War of the Fang - Chris Wraight Read online

‘It will be done,’ he said, turning to leave. As he went, he walked with less of a swagger than normal.

  ‘He feels his failure,’ said Greyloc once the Rune Priest had left.

  ‘He shouldn’t,’ said Wyrmblade bluntly. ‘You know who’s directing this, and the one who left us open to it is not on Fenris.’

  ‘We will endure. Did any of the ships break the blockade?’

  ‘The last, Blackwing’s ship, was destroyed ramming the enemy. We are alone.’

  Greyloc drew in a long breath. He lifted his gauntlet up and gazed at it for a moment. The armoured fist was scored with many wounds, all inflicted as he’d crunched it into the bodies of his enemies over countless engagements. He looked at it long, as if trying to conjure up some power locked within it.

  ‘Packs will disrupt the landings,’ he said at last. ‘They will not set foot on Fenris unopposed. In time, we will have to meet them here, and I will need you then, priest. I will need you to keep the mortals strong.’

  Wyrmblade nodded.

  ‘They will not falter. But the Tempering–’

  ‘I know. Do not let it cloud your judgement. The whole Aett will require your fire.’

  Wyrmblade looked like he was going to say something else, then backed down. The pooling shadows under his eyes were dark as he bowed.

  ‘It will be so, Jarl. And when they get here, they will learn what that fire can burn.’

  Greyloc nodded.

  ‘That they will, priest,’ he said. ‘I will count on it.’

  The space above Fenris was conquered. Aphael felt warm satisfaction flood through his body. He hadn’t felt this good since... well, there had been many strange sensations over the decades, some of them more recent than others.

  He sat on the command throne of the Herumon’s bridge, his crested helm removed and lying in his lap, and watched the last of the Wolves’ debris drift planetward before being consumed by the re-entry. He’d lost more ships than he’d planned, but none of the troop carriers had been touched. He briefly contemplated the contents of those massive vessels, reflected on what they could do and how many of them there were, and felt a further glow of satisfaction.

  ‘Lord, blockade has been achieved,’ came a voice from below.

  A Spireguard captain stood to attention on the golden steps leading up to the control pulpit. Aphael looked down at him with amusement. He hadn’t felt this good for weeks.

  ‘Do you know why you’re called Spireguard, captain?’

  ‘Lord?’

  ‘Answer me.’

  The man looked confused.

  ‘That is my designation.’

  Aphael laughed.

  ‘And you have no further curiosity? My friend Temekh would be disappointed. To blindly accept what you are given is not our way – it is the way of those we punish.’

  The man looked fearful for a second, swallowing against the strap of his tall golden helm.

  ‘There was a place once,’ Aphael explained, letting his mind’s eye wander. ‘There were real spires, watched over by thousands of men such as you. Many thousands.’

  He looked back at the captain. The man was nothing like a Prosperine warrior. He was short, wiry, with hard, pale skin. All of his comrades were the same. They’d been taken from high-altitude worlds and conditioned for the extreme cold, and when they went into action they’d be wearing heavy plate armour, masks and rebreathers, not breastplates of burnished gold and crimson. Fenris was not a place that rewarded elegance in war.

  ‘Forgive me. These things were not long ago, at least as I see it.’

  The captain waited patiently. They all did, these new mortals. A thousand cults, on a hundred worlds of the proud Imperium, now drawn together to create the Last Host, the bringers of revenge. They’d been taught that the Thousand Sons sorcerers were gods, heralds of a new dawn of learning and enlightenment amid the darkening shadows of ignorance and blind faith.

  We were, once. We really were.

  ‘You may prepare for the landings,’ Aphael said then, turning to more prosaic matters. ‘Position the carriers over the Ph’i sector and take your orders from Hett. Are the bombardment flotillas in place?’

  ‘They are, lord.’

  ‘Good. They may commence when ready. And what of the interceptor? The one that broke the blockade?’

  The captain signalled his regret with hesitation.

  ‘It made the jump-point before we were able to run it down, lord. But it will be destroyed before it reaches Gangava, as the fates will it.’

  Aphael raised a quizzical eyebrow.

