Battle Of The Fang Read online

  Like a ghost, they said. Snow on snow.

  ‘Are all the others there?’ Greyloc asked, still standing in the face of the wind. He could feel ice creep across his exposed forearms and ignored it.

  ‘Three Great Companies are off-world still, but Kjarlskar’s one of them.’

  Greyloc nodded. Ironhelm had been mustering his forces on Fenris for a long time, and the endless expeditions to hunt down his old adversary had seemed – at last – to be in abeyance. The Great Wolf’s passion for finding Magnus had become an obsession, one Greyloc had argued against before. There were a thousand other enemies to hunt, and many of them would stand up and fight rather than shrink away into the aether when the noose closed.

  ‘We’ll see, then,’ Greyloc said, watching as the mountains loomed.

  The massive precipices were coming to a head. Vast beyond imagining, a single peak was rearing up on the horizon. As if the core of Fenris had been shoved through its mantle into a terrifying, unmatched pinnacle, a conical mountain-mass soared up into the darkening sky. Its flanks were sheer, snow-clad on jagged shelves of rock, glossy with ancient, undisturbed ice. In every direction, lesser summits crowded the view, clustering close to the broken skyline in the shadow of the Great One, the Shoulder of the Allfather; the volda hamarrki, the World Spine.

  Against the gathering dark of the dwindling atmosphere, tiny lights shone at the distant summit. They marked the habitation of the Sky Warriors, the abode of the demigods, itself a tiny fraction of the bulk of that vast peak. The inhabitants of that place, whether kaerl or Space Marine, called it the Aett.

  To the rest of the galaxy, awe-struck by half-snatched legends of Russ’s fortress and never likely to see it, it was just the Fang.

  Greyloc looked at the approaching lights impassively. There were other flyers coming in, at least three of them. Ironhelm was pulling all his forces back to the hearth.

  ‘Perhaps he’s given up at last,’ said Greyloc, watching the flickering lights of the docking platform draw closer. ‘Can that be too much to hope?’

  ‘Wyrmblade! Enough splicing.’

  Odain Sturmhjart strode into the laboratorium, pushing aside fleshmaker-thralls impatiently. The huge Rune Priest, clad in sigil-encrusted armour, slammed his staff on the ground and ripples of excess power discharged against the stone.

  Thar Ariak Hraldir, bearer of the Wyrmblade that gave him his name, looked up from his work. The low light made his eyes look like pools of resin-rich amber. The Wolf Priest was irritated, and his ragged, ugly face twisted into a scowl. A pair of curved fangs snagged his lips as he exhaled loudly. Slowly, aching from the hunched pose he’d held for so long, Wyrmblade straightened.

  ‘Bone-rattler,’ came the caustic reply. ‘This, especially, is not a good time.’

  Ahead of him, vials containing clear fluid were arranged in long rows on a metal table. Each was labelled with a single rune. Some stood alone, some were connected to one another by microfilament, others were linked together with strands of conductive plasfibre.

  Wyrmblade gestured with a finger, and the lights in the chamber rose. Strip lumens exposed white-tiled rooms, surgically clean, each leading off from the other like chambers in a den. Blast doors to the inner rooms closed, obscuring the view of what lay beyond. Before they snapped shut, there was a fleeting view of banks of equipment humming around glistening centrifuges, of picts updating steadily with rows of runes, and of man-sized tanks of translucent fluid against the walls. There were dark shadows suspended within those tanks, motionless and silent.

  ‘You tell iron-arse that,’ said Sturmhjart, and his ruddy cheeks glowed with mirth. ‘He’ll flay your skin off to cover what he’s missing. I’ve come to save you from that.’

  The Rune Priest was built like all the Adeptus Astartes – solid, heavily muscled, broad and stocky. He had a circuit of augmentics around his left eye and a thick grey beard, stiff and matted from age. Talismanic bones hung in chains from his breastplate, carefully arranged to channel his power over the elements. The pattern of runes on his armour might have looked random, but it was nothing of the sort, and every carving and incision had been made after days of scrying and casting. His cheerfulness was misleading too – Sturmhjart was the Chapter’s High Rune Priest, and wielded power of a terrifying magnitude.

  ‘He could try,’ muttered Wyrmblade, casting a final look over the vials before leaving them. As he walked from the long table, a drawer full of steel instruments closed with a smooth click. ‘Then he’d remember who pulled him off the ice, and who gave him his first scars.’

