Battle Of The Fang Page 20

  Freija found herself marvelling at that speech. It made her skin prickle with anticipation. It was irascible and severe, as hard as the granite roots of the mountain. But there was something else. The same quality Aldr’s voice had.

  They are crippled with grief. The darkness, the cold. It has entered their souls.

  Arfang bowed to Bjorn in apology and took up his staff again. There was a faint click as something in his armour’s mechanisms communicated a signal to the servitors. They fell into line. All of those half-human horrors had survived intact.

  Not like Freija’s troops. Three of them would lie in the dark at least until the surface battle was over, uncremated and without the rites being said.

  Arfang shot a glance toward Freija then.

  ‘We are heading back now, huskaerl,’ he said. His voice was as metallic and clipped as ever, but there was an unhideable exhaustion there. Whatever he’d been doing in that vault, it had tested him to his limits. ‘You have come through the deep dark. My servitors are intact.’

  Freija felt a surge of bitterness at that bald statement. She was surrounded by warped monsters and ghosts from the past, all of whom were utterly indifferent to anything but their own arcane concerns. Looking for the right words, she almost replied too curtly, which would, of course, have been a big mistake.

  Luckily for her, Arfang’s next words stopped her in her tracks. He fixed her with a direct stare, though what thoughts passed behind that scarred helm-plate were, as ever, impossible to read.

  ‘Thank you,’ he rasped curtly.

  Then he turned away and stalked across the antechamber toward the tunnels. In his wake, the procession of Dreadnoughts rocked on their servos and primed to march. With a grind of long-static gears, the giant armoured hulls swayed into line. The beasts of the Underfang, still cowed by their presence, remained in the shadows, watching the ungainly progress as it unfolded.

  One of Frieja’s men came close to her.

  ‘What now, huskaerl?’ he whispered over the mission channel.

  For a moment, Freija had no idea how to reply. Then she shook off her surprise at Arfang’s brief concession to courtesy and snapped her skjoldtar into position.

  ‘Stay close, kaerl,’ she said. ‘Keep away from the beasts, but do not hinder them if they follow.’

  Freija grimaced as she recalled what they were capable of. This whole situation was too insane for words, but there was little to do but cope with it. Above all, her squad still needed leadership.

  ‘They will march, as we all do,’ she said, watching Aldr’s angular bulk fall into line amongst the other Dreadnoughts. ‘To war.’

  The Blood Claws swept back into the attack, leaping over boulders and tearing across the broken terrain. Brakk was in the forefront, his body low, weaving between incoming las-fire. Though dawn was close, it was still dark, and the slopes leading to the Sunrising Gate were lit only by the plasma fires still streaming across the shoulders of the Fang.

  ‘Tired, brother?’ inquired Helfist, coming into contact range and smashing a Prosperine soldier three metres back into his terrified comrades.

  ‘Of you, yes,’ replied Redpelt, swinging round to gun down a line of mortals before triggering his chainsword into throaty life. ‘Otherwise fine.’

  Helfist laughed, plunging through the wavering ranks and laying about him with his crackling power fist.

  ‘You’d miss me,’ he said, seizing a retreating trooper and slamming him into the ground with spine-breaking momentum, ‘if I wasn’t here.’

  ‘Like a bolt in the arse, brother,’ grunted Redpelt, dragging his blade through the torso of one victim before whirling round to take the head off another.

  Though neither would have admitted it, they were strung out. The battle had raged for hours, a terrible, meat-grinding conflict in which the Wolves had gone steadily backwards, forced towards their own ruined gates with a grim inevitability. Though the Claws had launched charge after charge, breaking the enemy with every surge, the ground could not be held. There were too many artillery columns laying down hammering curtains of fire, too many troops ready to fill the gaps.

  And too many Rubric Marines. Even as Brakk’s pack surged through their mortal opposition, more sapphire giants loomed up to meet them from the dark, their power weapons glistening in the shadows.

  ‘Traitor filth!’ roared Helfist, powering towards them as soon he saw the hated armour-profile, lacing his voice with the vitriol reserved only for fallen brothers.

  Redpelt was at his shoulder in an instant, and the two warriors crunched into the lead Rubric Marine together, slamming him back and off-balance. There was a ripple of crashes and sharp cracks as more Blood Claws launched themselves into combat, bellowing their fury with a tidal wave of fervour.

