War of the Fang - Chris Wraight Read online

  Kjarlskar smiled grimly. He had made an oath, and that was more sacred to him than every rune-stone in the Fang.

  ‘Muster all that remain of the Guard,’ he told Svart, gauging where best to launch the fresh attack. They would have to break out, somehow trying to hit the Rubric Marines before they were able to form an insurmountable barrier. ‘This will be bloody, but if we clear the path to him they will be singing our saga for a thousand years.’

  Svart bowed and turned away, voxing for his battle-brothers. Just as he did so, the Thunderhawks swung round on their smog-thick columns of downdraft and powered northwards, heading over to where Ironhelm still crashed against the distant enemy positions.

  Kjarlskar’s expression hardened. Those assets had been given to him to offset the support Ironhelm had drawn from the land-based armour. Without them, he was even more exposed.

  ‘This will not–’ he began, speaking out-loud, when the heavens above him suddenly ripped open amid a corona of flame.

  Drop pods slammed down, cracking into the cityscape ahead. Each one was perfectly aimed, sent right into the thickest concentrations of traitors, crushing many under the furnaces of their retro-thrusters. They were steel-grey, rimmed with yellow and black chevrons and bearing the sigils of Arkenjaw’s Twelfth Great Company.

  One drop pod crashed to earth just below Kjarlskar’s position, and immediately burst open in a riot of silver flame. Sturmhjart’s outraged voice boomed out from the heart of it, rivalling the arcane screams on the air, and the howl of stormwind surged in his wake.

  By then Kjarlskar was moving too. ‘To me, brothers!’ he bellowed, leading the charge down from the heights and into the morass below. The percussive background of bolter fire became colossal, drawn from the weapons of the Space Marines as well as the turrets of the drop pods.

  His company answered the summons, and surged down the slope. They hit the first rank of the Rubric Marines, crashing into them like a toppling swell of the grey seas. Caught between Arkenjaw’s and Kjarlskar’s forces, the sapphire lines wavered, buckled and then broke. The Rubric Marines, those not slain in the first assault, fell back steadily, managing to reap a tally even as they were forced northwards.

  By the time Kjarlskar located Arkenjaw, the southern approaches to the city were finally in the hands of the Wolves and its defenders moved northwards in disarray.

  ‘I will not deny it, brother,’ said Kjarlskar, leaning on his blade and panting hard. ‘That was timely.’

  The jarl of the Twelfth glared back at him. Even under his helm, the old lord’s anger was palpable.

  ‘You fool, Arvek,’ he hissed. ‘Ironhelm may damn himself with this insanity, but there is no cause for you to be here with him.’

  ‘I swore an oath,’ countered Kjarlskar, as if there were no need to say more.

  Ahead of them, the joint Wolf Guard packs were carving a trail northwards, hacking and blasting against a regathering wall of solid defence.

  ‘He has overreached himself this time,’ Arkenjaw said. ‘You can see it now – this place is drenched in sorcery, and his blades will not avail him.’

  ‘The pyramid is the target.’

  ‘And what if it is?’ demanded Arkenjaw, exasperated. ‘If we are unable to slay the servants, what chance have we against the master? Here is the only course – we fight to him, we drag him back, we salvage what we can of this Hel-spawned foolery. Then this never happens again. Oaths be damned – his nightmares will ruin us all.’

  Kjarlskar looked for a moment as if he wished to protest. The tactical situation was still perilous – Arkenjaw had given them a chance to extract themselves, but the balance would turn again soon.

  ‘So be it,’ said Kjarlskar, readying himself again for battle. ‘We can still reach him.’

  Arkenjaw unstrapped his weapon – a long-handled axe – and took his place beside Kjarlskar. The twin Wolf Lords together, cast under skies of madness, their rune-carved armour glinting from the swirling rain, stalked back towards the front.

  ‘The lifters are now summoned,’ said Arkenjaw grimly. ‘By the Allfather, let us hope they do not come too late.’

  Ironhelm charged up the long causeway. He could sense the weight of sorcery concentrated ahead, swelling like a tumour within the pyramid’s open corpse. The winds shrieked down, the elements tearing his pelts from his armour, but still that was the greatest horror.

