The Hunt for Magnus - Chris Wraight Read online

  The man struggled to stay conscious. Blood vessels burst across his desiccated skin, trickling across the grey armour-plate in thin lines.

  ‘You know… that to be a lie,’ he rasped. ‘You know that… he is beyond death.’

  Ironhelm felt flesh part under his grasp. Just a fraction more and the neck would be severed. He watched the man choke, and then relaxed.

  The man collapsed, sucking in air greedily. Ironhelm watched him suffer. Much as he had fought against them, the words struck at him deeply. The dreams had been going on too long, the imagery was too resonant, for it to be coincidence. There were never coincidences. It was no accident that the man spoke standard Imperial Gothic, just as those in the temple had, or that he had evaded detection, or that he had known of Ironhelm’s dreams.

  The man’s hood had fallen, revealing an almost hairless head, mottled with liver-spots across paper-dry skin. On closer inspection, Ironhelm saw his robes were stitched from many cuts of cloth, each one a slightly different shade, a subtly different weave, overlapping in a jumble. With a twinge of disgust, Ironhelm saw that the man only had one eye, a lone bloodshot orb. The other socket was empty, gouged out, by the look of it, long ago.

  ‘You wish for death, but it will not come by my hand,’ Ironhelm told him, keeping his voice steady. ‘The interrogators will keep you alive for longer than you desire. Speak your poison to them, I will have no part of it.’

  The man looked up at him, his eye bloodshot. ‘These are words for you, lord. They have always been for you.’

  Ironhelm shot him a mirthless smile. ‘Yes, that is how you would like it.’

  He punched down, hard enough to crack the skull, and the man’s body went limp. He righted himself, just as the vox-bead in his gorget blinked into life.

  ‘Hunt complete, jarl,’ came Trask’s voice over the comm. ‘The city is secure. Lord Marillus has entered orbit. You wish to speak to him?’

  Ironhelm had no desire to meet Marillus, no more so than the many other lords of the ordos he had come across during the centuries, but that was the price paid for engaging the scraps and remnants of Heresy – the agents of Terra would never be far behind.

  ‘I’ll see him on the surface,’ said Ironhelm, grabbing the unconscious man by his collar, turning back towards the burning city and dragging him in tow. ‘Tell him to expect a gift.’

  Two days later, Ironhelm held his final meeting with the inquisitor before his strike force was due to break for the void. They stood under the shade of a Chapter lander, its stubby wings casting a long shadow across the blasted plain.

  Marillus was young, a slim man in gold-lined battle armour. He spoke softly, and travelled with a modest entourage. Ironhelm suspected Terran aristocracy by the fine-boned face, clear eyes and contained mannerisms. This also explained the rapid ascension through the ranks.

  He was hard to like.

  ‘I will say it again, lord.’ Marillus at least looked him in the eye when he spoke. ‘The destruction is regrettable. I can learn little from ruins.’

  ‘They deserved their deaths,’ Ironhelm said.

  ‘No doubt, but I will leave this world with few testimonies. It is better to speak to witches before they lose their heads.’

  Ironhelm felt his weapon-hand itch, and closed the gauntlet tight.

  ‘The rite was near completion,’ he said. ‘We destroyed it. That is what we are charged with.’

  Marillus held his gaze, then, with a slight gesture of regret, let it drop. ‘Then we will do what we can. You have my thanks, lord, for what was accomplished. In any case, you also have my earnest commiserations. No doubt you will visit vengeance swiftly for your loss.’

  Was that sarcasm, now? Was he being mocked?

  ‘I do not–’

  ‘Ah, perhaps you have not yet heard? Then I am sorry to be the bearer of it. Delavia was one of your protectorates, yes?’

  At the mention of the world’s name, Ironhelm immediately saw the one-eyed face again, squinting up at him from the mud.

  ‘What have you heard?’

  ‘The signals came in an hour ago, carried from a secure source. No doubt your own people will bear you the tidings soon. It is gone, burning just as this world was burned,’ Marillus replied.

  ‘That is not possible.’

  ‘No world is–’

  ‘It was under our watch.’