  ‘The Illusion of Certainty had a squad of rubricae onboard, led by Lord Fuerza.’

  ‘This matters how?’

  ‘The Dog vessel’s shields were down as it passed through the wreckage. For a microsecond, I am informed, there was transporter activity.’

  ‘You’re certain of this?’

  ‘No, lord. The augur records are incomplete. But the Lord Fuerza is a skilled master of the technology.’

  ‘That he is. Go back and find more detail – much may rest on it.’

  The captain bowed and retreated back down the steps. Across the cathedral-like space of the bridge, other crew members went about their business quietly and efficiently. There were faint echoing taps across the marble floor as white-clad orderlies handed data-slates to Spireguard on duty. Sweeping lines of bronze edged the tall realspace windows, all fashioned from transparent yyeminacrystals. The hum of the Herumon’s engines was low and sonorous, blending into the myriad other soft sounds of competence.

  Aphael swept his gaze across the scene, running through the itinerary to be completed before he would join his forces on Fenris. The curve of the planet itself hung low in the port-nadir viewers, looking untroubled despite the carnage unleashed across its upper atmosphere.

  Then he felt it again, the urgent itching. The skin across his neck rippled and he snapped his head back. Sweat broke out across his body, clad as it was in robes of silk and sapphire armour.

  He looked around watchfully, checking to see if anyone had noticed. The crew carried on unperturbed.

  Gingerly, fingers moving slowly, he ran his hand up to the nape of his neck, feeling around the tender flesh where the collar of his armour rubbed against skin.

  It was getting worse. There were spines there, and the beginnings of some curls of soft matter.

  Feathers. Sweet Magnus, feathers.

  He withdrew his hand and set his jaw. He could combat this. The Rubric made them immune, and he was one of the warriors, the pyrae, strongest in body and least exposed to the warping of the Great Ocean.

  Temekh must not see it, though. Above all, Temekh must not see it. It was time to don his helm again in any case. Combat would not be far away, and it reinforced the distance between him and the mortals.

  ‘I loathe you,’ he hissed suddenly, curling his bronzed lip at the realspace viewers where Fenris hung, cold and inviolate. ‘This is what you have forced us to become. This is what you have made us.’

  He rose from his throne, taking his helm in his fist, ignoring the crew around him, his blue eyes going flat. His moods seemed to change so quickly.

  ‘You will seek to purge your own corruption, and you will fail,’ he breathed. ‘We will prevent you. We will leave you crippled, as we are. We will leave you broken, as we are. And when the Time of Ending comes, as it must do, you will be weak and alone in the face of the Annihilator.’

  He bowed his head then, wondering, just for a moment, where his fury was really directed.

  ‘As we are,’ he breathed, weakly.

  The Hall of the Fangthane was the link chamber between the Hould and the Jarlheim. It had been delved centrally, right in the inner core of the mountain and directly below the landing stages of the Valgard. One of a number of bulwark points within the Aett, it was the only route from the one region to the next. Any enemy, should they somehow make it inside the Fang at the gate level, would have to pass up through the Fangthane to
enter the higher galleries.

  In a fortress of wonders, the Fangthane had an awe-inspiring quality all of its own. Its walls soared high up into the dark, hundreds of metres, curving gently toward a roof lost in penumbral gloom. The entire populace of the Hould, hundreds of thousands of souls, could assemble in its cavernous space, filling the frozen chamber floor with the warm breath of humanity. They entered from the west, ascending the huge Stair of Ogvai, lined with its images of ancient heroes carved from the mountain-stone and lit by flickering torches.

  In the chamber itself, images of Fenris had been delved into the walls, each more than fifty metres high and adorned with the intricate knotwork that was the glory of the stone-shapers. There were symbols of the Great Companies of old – wolfsheads, broken moons, claws, axe-shafts and bleached skulls. Monumental images of Fenris’s elemental powers – the storm-spirit, the ice-bringer, the thunder-heart – were picked out in the flickering light, seeming to move in tandem with the flames and leaping shadows. Above them all were the runes, the sacred sigils that channelled the soul of the deathworld into the sphere of the living and warded against maleficarum.

