War of the Fang - Chris Wraight Read online

  ‘Then put it aside,’ urged Wyrmblade. ‘Leave it alone. Know the truth of the trap set to snare you and withdraw your neck before it closes.’

  Ironhelm made a strange sound. Only after a few moments did Wyrmblade realise that it was a throttled chuckle.

  The Great Wolf sighed, and rolled his shoulders stiffly. ‘Put it aside,’ he murmured. ‘Leave it alone.’ He turned back to the Wolf Priest. ‘Do you think I fear death? Do you think any of my jarls do?’

  Wyrmblade didn’t answer – he didn’t need to.

  ‘If it damns my soul,’ Ironhelm said, ‘if it sends me into the coldest pit of Hel, I care not. I know what they say – this is for glory. This is to rekindle the promise I showed.’ He chortled again, just as throatily. ‘They only think that because they cannot know. I have been shown things, I have seen things…’

  He shook his head, as if giving up on the idea of ever explaining. Wyrmblade moved to speak, but Ironhelm cut him off with a raised hand.

  ‘Suppose I said to you of your quest: leave it alone, put it aside. Would you do it?’

  Wyrmblade hesitated. His face betrayed a brief crisis of indecision.

  ‘I know you, Thar,’ said Ironhelm. ‘My order would hold you for a time, but if you willed it, if your spirit burned for it hard enough, you would find a way. That is how we are built, you and I. We are slaves to greater masters – the old oaths, the need to extract the last blood from the corpse of the past.’

  Wyrmblade eyed him warily. ‘Then what are you saying?’

  ‘Only this: I give you sanction. I release you to your great work. You know too much now. You cannot let it slide from your grasp, even if you wished it.’

  Wyrmblade looked as if he would protest, but then he relented. His eyes narrowed, his chin lifted. ‘You speak the truth,’ he said. ‘It will be done, then. It will be done well and it will be seen to completion.’

  Ironhelm laughed – a savage bark. ‘Of course it will – I would not trust it to any shaman or trickster. But you see why I tell you this now.’

  Wyrmblade nodded, resigned. ‘I will still not support it, not in the council.’

  ‘The council. Aye, there are strong voices there, ones blinded by their wisdom. It matters not. I am master of my company, and there are others who will follow.’ Ironhelm glanced back at the empty window, at the maelstrom outside. A mortal would have shrunk from that temporal violence, but he seemed ready to leap into the heart of it, to become a part of it. ‘Give me the coordinates. That is the last I shall ask of you in this.’

  Even then, despite all that had been said, despite his own voluntary bringing of the knowledge to the Great Wolf’s chambers, Wyrmblade pulled back. His gaze hovered for a moment on the armour fragment, gazing at it with something like loathing.

  He might have been able to leave without imparting any more. Alone of all the denizens of the Fang, a Wolf Priest could defy the order of a Lord of the Annulus and remain inviolate.

  But there was something greater compelling him now – a shared trust, a conspiracy of knowledge. He shook his grizzled head, dryly amused at where he found himself.

  ‘They will be with you by dawn,’ Wyrmblade said. ‘Then I will bar my doors and return to my own blasphemies. You will break your neck on this, but perhaps, just perhaps, you will break another on the way.’

  ‘Count on it,’ said Ironhelm.

  Wyrmblade reached for the fragment. ‘Hunt well, then, jarl,’ he said, taking it up. ‘Spring the trap. And when they come for you, as they will, make them choke on the bait.’

  Arkenjaw ran hard, his armoured boots cracking against the ice-hard stone. Thralls pressed themselves back against the tunnel walls, scattered from his path like prey animals before the charge of an apex blackmane. For all his age, the old jarl still charged as he had done in his prime: experience had only hardened his sinews, not weakened them.

  By the time he had reached the Rune Priest’s door, his skin was lathered in sweat. He hammered on the metal, and the bolts released.

  Inside, Sturmhjart was being drilled into his armour by an attendant swarm of kaerl attendants. Beyond his huge bulk, the long skull-topped staff was being hoisted from its rack by more thralls, followed by other, less arcane, weapons.

  At the sight of Arkenjaw’s fury, announced by the hard slam of the heavy inner doors, Sturmhjart seized the staff, lifting the mighty shaft as if it weighed less than a reed.

