Legacy of the Wulfen - David Annandale & Robbie MacNiven Read online

Ulrik stared at the Grey Knight. His limbs went numb with premonition.

  ‘What situation?’ asked Grimnar.

  Stern answered, and transformed Ulrik’s premonition into horror.

  CHAPTER 5

  Unveiling

  The decks of the Coldfang vibrated from the snarls. The walls thrummed with feral rage. The roars were growing louder. Hjalvard pounded down the halls of the strike cruiser, convinced he would find disaster at the guard post. The thought made his lips pull back in anger. His pulses were a double-beat of incipient battle frenzy. His skin crawled. His jaws ached as his fangs pushed further out from his gums. As he rounded the final corner, he was charging to attack.

  But the barrier held. Vintir was at his post. The door behind him was sealed. The Grey Hunter raised his power sword, but he did not run to meet Hjalvard’s rush. ‘Battle leader!’ Vintir shouted.

  Stop! Hjalvard thought. His rational mind wrestled with the beast. Stop!

  He turned at the last moment and slammed his fist into the wall, cracking the stonework. He breathed through his nose, forcing himself to move slowly, to be still. If his body calmed, perhaps his spirit would too.

  He had headed here merely on an inspection. He had almost precipitated the very disaster he had dreaded.

  The contagion is growing, he thought.

  When he felt he could speak without snarling, he faced Vintir.

  ‘All is well,’ he said, hands up as if it were Vintir and not he who had needed placating. ‘Have they tried to come through?’ he asked. Above all else, he had to keep the Wulfen off the main decks.

  ‘They are remaining below,’ said Vintir. ‘I think there have been some fights for dominance, but I believe the pack leaders are keeping them in their quarters.’

  ‘For now. And you, brother? How are you faring?’

  Vintir grunted. ‘As long as I’m not challenged…’

  Hjalvard nodded. ‘I’ve issued standing orders. No access to the Wulfen quarters, and no access to this corridor. We will keep the situation contained.’ For as long as possible, he almost added. He could only trust his coolest-headed warriors to be outside their own quarters now, let alone stand guard on this choke point. He could barely trust himself now.

  His vox bead crackled for his attention. ‘What?’ he snapped.

  ‘There are ships translating into the system, lord,’ an anxious huscarl said. ‘The Allfather’s Honour, the Alpha Fang, the Bloodfire and the Wolfborn. The Great Wolf is hailing us.’

  ‘I’m on my way,’ Hjalvard said. He looked at Vintir. ‘The fleets are returning.’

  ‘Is the hunt finished?’

  ‘Pray that it is, brother.’

  The hold below was more filled than the rest of the Space Wolves knew. It held more than just the Wulfen now.

  In the Alpha Fang’s hololith chamber, an encrypted channel opened to the five strike cruisers. Harald Deathwolf and Canis Wolfborn watched the flickering image of Hjalvard describe the situation aboard the Coldfang. The battle leader’s every word was dreaded confirmation. Harald grimaced. He had never before felt such pain at being proven correct.

  ‘We are overtaken by madness,’ Hjalvard said. ‘Already seven Grey Hunters have fallen to the curse. The transformation has taken them. They are Wulfen now.’

  ‘The mark is upon us all,’ Ulrik put in, the ancient voice hard and rasping as a glacier’s crawl. ‘The change can come to us at any time.’

  ‘In combat!’ Hjalvard protested. ‘In the heat of battle! The only struggle on the Coldfang has been between brothers! The more Wulfen come aboard, the worse it has become. Tempers are explosive. The training cages are wet with blood. I have restricted almost my entire force to quarters. My ship is a tinder box. It will take very little for it to explode.’

  Hjalvard’s tones were harsh with strain. His breath kept turning into a growl. There was a softness to some of his consonants, as if he was finding it difficult to close his lips over his fangs.

  ‘This is what I feared,’ Harald said. ‘The Wulfen are a curse.’

  There. He had made his declaration. It was no longer a supposition, no longer a warning. The danger the Wulfen presented was clear. What had yet to be revealed was the full extent of the threat.

  At his words, the hololithic figures burst into static, reformed, and burst again as the Wolf Lords shouted over each other. Ulrik the Slayer’s image remained still, dark with intensity. Egil Iron Wolf and Sven Bloodhowl, bloodied from their struggles on Mygdal Alpha and Tranquilatus, sided with Harald.