  The Wolf Priest moved silently and slowly, carrying his bulk with an accomplished ease. He was old, and the centuries hung heavily on his ravaged features. Black, straggling hair framed his long face, and the tattoos on the flesh had turned scab-brown with age. His skin looked as tough as plascrete, weathered and beaten down by over five hundred years of ceaseless combat. Though ancient, his eyes were still keen and his grip still strong. His armour was as black as his hide, hung with ancient bones and covered in a second skin of gouges, plasma burns and blade-scores. Every one of his movements radiated a deep, old power, tested and tempered in the fires of war.

  Two Priests. So opposite, so alike.

  Sturmhjart cast a sceptical eye over the ranks of vials.

  ‘Making progress?’

  ‘You’ve never understood the importance of this. If I failed to convince you a decade ago, I won’t do so now – you’re both older and more foolish.’

  Sturmhjart snorted a laugh, and it echoed from his chest like an erupting krakken. ‘Older, yes, though there’s more than one way to be foolish.’

  ‘You seem to know them all.’

  The two Priests strode out of the laboratorium. As they turned down the long corridor leading to the transit-shafts, lit only by flame torches against the polished rock, black-robed fleshmaker-thralls shrank back respectfully and inclined their heads.

  ‘I don’t know how long Ironhelm’s going to tolerate this research,’ said Sturmhjart. ‘You haven’t been off-world for a year.’

  ‘He’ll tolerate it until it’s done.’ Wyrmblade turned his dour, sunken-eyed face to the Rune Priest. ‘You’ll tolerate it too. The work’s essential.’

  Sturmhjart shrugged.

  ‘Don’t interfere with the wyrd, brother,’ he said. ‘I’ve warned you before. If the fates permitted it, it would have been done already.’

  Wyrmblade snarled, and the hairs on the back of his arms rose. Deep within him, he could feel his animal spirit glide to the surface. If Sturmhjart noticed that, he showed no sign.

  ‘Do not presume to give me an order, brother,’ he responded, coming to a halt. ‘You’re not the only one who can see the future.’

  Heartbeats passed, and neither figure moved. Then Sturmhjart backed down.

  ‘Stubborn old bastard,’ he muttered, turning back down the corridor, shaking his ragged head as he stalked between the torches.

  ‘Never forget it,’ said Wyrmblade drily, following closely. ‘It’s why we get on so well.’

  The Chamber of the Annulus was high up in the pinnacle of the Fang, in the Valgard near the very summit of the vast fortress, surrounded by a seam of pure granite. It had been one of the first halls to be delved from the living rock by the Terran geomancers brought to Fenris to establish the VI Legion in the time of legends. In that age, tech-adepts had been able to level the very mountains and raise them up again, to shape the continents and quell the tumults of the deathworld’s seasonal upheavals. They could have made Fenris a paradise if they’d chosen, and it was only on the primarch’s orders that the planet was never altered from its fearsome character. Russ wished for his homeworld to remain the great proving ground of warriors, a crucible in which its humanity would be tested and honed forever.

  So, as it had happened, only one mountain out of the hundreds on Asaheim had been changed from its primeval form, its chambers hollowed out and wrought by ancient devices of forgotten, terri
ble power. Now the knowledge brought by those long-dead artificers was fading fast, and no citadel of comparable strength and majesty would ever be built again. The Fang was unique in the Imperium, the product of a genius that was slowly bleeding out of the galaxy as humanity stumbled and unlearned the lessons of the past.

  Within the Chamber, twelve figures stood around the Annulus, the huge circle on the floor of the chamber with the sigils of the Great Companies inscribed on panels of stone. Eight of them were Jarls – Wolf Lords – including the pale figure of Greyloc, now in his war-plate and cleansed of the blood of the hunt. Three other Wolf Lords were off-planet, though Ironhelm had sent astropathic messages to their fleets advising them of Kjarlskar’s discovery. Standing beside the Jarls were the three High Priests: Wyrmblade, Sturmhjart and Iron Priest Berensson Gassijk Rendmar, resplendent in his foundry-enhanced armour.

