[Space Wolf 03] - Grey Hunter

by William King

  They entered another vast hallway. The ceiling loomed a hundred metres above them. On the far side, steps led up into the sanctum of this temple. Now Ragnar could see battle being fought, as Berek and his embattled company fought their way into the core of the complex against more than ten times their number. The sense of cosmic evil here was almost overwhelming. The daemonic shadows had multiplied in the corner of his eyes, and seemed somehow more tangible. Ragnar could see heavy weapons fire erupt from the Wolves’ position on the stairs, and see the flicker of energy as Rune Priests drew on their powers to blast aside their foes.

  “Come on!” he shouted, and led his pack at a blazing sprint across the chamber. Beams of hot light seared the stones around him as las-fire erupted from turret windows above the entrance to the sanctum. Snipers, he thought veering erratically to disturb their aim, knowing there was not much else he could do at the moment. The range was too great for a snapshot.

  “Nice to see some of the heretics are putting up a bloody fight,” said Sven. “I thought they had all gone on holiday.”

  “They probably heard you were coming and decided they could not let you in,” said Ragnar. At least he knew now the purpose of one of the groups the heretics had been divided into. They were guards. What was the purpose of the others?

  Somehow, he made it to the stairs, and saw why the Marines were currently hunkered down there. The rise of the stairs provided cover from fire from within the temple. The enormous projecting lintel prevented snipers from firing down on them from overhead.

  He heard Berek bellowing orders in the battle tongue of Fenris, and saw sergeants move quickly to see them carried out. As Ragnar arrived, Berek turned and gave him a feral grin. For all the madness and sense of impending doom about him, he gave the impression of a man enjoying himself greatly. “Good,” he said. “Blood Claws! Just in time. We’re about to storm the door and more assault troops are just what we need.”

  Ragnar nodded. Berek turned and gave orders for the Long Fangs to lay down a curtain of fire for a minute, while two supporting squads lobbed a mixture of frag, flash and smoke grenades to disorientate their enemies. Ragnar knew when the explosive screen peaked they would go. He paused for a second to take a look around at his company, suddenly aware that this would be the last time he would see some of them alive.

  He breathed in the scent of the massive pack, and noticed the quick confident way in which every man moved, instinctively knowing what needed to be done, and what his part in it all was. Ragnar could see through that illusion now. The co-ordination was in part a product of long years of training, and part a product of the complex subliminal web of olfactory signals that tied the pack together.

  Already the big grizzled old men of the Long Fangs were manoeuvring their massive weapons into position to send a concentrated hail of fire onto their enemies when the signal was given. Without having to be told twice the Grey Hunters were moving up with their grenades and bolters. Already the Blood Claw packs were running into positions in the fore, throwing themselves down to take advantage of cover until the moment when they would rise up and charge. Skalagrim summoned his powers. The Wolf Priests made ready to confront their foes and see to the wounded. Trainor and his men took up position amid the mass, looking as out of place as children on a battlefield.

  Perhaps it was the after-effects of his encounter with Chaos, but it suddenly struck Ragnar how many more Blood Claws there were than Grey Hunters and how unlikely it was that many of them would live to be raised to the grey. Not that most of them would ask for anything different. A short glorious life and a mighty death was all most of them desired. Indeed, for men raised on Fenris where few lived to an age where they got grey hairs, it was all most of them had expected anyway.

  Ragnar grinned. What did it matter when you entered Russ’s halls? Every man here would die sooner or later. Nothing was more certain. What mattered was how you entered. All men wanted an end that would be worthy of a song, and a tale you could tell to the other ghosts as you swigged ale with the heroes of legend around the long tables.

  In the back of his mind something niggled, though. He was not yet ready to leave this life. There were still things he wanted to do, places he wanted to see, before he passed through the grim grey portals. He pushed those thoughts back. The time and place of his falling were not his to choose. If it was ordained by fate that he die this day there was nothing he could do about it, and no way to protest. He needed to ready himself. He nodded to Berek, turned to the Blood Claws of his pack and moved towards the van, trying to get as close as possible to the centre and the front. He sensed some objections to him taking the place of heroes, and he was not about to start a fight about it at this late stage. It served him right for coming late.

