Stormcaller

by Chris Wraight

  Gunnlaugur looked on, his battle-joy quickly turning to shocked disgust.

  ‘The Church,’ he snarled. ‘The Church.’

  Ingvar scanned for the Plague Marines they’d sighted earlier. This changed everything – with allies crashing into the heart of the enemy army, the odds were evening up rapidly. ‘I think they’re on our side,’ he said.

  ‘Who is?’ demanded Gunnlaugur, outraged. ‘Who commands?’

  Ingvar activated dausvjer’s energy field.

  ‘Find out later, brother,’ he said, starting to move again. ‘For now, be glad they hunt with us.’

  Chapter Four

  De Chatelaine stood at the summit of the Ighala Gate, watching as the sea of flame lapped up against the walls of her city. The platform on which she stood was broad and open, containing only her and twenty ceremonial Guard soldiers, and it felt like being isolated on a pinnacle over a universe of blood and torment.

  She’d watched her Battle Sisters spearheading the assault down to the perimeter, noting with pride how swiftly and how skilfully they had retaken lost ground. She’d watched as the big guns had been hoisted into position, remounted on the old defence towers and angled at the huge mobs outside the walls. She’d watched as the enemy had responded, stirring lazily at first, then hurling its vast resources at the fragile barrier, hammering at the gates, surging up against the defiant line of defenders.

  It had been difficult to witness from a distance, condemned by her rank to remain an overseer of the carnage rather than a participant in it. One of the towers had been overwhelmed less than an hour after being retaken. Waves of mutants clambered up the walls, poured through the demolished sections and surrounded the pockets of reclaimed defiance. De Chatelaine had been tempted to order a fighting retreat back to the inner walls. She could see her meagre troops being surrounded, and it felt like throwing away everything they had worked so hard to win.

  She held firm. Most of the bulwarks survived, reinforced by a constant stream of troops and materiel sent down from the upper city. They were besieged and isolated, but fought on defiantly. As time went on, the precarious salient drew yet more troops out from the sprawling enemy encampment, dragging them across the poisoned desert and into the meat grinder of combat.

  When the four gigantic explosions rocked the foundations under her and sent intertwined columns of burning smoke rearing high over the entire battlefield, she knew the Wolves had done what they had promised – the enemy had been blooded, its fangs drawn.

  ‘Come back now,’ she breathed, leaning out into the night air. ‘No pride, no glory – you’ve done what was needful and now we need you here.’

  But then everything changed. The sky above her burned. The roar and clamour of the battle was replaced by the thunderous crescendo of landers coming into range.

  She looked up, gazing at the film of lurid pollution that had overarched them since the first days of the siege, and saw it glowing from above, lit vividly by starbursts of crimson and silver. Then drop pods broke through, hurtling down into the wastes beyond the broken walls.

  As she watched them fall, de Chatelaine’s sudden joy gave way to unease – they were not Space Wolves drop pods. Though hard to make out in the particulate fog, the war machines looked blood-red, their death’s-head insignias surmounted by baroque crests of gold.

  ‘Canoness,’ murmured one of her guards, hovering at her side. ‘Please, now, you must withdraw.’

  Her bodyguards had been trying to persuade her to retreat to somewhere more secure for over an hour, but now, for the first time since taking position on the Gate, she felt suddenly exposed.

  ‘Captain, I do not–’ she started, but her voice was immediately drowned out by a fresh clamour.

  Six columns of actinic energy shot down around her, surrounding her and making the platform blaze wildly as if in full daylight. She reached for her sidearm, just as the eddying distortion guttered out and threw the platform back into fire-flecked gloom.

  Standing before her, glistening from the residue of warp-translation, were six figures, each looking at her dryly as if they owned the planet and she were some kind of interloper.

  ‘Put your weapon away please, canoness preceptor,’ said one of them, a slender man wearing sable robes and holding a tall, aquila-tipped staff. His voice was soft, and his skin was as pale as milk. ‘If we were here to harm you, by the Emperor’s will you would already be dead.’

  De Chatelaine stared back at him for a moment, her heart thumping. She kept her bolt pistol raised, holding it two-handed. ‘This is my domain,’ she said. ‘I would know who treads here.’