  ‘Aggression is spiking on my ship,’ Iron Wolf said.

  ‘And mine,’ said Bloodhowl.

  Grimnar spoke, silencing the others. ‘The Stormcaller subjected our kin to every test he knows, Deathwolf. I insisted on it. There is no Chaos taint here. None!’ he said.

  The image of Ulrik the Slayer nodded once, as if that was an end to the matter, but Harald had noticed a sliver of doubt in Grimnar’s voice.

  ‘Perhaps not,’ said Iron Wolf, ‘but there is something amiss. Some sickness, perhaps? My optic augurs read biochemical hyperactivity in my warriors. Their blood stirs…’

  ‘We make warp for Fenris at once,’ Grimnar thundered, cutting him off. ‘And upon our arrival, the Wulfen will fight at our side. The Space Wolves will defend our home world, and we will do so together! Do you mark that ship that has joined our formation?’

  ‘I do,’ Harald said. The grey hull of the battle-barge reflected the light of Anvarheim with a bleak purity.

  ‘Our fleet is accompanied by the Grey Knights,’ Grimnar continued as if Harald had not spoken. ‘Will you trust the encryption of this channel when the likes of them are present? Will you call our brothers cursed when they might hear? They demand we turn the Wulfen over to their tender mercies.’

  ‘Then we should do so, and excise the curse from our ranks,’ said Harald.

  Hjalvard had kept out of the debate of the Wolf Lords, but he grunted now in agreement.

  ‘No,’ said Grimnar, more quietly now. ‘We need them. Fenris needs them. Even the Grey Knights have agreed to suspend their demands for the time being.’

  ‘Then why are they here?’ Lord Iron Wolf asked.

  ‘They have offered their aid. I have accepted.’

  ‘The threat is grave then,’ Harald said. He knew it was, since Grimnar had sent the order to all vessels to return to Fenris. Harald, Iron Wolf and Bloodhowl had already been making for Anvarheim when they received the message. The rest of the Wolf Lords had to cease their hunts and return. For Grimnar to accept the Grey Knights’ offer of aid, the crisis must be extreme.

  ‘Captain Stern’s astropaths intercepted a message from the Fang,’ said Grimnar.

  ‘They did?’ said Harald.

  ‘Only they could have,’ Grimnar replied. ‘So little was left. Listen.’

  The recording played over the vox feed. The message was garbled and broken. The fragments were insufficient to permit a transcription into written language. Instead, the voices of the astropaths summoned portents through sound. They conjured symbols through the phrasing and tone. That was enough. In his mind’s eye, Harald witnessed visions of storm and collapse, of fire and of an infinity of rioting, inhuman forms.

  ‘And we would bring the Wulfen back with us?’ he protested. ‘Don’t you see, Great Wolf, the role they have played in this disaster? Fenris is attacked while we have been scattered over the Sea of Stars, in pursuit of beings who bring out the most uncontrollable side of ourselves. Will we compound our folly now?’

  ‘They saved your life, Lord Deathwolf,’ Ulrik said.

  Yes, Harald thought. Twice. He was mindful of his debt. Each word he spoke against the Wulfen felt like a frostblade plunging into his sense of honour. There is no debt to the unclean, he reminded himself. There is no debt to the cursed. There was no comfort in those words. Even so, his greater duty was to the survival of the Space Wolves, and he would not flinch from the path he must walk. ‘What better way to be introduced
to the heart of our Chapter?’ he said.

  ‘You are wrong,’ said Ulrik. ‘They are the necessary counter to the threat. If we abandon them, we abandon Russ. If we fight without them, we invite disaster.’

  ‘Enough,’ Grimnar said. ‘The decision has been made.’

  Harald shook his head. He muted his vox bead and looked at Canis. The champion shrugged.

  ‘They fight well,’ Canis said.

  ‘They do,’ Harald agreed. But for whom? he added silently.

  ‘There is more,’ said Grimnar.

  More? Harald thought. This isn’t enough?

  ‘I am unencrypting the hololith transmissions. Brother-Captain Stern warned me of something else on Vikurus. Prepare to receive pict data from the battle-barge.’

  A few moments later, Stern said, ‘You have been speaking a long time under encryption.’