  Sven and the others fell into place alongside him, as the barrage of heavy weapon fire reached a crescendo. He wondered what it must be like to be on the receiving end of it. To have to face that hail of death, of heavy bolter shells, and micro-missiles and heavy las-fire, without the benefit of heavy ceramite armour, without the confidence of being a Wolf.

  For a brief instant he caught a glimpse of what it must be like for ordinary men to see Space Marines coming at them. They faced an unrelenting foe that came on implacably in the face of superior numbers, a foe much faster and stronger and tougher man they were, who showed no trace of weakness. It must be like facing gods, he thought, and wondered if the spell of pride still clouded his mind, and then realised that it did not. His was an accurate assessment of the situation.

  The return fire seemed to have died under the barrage of death thrown down by the Long Fangs. He risked a glance up and saw a massive cloud of smoke and thunderous explosions. Some of the wicked looking gargoyles around the entrance had been reduced to shapeless masses, chiselled away by the sheer weight of bolter shells thrown at them. Some had been melted to slag by the reflected spray of heavy las-fire. Dead bodies lay sprawled in the dirt. Chain lightning danced across his field of vision as the Rune Priests called on the fury of the heavens. It did not seem possible that anything could survive in there. And yet the sense of ominous tension had increased. Something dark and evil lay within this final sanctum. It waited for them there. A cold flash of fear flickered down Ragnar’s spine.

  A long, eerie, ululating cry echoed from behind him. It was the signal. The time to advance was upon them.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Surrounded by his comrades, Ragnar raced into the smoke. It billowed and swirled around him, turning his fellows into shadowy outlines. Had it not been for his heightened sense of scent he might have felt isolated, but as it was he could smell and hear his comrades and was reassured by the presence of the pack.

  Like an avalanche of unleashed fury, the Blood Claws hurtled forward. Terrifying yips and howls filled the air and echoed away. As he emerged from the cloud, Ragnar threw himself flat, hoping to confuse any enemy who might have targeted him. He hit the ground rolling, and let his momentum carry him ten strides before coming to his feet again. Once more he was astonished. Only a few hundred warriors opposed them, and the Blood Claws smashed through them like a spear through a body. The heretics were no match for the Blood Claws nor the hardened Space Wolf warriors who swarmed in behind them.

  Ragnar bowled over one foe, chopped down another and then the momentum of his rush carried him through the defenders and into the nave of the temple. Hundreds of ecstatic faces turned to stare at him, confused. Each belonged to a red-robed heretic whose head had been shaved and whose brow had been marked with the twisted rune of Tzeentch.

  The air stank of incense and sweet perfumed oils. The cultists had the blank, delirious look of the drugged, or of zealots awaiting a manifestation of their god. At a guess, Ragnar would have said that these were the “anointed” of which the possessed heretic had spoken.

  Thousands of the cultists occupied the vast empty space within this sanctum. Huge masked figures leered down from alcoves, rebel gods spectating on what was about to
unfold. The sense of gathering power that had surrounded the temple was focused on this spot, Ragnar realised. The air fairly pulsed with magical energy.

  Before he had a chance to comprehend fully what was going on the battle swirled into the sanctum itself. A masked soldier aimed a bayonet at him. Ragnar cut him down with a back-handed swipe, took out two of the man’s companions and looked around for his battle-brothers. In moments, the tiled and mosaic floor was taken up with the bodies of the wounded, and the surviving heretical fighters cowered away from their attackers.

  No, Ragnar realised, not just their attackers. It was not merely the spectacle of the Wolves arriving that had terrified them, it was what was happening within the temple. The ritual being enacted here had seared even the sin-blackened souls of these cultists. Seeing what was going on, Ragnar was not surprised.