  And then Brakk was among them, heaving his power sword in huge, crushing curves. The Wolf Guard remained comm-silent as ever, but his presence was immense. He squared up to a Rubric Marine and their blades came together with a heavy, resounding clang. The twin lengths of metal danced, both of them blurred with speed, hacking and parrying with astonishing control and weight.

  Helfist and Redpelt maintained their own attack, driving the Rubric Marine back another pace. Redpelt thrust his chainsword low even as Helfist lunged high with his disruptor-field. If their adversary had been mortal, he’d have been dead in an instant. As it was, the Traitor swung his sword down to knock aside the buzzing chainblade before veering expertly away from Helfist’s heavy punch. Righting himself, the Rubric Marine then loosed a burst of bolter fire at Redpelt, hurling the Blood Claw back and out of combat.

  Helfist suddenly stood alone. For a split second he saw the face of his foe lit up by the storm. The helm-mask was ancient. Pale green witchlight bled from the lenses.

  The warrior within had fought for centuries, just as passionlessly, just as skilfully. There was something horrifying about that silent visage – the irreversible corruption of what had once been the apotheosis of humanity.

  For an instant, Helfist froze, stricken by the vision of what the Adeptus Astartes could become. His own reflection was visible in those terrible lenses.

  ‘Maleficarum!’ came a voice from close by, urgent and desperate.

  A new figure slammed into the Rubric Marine, sending it tumbling out of contact. Helfist shook his head as he recovered, burning with shame.

  It would have killed me.

  He powered back into action. Brakk had been the one who’d saved him. Isolated and out of position, the Wolf Guard now took on three Rubric Marines single-handedly, including the one who’d frozen Helfist. The old warrior fought like a berserker of old, laying about him with the dread blade Dausvjer, his charred pelts flailing. His free fist punched out, shattering the snake-mask of a Traitor as his sword carved deep into another’s armour.

  ‘Blood of Russ!’ yelled Helfist, rushing to his aid, feeling the force in his power fist explode again into roaring life.

  He arrived in time to see Brakk cut apart, his helm-plate blasted into pieces by close-range bolter-fire as the third Rubric Marine stabbed his blade in deep below the breastplate. More Traitors piled in soundlessly, hacking and slicing like butchers, as impassive in victory as they were in defeat.

  ‘Morkai!’

  Helfist burst amongst them, overcome with a flood of horror and grief. The wolf within him screamed, its jaws wide and eyes rolling. His vision went red, ringed with black, spiked stars. He forgot his training, forgot his technique, forgot everything but madness. He only felt his limbs moving, striking out with horrible, unnatural speed. He saw Rubric Marines scatter under his blows, ripped into dust-blown husks by his crushing strikes.

  Somewhere deep within, lips were pulled back from yellow teeth.

  ‘Kyr!’

  It might have been seconds, it might have been minutes. The combat claimed him, warping him into a maniacal engine of death. He killed, and killed, and killed.

  ‘Kyr!’

  The sounds of battle disappe
ared into a single roar of insanity, a continuum of bestial rage. He was the Wolf. The Wolf was him. The barrier had fallen.

  ‘Kyr!’

  A new opponent loomed up in front of him, vast as a mountain, its eyes blazing red. Helfist tensed to spring, ready to rip the monster’s throat out with his teeth, to bathe in hot blood, to drink it down and quench the burning pain...

  A vast gauntlet clamped on to his bolter-arm, holding it steady. For a second, Helfist still pressed forwards, consumed by kill-rage, lost in the frenzy of bloodletting.

  ‘Kyr. Brother. Come back.’

  The voice was firm, unyielding.

  Helfist’s vision cleared. He was restrained by a hulking Wolf Guard in gunmetal-grey Terminator plate. Tromm Rossek his helm-lenses as red as heart-blood, his chainfist ready to end him. All around the pair of them were the destroyed shells of Rubric Marines. Their armour-plates were scattered as if a hurricane had cut through the squad.

  Helfist’s blood was still pumping. The horror was still raw. The Wolf still called him back, still beckoned him into the embrace of sweet madness.

  ‘He is gone, Blood Claw. Now we withdraw. I will not see more warriors wasted under my watch.’