  ‘We have,’ said Grimnar. His tone dared Stern to object.

  ‘The attack on Fenris is not the end game,’ Stern said, as if Grimnar had not spoken.

  The electro-missive from Stern arrived. The pict screen above the tacticarium table displayed a schematic of the galaxy.

  ‘The warp storms associated with your… kin… are not random occurrences.’

  ‘We never thought they were,’ Harald said.

  ‘You misunderstand me. Their locations are not random. The afflicted worlds were chosen for a reason.’

  The warp storms appeared on the schematic, a disease of whirling sigils.

  ‘Look,’ Stern said.

  More data was added to the maps. With the exception of the warp-struck worlds, the galaxy faded into the background. Lines appeared, connecting the storms. Harald squinted. Even in this form, the pattern was an assault. A coil of tendrils looped from Atrapan to Hades Reach, split to grasp Irkalla and Dragos in jagged talons, fused once more to pierce Spartha IV. On and on the lines went, from world to world, a foul unveiling. A symbol came into being on the pict screen. The image shook. Static ate into the galaxy, though the lines remained strong. They vibrated. They began to pull free of the screen itself.

  Then the data feed terminated. The pict vanished.

  ‘The complete symbol is dangerous even as the most basic schematic,’ Stern said. ‘And it is being drawn over the breadth of the galaxy.’

  ‘What is it?’ Harald asked.

  ‘It is vengeance.’

  ‘You’ve encountered it before?’

  ‘Records of it. No one in the Imperium has seen it for ten thousand years.’

  Ten thousand years. The past again, forever reaching out, forever clawing the present.

  ‘And when was it seen then?’ said Harald. The question was ceremonial. In the depths of his soul, he knew the answer.

  ‘It was only ever used by the sorcerers of Prospero.’

  Harald reached out to the blank screen. He slashed a finger across it as if he could disrupt the vanished pattern. As if he could destroy the pattern coming into being across the Imperium, and even now devouring the worlds of Fenris.

  The symbol was the signature of the Crimson King.

  PART 3:

  THE RITUAL

  CHAPTER 6

  Planetfall

  Frostheim and its moon, Svellgard.

  Midgardia.

  And then Valdrmani, the Wolf Moon. The enemy was on the doorstep of Fenris itself.

  The system cried out for its saviours. Krom heard. Held by his oath, he could do nothing.

  Frostheim fell into its infernal silence, but Svellgard howled before it followed. The vassals garrisoning the World Wolf’s Lair saw the seas vomit up millions of daemons. They had a brief moment to call out to Fenris, to give voice to their horror, before they were swallowed up.

  Krom heard. He could do nothing.

  Midgardia was the inverse twin of Fenris. Where Fenris was glacial, Midgardia was a hothouse. Fenris’ winds blew with bone-scraping purity, whereas Midgardia’s air was foetid and thick with spores. Fenris permitted only the hardiest, most brutal of life forms to survive on its surface but Midgardia was a lush, fungal jungle, an explosion of life in such super-abundance that it was a riot of all-consuming competition. The population of Fenris was sparse. The people of Midgardia were many. When the warp rifts opened in the air and below the ground, unleashing the daemonic hordes on the surface of the cities and in their subterranean warrens, the massacre was not over in an instant. There was time for the Ruinous Powers to savour their work. There was time for Midgardia’s militia to attempt a defence, and so there was time to experience the death of all hope. The population of Midgardia screamed as it was overcome. The scream was the death cry of millions. It resounded across the Fenris System. It was compounded of such horror and agony and fear that it seemed as if it should send the very Wolf’s Eye into eclipse.

  Krom heard. He could do nothing.

  And Valdrmani. Like Frostheim, it fell quiet. There was a different quality to its silence, however. Frostheim went down first, and when the rifts opened across the system, it was clear the ice world had been the start of the attack. Valdrmani went down at the same time as Svellgard and Midgardia. There was only the briefest of cries, suddenly cut off. Or, it seemed, contained. Communications were dead between Fenris and Frostheim. But the astropathic choir of the Fang detected something in the aether of Valdrmani. The silence was tense, stretched to the breaking point. Something was building up, and when the silence could no longer contain what grew, the scream would dwarf all others.