  ‘You have heard, then,’ Arkenjaw snarled.

  ‘This will not be borne,’ said Sturmhjart, waiting impatiently for the last of his battleplate to be bolted into place.

  ‘He has taken Kjarlskar.’ Arkenjaw balled his fist and cracked it impotently into the stone wall. ‘He listens tonothing!’

  ‘It is Frei,’ said Sturmhjart. ‘He has been taught some scrying, and now thinks himself equal to the mysteries. You are right, brother – I should have reined them both in.’

  Arkenjaw paced to and fro, straining at an invisible leash. The entire Fang was roused, but too late – it took time to gird a Great Company for war. ‘How long has he known?’

  Sturmhjart shook his grey head. ‘Wyrmblade has been hidden for days – he will have had a hand in this. I should break his lair and drag him out into the sunlight.’

  ‘Forget Thar,’ muttered Arkenjaw. ‘He was not a believer – there is devilry of his own that keeps his bloody fingers busy.’ The jarl spat on the ground, his eyes flashing and his skin flushed with mottled fury. ‘I warned them all of this. If there was any counsel that must be heeded, it was never to leave this place without guard. The greatest fortress needs its sentinels, and if we leave it empty we do not deserve it.’

  The last of Sturmhjart’s armour-plates locked into place, and he shook off the attentions of the thralls. Together, the two lords strode out from the chamber. Ahead of them, up in the Valgard, there came the sound of more running, of blast-doors clanging, of klaxons echoing.

  ‘Morskarl and Vrakkson are too far away to be recalled, as are those who were already hunting,’ said Sturmhjart. ‘Krakenbane would come, but the standing orders–’

  ‘–are there for a reason,’ snapped Arkenjaw, pushing the pace. ‘He and Oirreisson must stay. Their companies are battle-wounded, their ships in refit. In any case, there must be two companies on the walls. No less, ever. He knew this. He knew all this, and he cares not.’

  ‘He was in good spirits,’ said Sturmhjart. ‘I should have guessed the reason for the change.’

  They rose through the levels quickly. Other packs were running ahead of them, arrayed hurriedly for war. All of them bore the sigil of the Twelfth Company, and were marshalled by the Guard. Arkenjaw could hear the roared commands of Rossek, of Skrieya, even of Greyloc.

  ‘Bloodmane is prepared in orbit,’ said Arkenjaw. ‘It will carry the company, and those of your priesthood you need.’

  ‘Myself alone,’ said Sturmhjart. ‘But tell me – how did you learn his trail?’

  Arkenjaw smiled grimly. ‘I set my shadow on him. Vaer Greyloc has the coordinates, and for that he will be honoured in the annals.’

  ‘The name of the world?’

  ‘I know not. All I have is a location – that will be enough.’

  They reached the hangars of the Valgard, where all was a ferment of activity. Lifters were already squatting on the hangar, dozens of them, sending gouts of steam into the frigid air. The atmosphere of the ice world was visible at the open end of the cavernous chamber, steel-grey and wracked with storms. Arkenjaw’s packs were clanking up the ramps into the crew-holds, mag-locking their blades in place and adjusting the fit of their helms.

  On the edge of the rockcrete apron, Sturmhjart halted. ‘And what, brother, when we catch him? You think you can bring him back?’

  Arkenjaw laughed. ‘Skítja, no. He will take no command from me, and I am not fool enough to try.’ He looked out at the massed strength of his company, the one he had commanded for centuries. It was less than two-thirds the size of Ironh
elm’s, and did not have nearly the same prestige. For all that, every warrior was true Fenris-born – a master of the murder-make, and they could hold their own. ‘I harbour no hate for Harek,’ he said. ‘He is as far above me as Russ was above us all, if only he could be made to see this sickness for what it is.’

  He started walking again, out across the hangar floor to where the first lifter was ramping up its engines up for takeoff.

  ‘This is not about sanction,’ he said. ‘If we reach him, though, it may yet be about salvation.’

  IV

  Ironhelm’s battle-group broke the veil, tearing into real space like a dagger’s cut. Seconds after the warp-drives shuddered silent, the plasma engines roared up to full burn, hurling six starships, one line battleship and three escorts, towards the distant sun. As they went, void-shields were raised and gun-lines run out ready for immediate assault.