  The voice was thick with grief. It brooked no defiance.

  How much time had passed in that mad rage? Helfist glanced at his helm-display. His squad had been mauled. Even now, more enemy signals were closing on their position, drawn by the carnage.

  ‘If you stay, the Wolf will claim you.’

  Helfist knew it was true. He’d never been so close. Redpelt and he had laughed about the Wulfen before, cracked coarse jokes about the mad howlers when out of earshot of the Priests.

  Now he’d seen it. Now he’d seen what he could become.

  Helfist released the disruption field around his fist, and the energy crackled out. Brakk’s body lay, broken, at his feet. He had stood over it, lost in a mania of kill-urge. The frenzy had passed now, and he felt drained.

  Sick.

  He stooped and retrieved the blade Dausvjer from the Wolf Guard’s stiff grasp. It was bloodless, used only against the empty shells of Traitor Marines. This, at least, would be recovered.

  Rossek nodded in approval, then stomped away, back to the gates. All around them, the Wolves were falling back. The causeways were lost.

  Shakily, his soul harrowed with shock and misery, Helfist turned to follow the Wolf Guard. As he did so, Redpelt limped up to him. The Blood Claw’s breastplate was cracked open and punched with bolter holes. His breath was wet and rattling, as if blood still bubbled up into his mouth.

  He laid his gauntlet clumsily on Helfist’s shoulder.

  ‘Brother,’ he said.

  In the past, after conflict, the two Blood Claws had always made light of what they’d seen. It was their way, their homage to the vital energy that pulsed through their gene-enhanced veins.

  Not this time. When Redpelt spoke, the only emotion there was awe – a horrified, wary awe.

  The retreat had been well-planned, and there was no panic when it came. The kaerls broke first, streaming back to the uncertain shelter of the ruined gates, plagued by constant fire slamming into their backs. The Wolves came after them, faces turned to the enemy, firing from the waist and ready to punish any over-eager attempt to rush them. Wyrmblade’s Wolf Priests, only four in number including the old dog himself, lingered the longest, retrieving all the gene-seed they could before falling back. Long Fang squads stepped up the volume of covering ordnance, but it was painfully insufficient. The emplacements on the cliffs around the gates had mostly gone, shot-out by the volume of incoming shells and las-beams from enemy artillery positions.

  Though the vanguard of the Thousand Sons had been badly mutilated by the ferocity of the disruptive sortie, sheer pressure of numbers meant it retained cohesion. As the approaches to the massive gates were finally overrun, troop carriers ground their way to the front, disgorging yet more companies of mortal soldiers into the battlezone. In their midst strode the Rubric Marines, now in their hundreds, guided by the hidden sorcerers at their backs. With Sturmhjart and Cloudbreaker’s withdrawal, the field was clear for them once more, and glittering kine-shields arced over the advancing ranks. The storm that had done so much damage began to ebb and gust out.

  Greyloc watched as the last of his armies made the cover of the Sunrising Gate and disappeared within the Fang. He stood on an outcrop of piled stonework just under the lee of the breach. His claws still hummed with energy. Both hearts thumped, and his breath was ragged. He’d fought hard, perhaps more so than any of his warriors. As ever, the temptation had been to give in to the joy of it, to forget the strategic demands of the battle and glory in the immediate thrill of the hunt.

  I am Jarl. Such things should be beneath me now.

  Perhaps he over-compensated. He knew his reputation among the Blood Claws, and possibly strove too hard to correct the image of cold-bloodedness. If so, that was unworthy too.

  In any case, he’d given the order at last. The causeways had been emptied of his troops, and now the enemy swarmed toward the open doors of the Fang. The closest of them were only a few hundred yards distant. A price had been extracted for their assault up the slopes, but only fate would tell whether it had been enough.

  ‘How stands Bloodfire?’ Greyloc voxed calmly, watching the front ranks of the enemy sweep towards him.

  ‘Clear, Jarl,’ came Skrieya’s reply from the far side of the mountain.

  ‘Good. You have command there.’

  With a final gesture of defiance, he withdrew at last from his position and loped down into the vast maw of the gates.