  That left one place remaining. It was filled by Harek Eireik Eireiksson, Heir of Russ and the Great Wolf. Wearing his customary Terminator battle-plate, he cut a vast, ominous figure at the head of the council. His black hair and beard were long and full, the forks braided and sealed with bone totems. Aside from Wyrmblade he was the oldest warrior present, having led the Chapter for three centuries and served for at least another hundred years before that. The blood of victims had stained his battle-garb for so long that the grey had long since shrunk to darkness. Only the curved sheet of metal implanted across the right hemisphere of his skull glinted from the firelight of the torches, the legacy of the bloody duel that had earned him his iron implants and given him his nickname. In the semi-light of the Chamber, Harek Ironhelm looked as joyless and brooding as a spectre of Morkai.

  ‘Brothers,’ he said, fixing his gaze on each of the Wolf Lords in turn. His voice carried a permanent undertow of rumbling, grinding aggression. ‘The hunt is called. Jarl Arvek Hren Kjarlskar has uncovered the lair of the Traitor, and now, at last, we will have completion.’

  As he spoke, a shimmering green hololith emerged over the centre of the Annulus. It was a planet, rotating gently. Points on the hololith were marked with warship battle-signs, all of them Fenrisian. Kjarlskar had blockaded the world.

  ‘Gangava Prime,’ said Ironhelm, relishing the words as they left his cracked lips. ‘What orbital defences there were have been destroyed, but void shields shelter the major settlements. Kjarlskar estimates tens of millions in the principal city alone.’

  As Ironhelm talked, his voice became more animated. Greyloc saw the Great Wolf’s right hand, enclosed in its heavy gauntlet, flex into a fist as he spoke. A subtle kill-urge pheromone marked the air.

  He’s combat-roused. Already.

  ‘We’ll take the Rout,’ Ironhelm announced, baring his thick, chipped fangs in a chill smile, as if daring any to disagree. ‘All of it. We strike, hard. This prize calls for the full wrath of the running pack.’

  The hololith flickered as tactical overlays showed landing sites and ingress routes. The primary target was a massive urban sprawl on a high northern latitude, hundreds of miles across. The swirls of citylight were uncomfortably arranged, and as Greyloc looked at them a hot sensation broke out behind his eyes. He heard low growls around the chamber as the others recognised the mark of corruption in the architecture.

  ‘How far?’ demanded Morskarl, Jarl of the Third, his question muffled by an archaic Heresy-era face-mask.

  ‘Three weeks in the warp. The fleet is being made ready.’

  ‘And you’re sure he’s there?’ asked Iron Priest Rendmar in his strange, metallic voice.

  ‘Kjarlskar’s Rune Priest confirms it. The Traitor waits for us, confident in his strength.’

  ‘He invites the attack,’ said Jarl Egial Vraksson of the Fifth, narrowing his eyes across a heavily scarred brow and scrutinising the tactical display. ‘Why?’

  ‘There are over two million troops in the target zone. It’s fortified, and there are armament works within. He’s building a new Legion, brothers. We’ve caught him before he’s ready.’

  ‘A Legion with no fleet,’ said Greyloc softly.

  He suddenly felt hostile eyes sweep across him. Ironhelm’s enthusiasm was infectious, and they didn’t want to hear contrary counsel.

  ‘And what of that, whelp?’ demanded Ironhelm. The term ‘whelp’ had been used in the past as a joke, a way for the older Jarls to poke fun at Greyloc’s relative youth, but there was a sharper edge in Ironhelm’s speech this time.

  Greyloc looked back at the Great Wolf coolly. The entire Chamber was alive with a rush for completion. The hunters needed to finish the job, and they were straining like hounds on the leash.

  ‘You think the Traitor didn’t foresee this, lord?’ he said, keeping his voice low and posture respectful. ‘How many false signs has he left for us already?’

  Rekki Oirreisson, Jarl of the Seventh, a hirsute monster with a heavy jawline and bunched shoulders, grunted his displeasure.

  ‘The Rune Priest has ruled,’ he said. ‘Magnus is there.’

  ‘And if he is?’ replied Greyloc. ‘For all his degeneracy, he is a primarch. If Russ, honour to his name, couldn’t kill him, what hope have we?’

  At that, red-eyed Borek Salvrgrim of the Second took a step forwards, hand reaching for his weapon-belt. There was a chorus of low, angry growls from other Wolf Lords.