  The thralls came silently to the summons, all knowing the hallowed wyrd of the place. There was none of the coarse banter that normally rang through the corridors of the Hould, the routine obscenity and throaty, growling laughter. The Wolf of the Watch, the Twelfth Great Company Jarl, had called all those who had not been drawn to arms already. Such a thing had not happened in living memory, nor in the sagas known by the thralls, nor in any rumour passed from one hearth to another, and the deathly quiet was tinged with unease.

  So the ranks of grey-clad men and women marched between the two massive granite statues of Freki and Geri that guarded the west gate, each ten metres tall at the shoulder and crouched ready to pounce. Ahead of them they saw the chamber yawn away into the distance, vaster than any cathedral, lit only by racks of blood-red fire in man-high braziers of iron. And at the far end, most brightly lit of all, there was the mightiest of all the many statues, the colossal image of Leman Russ. The size of a Warhound titan, the granite primarch gazed across the space with a snarl on his craggy features. He had his sword Mjalnar clutched in one hand; the other was clenched into a balled fist. Other primarchs might have been rendered in a more contemplative pose, but not Russ. He’d been carved by the stone-shapers as he had been in life: an engine of war, a living god, a rolling, consuming furnace of violent, focused kill-urge.

  Morek Karekborn waited in the front rank of the crowd, less then a hundred paces from the statue, feeling the reassuring weight of his skjoldtar in his hands. His riven, just under five hundred kaerls, lined the galleries all round the walls of the Hall, placed to keep order.

  His heart was still beating from the hurried progress of the muster. He’d seen the Wolves leave, had watched them stream from the Fang like grey shadows. He’d seen others fire up the Thunderhawk transporters or begin deploying the heavy armour throughout the Aett. They’d worked with quick, blunt efficiency.

  As ever, he felt the inadequacy of his mortal response. His spirit had sunk when he’d been instructed to guard the Fangthane while the muster reached completion, though he’d voiced no protest.

  There will be no battle here, no murder-make. I cannot serve the Masters within the Aett.

  He suppressed the complaint. It was unworthy. The wyrd would be interpreted by the Sky Warriors, and they had ways of reading it that were hidden from him.

  I will learn to accept it. There are other ways to serve.

  And yet, if battle was coming, he deserved the chance to stand at the forefront of it. He’d earned that, over the decades. Surely, at the least, he’d earned that.

  A huge gong sounded from ahead of him, resounding through the gigantic space and throwing echoes back and forth across it. Another sounded from the far end of the chamber, and the stone beneath his feet vibrated.

  What little chatter there had been faded into nothing. Vaer Greyloc, Jarl of the Twelfth, resplendent in the massive shell of his battle-plate, strode on to the platform at the feet of Russ. A mortal would have been dwarfed by the figure of the primarch towering above him, but the Wolf Lord had a presence that refused to be dominated. In the scant hours since the first council of war, Greyloc had donned Terminator armour and wore two wolfclaws on each hand, each rippling from the power fields enclosing the talons. He wore no helm, and his ice-white eyes shone in the shifting firelight.

  Like a shade of Morkai. Snow on snow.

  ‘Warriors of Fenris!’ cried Greyloc, and his voice rose above the dying echoes of the gong. Whether it was augmented by some auditory effect or simply projected beyond the ambit of mortal vocal chords, it reached to all corners of the hushed chamber.

  ‘I call you warriors, as all those born on Fenris are warriors. Whether man or woman, whelp or elder, you all carry the spirit of Russ in your blood. You are killers, bred on a world that only respects killing. The time has come for you to take up that mantle.’

  His pale eyes swept across the motionless ranks. Morek shifted his weight, letting his attention flicker up to check his men were at their stations. They were all paying full attention. It was rare for any of the Sky Warriors to address mortals in such a fashion, and they were soaking up his words.

  ‘The Archenemy is here. They will land on this world soon, in numbers that have not been seen for a thousand years. They come, so they believe, to take this place, to burn it, to defile the home of your fathers. Not since the days when the Allfather walked the ice has an enemy come to Fenris with the power to shake these halls. I will not hide the truth of it from you. That day has come again.’

