War of the Fang - Chris Wraight Read online

  ‘You know that is not true.’

  Then he turned, stalking back out of the fleshmaker’s sanctum.

  Wyrmblade watched him go. Then, slowly, his gaze slipped down. The armour fragment lay where it had been left, stark under the glare of the sodium lamps.

  It was malignant. Something radiated from it, as if it were hot to the touch, even though Wyrmblade knew well enough that it was no warmer than his own flesh.

  It should be burned, cast into the deepest forge-fire and forgotten about. Ironhelm clearly cared nothing for being in servitude to mania, but a Priest could not indulge in the same lest the whole Chapter lose its way.

  But then he had been given an order, and that counted for something. And, as he looked at the golden script, the faint shapes of a lost world, he felt the old emotions spike again – the desire to know, to recover some of what had been lost.

  His first movements were awkward, almost grudging. Wyrmblade extended a hand out to it. Once the first touch had been made, another followed. Soon he was carrying it into the deeper vaults, where the scrolls and the saga-stones were kept. If anything could be made of it, it would be done so there.

  As he went, something like loathing burned through him.

  It should be burned, he kept repeating, knowing that now it never would be.

  They assembled in the Chamber of the Annulus. Seven Wolf Lords were present, the others being on hunts far from Fenris. Rendmar the Iron Priest was there, as was Sturmhjart. Of the Priests, only Wyrmblade was missing. He had not been seen for the two days since Ironhelm’s return, and the doors to his chambers had remained barred.

  The Wolves stood around the great circle carved into the granite floor. The emblems of the Great Companies were limned by the wavering light of brazier-pans, and thin coils of smoke twisted up into the darkened vaults from ritual torches.

  Ironhelm stood at the place of honour, looming over the emblem of the Wolf that Stalks the Stars. The last of his wounds from Arvion had healed, testament to the power of his gene-heritage, and under the cold gaze of the stone wolves around the chamber walls, he looked as lethal as he had ever done.

  ‘So we come to it again,’ the Great Wolf said.

  His voice was like a grind of metal over coals, animated with the anticipation of what was to come. His yellow eyes glistened, his hands moved restlessly at his side. All the assembled council waited, some warily, others with similar eagerness. Across the void left by the Thirteenth Stone only Arkenjaw’s face – hidden in shadows, one place away from the Great Wolf – gave nothing away.

  ‘All of you know my mind and my desire,’ said Ironhelm. ‘All of you know the corruption that has been ended by the hunts we have launched, and what I aim to achieve at the end of them.’ He looked darkly to the figure at his side. ‘There are those who speak against this. There are those who hold that our great enemy is dead, or beyond reach, and that his progeny have been driven from the realm of the senses and into the mirror of Hel.’

  Arkenjaw did not look up. Sturmhjart shifted uneasily.

  ‘It is only now, following the paths of fate, that I bring you the proof of all I have long believed,’ said Ironhelm. ‘The Fifteenth is restored. I have seen its warriors fight, and have cut their threads with my own blade. They are corrupted more deeply than any traitor I have seen, but they are active, and they are deadly.’

  The news was received in silence. None demanded to see the evidence – Ironhelm’s word was enough, and so they absorbed the import, chewing over the implications.

  ‘This, then, is the time to put aside doubt,’ said Ironhelm. ‘The whole Chapter must now take up the hunt. No greater task falls to us. All our lore, all our power, must be bent towards this, for none other will take up the mantle as we can.’

  There was a low murmur of agreement from several points around the circle. Salvrgrim of the Second and Kjarlskar of the Fourth were the most vocal, but there were others too.

  ‘No task deserves the sending of the Chapter,’ said Arkenjaw, quietly.

  All eyes turned to him.

  ‘Say more, brother,’ invited Ironhelm, a touch sardonically. ‘Why is this the law now, to be unbroken save by your word?’

  Arkenjaw looked up, and in the light of the fires his leathery skin looked as ancient as the mountain’s bones. ‘None now live, save the Revered Fallen, who walked with Russ. But I was there as the last embers of the long Scouring still glowed. I remember the wars at the gates of Hel, and the ruin of the old Legions. Even then, when the Eye had not yet been compassed and the traitors still marched under their fell lords, we did not commit all our strength to one enemy. We fought as our brothers do across a hundred worlds, for then battles were many as they are now.’