  In the vanguard was Russvangum, the greatest of the warships left to the Chapter and as old as the foundations of the Imperium. Kjarlskar, Frei and Ironhelm were on the command bridge, surrounded by the company’s honour guard and kaerls, when Ark Reach Secundus swam into range of the forward augurs. Streams of raw data surged through the sensor intakes, and picters all across the bridge’s throne dais flickered into life.

  ‘What do you see?’ asked Ironhelm, speaking to Frei. As ever, the Rune Priest acted as the Great Wolf’s senses, able to detect the ripples and eddies in the skin of the warp before they became apparent to mortal awareness.

  The Rune Priest’s pale skin pricked with droplets of sweat, even though the bridge was as cold as that of any Fenrisian ship. ‘By Russ,’ he breathed, his eyes screwed up in concentration. ‘It is… burning.’

  More picters filled with visual imagery, flanked by readings across all the sensorium spectra. No detailed annals remained to say what the world had looked like when the Space Wolves, Thousand Sons and Word Bearers had conquered it in the name of Unity, but it was hard to imagine that it had looked then as it looked now.

  Ark Reach’s skies were seething with pink, purple and blue energies. Vast cloudbanks tore and jostled across a violent atmosphere, forever moving, forever changing. Pale white lightning slipped from hemisphere to hemisphere, flickering in tiny spurs across the face of a multi-hued troposphere. The entire orb glowed in the void like light refracted through a jewel.

  ‘Surface scan,’ ordered Ironhelm.

  ‘Initial readings,’ reported Leofgar, Master of the Sensorium. ‘The world is barren, cleared of life, save for one location.’

  ‘Show me.’

  The closest picter lenses hissed with static, then clarified to show a landscape grid. Most of the view was composed of what looked like a turbulent ocean, though the upper section was dominated by the crown of a rocky landscape. There was nothing in between those two extreme terrains – open seas or sheer cliff-faces, the latter rising up to astonishing heights from such precarious foundations.

  The larger part of the exposed rock terrain was empty, devoid of vegetation or settlement. The rocks were streaked with violent colours just as the sky was, giving the impression of some vast geode. One corner, where the highest peaks overlooked the crashing surf, emitted energy signatures – huge amounts, comparable to a whole starship formation, all confined to the minuscule scrap of land. The light from that sector was a neon blaze, testing the limits of picter reproduction. Even under the thick cloud cover the incandescence could be made out, throbbing like a beacon in the deep void.

  ‘Clear readings?’ demanded Kjarlskar, leaning closer to the banks of images.

  ‘Nothing beyond what you see,’ reported Leofgar. ‘Sensors cannot pierce the energy field around that pinnacle.’

  ‘Frei,’ said Ironhelm. ‘Maleficarum?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ answered the Rune Priest, bleakly. ‘Of a depth I have not witnessed. Perhaps if Sturmhjart were–’

  ‘He is not, and you know well enough why,’ snapped Ironhelm, switching to the tactical viewers and watching the escorts hit their geostationary watch-points. Russvangum itself surged into place above the energy-pinnacle and took up high orbital anchor, its every weapon trained down at the cliffs below. ‘The journey has not been wasted – that is the place we seek.’

  Kjarlskar was already reaching for his helm. ‘A city,’ the Wolf Lord observed, watching the images tighten as the augurs found their range. ‘Of a kind.’

  There were buildings there, but they were of strange and impossible shapes. Many looked like vast pieces of shrapnel, caught in mid-explosion and locked in place. Others were wider at the top than the bottom, suspended in defiance of gravity on tiny foundations. Everything shimmered in a thick haze of light, winking and flashing like scattered lenses.

  ‘But it is real?’ asked Ironhelm, his voice giving away his desperation for it to be something solid, something he could grasp at. ‘This is not just illusion?’

  ‘As real as you are,’ said Frei. ‘But there is sorcery – the place swims with it.’

  ‘So we expected.’ Ironhelm’s voice was firm now, growling, catching with the animal depths that made his roars shake the battlefield. ‘We will drop into its heart and tear it out.’

  He moved off, going with Kjarlskar to the blast doors at the rear of the command sanctum. Behind him, the mortal crew scurried to take up tactical positions, slotting in as the Wolves left their stations to join the assault below.