  The thralls made no response, but remained flinty-eyed and impassive, listening intently. Morek had been on distant worlds during campaigns and seen the way other mortals were. There were places where such speech would have induced panic, or provoked fist-pumping denunciations, or weeping, or collapse.

  Not on Fenris. They accepted the wyrd, and endured.

  ‘You are sons of the eternal ice, so I will not say: do not fear, because I know that you will not. You will defend your hearth with all the strength that is in your bones and fists. And you will not stand alone. Even as I speak to you, Sky Warriors have left the Aett, hunting for the first Traitors to make planetfall to burn their landings and bring death among them. Where the need is greatest, when it comes to the walls of the Aett, they will come among you too. The storm will fall here, that we may be certain of, but when it comes we will be in the eye of it with you.’

  Morek felt his heart quicken. These were the words he yearned to hear.

  They will come among us. The Sky Warriors, fighting with us. This is the honour I crave.

  ‘You will all be armed,’ continued Greyloc. ‘Even now, weapons are being brought from the armouries. Kaerls will instruct you in their use. Wield them as you once wielded axes. Every one of you will be called to fight. This is our time of testing.’

  I welcome it. I glory in it. We will be tested together.

  ‘Little time remains before the storm hits. Use it well. Remember your hate. Remember your inner fire. The Traitors come to challenge you in our own lair. They are numerous, but they know nothing of the wrath of Fenris. We will show it to them.’

  Greyloc’s words gradually rose in volume. As he spoke, his fists crackled more brightly with the vast energies held within them.

  ‘Do not disappoint me,’ he snarled, and the threat of his wrath ran like a chill wind around the chamber. ‘Do not spurn this faith shown in your spirit and determination. These interlopers will be hurled back into the void, whatever pains we endure to accomplish it. You will be a part of it. You will do this!’

  The claws rose in unison.

  ‘You will do this for the Allfather!’

  The crowd began to press forwards. Their blood was stirred.

  ‘You will do this for Russ!’

  Growled murmurs of acclamation broke out.

  ‘You will
do this for Fenris!’

  The muttering defiance rose in volume.

  ‘You will do this, because you are the soul and sinew of a deathworld!’ Greyloc roared aloud, and his talons blazed into swirling life. It was as if his ice-cold demeanour had been cast aside like a cloak, and what remained was white-hot, burning with a fierce intensity.

  As one, the crowd slammed their fists on their chests. The heavy, thudding sound rolled across the Hall like a peal of thunder on the distant peaks.

  ‘Fenrys!’ cried Greyloc, tapping into the waves of rage.

  ‘Fenrys hjolda!’ they thundered, and the wall of noise was deafening.

  Drums broke out from hidden places in the Hall, and the driving rhythm rippled across the seething masses.

  ‘Hjolda!’ shouted Morek with the others, feeling his blood begin to pump harder. The murder-make was being roused, the animal spirit of the people of Fenris. It was a fearsome, wonderful thing. No other human world could match it, and the thrill of the impending hunt began to run through his veins.

  Morek gazed at the lone Sky Warrior ahead of him even as he screamed out his words of defiance. The Terminator-clad leviathan was the representative of all he venerated, all he worshipped.

  A god among men.

  ‘Fenrys!’ rang out across the Hall. The fires exploded into red, angry life, licking the stone and iron around them like writhing beasts.

  ‘Fenrys hjolda!’ repeated Morek, hefting his weapon and crying the words with feeling.

  They will fight among us.

  As the Hall descended into roars and bellows of untamed aggression and the pinions of war descended over the Fang, Morek Karekborn looked on the image of the Wolf King and felt his faith blaze like a comet in the empty skies.

  This is what they cannot understand, he realised, thinking of the faithless who came to despoil the Aett in their folly and madness. We will die for Sky Warriors, for they show us what we can become. Against this certainty, they can have nothing. Nothing.

  He smiled through his shouting, feeling the hoarseness in his throat, welcoming it as the badge of his devotion.

  For the Allfather. For Russ. For Fenris.