  Verthandi, mistress of the astropathic choir of Fenris, came to Krom and told him what was sensed, and what was to come.

  Krom heard. He could do nothing.

  He patrolled the defences of the Fang. The Drakeslayers stood on high alert, ready to destroy the enemy when it came to Fenris. They longed to take the battle to the daemons, but to where? To which world first?

  No rifts had opened on Fenris. Krom saw, in the sparing of the Space Wolves’ home world, the lineaments of a trap. The agony of the other worlds tested him. The need to storm to their aid threatened to tear him in half. But his failure on Alaric Prime held him to his oath; he would not abandon his post and see Fenris devoured by the daemonic as the rifts opened, mocking his pride and his arrogance.

  He pushed the astropaths beyond their limits. It was the only action open to him. Grimnar and the other Wolf Lords must know what had been heard on Fenris. They had to be recalled. The choir sent out the call. It was torn to shreds by the rifts. No aetheric communication could leave the system. Even vox transmissions no longer worked, except over limited distances.

  Impossibility was a poor excuse. The message must be sent. Astropaths died, the blood of their minds pouring from their eyes and ears.

  ‘We cannot,’ Verthandi told Krom. She could barely walk now. She was supported by serfs on either side.

  ‘You must,’ Krom told her. ‘You will.’

  When he was not on the ramparts, he stood in the shadows of the stone gallery above the choir, bearing witness to their efforts. He saw the cost of what he demanded. He saw a form of heroism different from the battlefield glory he and his brothers knew. It was no less real. The astropaths were the only active combatants on Fenris. He watched them with respect and envy.

  There was no way to know if any of their efforts were successful. There were no messages that arrived from outside the system. There was only the wait for the return of the hunters. The hope they would hear. And the endless, grinding frustration.

  Krom waited. He stood fast. And while he kept faith with his oath, the worlds of the Fenris System screamed.

  The wolves returned to the fold in fury. The individual fleets had purged world after world in the hunt for the Wulfen. Now they arrived as one, descending with all their might on a single system. Their own home.

  But the Fenris System was no longer theirs.

  The ships translated from the warp, yet the warp did not leave them. It was here, in the rifts unleashing infinite foulness on their worlds. The fleet e
merged from the Mandeville point at the edge of the system. Even with the ships in close proximity, vox communication was growing difficult. Attempts to make contact with the home world failed. Assembling a coherent picture of the situation was difficult. It was not impossible, however. The aetheric disturbances caused by the rifts over the occupied worlds were so severe that there was no doubt where the fury of the wolves would be directed.

  ‘We shall make simultaneous strikes,’ Grimnar announced in the hololith chamber of the Allfather’s Honour. ‘The Firehowlers will retake Svellgard. The Deathwolves, Frostheim. Lord Iron Wolf, together your company and the Kingsguard are bound for Midgardia.’ Every sentence the Great Wolf spoke resounded in the chamber like the beat of a huge war drum. The Great Wolf’s frame seemed to vibrate from the horror and rage within.

  Ulrik shared the wrath. No words could encompass the crime that had occurred. No words could describe the punishment that was coming.

  The Great Wolf paused. He exchanged a look with Ulrik. The High Wolf Priest knew what Grimnar would say next. All the Wolf Lords did. Their hololithic images were still. They waited for the blow to their pride.

  When Grimnar spoke again, his voice was no less resonant than it had been before. If he must make this request, it would be done with power. ‘Brother-Captain Stern,’ Grimnar said. ‘We would be grateful for your aid in purging Valdrmani.’

  ‘It shall be done,’ Stern voxed.

  ‘And the Wulfen?’ Lord Deathwolf asked.

  ‘To each strike force, a murderpack.’

  ‘We risk having our companies consumed by frenzy from within.’

  ‘It is done!’ Grimnar roared. ‘We will use every weapon and every warrior to reclaim our worlds. Chaos seeks to weaken us. We will counter it with unity. We will not deny any brother the honour of fighting to reclaim our system.’

  ‘Lord Deathwolf,’ Ulrik said. ‘The Wulfen have not been brought to us by Chaos. They have returned to us to fight this greatest threat.’

  ‘I hope you are right, Slayer,’ Deathwolf replied. ‘We will know very soon.’

  Beneath sleep, above death, the giant daemon on the ramparts.