  He knew, more certainly than he had ever known anything in his long life of war, that he was in there, observing, collecting himself, contemplating the shape of battle. Just as he must have done on Prospero before the end, the Master of Sorcery watched his thralls being slaughtered by the Sons of Fenris, and waited until the very end to show his true form.

  The Great Wolf was slaying with abandon now. The last of his tactical awareness was long gone, consumed by the burning need to fight his way to the summit, to take on the presence that had stalked his dreams for more than a mortal lifetime.

  ‘I will break you!’ he cried, and his voice was wild, almost the voice of another.

  Snatches of comm-bursts snagged at him, voxed from those of his company still within range. He was leaving them behind. Even Trask and Frei – they were too slow, too mired in the grind of conquest. Only he, the heir to Bjorn, the heir to Russ, had the physical command to shatter the final seal, to reach the pinnacle and enter the sanctum of the most damned.

  Ahead of him, vast in the churning storm, loomed golden gates. Their capitals were carved with words he could not read, and the arch was broken. Beyond the gates lay the pyramid itself, still laced with raw fulguration, thrust up into the heavens like a spear shivered into the earth.

  He raced on, never losing pace. He could feel the malign presence ahead loosening, shifting, preparing to slink back into whatever realm it had oozed from.

  ‘You will face me!’ he shouted, bursting through the remnants of the gate and breaking into the great pyramid beyond.

  Instantly, as if a great shroud had been lifted, the sounds of carnage stopped. The rain no longer fell, the air no longer screamed. The skies were dark, barred by older clouds that remained static. The dust at his feet was a thick muck, clotted with blood.

  He turned and saw the broken gate framing the world he had left. The violet skies were still there, as was the battle, raging as violently without him as it had done with him in it.

  He looked back. The interior of the pyramid was vast, a haunt of echoes and deep occlusion. Books were strewn across the floor, whole ranks of them, torn down from the iron cases in which they had been stored. Amid the blood and the dust were long white feathers, like quills, though most were broken and all were trampled.

  Ironhelm crept forward, keeping his blade in hand. His footfalls resounded from the high vaults. Above him, the dark skies brooded. He only halted when he reached the centre, where four burned spars angled up towards a shattered apex. No other soul stirred, and the residue of aeons lay about him.

  Ironhelm circled warily, sensing enormous power thrumming under the flagstones. It was cold, bitterly cold, but there was no escaping it – something was there with him, watching him, observing every move he made.

  ‘Show yourself!’ Ironhelm roared, and the words echoed over and over before dying away.

  With a cold twinge in his stomach, he guessed the truth. He was too late. The power he sensed was an echo, just as those of his own voice were echoes. The fight had taken too long, they had been forced to cut their way through too many of the silent traitors, and that had given their lord time to withdraw. If the master had once made this world his fortress, he had now abandoned it. There would be no duel here, not as Ironhelm had dreamed of.

  ‘I name you craven!’ he accused, pointing the tip of his sword towards the pyramid’s crown. ‘I name you Lord of Cowards!’

  Then, furious and frustrated, he stalked back the way he had come. For a moment, he doubted whether anything had ever been there at all, but then his eyes ran over the tumbled bookcases, and h
e saw the final mockeries. Every fallen book had the Eye engraved on its cover. Their titles were the names of worlds – ones he had conquered, ones he had visited on the hunt, ones he had heard tell of in his dreams.

  Among the piles of books were the artefacts. He recognised them all – the jewelled dagger from Pravia he had seized from the cult-nests, the broken axe-blade from Daggaegghan which had borne the mark of Prospero. There, impossibly, was the gorget-fragment from Arvion. And there, next to it, was the old man’s cloak. It was as stained with grime as it had been fifty years ago, still stitched roughly from the same multi-coloured scraps of cloth. Now the cowl was empty, and the emaciated body that had filled it on the world with no name had long since gone.

  You do not even know what he looks like, but you hear him in the deep of the night, and the voice is enough.