  Arkenjaw’s voice was different to Ironhelm’s. Where the Great Wolf was strident, the Lord of the Twelfth was age-soured and soft-spoken. For all that, the others heard him with as much silence as they had reserved for his master, and there were those around the circle who had always been his allies.

  ‘You speak of old wars,’ said Ironhelm.

  ‘They are all old wars,’ retorted Arkenjaw. ‘That is the point. Now, on this day, there are greater threats and greater duties.’

  ‘Did you not hear me, brother? There is no greater threat.’

  ‘Only because you wish it.’

  The two of them were glaring at one another now, their wills striving across the Stone. Neither moved a muscle, but the aura of threat was palpable, hanging in the acrid air, curling like the smoke-lines.

  It was Ironhelm who turned away first, sweeping his gaze back to the council. ‘So you say. Will no others speak?’

  ‘If the Fifteenth still lives, it will be slain,’ said Salvrgrim of the Second, ever an ally of the Great Wolf. ‘You speak the truth: none save we alone will do it.’

  ‘But in what numbers?’ asked Vrakkson of the Fifth. ‘How many have been seen?’

  ‘A handful, no more,’ said Ironhelm. ‘But others will follow. I have consulted the runes, and the aether now screams to me of their presence.’

  ‘Not by my counsel,’ said Sturmhjart, darkly.

  ‘Where, then?’ asked Kjarlskar, beside Salvrgrim the keenest to join the hunt.

  ‘I know not,’ said Ironhelm. ‘But I will do.’ He addressed the chamber again. ‘Have I ever led you awry? Every quest I have launched has blooded the enemy. I will know the place in time, and on this day, in this chamber, I need only know one thing: who will follow me?’

  Salvrgrim, Kjarlskar and Oirreisson of the Seventh immediately pledged their blades. Vrakkson, Morskarl of the Third, Krakenbane of the Tenth and Arkenjaw remained unmoved. The council was divided down the middle.

  Ironhelm smiled cynically, and looked over towards the jarl of the Twelfth. ‘I see you have been busy in my absence.’

  Arkenjaw returned a flat look. ‘You may do with your own company what you wish. You may order the Priests and you may sway the others with argument, but we are all Lords of the Fang in this chamber and you may not compel the least of us, not in this.’

  Ironhelm’s face twitched, and his hand moved by a finger’s breadth, over to where the blade hung at his belt. ‘That is not the order of this Chapter,’ he snarled, his voice like a snagging tooth through flesh. ‘If I give the command, you will follow it.’

  Arkenjaw did not flinch. ‘You are the greatest of us, lord, but you have let this thing turn your mind.’ His dry voice echoed through the chamber. ‘If he lives, if he lives, he is laughing now. Every trinket he leaves for you, you pick it up. Every thread you grasp at. If you truly believed he could be found, if you truly wished to spite him and frustrate his purpose, you would put this aside. You would laugh at the Sign of the Eye and you would turn your shoulder to enemies of flesh and blood that even now muster in the dark.’

  Ironhelm’s rage was evident now, pulsing under the surface, barely contained by the mask his face assumed. ‘Your crusade!’ he spat. ‘No doubt you would lead it? No doubt the hon
our would be yours?’

  ‘No, lord, you would lead. You will always lead. Only in this will I never follow you. I will contest you on it, I will stand against it, and only if the Fang itself falls and the earth of Asaheim is consumed by fire will I relent over it, for it is folly.’

  At that, a deadly silence fell across the chamber. The braziers themselves seemed to burn lower, as if the coals were brushed by a chill air from beyond the mountain. Ironhelm looked as if the rage within him would spill over, his fists clenched tight, and the veins on his knotted neck jutted like wires from the skin.

  Slowly, very slowly, he relaxed. To witness it was like watching some great engine of war wind down, unhooking weapons of world-ending potency one by one. At the end, he even smiled, though as ever the gesture was crooked and without warmth.

  ‘You say that he laughs,’ Ironhelm said. ‘Aye, he laughs. He laughs to see us divided, arguing like children. You cannot prevent this, for fate has it written. Even this has been foretold. The time will come. I will break him, just as the greatest of us once broke him.’