  Another of the newcomers shuffled forwards then, pulling at the robe of the speaker and gesturing for him to make way.

  This one was different, his skin oil-slicked and golden. Voluminous robes swaddled a corpulent frame, picked out in brocade of gold and red and black. Armour glinted from under gaps in the robes, itself richly decorated and studded with rococo flourishes. He too carried a staff, but it was far grander, carved from gold and studded with garnets, emeralds and carnadines.

  His eyes were dark, almost white-less, and had the dead-stare certainty of a man who routinely controlled the fate of worlds. When he smiled, his thick lips pursing fleshily, it was with the awareness of what honour the gesture bestowed on the beholder. There was no joy in that smile, just a smooth, practised command of indulgence. He lifted a limp hand, heavy with bands of gold, and glided towards her.

  ‘Of course you would,’ he said, extending the hand in her direction. ‘But I trust you know me now?’

  De Chatelaine dropped to one knee.

  ‘Lord Cardinal,’ she said, grasping his hand. She kissed the golden ring of his middle finger – a weighty band of gold surmounted by a ruby in the shape of a skull. ‘Forgive me, I did not–’

  ‘Rise, my daughter.’ He gazed down at her tolerantly. ‘This is war, and you were cautious. Now it is over, and the Church comes to reclaim its own.’

  De Chatelaine did as she was bid, and holstered her pistol. Drop pods were falling from the skies, lancing down into the thick of the fighting beyond the walls. She could hear the crescendo of intensifying combat, pocked with the familiar rush of flame-weapons being deployed.

  ‘We had no idea,’ she said. Repoda had given her no warning, no inkling, that Ecclesiarchy forces had come into range of Ras Shakeh.

  The Cardinal nodded. His every movement was feline.

  ‘We can move carefully when we wish to,’ he said. ‘But you were clearly expecting help from somewhere. A rash assault to make, I think, if you were not.’

  ‘The Wolves of Fenris,’ said de Chatelaine. ‘A pack of them fights with us, and more are due.’

  At the mention of Space Wolves, the man in the sable robes stiffened. The Cardinal sniffed, as if a minor foul aroma had just wafted into his otherwise perfumed presence.

  ‘They have an old claim on this place,’ he said. ‘Like half the worlds in this sector.’

  As he spoke, a heavy troop lifter emerged from the clouds, far out over the plains. It was immediately strafed with flickering lines of las-fire, while labouring on a throbbing cushion of engine down-blast. The ship was huge, far larger than the drop pods, and must have carried hundreds of troops within its swollen crew bays.

  ‘What strength do you bring?’ asked de Chatelaine, observing the lifter fighting its way down.

  ‘Enough.’

  ‘My lord, they have Traitor Marines. The Wolves–’

  ‘Space Marines are not the Emperor’s only weapons.’

  ‘No. No, they are not. Even so…’ She trailed off.

  The Cardinal gave de Chatelaine a disapproving look. ‘This is our world. We can use the Wolves if we must, but when this filth is cleared away, they will stay or leave by our command.’ He shot a glance at the sable-cloaked man, who nodded fervently in agreement
. ‘I may have been remiss in fortifying this sector, but there are so many for us to ward, all with mouths to feed and souls to shrive. You must forgive me, canoness, for leaving you to the mercy of savages.’

  ‘They have died for us.’

  ‘Which is the least of the many services a man may render. And, for them, who are not even men in the true sense, what else is there?’ He reached into a deep pocket in his robes and withdrew a small ivory box. He flicked it open, retrieved a pinch of what looked like coal-dust, placed two dabs of it against his nostrils, inhaled, then replaced the box. ‘There is a reckoning for all things. We are all held accountable for our service, one way or another.’

  The Cardinal behaved as if the warfare thundering around them all were somehow a trifling affair, the business of others. By now, the lifter had made planetfall and was busily disgorging its contents onto the plains around it. De Chatelaine saw battle engines striding amid the carnage, blessed instruments of the Adeptus Militorum. Most were Sentinel-class walkers, adorned with Ecclesiarchy colours and bearing flamers slung under their chassis, but there were other assault machines among them, some with a darker genesis.