  Ironhelm laughed. He pushed back his head, stared up at the darkness, and let slip a cynical mirth. It poured out of him, bitter as gall, rendered empty by his helm’s filters.

  He kicked the robes, and they crumbled into ash beneath his boot.

  ‘All this, then, for nothing?’ Ironhelm demanded, addressing the shadows. ‘You bring me here, you invest in this artifice, for no reward? I am here! You want me, you come for me!’

  A cold wind sighed through the chamber, stirring the filth that clogged the old stone floor. As the tattered books turned over, their pages rustling, something like a pale whisper picked up strength. The whisper grew until words emerged within it. The voice was like no human voice, but in it could be heard all those he had slain, overlapping, merged, choral.

  What makes you think – softly, barely audible – that I brought the Wolves to Heliosa – now dying away, ebbing – for you?

  Ironhelm stood rigid, struck by the words.

  It had always been about him. It was he who had suffered the dreams, who had sworn the oaths. It was he who had been gifted the strength and the power to bring low the primarch. It was he who the Rune Priests had made prophecy of, and with whom the fate of the Crimson King had been bound.

  Who else could it be?

  Then he was running, tearing through the ancient aisles, smashing aside the broken bookcases and making for the gate again. He could see the storm under the archway, still raging, still flared with dire magicks.

  And he knew then that he was too far away. He would always be too far away. And whatever happened now, whatever deeds he was destined to accomplish in whatever future he would live to see, the knowledge of that would always be with him.

  The lifters came down, their hulls crackling with chain lightning as they forged through the storm. Every atmospheric gunship in the holds of the battleships above had been dispatched, and they flew low, escorting the wide-bellied orbital craft as they came into land.

  Pulling an army clear of a planet was far harder than dropping one on it, especially when it was outnumbered and outgunned and fighting hard to stay alive. Arkenjaw and Kjarlskar had crashed their way north towards the causeway in tandem, driving all before them through sheer force of will. Sturmhjart had come with them, summoning the full majesty of the storm, wreathed in hurricanes of lashing energy.

  It would only be a temporary respite. All they could hope to achieve was to link up with the beleaguered bulk of Ironhelm’s company, secure enough of a cordon to allow the lifters to make planetfall, and then stage a fighting retreat while the silent hordes closed in on the narrowing circle.

  In defiance of all expectation, they had achieved the first stage. Arkenjaw fought like a jarl of old, the weight of ages falling from his arms as he wielded his axe. Kjarlskar was similarly immense, still in the prime of his warrior’s life and as fierce as the ice-rain of his home world. Frei saw them coming, and with the departure of his jarl realised at last the hopelessness of what they were attempting. He pulled the First back from the causeway, and the two battered halves of the Wolves’ strike force hammered and blasted their way towards one another, aiming for the circular courtyard below the causeway’s mouth.

  The Rubric Marines came after them, catching the slowest and dragging them down under the massed tread of sapphire boots. Their deadliness had not diminished, and now, buried deep in whatever awareness they still possessed, they sensed victory over the hated enemy. The fighting never ceased, not for a moment. Helms were cracked, lenses were smashed, bolter-chambers were emptied and axe-edges were worn blunt against the carcasses of broken armour. From all corners of the city, more traitors pushed themselves up from their hidden vaults, their eyes lit with a fell fire and their lips sealed by the curse that gave them their eldritch power.

  By the time the courtyard had been reached, the first of the lifters was already nearing ground level. Kjarlskar took command of the southern perimeter, ordering what remained of the artillery to give what cover they could. Sturmhjart, Svart and the other Wolf Guard of the Fourth held the line there, giving time for the rest of the company to make for the orbital landing craft.

  Arkenjaw, Greyloc and Rossek forged north, aiming to relieve the retreating forces of the First and give them something like a defence line to pull back behind. The Twelfth were fresh to the battlefield, and charged the enemy with unmatched energy, cutting a road for the exhausted First to fall back along.

  Frei was the last to withdraw from the causeway, pursued by the ever-present squads of Traitor Space Marines. He met Arkenjaw under the low contrails of missile batteries – Kjarlskar’s Long Fangs giving a final salvo to clear a fractional space before the close combat resumed again.