  ‘Jarl, you forget yourself,’ warned Ironhelm, his powerful voice echoing around the Chamber.

  For a moment, the danger lingered. The suggestion – even the intimation – that there were limits to the vengeful capability of the Rout was perilous.

  Then Salvrgrim withdrew the challenge, grudgingly, casting a dark look at Greyloc as he did so.

  ‘We are committed to this,’ said Ironhelm, speaking to Greyloc as if demonstrating an axe-grip to a child. ‘It is blood-debt. It is completion.’

  That word again. Like all the others, Greyloc knew the importance of it. They were hunters, the Wolves, and nothing was more important than bringing the chase to a kill. Plenty in the Imperium thought of Russ’s warriors as savages, but that betrayed their ignorance of galactic history – the Wolves did what was necessary to complete the task, whatever it was. That was the trait they’d been bred for. To leave a slaying unfinished was a cause for deep shame, something that burned in the soul forever, chewing away until the ache was cleansed.

  ‘There are other considerations,’ said Wyrmblade, too old to be daunted by disapproval. His lined, cynical face looked up at Ironhelm’s. ‘My work, for one.’

  ‘Do not mention that here,’ muttered Vraksson, glaring at Wyrmblade. ‘This is a council of war, not a discourse on your blasphemy.’

  Wyrmblade gave the Jarl a cold smile.

  ‘Perhaps your pattern could have done with some tweaking, Egial.’

  ‘Enough,’ hissed Ironhelm.

  Greyloc watched the Great Wolf carefully, noting the dilated nostrils and glistening irises. The kill-urge was powerful now.

  This council will only endorse one outcome.

  ‘Disgust is strong in me,’ said Ironhelm. ‘We have him – the Crimson King, the architect of our dishonour – in our grasp and hesitate before taking the chance. For shame, brothers! Will we cower forever here, huddled around the fires while the deeds of our fathers keep us warm?’

  There was a fresh murmur of agreement around the Chamber. The pack-scent had turned from one of surly belligerence to one of impatience. Greyloc saw how skilfully Ironhelm spoke to their pride, and remained silent. There would be no contesting the coming verdict.

  ‘We have our full strength gathered,’ continued Ironhelm. ‘No force remaining in the galaxy can stand against us when mustered together. Kjarlskar has him pinned, and, as we join him, Gangava will bleed under our claws.’

  Guttural noises of approval came from Salvrgrim, whose vehemence for the chase was ever paramount.

  ‘This is it, brothers,’ snarled the Great Wolf, raising his clenched fist before him. ‘Do you not sense it? Do you not feel it in your blood?
This is when we destroy the last dregs of Prospero!’

  There was a sudden, massed roar from the assembled Jarls at that, a thunderous sound that rebounded from the cold stone around them.

  Greyloc exchanged a quick glance with Wyrmblade, his only ally in the Chamber. The Priest’s expression, as ever, was sour.

  ‘And who will man the citadel, lord?’ the old Wolf Priest asked, timing his question to puncture the euphoria around him.

  Ironhelm looked at Wyrmblade, and a mix of scorn and exasperation marked his features.

  ‘You, then,’ he spat. ‘You and the whelp, since your stomach for fighting is so weak. But no more than that. Only one Great Company will remain – the rest I will commit to this.’

  He spun back then, facing the circle of huge armoured figures around the Annulus, and there was a murderous smile on his ravaged face.

  ‘For those who join me, honour beyond measure. We shall do it, my brothers! We shall do what even our dread father did not.’

  His smile grew to a wide, expectant grin, exposing his fangs of tooth and metal.

  ‘We shall take the Crimson King,’ he growled, his voice grating deep within the curve of his breastplate, ‘and tear him from the face of the universe.’

  CHAPTER TWO

  The chamber’s lights were dim, barely above the level a mortal would need to see by. Apart from the glow of floor-level lumen strips there were only four prakasa floating below the ceiling. They swam through the air lazily like jewels, tiny points of slow-spreading illumination in the warm darkness. From below the floor, the low hum of the ship’s warp engines made them shiver like leaves in the breeze.

  Ahmuz Temekh would have been able to read the text before him even in near-complete darkness, but the soft blush of colour was satisfying. He reached for the corner of a fragile page and turned it gingerly. His oversized fingers worked carefully, avoiding the rips that had already disfigured the ancient manuscript.