  Marillus looked at him coolly. ‘And is there nothing in the galaxy that can possibly hurt that which the Wolves of Fenris cherish?’

  Ironhelm felt hatred spark in him then – for the smooth face before him, for the backwater world that had offered so little glory, for the constant, nagging dream-voice that had plagued him for decades and had now spilled over into the world of waking.

  ‘I sent you a subject,’ Ironhelm said. ‘A man, one-eyed, found outside the city. What did you get from him?’

  ‘You sent me no one. I have already complained of it.’

  ‘You lie!’ Ironhelm rounded on him. ‘I sent him to you – you know the one. I could have wrung the truth out of him myself, but I–’

  ‘Then why did you not, lord?’

  Ironhelm narrowed his eyes, pulling away. The inquisitor remained calm, secure in his station despite his physical frailty.

  Was he a part of this? Were they acting together, cultists and the Emperor’s agent? How had Marillus received news of Delavia ahead of his own star-speakers?

  ‘Leave now,’ Ironhelm growled, feeling the hairs on his neck prick up. Something was wrong, wrong with everything around him.

  Marillus stood his ground, looking concerned. ‘Lord, are you–’

  ‘Leave now. Leave before I forget the vows that ward you from harm.’

  Marillus stiffened. ‘You are just as they said you would be. So be it. Hunt well, Lord of Wolves. Perhaps it is best you do so alone.’

  The inquisitor turned without waiting for a reply. Ironhelm watched him go, his mind working furiously. Perhaps he should call him back. He should search for the man. He should return to the temple ruins. He should–

  ‘Jarl,’ came Trask’s voice over the comm. ‘Tidings you should hear.’

  ‘From Delavia, I know. Make the strike cruiser ready – we break for the warp within the hour.’

  ‘How did this happen?’

  Trask’s voice was outraged, already thickening with battle-fury. Ironhelm didn’t want to hear it. The fighting would come soon enough, but that would not be the end of it. Another voice now echoed in his mind, one that he should have silenced earlier, before it could have planted the seed that would now plague him.

  He lives.

  ‘This is but the start,’ Ironhelm told him, making for the lander’s open doors. ‘Mark now this name. It is prey for us now, just as it was in the age before.’

  He reached the ladder and gripped the iron rail, feeling the metal tremble as the atmospheric drives whined into life.

  ‘Magnus,’ Ironhelm snarled, spitting out the hated name as if it were poison. ‘All else can perish in the fires, but he I shall strike from eternity.’

  II

  The sun burned down hard on the flanks of the mountain, making the ancient snowfields glisten with a clear brilliance. The air at the summit was painfully thin, rendering all edges sharp. The cold was well beyond mortal tolerances, for this was a realm marked for demigods, sundered from their tribal kin by barriers both physical and beyond the senses.

  High on the northern edge were the chambers of Rune Priest Sturm­hjart, gouged into the rockface and set deep within solid walls of granite. Thick armourglass windows had been set in the steep-angled roof, capturing and filtering the hard sunlight. The walls had been polished to a high sheen and there were runes carved into them. An altar stood under the largest of the lead-lined panes, over which hung an axe from lengths of chains.

  The a
ir smelled of incense and blood. Carcasses of animals still lay on bronze salvers, ready to be taken to the furnaces now that their innards had been pulled apart for omens. Bones lay charred in ash-pits, and caged ravens glared out beadily from their iron prisons.

  The Priest himself stood in the shadows, a thick grey beard spilling over a pitted breastplate. His armour was runic, festooned with the panoply of the Fenrisian warrior-cult, draped with bones and feathered totems.

  The one who stood with him was a little shorter in stature, but just as broad of shoulder. He wore armour so old the grey had darkened to the shade of thunderheads, with every surface charred, scraped or encrusted with plasma-burns. His beard was white, streaked with lines of coal-black and plaited heavily, while his shaggy hair hung in matted dreadlocks across an iron collar.

  ‘So where is he now?’ asked Oja Arkenjaw, jarl of the Twelfth Great Company, speaking quietly. His voice was like the crack before an avalanche – low, soft, yet as heavy as the bones of mountains.

  ‘A forge world,’ replied Sturmhjart, wearily. ‘Far from where he needs to be.’