  It had been a long time since she’d witnessed a Penitent Engine at war. The memory of the first time was still raw in her mind.

  ‘So this is deliverance,’ she said quietly. ‘I had assumed it would be them. Better that it be my own kind.’

  ‘It matters not who wields the blade,’ the Cardinal said, sniffing again, ‘so long as it finds a neck to bite.’ He looked around him, casting dead eyes across the carnage. ‘Perhaps you will show me to the Halicon now. I wish to instruct you on what is to come.’

  De Chatelaine hesitated. ‘My forces are engaged.’

  The Cardinal smiled coldly. ‘Do not concern yourself with that. You have laboured for long enough, and your service will be recognised.’ The fleshy lips twitched. ‘We are here now. That is all that matters.’

  Down on the battlefield, the volume of fire was incredible. Penitent Engines hurled out vicious streamers of flame, catching on the enemy and exploding in promethium-laced clouds. Phalanxes of closed-helm troopers in red segmented armour stalked through the carnage, laying waste to everything before them. Most destructive of all were the Battle Sisters, hurled into the thick of the fighting by precision drop-strikes. They, too, were clad in deep crimson battleplate and bore the sigil of a teardrop surmounted by flames. Like their counterparts of the Wounded Heart, they fought with brutal commitment, charging in close before unleashing a torrent of flamer weapons.

  The entire battle-plain was now a furnace of brutality. The enemy remained as stubborn as ever, fighting with the sullen, semi-conscious violence they were known for. Tides of mutant soldiers charged into hurricanes of incoming fire, overwhelming oncoming troops with weight of numbers. Twisted horrors limped out of the depths of the army, swollen with stimm-enhanced grotesquery and laying waste with chem-weapons or poison-tipped flails.

  Out of all of them, though, the most formidable were the Masters – the Plague Marines, centuries old and hardened into instruments of destruction. They strode through the clogged battlefield, reaping as they came and leaving ditches of severed limbs in their wake. Las-fire glanced harmlessly from their crusted armour, blades turned from their rust-pocked breastplates, and flames coursed over them leaving nothing but surface charring. While they lived and fought, the battle remained in the balance.

  ‘For the Allfather!’ bellowed Gunnlaugur, charging to be the first into contact. Ingvar, Olgeir, Jorundur and Hafloí charged with him, howling and bellowing death-curses as they cut their way towards their fallen brothers.

  The Plague Marines lumbered to meet them, striding across the flame-laced battlefield in grim silence. They carried thick-bladed power scythes, their twisted blades running with filth. Their immense armour power-packs had distended, fusing into the plague-pale flesh beneath and latching on to coils of bunched cabling.

  When the two forces clashed, the impact cracked out across the battlefield. The pure fury of Fenris thundered into the pure corruption of Barbarus, shivering the earth and blasting away any combatants foolish enough to dare to intervene.

  Every blow was perfectly aimed, lashed out with crushing weight and infinite hatred. Hammer and axes thudded into the curved blades of the scythes, exploding in showers of disruptor-sparks. Boltguns blazed, blasting shards from power armour.

  The Wolves were faster. Up against real opposition for the first time, their speed became truly phenomenal – they hacked and shot, roaring and snarling, totems flying about them like satellites. Skulbrotsjór arced wildly, cracking into corroded armour with deadening force. Dausvjer thrust, catching the light of bloody flames on its rune-carved length.

  The Plague Marines responded with equal fervour. Eerily silent, their movements were suffused with a wearing power of eternity, absorbing impacts and turning them back on the bearer. They thrust and parried with their scythes, meeting the hammer blows and blade strikes and hammering back. Green-edged energies rippled down their corrupted blades, flaring as they hit and sending webs of aetheric power dancing like ghosts.

  One of them, a monster with one bulging eye-lens and a bursting abdominal armour-plate, was smashed bodily to the ground by Gunnlaugur, his death mask driven in to reveal a bloody mass of flesh beneath. Jorundur was mauled by another, his axe slammed away by a power scythe before the hilt cracked into his gorget-plating. The Old Dog hit the earth, cursing even as Olgeir raced to support him. Hafloí became locked in a frenzied duel with a tusked adversary covered in clanking skulls. Ingvar took on two at once, working his sacred blade with preternatural speed and dexterity.