  ‘Where is he?’ cried Arkenjaw, his helm near-riven in two and his axe-handle streaked with his own blood.

  ‘I know not,’ rasped Frei, carrying deep wounds of his own. ‘He would not be halted. He was slaying them alone.’

  Arkenjaw gestured for Greyloc and Rossek to push the defensive perimeter back. More lifters came down, thundering on main thrusters and sending columns of smoke tumbling over the ground below.

  ‘He must be recovered,’ Arkenjaw said. ‘He must be made to see what he has done.’

  Frei staggered, falling to one knee. His staff was broken. ‘There was something here,’ he insisted. ‘We were close…’

  Arkenjaw snorted in derision. ‘Then you too are lost.’

  He strode out, heading north, flanked by the packs of his company. Behind him, lit up by the twisting beams of las-fire, the first lifters were taking off. Thunderhawks circled them, running through drums of ammunition just to maintain something like a defence of the retreat.

  The last of Ironhelm’s forces were now within the cordon, which contracted as ever more Wolves were taken up into orbit. Rubric Marines closed in, pressing every advantage, slaying all who remained in their path. Arkenjaw was soon surrounded, and had to work hard not to be overwhelmed. The passage north became clogged, the streets full of advancing traitors.

  For a moment longer, Arkenjaw held his ground, desperate to see some sign of Ironhelm coming towards him. If any one of them had the power to carve his way single-handedly through the enemy host, then it was the Great Wolf.

  Eventually, though, the pressure became too great. His warriors began to fall, hurled back by the impossible numbers, and he gave the order.

  ‘Pull back!’ he cried, swinging his axe-blade wide to clear himself one last metre of space before the gap closed. ‘To the lifters!’

  His warriors obeyed the command. Fighting all the way, never turning their backs, they ceded ground, knowing that every sacrifice they made gave precious more time for those who were destined to survive.

  Arkenjaw retreated with them. His axe swung like a mighty pendulum, cracking open the shells of those who reached for him. The only blood on it was his own, from the rents and bolter-impacts that now peppered his battleplate.

  His movements became sluggish. With alarm, he realised that he was falling behind – his brothers were retreating back to the last line of lifters, their passage covered by continuing waves of fire from the gunships, but he could not m
atch the pace. It was as if his limbs were plunged into tar, and soon he was cut off entirely, ringed by enemies.

  ‘To me!’ he roared, trying to summon both energy for himself and to give warning to his company that they had outpaced him, but the words were blurred as they left his lips. His limbs went cold, and an icy smoke coiled up from the ground under his feet. Too late, he tasted the acrid burn of maleficarum, and sensed the presence of more than just automata around him.

  He whirled, driving his muscles as fast as the crushing weight would let him, only to see a towering figure standing before him. Unlike the mute Rubric Marines, this one was clad in flowing robes that shifted and reflected the burning light of the skies. His helm was crowned with a rearing serpent, and he carried a long staff, bound with gold.

  The sorcerer bowed to him, and inclined the staff by a hand’s breadth. The Rubric Marines now circled around Arkenjaw, moving as one, their blades wreathed in fresh tongues of sorcerous flame.

  Arkenjaw roared out his fury, and met the charge. The deadening mass of sorcery pulled on his arms, but still he swung the axe. The traitors were smashed apart, their armour-plates flying clear as the force that knit them was ripped apart. Two were annihilated, a third was crippled. Then two more felt the cut of the axe, their helms cracked open. With every kill, Arkenjaw cried out aloud, defying the fell cantrips that pulled him ever earthwards. More Rubric Marines were shattered, until the empty armour ringed him, heaped knee-high. Arkenjaw slew like a chieftain of old, his axe flying, his voice cracking with denunciations.

  It was glorious, but it could not last. The sheer numbers told in the end – a blade broke his guard, another sliced across his back, a third jabbed in at his legs. With the first strikes landed, the end came quickly – the sapphire automata piled in, smothering him, dragging his arms down and pushing their own blades into his hearts.