  A dazzling aurora shimmered in the air, rainbows of multicoloured light reflected in the gleaming marble walls. At the end of the chamber, a monstrous altar, a blasphemous parody of that to be found in every Imperial temple glowed with evil might. Around it stood five men. All of them were garbed in heavy crimson robes, trimmed with gold and covered in flickering symbols of hallucinogenic complexity. One of the men held the burnished crystalline skull of some horn-headed daemon. The other held what looked like the bones of a massive hand, held together by wires of finest spun silver. The third carried a glowing orb shaped like an eye. The fourth carried a chalice of bronze. It was what the fifth man carried that drew Ragnar’s eye.

  He was a huge bearded old man, with the face of a prophet and the eyes of a daemon lord. It was Sergius, without a doubt. In one massive tattooed hand, the cultist held a huge spear. It was carved all of some dark wood worked with the runes of Fenris. The runes now glowed with an evil ruddy light, obviously the work of Chaos. The spearhead looked as if it were carved from the fang of a monstrous dragon. It glowed with an unearthly radiance, a chill-bright glimmer that recalled the light of Fenris’s sun save that it too was being polluted by the taint of Chaos. Ragnar knew that he looked upon the Spear of Russ, and that the man who held it was the leader of this pack of heretics. The urge to face the apostate in single combat, and claim back that which he had stolen was near overwhelming. There was something about the Spear, even in its polluted state, that caused a sense of reverence in him, something that seemed to have been burned deep into his flesh, perhaps implanted within the gene-seed itself.

  Sergius turned to glare at them. He was a huge man, so broad that he seemed almost obese, with arms thick as treetrunks and a neck like a bull. Under his massive cowled cloak he wore shimmering armour embossed with the eye-dazzling, stomach churning runes that were the mark of Tzeentch. Curving ram-like horns emerged from his helmet, and Ragnar was not sure whether they were part of it or actually grew from the man’s head.

  Above the heretic’s head, a rift had appeared in reality, and through it something else was visible, a realm of shifting constantly changing lights in which Ragnar caught sight of daemon faces leering and gibbering. Even as Ragnar watched, the faces all flowed together forming one massive face, its features as yet formless save for an enormous gaping mouth and a single massive eye. Through the rift of the mouth streamers of Chaos stuff gushed out into the chamber and flickered around the room. The very light seemed tainted by the presence of daemons.

  Seeing that the ritual was about to be interrupted Sergius returned to his work, chanting alien words in a deep powerful voice, words never meant to be shaped by human tongue. The words echoed within the cavern of Ragnar’s skull, and brought back a flood of images from the smashing of the mural. The Wolf shook his head and fought off a momentary dizziness.

  More and more streamers of incandescent radiance leapt through the rift. One of them touched a shaven-headed cultist kneeling near the altar and the man screamed as if his soul were being ripped from his body. A reddish light flickered in his eyes, and a foul frothing cloud of many colours emerged from his mouth. His body spasmed, as if he was in the grip of some powerful fit. His muscles rippled and expanded like balloons, bursting out through flesh in a tidal wave of red dripping meat, and bluish pulsing vein. With one hand, the man reached into a split in his flesh and tore it free, leaving him stripped and skinless, blood pooling on the floor near his feet. Despite a pain that must have been near indescribable, he still stood, and then, most horribly of all, he laughed, a chilling sound that rang through the chamber like the mad mirth of some demented godling.

  The transformation was not over though. The possessed man opened his mouth and the stuff of Chaos slid down his throat and again his body glowed briefly, the bones glowing so bright they were visible through his flesh. As Ragnar watched, they thickened and grew denser, the joints becoming heavier as if adjusting to compensate for the additional mass of muscle on the body. The whole process was oddly familiar, and reminded Ragnar of something he had learned once before. Then it came to him — the bone structure and the increased muscle mass were almost exactly the same as the changed form of a Space Marine. The cultist seemed to be creating a wicked parody of the foes that sought to stop him.

  More of the coloured stuff of Chaos flowed around the doomed human sacrifice, knitting itself into a new layer of flesh, gleaming and scaly, at once suggestive of something reptilian and something insectoid. His eyes became deep eerie pools of dancing flame that reflected the glow of the hell-lights about him. He gestured and the blood pooled at his feet washed upwards in a wave, congealing and clotting as it did so, covering him in a layer of blackened slime that hardened into a carapace very similar in appearance to the one Ragnar knew was beneath his own armour.

