War of the Fang - Chris Wraight Read online

  ‘We have been hunting this enemy for a long time,’ said Ironhelm. ‘We have learned to predict his movements. If we could have given you warning earlier–’

  ‘You would have done nothing, for this world’s fate means nothing to you.’ Selvarios spoke blankly, with no reproach – he was just stating facts. ‘They came here for knowledge. This is a repository of ancient things.’ He gestured with a tentacled arm towards the column. ‘The column stores our venerated templates. Some of them we use. Some of them we cannot decipher. Some of them can only be deciphered by the ones that made them, and they are either dead or dwell beyond our reach. If they had taken them that would have been…’ There was a sudden clicking from the creature’s mandibles. A laugh? Cogitation? ‘…sub-optimal.’

  ‘The column was not taken.’

  ‘I see that. But I will not thank you. I repeat: you did not come here for us.’ Selvarios angled his ocular viewers towards the armour-corpses. ‘Our enemies are fleshless. I can admire that.’

  ‘They are weapons of sorcery.’

  ‘Yes. They will be destroyed.’

  ‘We will take them.’

  ‘They will be destroyed here, on this day, in our furnaces.’

  Ironhelm squared up to the metal giant. ‘My warriors bled for you here. Their threads were cut on your soil. I will take these things as weregild. I demand nothing else.’

  ‘You demand nothing at all.’ Selvarios’s servo-arms cycled around one another, and his thorax vented more vapours. ‘You are a lord on your own world, Son of Russ, but this is not Fenris. Your ships are within our defence grid, which remains intact. Your warriors are surrounded by thousands of mine. Your reputation for violence is great, but I assess that you do not wish to demonstrate that here.’ His serpentine neck extended, bringing the mandible-face closer to Ironhelm’s. ‘I will burn them, this day, on this world. They are sorcerer’s things, blasphemies. They have no place in the galaxy.’

  Ironhelm silently gauged the forces marshalled around him. Selvarios was right – the Wolves were heavily outnumbered. Even if they could have fought their way back to the drop pods, local space was held against them.

  It still might be worth the attempt. The Mechanicus would balk at taking on an entire Great Company.

  +Let this one go, jarl,+ came Frei’s voice, echoing within his mind. +We have what we need.+

  Ironhelm didn’t so much as glance at his Rune Priest. His amber eyes remained locked on the augmetic bio-construct before him. It was hard to back down, even when all reason demanded that he did so. Something would have to be offered in return.

  ‘I will observe the destruction, then,’ Ironhelm said eventually. ‘I will not leave this place until no trace of them remains. And they will not leave our sight – my warriors will guard them.’

  Selvarios bowed, and the metal plates along his flanks clinked. ‘Alongside my own. Do not unsettle yourself, Space Wolf – there will be no deception here.’

  Then he twisted back on himself, his long train of servo-arms and mechadendrites clanking in his wake. His menials followed him, sweeping incense-burners through the air as they went.

  Once the entourage was gone, Ironhelm turned back to Frei. ‘What do you mean, we have what we need?’ he asked in a low voice.

  ‘The battleplate is nothing. The prize is the script. The archmagos knows it, and will take records before they are burned.’

  ‘Then do the same.’

  Frei bowed. ‘By your will.’

  The damage to Arvion’s infrastructure took many hours to stabilise. Both major incursions had gouged trails of destruction leading from the initial flare-points to the enemy’s targets. The forge world’s principal command pyramid had been badly scarred, and it had taken the intervention of two hastily awakened Reaver Titans to stem the losses at the main gate, after which Selvarios’s standing garrison had been able to drive the insurgents back into the surrounding maze of manufactoria and forge-clusters. The second objective – the repository of STC records – had been a far closer thing. Selvarios might not have admitted it, but without the intervention of the Wolves it was not inconceivable that the data might have fallen into the hands of the enemy.

  Few asked what the insurgents would have done if they succeeded in taking the files of ancient cogitator wafers. There was no route off-world for them, so the only course would have been to destroy what they had won. That did not sit easily with the reputation of the thieves – the Fifteenth Legion, according to what myths of them remained, had ever been hoarders of esoterica rather than vandals, and if their servants had been the ones to inspire the uprising then it was hard to imagine that annihilation had been their goal.