  In the face of those words, and for the first time, Arkenjaw gave away the slightest shade of doubt. Ironhelm seemed almost as he had been in the past, before the Eye-cults had driven all else from his mind and all had looked to him for the renewal of glory on Fenris.

  But the Great Wolf’s shoulders had relaxed and the light had drained from his eyes.

  ‘Not this day, then,’ he said, wryly. ‘I called for counsel and have been given it.’

  He gazed into the heart of the Annulus, where the light of the braziers mingled.

  ‘Let no one say that I have forgotten to heed warning,’ he said. ‘It changes nothing – the Chapter will one day meet this threat. It will be compelled to.’

  Then he gave a final smile, resigned, knowing and cold.

  ‘But not this day.’

  After the council came the storms. They came in hard, propelled by driving gales from the east. Soon the mountain was surrounded by black-hearted squalls, throwing down sleet and snow in droves that battered the rock pinnacles and ripped pines from their roots.

  The impact was so severe that it prevented two Great Companies – Morskarl’s and Vrakk’s – from taking ship for a whole diurnal cycle, after which their orbital lifters had to fight furiously against the continent-spanning vortex before clearing the atmosphere.

  Inside the heart of the fortress, only faint echoes of elemental violence penetrated to the tunnels. Thralls hurried along the ice-cold passageways just as they always did, inured to the piercing chill. The forges worked, the anvils felt the bite of the hammer, the refectories steamed with endless processions of broths and bloody meat-joints.

  Throughout it all, the doors to Wyrmblade’s sanctum remained barred. No news passed from within, and even the Priesthood’s thralls did not dare to ask for tidings.

  The doors finally slammed open the night of the sixth day since Ironhelm’s return from Arvion. Wyrmblade, looking like he had neither eaten nor slept since taking on his task, strode out into the tunnels and hurried up the Great Wolf’s tower without a word.

  He found Ironhelm engaged in what Ironhelm was nearly always engaged in – scrying the wyrd. The Chapter Master of the Wolves stood in a circular chamber, his hands bloody from entrails, staring out at the boiling heavens. His chamber’s walls opened out to the extreme edge of the mountain, and sleet swirled in through narrow windows.

  Wyrmblade closed the heavy door behind him, sealing them in.

  ‘Like grains of sand,’ said Ironhelm, broodingly, his gaze still fixed on the open window. The hour was near the nadir of Fenris’s nocturnal period, and the moonless dark was almost perfect.

  Wyrmblade raised an eyebrow. ‘You are scouring for worlds,’ he said. ‘There are many to choose from.’

  Ironhelm turned. His face was streaked with lines of blood, and looked nightmarish in the light of half-burned torches. ‘I find nothing,’ he said. ‘You, I hope, have had success.’

  Wyrmblade unwrapped the armour fragment, cleared a space on the stone slab before him from the remains of carcasses, and placed it on the top.

  ‘I tried to read the script,’ the Priest said, wearily. ‘I consulted every lexicon in our possession, but I failed. They were ever the wordsmiths – I cannot match them in that.’

  Ironhelm nodded. Frei had said the same. Unless they captured one alive, they would never understand what had been written. And, of course, if all were like the mute warriors on Arvion, even taking prisoners would not help them.

  ‘Then the runes will guide,’ the Great Wolf said.

  ‘They may not need to.’ Wyrmblade righted the gorget-fragment, angling it towards the light. ‘Look here – what do you see?’

  Ironhelm found himself looking at the portion Frei had picked out earlier. ‘XVIII-XV,’ he said. ‘The Fellowship designation.’

  ‘I assumed that too.’ Wyrmblade shook his head fractionally. ‘It wasted much time. Look closer.’

  Ironhelm narrowed his eyes. Nothing changed. The marks terminated amid a blur of scorch-damage. ‘Priest, I am not in the mood for riddles.’

  Wyrmblade moved his finger towards the end of the sequence. ‘We do not know much of the old Legions,’ he said. ‘But I asked myself this: does any Chapter keep their squad markings in this location? Do they not belong on the pauldron? And there is also this: every other mark on this piece is in Prosperine script. Only this is in Gothic. Would not the Thousand Sons mark out their divisions in their own tongue?’

  Ironhelm listened closely, saying nothing, looking at the marks with greater attention.