  Each warrior, Traitor and Loyalist alike, remained so focused on the fight, so locked into the pure state of combat, that none noticed the wind picking up around them. The blows continued to land, the boltguns continued to drum. They fought on as the earth at their feet shook and electric arcs crackled around them. They were fighting even as lances of power shot down from above, outshining the crackling roar of the flames and sending shadows leaping across the battlefield.

  Only when the Plague Marines were encased in fields of writhing ball-lightning and lifted clear of the battlefield did the pack finally pull clear. Gunnlaugur checked a hammer swipe, seeing his opponent held rigid within a vice of rippling translucent force. The six Traitors were transfixed, locked in midair by snaking bolts of silver fire.

  Gunnlaugur withdrew along with his brothers, hackles rising, primed for the next assault. As soon as he saw the origin of the battle-lightning, though, he let the head of skulbrotsjór fall. The rest of the pack, free from the grip of combat, fell back, their ragged pelts rippling in the howl of wind and dust.

  More drop pods had come down, this time in grey livery with yellow-and-black chevrons. They studded the battlefield like granite monoliths, steaming from their atmospheric plummet. Two dozen Grey Hunters surrounded the pods, bolters lowered, their rune-daubed armour limned red by the fires. They remained motionless, every barrel of every gun aimed at the stricken Plague Marines.

  The Hunters were not alone. Before them stood the living legend.

  He towered over all else, clad in hulking Terminator plate that made him look like some storm-giant of Fenrisian myth. Runes glowed on its surface, throbbing like open wounds, and the air around him ran with static. A heavy red-mane wolf-pelt hung over the curve of his thick psychic hood, pulled by the unnatural wind that eddied around him. His staff, a thick stave of ebony, snarled and shimmered as if alive, crowned by a bleached skull whose eyes flared with pooled aetheric matter. His flame-red beard, unfaded to grey despite hundreds of years in service, spilled out across a huge barrel chest. Two frost-blue eyes stared out, perfect in their clarity, fearsome in their intensity.

  He said nothing. Lines of force lashed and snaked from his staff, swept up by the circling winds and feeding the coronae that enclosed the locked
Plague Marines. The very stuff of the elements seemed drawn to him, and the dust drummed and rippled around his boots.

  He raised his left gauntlet, encrusted in ice-rimed ceramite, and a black shape flapped down out of the tortured air. A sleek raven, half the size of a mortal man, its night-black plumage laced with the cables and iron bands of the Iron Priest’s trade, alighted on his wrist, folding semi-metal wings, cawing once, then glaring out at the battlefield.

  Njal Stormcaller issued no war-cry. He lifted his immense staff, and lightning forked out, bounding across the earth before snapping into the Traitors suspended in their auras of psychic fire. Tempests howled around him, whipping up blood and smoke and grime and hurling them into vortices of destruction. The noise of it was incredible, as if the planet’s soul were being harrowed before their eyes and remade anew.

  One by one, life was strangled out of the suspended Traitors. Their limbs twitched, then flailed, then spasmed, as if invisible hands had reached up to their throats to choke them. Their armour cracked, splitting with snaps of silver brilliance, revealing pox-thick flesh within, as pale as bone and puffed up with lesions. Layer by layer, their fallen magnificence was stripped away, scorched and consumed, withering in waves of coruscation. They screamed, but the sound was snatched away by the scream of the wind. When nothing was left of them but husks, as black and fragile as coiled paper, their carcasses thudded back to the ground. Remnants of their ceramite shells rolled away, held together by inky strands of tar-like residue.

  All but one. The largest of the Plague Marines, the monster Gunnlaugur had felled, still hung intact, immobile, locked by the esoteric forces that played across his armour. He fought against the coils and spiked webs of aether-force, but the dazzling lattice clamped him tight, shrinking onto his tortured frame like throttle-wire.

  Njal walked slowly up to his captive, his boots crunching across the bones of the battlefield. As he moved, the raven at his wrist issued a harsh vox-caw of denunciation. Crackles of lightning continued to dance and flicker around the Rune Priest’s colossal frame, as if leaking out from the furnace of power contained within.