  Such questions, however, were deferred in the face of the need for reconstruction. Several fusion reactors had been badly damaged and needed immediate attention from the tech-priests. Over a hundred drone-habs had been torched, and seven major transit-channels were now little more than rivers of fire that licked against scorched metal.

  Titans still stalked across the smouldering rubble, sweeping blunt heads across vistas of debris. If their masters permitted themselves shame, they would have had plenty of cause for it: in the space of little more than one standard day, two primary sectors of the forge world command citadel had been lost to insurrection. Those few insurgents who had been captured alive were now buried deep in the lightless vaults of the archmagos’s inner fortress, where their dormant pain-receptors were being re-connected prior to insertion into agony-tanks. At that stage it was still unclear how so many priests and skitarii battalion commanders had been persuaded to turn against their own kind. Rumours had begun to spread across the noosphere that many of them were equally clueless, as if emerging from a madness that had left them without memories of their crimes.

  Ironhelm cared nothing for any of it. Once the last of the fighting was over, his warriors returned to the dropsites, securing them against interference and signalling for mass lifters to descend from orbit for the empty drop pods. The losses had been high – twelve battle-brothers dead, thirty more destined for the Apothecary’s knife – but Ironhelm scarcely registered the numbers. The losses would have been justified even if the defence of Arvion had been his only objective. As it was, the encounter had yielded far more than that.

  Once the last of the overriding kill-urge had faded, he had come to see that Frei was right: the silent warriors were what remained of Magnus’s once-proud Legion. The livery might have changed and the physical structure perverted, but there were no other explanations. Something beyond imagination had happened to the Thousand Sons – divine retribution for their many sins, perhaps, or maybe the outcome of some twisted act of self-harm.

  There was much to learn about them. Frei was convinced that they had been guided by intelligence, perhaps one of their own kind, and that with the withdrawal of such control they had become weak and easy to slay. The guiding hand had eluded detection, and in the confusion and labour of reconstruction it was possible that it had escaped, though without visual confirmation the search was unlikely to turn up solid results.

  For the remainder of his time on Arvion, Frei obsessively studied the corpses, making careful records of their markings, weaponry and dispositions. In this he was matched by Selvarios’s priests, who made similarly exhaustive studies of the fallen automata. Neither side consulted the other, though their conclusions were similar – a new kind of battle engine, animated by forbidden sorcery, retaining all the strength and deadliness of the original Legiones Astartes template but with new and arcane dependencies that limited their autonomy.

  The reactions of the two commanders differed. Selvarios evinced an undiluted horror for them, no doubt reacting against the pollution of raw machine and crippled soul. Ironhelm, on the other hand, could not hide his emotions even from the skitarii around him. They reported back to their masters that the Great Wolf, after the shock of discovery, seemed to have been energised by them. His eyes shone and his gestures became animated.
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br />   It was almost as if, they documented in their databursts, he had been pleased to find them.

  The hour came, and Ironhelm and Selvarios stood together before the pyres. The remains of the sapphire-armoured automata were conveyed on iron tracks directly into the maws of two blast furnaces, each one operating at temperatures sufficient to destroy adamantium. The Great Wolf and the archmagos watched silently as the ceramite crisped, bubbled, and then degenerated slowly into crackling ash. The pauldrons lasted longest, and so the icon of the coiled serpent lingered in the flames, writhing as if alive.

  ‘This was well met, jarl,’ said the archmagos at the end, perhaps in an attempt to salvage some element of fraternity to what had been an uneasy alliance. ‘Loss was averted. We will celebrate that.’

  ‘Look to yourselves,’ said Ironhelm. ‘You have been corrupted, and it is hard to bleed out such poison.’

  A metallic sigh escaped through Selvario’s oxygen filters. ‘I do not believe that you will listen to any counsel from me, nor perhaps from any but your own conscience, but I will say it nonetheless. I have lived for many lifetimes and seen many minds. We are not beyond obsessions of our own, and this is worth guarding against as much as any other weakness.’ He hesitated, and the sound of micro-pistons sliding back and forth emanated from under his metal carapace. ‘There are few chances in this universe. You hunted them, and you have what you came for. Can you believe that he does not know of your quest? And can you truly believe that he does not smile to see you remain on the scent he has laid?’

