War of the Fang - Chris Wraight Read online

  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 exp
ression, 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.

  His violet eyes gazed down on the script. He knew what was written there. He knew what was written in all the books still possessed by the Legion. Only Ahriman, perhaps, had delved deeper, and he was gone.

  ‘You should not have strayed, brother.’

  Temekh spoke aloud, feeling the shape of the words slip around his cultured lips. He spoke in Telapiye, the xenos language of the book’s long-dead authors. Even with his superhuman control of musculature, he couldn’t recreate the full range of sounds necessary – for that, he’d have needed two tongues, each with more prehensile range than his own. Still, that even his rough approximation was heard in the universe was something. Since the last of the telap had been exterminated, it was entirely possible that Ahmuz Temekh was the only speaker of the million-year-old dialect left.

  A faint chime rang out from the corridor outside Temekh’s private lexicanum. He felt a flicker of irritation, quickly quelled. Aphael was only doing his job.

  ‘Come.’

  As he spoke, a panel in the darkened chamber withdrew silently and slid open. The prakasa swelled into more light and their beams swept around the room, showing up the eclectic contents. A hauxx writing desk from Karellion, an aquarium of feldspar crystal populated with sparkling cichlids, a wraithbone sword-holder from the extinguished Saim-Arvuel craftworld.

  So many trinkets. On ancient Terra, they’d have called him a jackdaw.

  ‘Still reading, brother?’

  Herume Aphael ducked as he entered the lexicanum. He was arrayed in full battle-armour, which made him a half-metre taller than Temekh. His plate was deep blue, decorated with bronze swirls at the joints; only his bald, smooth head was exposed. The pyrae sorcerer-lord spent much of his time in armour these days, and Temekh couldn’t recall when he’d last seen him without it.

  ‘There’s plenty of time,’ Temekh replied, putting the book down on the desk in front of him.

  Aphael grunted, and stood opposite him. He was emanating impatience. There was no surprise in that – they were always impatient, his kind. That was the gift of their order, and what Magnus continued to value them for.

  ‘Why are you here, brother?’ asked Temekh, not wanting to waste the precious days before system-fall made anything but thoughts of combat impossible.

  ‘What are you reading?’ countered Aphael, looking at the book with distrust.

  ‘Nothing of value to the current campaign. The authors’ light has been taken from the universe. By Angron, I believe – one of his many exercises of tolerance.’

  Aphael shrugged. ‘He’s as barbaric as the Dogs, but keep your mind focused on the matter at hand.’

  ‘It is, I assure you.’

  ‘You would do well to assure me. You’ve become distant.’

  ‘If I have, it is in your imagination.’

  Aphael smiled without humour. ‘And you’d know all about that.’

  The pyrae shook his head. As the flesh moved against the interface nodes in his armour’s neck-guard, Temekh could see the puckering, the slight reflectiveness. Was that an early sign, a giveaway symptom?

  Oh, no. Not you too.

  ‘In any case, the assault plans are now advanced,’ Aphael said. ‘You should join the command group, or your absence will cause more comment among the conclave.’

  At that, Temekh let his mind detach briefly from the physical, abstracting himself into a local vector within the immaterium. From his privileged vantage he saw the fleet around them as it powered through the warp. Strike cruisers, bristling with weapons, readied for the orbital war to come. Behind them, vast troop ships, crammed with thousands upon thousands of mortals bearing the single eye on their breastplates.

  And in the holds of the great battleships were the rubricae, Ahriman’s creations. They waited, silently, animated by nothing but the wills of those who led them. They would feel no hate against the Dogs as they killed them, the ones who had reduced them to their state of eternal, silent horror. For them, the years since the Betrayal were a nothing. Even for Temekh and the others who had retained their souls, mere decades had passed since Prospero had been sacked, whatever else might have happened in the universe of mortals. For Magnus’s children, the wounds were still raw, still weeping.

  He relaxed, and his soul snapped back to its physical bounds.

  ‘The fleet is in good order,’ he said. ‘You are to be congratulated.’

  ‘I don’t need your approval. I need you on the bridge.’

  Temekh bowed his head.

  ‘I will come, then. And we will refine the instruments of our revenge together.’

  Aphael frowned at Temekh’s weary tone.

  ‘Do you not wish to see them burn, brother? Do you not relish the pain we will cause them?’

  Temekh almost replied with the words he had been reading a few moments ago.

  There is a symmetry of pain in revenge. When a man will not withdraw his emotion from those whom he wishes to destroy, then even in victory he destroys nothing but a part of himself.

  ‘Causing them pain will not bring back Tizca,’ he said, gazing absently at the cichlids as they darted through the weeds of the aquarium. ‘But if we have been so diminished that our only remaining satisfaction is in their destruction, then it will have to do.’

  His violet eyes flickered back up to look at his comrade.

  ‘So they will burn, brother,’ he said bleakly. ‘They will burn in ways they do not even begin to comprehend.’

  Only to himself, silently and within the privacy of his psychically shielded mind, did he complete the sentence.

  And so will we.

  Freija Morekborn had the Blood Claw by the throat, and she wasn’t letting go.

  ‘Damn you,’ she spat, before landing her knuckles on his slabbed, stupid face, breaking teeth and splitting skin. The Sky Warrior looked up at her blearily, arms limp. ‘Show. Some. Respect.’

  ‘Daughter!’

  Freija heard the voice from far away, interrupting her dreaming. Somewhere deep in her subconscious, irritation stirred. She was enjoying this one.

  ‘Daughter!’

  This time, her shoulder was grasped. Unwilling, grudgingly, she was shaken awake. Her last dream-image was of the broken Space Marine sinking to the floor, beaten in combat, humbled and humiliated in a way that could never happen in the waking world.
<
br />   She opened her eyes, seeing her father leaning over her. Her bedchamber was still dark, lit only by a wavering tallow candle set high into the rock walls.

  ‘What is it?’ she mumbled, shrugging off his rough hands. She could make out the familiar line of his shoulders, feel the calloused flesh on hers.

  ‘Get up,’ he said, turning from her and looking for more light.

  Freija pushed herself up from the disarranged furs of her bunk. Her sand-blonde hair fell in unruly clumps around her face. The tiny chamber was ice cold, but she ignored it. Everywhere on Fenris was ice cold.

  ‘What’s going on?’

  Morek Karekborn managed to find a working glowsphere and sent it spinning up into the air. A thin grey light flooded across the untidy space. His blunt, honest face was thrown into stark relief, and the worry lines around his eyes looked deeper than ever.

  ‘Change of plan,’ the old warrior said, running a tired hand over his cropped head. ‘The Eleventh has been called off-world. We’re back on duty.’

  ‘Skítja,’ Freija swore, rubbing her eyes and trying to banish the heavy weight of sleep. ‘Again?’

  ‘Don’t question it. Just get into uniform.’

  Freija looked at her father with concern. Morek was a rivenmaster, leader of five hundred kaerls of the Aettguard. His duties drove him hard, and he drove himself harder. He had the shadows of long-term fatigue in his face.

  They’re killing him, she thought. And they don’t even know it.

  ‘We’ve just come off rotation,’ she protested, swinging her legs from the hard bunk and staggering over to the grey tunic thrown across the floor. ‘There are other detachments that could do this.’

  Morek leaned against the wall.