  Another complex gesture and more and more of the scraps of Chaos stuff flowed towards him, flapping like monstrous batwings as they wrapped themselves about the man. They gleamed bright as metal hot from the forge and the man screamed once more like someone dropped into a vat of molten metal. The light surrounding him was so brilliant that Ragnar could not look at him with his naked eyes, and dropped his gaze, leaving only a horrific after-image burned on his retina. In the last second before averting his eyes, he saw what the man had turned into, and recognised it. He looked up, knowing already what he would see. Knowing that there would be recognition too in the burning gaze of the thing he faced.

  A Chaos Marine stood there, clad in ornate armour of ancient design, hundreds of leering metal daemon heads emerging from his armour. He clutched a runesword that glowed hellishly in one hand, and a bolter of ancient aspect in the other. His helmet was horned. He looked much the same as Ragnar remembered from the caverns below the most accursed mountains on Fenris.

  “Madox!” he bellowed, challenging the Chaos warrior he ought he and Strybjorn had killed many moons before.

  “It’s always nice to be recognised,” came the silky mocking voice he knew and loathed. And still the rift in the air above the spear glowed brighter. The face it had formed was more recognisably human now. Ragnar had seen its image before in the most ancient ikons of his Chapter. It was the visage of one of the greatest of all mankind’s enemies, the rebel Primarch, Magnus.

  More and more scraps of Chaos stuff, the souls of undying warriors, flashed out like meteors, striking cultists left and right. The glare Ragnar had seen earlier, repeated itself, once, twice, a dozen, a hundred times.

  Ragnar knew in that moment that at least a company, perhaps a Chapter of Chaos Marines were warping into being all around him.

  All around the heretics screamed as they were possessed, their physical forms warped, their souls displaced. Whatever they had been expecting from the ritual, this was not it. Doubtless they had been promised apotheosis, or power beyond their wildest dreams. Ragnar supposed they were getting it, just not in the way they anticipated.

  Even when Chaos keeps its promises, it finds a way to break them. The shaven headed acolytes panicked and ran, but the glowing fireballs of Chaos stuff followed them, consuming them utterly and transforming them into something else. Perhaps it was
his imagination, but Ragnar thought he could see the visages of long-dead Traitor Marines within each incandescent sphere. The cultists rushed past seeking to escape their doom. Screaming and bleating like frightened sheep they threw themselves headlong at the Wolves.

  The rift in the air widened. The chief heretic chanted louder. Ragnar thought he could see other things swirling about within it, massive daemonic forms that sought entrance to this world. His sense of foreboding grew. It was like watching the mouth of hell open in front of him. He heard Berek shouting from behind him, “Kill them. There will be fewer bodies for the daemons to possess!”

  A cultist standing in front of Ragnar was sliced in two by a black, glowing hellblade. Ragnar found himself confronting Madox. “An admirably brutal and ruthless thought,” he said. “But I am afraid living or dead these bodies will serve. Of course, my returning brethren won’t thank me for cutting this body in two, but I could not restrain myself.

  “Imagine my joy in seeing you once more. I just could not wait to greet you appropriately.”

  The hellblade lashed out at Ragnar, licking towards his face. Frantically he parried with his chainsword. Sparks flew as the two blades met. The black blade moaned. “I do believe you have improved since last we fought, youth. Excellent. This will make your death all the more satisfying.”

  Madox aimed a mighty two-handed cut at Ragnar’s head. Ragnar ducked and struck back, shearing a brazen skull from the Thousand Sons’ armour. “Let me show you how much I have improved, loathsome spawn of Magnus!”

  “Loathsome spawn of Magnus?” The Chaos warrior’s tone was amused. “Spoken like a true Space Wolf — all mindless bigotry and unreasoning hatred.”

  “Die, Chaos spawn!” shouted Ragnar, chopping at Madox with a blow that would have cut the evil Space Marine in two had he not parried. Their blades met with a crash like a hammer hitting an anvil. All around combat had become close and general as the Wolves fought with the resurrected Chaos Marines.