  Arkenjaw nodded sourly. He was among the oldest of the Chapter, and had his claws bloodied during the years of Scouring. Perhaps only the Wolf Priest Wyrmblade was older, and both had the scars to mark the passing of the ages.

  ‘How does he find these places?’ Arkenjaw asked.

  ‘Luck?’ offered Sturmhjart. He attempted a grin, and failed. ‘He has learned things, over the years. He tries to read the wyrd. His own Priest helps him, and they cast the runes together.’

  Arkenjaw spat on the stone. ‘That is your work.’

  ‘I know it, though Frei no longer listens to counsel from me. They are the same, driven, and it only grows.’

  ‘You could rein them in.’

  Sturmhjart laughed – a huge sound rising from a great chest and fuelled by lungs that could summon the storm from the heights of Asaheim. ‘Rein in Ironhelm?’ he asked, his eyes glistening with amusement. ‘Do you remember how he used to be? Bjorn reborn. I saw him fight up close on Bel Taroder, and he slew then. He still can. That is why they follow him.’

  Arkenjaw stalked over to the altar and watched the axe-blade glint from the hard sunlight. ‘He brings them success,’ he murmured.

  Sturmhjart nodded. ‘Frei is no fool – I trained him. Every spoor they follow brings them a scalp. He finds witches and cults and old pits of corruption, and he cuts them out every time. He has the Chapter in his hands now, and they would follow him into the maws of Hel.’

  ‘Not yet, he doesn’t,’ rasped Arkenjaw. The old jarl paced around the altar-stone, shaking his head. ‘We are wasting time. These are old wars. They are gone, fallen into the past.’ He turned towards Sturmhjart, his scarred face burning with frustration. ‘The xenos are the plague now. On every world they are spawning. We burn the growth back, and still it swells.’

  Sturmhjart listened carefully. He had seen the teeming hordes for himself.

  ‘Ironhelm can mumble about forgotten monsters as much as he likes,’ Arkenjaw went on. ‘It is the greenskin that hammers at our gates now.’

  ‘So you have often told me, brother.’

  ‘Then let us act on it!’ cried Arkenjaw, slamming his fist on the altar top. ‘You know what I long for. There are Chapters who would join us. We come together, we drag the sword’s edge to where it needs to be. You have read the Annals of Ullanor, and you know I speak truly. If we do not act now, the plague will never be stamped out. It has been little more than a century since the entire Imperium was…’

  ‘…nearly undone by them. You do not have to remind me.’

  Sturmhjart had heard the speech a dozen times, and had agreed with it a dozen times. The Imperium was larger than it ever had been – larger, according to some scriveners, than it had been at the height of the Great Crusade. Every day brought word of another world being claimed for the Throne, hammered into submission by an Imperial war machine formed of trillions of men and millions of warships.

  And yet, in the immense gulfs between the walled fortresses of mankind, the xenos were burgeoning again. Old caution was being forgotten as the Adeptus Astartes went their own way, led by a thousand Chapter Masters rather than the eighteen Legion primarchs of old. The eyes of the High Lords were ever directed towards their growing fortifications at Cadia, guarding against a return of nightmares, which left the greater part of humanity’s vast inheritance to be governed by the mortals of the Administratum.

  And all the while, out in the dark, the primordial enemies of the human species multiplied, learning new skills, remembering the dormant hatreds of millennia. They had already come close once; they might do so again.

  ‘But if he lives…’ murmured Sturmhjart.

  ‘If he lives, then he lives. His Legion is gone, his time is over. He is a broken dream – to pursue it is beyond foolish.’

  The Rune Priest leaned back against the bare stone wall, feeling the coolness of the mountain. It was all around them, indomitable, impregnable, just one wonder now amid a galaxy of tarnished wonders.

  ‘Tell me what you advise,’ Sturmhjart said.

  ‘When he returns, we end this,’ said Arkenjaw, looking at Sturm­hjart with grim certainty in his eyes. ‘We call a council, sworn on the Stones. We tally the ruin he has brought on the Chapter. We speak to the jarls, one by one. They know the xenos threat. They can be brought round.’

  ‘Kjarlskar will not. And Wyrmblade?’