  Once in cover again, he went swiftly, running from the ruined areas into the vaulted spaces of the entrance halls. Massive statues passed by in the flickering dark, stern-faced warriors of old lining the passage into the mountain. Runes of intimidation and destruction had been carved deep into the living rock above them. Never had a living foe seen those figures, nor set foot on the hallowed portals. In moments, though, hundreds of the enemy would surge past the graven images, racing to complete what they’d started on the causeways.

  No defenders would oppose them there. The halls were empty. No barricades had been raised, no fire-pits dug, no gun-emplacements mounted. As Greyloc sped into the heart of the mountain, only his heavy treads resounded from the rough floor.

  After a kilometre, the tunnel ended and Greyloc burst into a high vaulted chamber lit with roaring hearthfires. This was the division of the ways, where the single entry route running into the Fang branched off into other corridors and elevator-shafts. The great seal of Russ hung from a gigantic chain in the centre of it.

  Here the defenders waited. There was Rossek, and Cloudbreaker, and Rojk, and Wyrmblade. All stood defiant, waiting for the arrival of their lord. The surviving Wolves were there too, reloading weapons and making hasty repairs to their armour. Further back, mortal troops bustled back and forth, doing their best to meet the expectations of the unforgiving huskaerls. Stretcher-bearers went among them, hauling the wounded away from the front and deep into the heart of the citadel. Box-guns rotated into firing positions, their squat barrels locked on the arch Greyloc had just come through.

  None of those things caught Greyloc’s attention as he entered the chamber. One figure alone dominated the massive space, reducing even the Terminator-clad warriors around him to pale, child-like shadows. In the centre of the hall, directly under Russ’s seal, was the legend.

  As he laid eyes on Bjorn, Greyloc felt hope leap in his heart again.

  With no thought of honour or entitlement, he fell to his knees.

  ‘You answered the call, lord,’ he said, and there was joy in that weary voice.

  The Dreadnought lowered its claw and ponderously beckoned him to rise.

  You are Jarl Greyloc?

  ‘I am,’ said the Wolf Lord, getting to his feet.

  And you plan to make your stand here?

  As Bjorn spoke, the first sounds
of pursuit began to come down the corridor behind Greyloc, distorted by the echoing chambers beyond. There were thousands of footfalls in the distance, a crescendo of aggressive battle-cries, all from troops intent on resuming the slaughter they’d been denied by the Wolves’ retreat.

  ‘I do not.’

  Bjorn said nothing, but inclined his torso fractionally in an almost-human gesture of questioning. Greyloc smiled, and nodded to Wyrmblade.

  ‘Now, Thar,’ he said.

  The Wolf Priest took up a detonator and depressed the control rune.

  The explosions boomed out instantly. Vast fireballs erupted all along the kilometre-long tunnels, breaking the rock shells around them and caving them in. The sharp bang of detonation was quickly replaced by the vast, rolling roar of the heavy roof sections falling in, burying any invaders that had made it inside.

  A bow-wave of rubble flew into the chamber of the seal, carrying the last screams of the crushed on its wings. Outside the Fang, huge columns of black dust rose from the collapsed Bloodfire and Sunrising Gates. Loosened rocks around the portal entrances rolled down the slopes, causing havoc in the companies of soldiers preparing to follow their comrades in.

  The flanks of the mountain shook. There were a few last, grudging booms from deep within. Then the dustclouds drifted into the night, ripped into shreds by the dying stormwind.

  The Fang was sealed.

  Bjorn looked down at Greyloc. The Wolf Lord looked back.

  Nicely done, said Bjorn.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Gangava Prime. A dark world, far from its giant red star. As the solar terminator swept across the rust-red planetscape, the night-side sank deep into occlusion. There were pinpricks of artificial light all across the shadowed hemisphere, but they concentrated into a bright cluster towards the high northern latitude. Swirls of sulphur-yellow picked out a city. A vast, sprawling city.

  From the bridge of the Russvangum, Ironhelm watched the lights wink on far below. The inhabitants of that place knew that the Wolves had arrived. They had detectors, sensor-arrays and void shields raised. The entire Chapter fleet, minus the few guard-ships left on Fenris, was now in high orbit. The firepower assembled there was immense, as great as anything pulled together during the Great Scouring. Gangava had no orbital defences, but they would have been an irrelevance anyway. Lean strike cruisers and ploughshare-bowed destroyers now prowled across the void with impunity, poised to unleash Hel on the world below them.