  ‘I put this portion under an ocular augmenter,’ said Wyrmblade. ‘Blast damage obscures the end of the figures. The marking, in full, is XVIII-XVII.’

  ‘Twenty-eight, seventeen. What does that signify?’

  ‘In terms of the Legion, nothing I could uncover. They had a mania for numerology, but this sequence does not tally with any of their known obsessions. And remember – this mark alone uses Gothic type. That is the important factor.’ Wyrmblade let the gorget fall to the stone again, and straightened up. ‘It is an Imperial mark, not a Legion one. It does not denote a unit. It denotes a campaign.’

  As soon as the words left Wyrmblade’s mouth, Ironhelm saw the truth in them. ‘A record of victory.’

  ‘A great one, or they would not have made it. But that still leaves much to do. The Thousand Sons fought in hundreds of engagements. We do not have the records of many – that knowledge is either on Terra or is lost.’ Wyrmblade looked at Ironhelm, a strange expression on his age-withered face. ‘Except, that is, for those we fought in together. No more than a handful – even though our masters were never allies, they did exist. I found names in the records, some now indecipherable, some probably errors, some – a handful – that were corroborated.’

  Ironhelm wore a hungry expression then. With the blood on his face, the stink of it in the air, he looked like a baresark. ‘You tell this like a skjald, brother. Do you have a name?’

  ‘XVIII is the reference for a war-fleet of the Great Crusade, one that the Thousand Sons were a part of. The second number is a planetary reference, one that the fleet encountered as part of a compliance mission. The name was illegible in the archives, as was the position data, but we retain transcribed interpretations of astropath visions from that era. It seems that our Legions fought together on this world – the Wolves and the Thousand Sons, united for a time.’

  Ironhelm let slip a hiss of exasperation. ‘The name.’

  ‘Heliosa,’ said Wyrmblade. ‘Known then as Ark Reach Secundus.’

  Ironhelm frowned. ‘I do not know it.’

  ‘You would not. It appears in no current records. If it was part of the Imperium during the Crusade, it did not remain so after the war. It has been hidden, lost in the void, perhaps by oversight, perhaps not. I have the coordinates, though. They can still be used. The world can be found.’

  Ironhelm gripped the s
ide of the augury table, evidently trying not to grasp too greedily at the chance. ‘But what of it?’ he murmured. ‘We no longer dwell on the worlds long conquered.’

  ‘Perhaps so,’ agreed Wyrmblade. ‘Perhaps this is a dead world, or maybe a teeming hive. You have launched hunts on flimsier pretexts. But consider this: we know that of old the Fifteenth Legion marched in the crimson of their primarch. Now they have changed their colours, but still they record the old campaign number on the new armour. Some scribe has seen fit to retain the old marks. It may mean something, it may not. In any event, the world Twenty-Eight Seventeen has some significance for them.’

  Ironhelm picked up the fragment and held it high, turning and studying it. ‘Oja would say this was intentionally placed for us to find,’ he mused. ‘He would call me a fool to chase it down.’

  ‘He would be right, lord.’ Wyrmblade crossed his arms. ‘I did what you asked. I made what sense of it I could, I told you the truth, but I will do no more for you.’

  Ironhelm glanced up at him. ‘You would support his own crusade instead, then?’

  ‘Neither. I have my own work. For that, I still require the word of command.’

  Preparation of the therapies. Then living subjects. Aspirants.

  Ironhelm said nothing. He placed the armour fragment down, and moved back towards the window. Outside, the gales had not let up. Few worlds had storms like Fenris, and the deep howl of the winds was immense. The Great Wolf stood before them, clasping his hands behind his back, lost in thought.

  Wyrmblade waited for him. The air, still bitter from spilled animal blood, hung thick between them.

  ‘I cannot go back to my brothers with this,’ said Ironhelm at last. ‘Not yet. They will see it, in the end, but not now.’ He put out a hand and leaned against the stone sill. In that moment, for all his massive bulk, his imposing frame, his killer’s poise, he looked utterly weary, as if everything, even the quest that drove him onwards and defined his every action, had become hateful to him. ‘Of course these things are left to be discovered. But what then? Do I leave them be, like a coward fearful of what deaths may come of it? I would deserve my nightmares then.’ He snorted a bitter laugh. ‘And he sends me plenty.’