  All across the bridge, strategeos began to calculate the ingress angles, pinpointing drop pod strikes for rapid link-up on the ground. Thunderhawk flights were coordinated, targeted to offer rapid support when resistance was encountered. While this was done, the Blood Claws were already whooping down in the muster-halls, keying themselves up for the frenzy of killing. The Hunters coolly strapped themselves into restraint cages, while the Long Fangs checked over the heavy guns a final time before committing them to the drop pods.

  Two whole Great Companies, bolstered by Rune Priests and mechanised cover from Rendmar’s foundries, launched together on the single target, all at once. It was a formidable strike force.

  ‘The Hand of Russ!’ Ironhelm voxed, speaking over the company-wide channel and addressing every warrior in the joint vanguard. ‘Brothers, fate has led us here, and now it hangs close on your shoulder. This is a damned world, one that deserves what we shall give it. But hope too that greater prey will be caught, the one whose neck I have vowed to sever. Pray that our ancient enemy is in that city of light, and pray that his fell magick girds him well, for now we are on his heels!’

  Massed roars came back over the comm-feed, thick with static and fury. As he spoke, Ironhelm neared his own shackled drop pod – it stood open to receive him and Trask’s honour guard, its innards glowing red like the cut-up corpse of a scrying beast. Above the pod hung the massive release claw, below it the long shaft down toRussvangum’s under-hull, where even now the void-doors would be priming to unlock.

  ‘So go with all fury, and let hunger lead your blades to prey!’

  Then he was in, clamping himself into the adamantium casket just as he had done a thousand times. His comm-channel rang with the echo of the shouting warriors, until the launch strobes began to whirl and the vox cut dead.

  Trask was opposite him, as always. The Wolf Guard acknowledged his master with a bow, just as the outer pod sealed tight and the release claw mechanism clanked into steaming life.

  ‘Is this the one, then?’ Trask asked, his voice betraying no scepticism, only hope.

  Then the claw released, sending the drop pod plummeting down the shaft. Ironhelm laughed wildly, relishing as he always did the first moment of sheer physical dislocation. Soon the true fall would begin – the plunge through the void, followed by the fiery run of the atmosphere before the bone-jarring crack of terrestrial impact.

  ‘May it be so, brother,’ Ironhelm cried back, fervently. ‘By Russ, may it be so!’

  Only once they were down did the scale of Ark Reach Secundus’s unique landscape become truly appa
rent. The cliffs were not just huge, they were gargantuan. Sheer and near-perfectly vertical, they shot down from the highest rock towers to the foaming shoreline. Whole cloud formations passed under the summits of those clustered towers, buoyed by warm airs wafted up from the churning ocean below.

  The drop pods hit the summit in a wave of earth-cracking impacts. Even before the clamshell doors had smacked down, the Thunderhawks were wheeling among them and hovering over the dropsites like vultures over carrion.

  The Wolves burst from their teardrop caskets, slavering for an enemy to engage with. Ironhelm’s force had come down to the city’s east, up where the land was highest and the rock-bridges between towers most slender. Kjarlskar was to the south, from where his company had to clamber up a steep series of switchbacks to gain the city’s lower edge. To the west and the north, beyond the narrow city’s spires and pyramids, was nothing but the gulf – a swirling miasma swelling with vapour over the seas below.

  As the Wolves ran, the air screamed. Every gust of wind shrieked like a thousand voices, ripped from their authors’ throats and set loose on to the gale. Amid the screams were laughs and manic yells, whole fractured choirs of demented rage. The Wolves largely ignored them, racing across the rock-plates towards the first of the teetering buildings. Some roared back with war-cries of their own – curses from the storm-seas of Fenris, strangely at home amid the skirling atmosphere of Ark Reach.

  Ironhelm’s pack was first to hit the perimeter, pushing under the shadow of the distorted edifices and making for the city’s heart. Above them the clouds ripped and twisted and contorted, glowing violently as if lit from within. Shapes formed – momentary faces, or eyes, or mouths – before rippling away before the outline could be made out.

  In Ironhelm’s wake, the attacking formations firmed up. Sundered packs joined together as they reached the straggle of outer structures, shepherded by low runs from the Thunderhawks. Behind them, orbital lifters brought down the last of the Chapter’s armoury: Predator tanks, Land Raiders and tracked artillery pieces.