  Ironhelm listened impatiently. He had heard similar words from his own lords, and had grown weary of them long ago. He smiled grimly, exposing the fangs that were the most obvious marker of his Chapter’s savagery.

  ‘I am not blind,’ he said, his voice a low, controlled growl. ‘I know what powers wait beyond the veil, and what they hunger for. But they are not infinite. They are not without fault. They can be beaten.’

  ‘There is other prey.’

  ‘Not like this one.’

  Ironhelm turned, saying nothing more, not even offering the most cursory of bows, and stalked back to the platform where his lander waited. The archmagos watched him go. The morass of lenses and tubes that passed for his face rearranged themselves into an expression that might have been resignation.

  With the crew-ramps withdrawn, the lander’s atmospheric engines fired, taking the Great Wolf back into orbit. Arvion returned to being a pure Machine Cult world, albeit with deep wounds that would set production quotas back by years.

  Selvarios didn’t speak for some time after Ironhelm’s departure. His menials waited silently, knowing better than to inquire. Eventually, he shook himself, waking systems that had been locked in deep cogitation cycles, and the mechadendrites stirred.

  ‘They fight well,’ he murmured, rendering the words in a binariccreed that was reserved for his own cluster of internal intelligences. He was slithering again by then, heading to the capsule-train that would take him back to the command-node. ‘But they are proud. Thus, I judge, they summon their own doom.’

  III

  ‘He returns,’ said Arkenjaw.

  ‘So they tell me,’ replied Kjarlskar.

  ‘Another den of heresy cut out.’

  ‘You should be glad to hear it.’

  ‘There will always be witches.’

  ‘Not if the Great Wolf has his way.’

  The two of them stood in the open, buffeted by a wind that cut like knives. Fenris’s dawn sky was leaden and heavy, carrying squalls in from the west across the far passes. The encircling peaks of Asaheim crowded the horizon, their crowns streaked black and white like Arkenjaw’s own ragged mane.

  Kjarlskar was different – younger, leaner, his hair as dark as oil. Though neither of them moved, the impression they gave was of circling around one another, haunches raised, fangs bared.

  Both had brought their Guard with them: Kjarlskar just the one, a severe warrior in war-tarnished plate named Svart. Arkenjaw had brought both his lieutenants, still unwilling to choose between them, knowing how deadly their respective gifts made them in tandem. The show of force brought out a cynical smile from Kjarlskar.

  ‘You felt the need to outnumber me?’ he asked.

  Arkenjaw didn’t return the smile. ‘No jesting, brother. I came to speak reason.’

  Kjarlskar glanced down the steep slope, the rocks hidden by deep drifts, over to where the three subordinates leaned into the gale. ‘There is the White Wolf,’ he noted, pointing out Vaer Greyloc’s pale hide. ‘And Rossek, the Red. Which of them has your blessing, jarl?’

  Arkenjaw’s expression hardened. ‘You still support him. I would know why.’

  Kjarlskar smiled, a wide grin that made his fangs glimmer in the dull light. ‘Oja. You think to wedge a blade between us, is that it? Perhaps you would have liked his position at the Annulus.’

  ‘I never desired it.’

  Kjarlskar snorted. ‘We all desire it.’ He shuddered in the bitter cold, and new-settled snow scattered from his shoulders. ‘He slays like no other. You have seen him fight, I have seen him fight. When he orders it, we follow. We all follow.’

  ‘I would do so again,’ Arkenjaw said, wincing as he remembered how it had been, ‘if he showed me an enemy worth getting my blade bloody.’

  ‘Then what more do you want, brother?’ Kjarlskar demanded, his voice tightening. ‘What greater prize is there?’

  ‘He digs out magicians and the blinded, and parades them as if they are worthy of anything but our scorn. You know what more he hungers for.’

  ‘No, I do not. Tell me.’

