed metalwork. The massive machines waited patiently, like giant plains-beasts tolerating the attentions of parasite-cleaners.

  ‘I can do no more, lord,’ announced Arfang, bowing to the mightiest profile of them all. ‘Both gates are now broken and under attack. Jarl Greyloc summons me to the surface again.’

  Cumbersomely, Bjorn turned his torso section to face the Iron Priest.

  Greyloc? Your Great Wolf?

  ‘Jarl of the Twelfth. Only a single company remains within the Aett. The Chapter has been called to Gangava, where Magnus the Red has been located.’

  There was a low growl from Bjorn at that name, a rumbling mechanical noise that emanated from his very core.

  Brief me as we ascend. Your tidings anger me, Iron Priest. I should have been consulted before this was done.

  The venerable Dreadnought’s voice had lost its undertow of sluggishness. Gradually, painfully, the ancient intelligence within was rising to a full pitch of awareness. There was an unfamiliarity in the accent it employed, even filtered through layers of vox-generators. Each syllable Bjorn uttered was somehow archaic, the embodiment of an age that had passed.