  ‘Who knows? Thar will be locked up, counting vials. We can carry the others – you and I.’

  Sturmhjart drew in a long breath, and let his eyes wander over to the carcasses, the bone-tokens, the tools of the wyrd-scryer. None of them had answered, not on this question. Whenever the question was asked, the paths dried up, shrivelling like leaves in winter. It was as if the universe had withdrawn from the memory of the Crimson King, insulating itself against him, wrapping up the past in layers of obfuscation.

  ‘When does he return?’ pressed Arkenjaw.

  ‘When the hunt is complete. When else would he return?’

  ‘Then where does it take him now?’

  Sturmhjart remembered every name, every world. They tripped off his tongue now like a litany, each one a testament to weakness. Perhaps only Ironhelm knew the full roll of shame, though, undoubtedly, he would not see things quite the same way.

  ‘Arvion,’ said the Rune Priest. ‘He has taken his whole company there. No doubt that world already lies in ashes.’

  From the void, Arvion glowed like a hot coal. Magma channels and promethium burn-lines for the great forges crisscrossed in flared red over a screen of darkness, spreading like geometric scars across a nightmare patchwork of metal-deep shadow. Arvion’s sun was old, a sullen worn-out ball of dull orange that gave little illumination, and so the servants of the Mechanicus lit their industrial world with vast sodium-chamber banks and plumes of flame. Robed servants of the Omnissiah shuffled amid soaring manufactory complexes, permanently locked into a lambent gloom.

  Arvion was a mid-grade forge world, capable of producing every calibre of civilian transport from orbital lifters to the mind-bendingly immense Colossus and Anaconda bulk freight carriers. The void-­capable starships were constructed in orbital berths which ringed and enclosed the entire globe, giving Arvion a second skin of twisted, lattice-pattern metal. Several ships were still in the process of being fitted out when the first anomalies were detected on the noospheric grid, their carcasses hanging like bloated cetaceans in a sea of flickering arc-welders and drifting scrap clusters.

  No one was ever able to ascertain how infiltrators got past the orbital defences, which should have stopped anything but a fleet battlegroup from getting down the surface forges. All that was reliably recorded was the chrono-mark – 56-56-34 – when the first blasts were detected. The explosions came from six separate locations, all on the factory-leve
l surface, all flaring across detector grids at the same precise moment.

  The forge world was not undefended: it had resident battalions of skitarii, as well as specialist-function auxiliary troops. Mechanised divisions were stationed at all major continental intersections, each one capable of being lifted to their designated location by a constant alert fleet of dedicated transports. Once the alarm was raised, the world’s commander, Archmagos Intendant Nhem Georg Selvarios, activated well-rehearsed protocols and mobilised close to seven thousand battle-ready units, with three thousand more drummed from barracks and held in tactical reserve.

  It was not enough, at least at the start. The main attacks were not conducted by outsiders, but by insurgents drawn from the forge world’s own defence forces. Whole regiments suddenly went dark, cut their links to the planet’s comms-grid, and started to turn on their uncorrupted counterparts. The strikes were numerous and well-­prepared – the leaders moved quickly, going for comms stations and scanner relays, knocking them out one by one. Divisions of skitarii disappeared from planetary data-sweeps, part of a blackout pattern that swept across the northern continental mass with unnerving speed. Fractured reports came in from rapidly expanding battlefronts of sacrificial kill-teams armed with daunting levels of esoteric weaponry. Whatever had been executed on Arvion had been planned for a long time.

  Selvarios enacted a second wave of emergency reaction-orders, and assistance requests were broadcast into neighbouring systems and across major astropathic channels. Heavier guns were brought to bear – even a middling forge world could call on Mechanicus specialities – and soon loyal skitarii detachments marched alongside Warhounds and lumbering battle tanks. The reserves were committed and sent into battle with orders to prevent the six ingress zones from linking up to form a united front.

  Selvarios’s response saw success, and the enemy was pushed back from four of the beachheads it had established. Factory complexes were regained, and vid-feeds began to slide into Arvion’s command ziggurats showing heaps of the dead, all wearing the robes of menials, servitors and minor-ranking tech-priests.