  Arkenjaw looked up at him blankly. Kjarlskar was like a wall – defiant, committed, the true believer.

  ‘He reads the runes,’ Arkenjaw said. ‘He dreams. He has told me of those dreams. He sees the great war of the past. He places himself within it.’

  Kjarlskar laughed. ‘You think he–’

  ‘There are no enemies left worthy of his anger,’ said Arkenjaw, holding the other Wolf Lord’s gaze. ‘He delves for those of myth, and you indulge him.’

  ‘They are not all myths,’ said Kjarlskar, his voice dropping to a low threat-note. ‘They were not all slain. There are some of us who will not rest until they are.’

  Now it was Arkenjaw’s turn to laugh, though grimly. ‘So you speak like he does. What secret knowledge do you possess to give mastery over the ancients?’

  ‘No secrets. The defeated will not hide forever, and when they emerge, we will have remembered our oaths.’

  Arkenjaw’s old skin now ran with lines of melting slush. ‘It has been more than two thousand years. That is long enough for some oaths to sleep.’

  ‘Eternity would not be enough.’

  ‘And there are other enemies.’

  ‘So you weary me by saying,’ snapped Kjarlskar. ‘I hear it from other mouths – there are greenskins, there are corsairs.’ He drew closer to Arkenjaw, and his mien darkened further. ‘They are nothing. They are meagre prey, and I feel empty when I slay them. But he… He was one of us. You remember what that means? One of us.’

  Arkenjaw remained where he was, and soon the two of them faced one another, divided by less than a hand’s breadth. Their amber eyes were locked, and their hot breath ran in steaming gouts over the lip of frost-laced gorgets.

  ‘If he lives,’ said Arkenjaw. ‘And in all the annals, he was never spoken of as a fool. He sees the fates more clearly than we do. He needs no runes, and needs no dreams, for he was a dream.’

  Kjarlskar listened, though his expression did not change.

  ‘He should remain a dream,’ Arkenjaw went on. ‘We can ignore the goads, the trails in the dark. We are awake, our blood is hot. They were the gods of another age, brother.’

  Kjarlskar did not speak again for the space of many heartbeats. The two of them, mere specks on the shoulder of the mountains, stood like granite images.

  In the end, the younger lord broke away first, shuffling away
and kicking up loose snow. He snorted a laugh, and looked down across the drifts to where his shieldbearer waited. ‘You never answered me, Oja,’ he said. ‘Which one, the White Wolf or the Red?’

  Arkenjaw followed his gaze, to where Greyloc and Rossek waited. Greyloc’s expression was hard to read, as ever. Rossek looked hopeful, though not for Arkenjaw’s success – he wished for nothing but the success of Ironhelm’s quest, though his loyalty to Arkenjaw remained solid enough.

  This is driving us apart, Arkenjaw thought, seeing how the divisions opened up even within companies. The easier course would be to cease his opposition, to join in the hunt wholeheartedly. None other had the power to gainsay Ironhelm – it would restore unity, if nothing else.

  Rossek was surely the better choice. He had a heart of fire, that one. He would fight until the suns burned out, and lead the company back to the heart of things, where it belonged. Being on the edge of the fire-circle had made the Twelfth’s voice weaker – in time, that would have to change.

  ‘You govern your own company,’ Arkenjaw growled, pushing past Kjarlskar and heading back down the slope.

  Ironhelm’s flotilla broke back into real space at the Fenris System’s Mandeville point. The ships were soon burning hard for the home world, escorted by dagger-prowed destroyers from the standing defence cordon, but the Great Wolf himself was not on the command bridge to receive their hails.

  Down in Frei’s private chambers on the lower decks, the torches had burned down low, and runic seals had been placed on the outer doors. The Rune Priest moved around a long, low slab, on which rested ancient picter lenses and iron-bound caskets. Ironhelm stood on the other side of it, gazing intently at the collection of ephemera before them.

  ‘Progress?’ Ironhelm asked.

  ‘Some. I detect auras still, hovering over the matter.’ Frei looked thoughtful. ‘At times, when the flames are leaping, I almost hear voices.’

  ‘From the images?’

  Frei shook his head. ‘Picters tell little. I have better.’