Stormcaller

by Chris Wraight

  ‘You,’ Njal rasped, gazing up at his prey. His voice was ice-sheer, as raw and jagged as the wyrd-storm that raged around him. ‘You will live. For now.’

  Gunnlaugur, until then held rapt by Njal’s imperious presence, remembered himself and raised his thunder hammer in salute. The rest of the pack did likewise with their blades.

  ‘Hjá, gothi!’ they cried.

  Njal turned to look at them, maintaining the force-aegis over the Traitor with ease. It was hard, even for Gunnlaugur, to meet the stare of those eyes, laced as they were with flickers of deep aether-fire. Something about the way they burned – the inflexibility, the acuity – was impossible to endure.

  ‘Grimnar sent seven to this world,’ said Njal.

  ‘He did, jarl,’ replied Gunnlaugur. ‘Váltyr’s thread was cut.’

  ‘The sixth?’

  ‘The Red Dream.’

  Njal’s gaze moved towards Ingvar, as if he knew, instinctively, who was responsible for Apothecary duties. ‘He will recover?’

  ‘He will,’ said Ingvar.

  Njal nodded curtly, then looked out beyond the protective circle of Grey Hunters. Ecclesiarchy battle engines were by then running rampant, driving out into the reeling heart of the enemy horde. More forces were being landed all the time, hammering down into the battlefield on roiling columns of thruster-burn. With every crash-landing came the slam and recoil of lander-ramps, followed by the charge of booted feet. The air was filled with the whine of mortars, the rush of flamers, the roar and crack of bolter weapons.

  In the distance, the enemy was already falling back from the city’s outer walls, and Battle Sisters clad in both black and red were leading the counter-offensive. Penitent Engines swayed and burned among them, many carrying the tattered banners of the Ministorum above the carapace-shells of their agonised occupants.

  ‘No honour in allies like these,’ Njal murmured, watching a squad of what looked like men with metal flails in place of arms and thick iron plates bolted over their faces.

  His raven watched it all with dark, reflecting eyes. It cawed again – a harsh vox-scrape – then turned its long-beaked head away.

  ‘Know this!’ cried Njal then, whipping up more stormwind as his huge voice boomed out into the night. ‘The Rout is among you now! Fear us! Flee from us! We come only to slay, and before the red dawn rises, our axes will be black with your blood!’ His pelts flared out from his shoulders, buoyed by unnatural wind and crowned with the thorn-pattern of lightning shards. ‘Run while you may! Plead to your gods! Nothing remains for you but death!’

  Njal’s raging aura exploded into a sunburst of raw light, streaming out into the gloom with eye-burning intensity. Given their cue, the Grey Hunters of his retinue broke out of the cordon and charged down the retreating mutant hordes. Járnhamar charged with them, spurred into fresh combat-fury by the arrival of their battle-brothers. With a massed howl that cut through all else on the battlefield, the Wolves of Fenris tore back into combat, driving the enemy back into the desert and breaking the grip they had exerted on the city for so long.

  Birthed in fire and fury, the final deliverance of Hjec Aleja had begun.

  Chapter Five

  When dawn came, the sun rose over a bleak scene of devastation. The city remained enclosed in a pall of rising smoke, part chem-filth from the enemy’s ample reservoirs, part smog from the broken tanks and fuel depots. A sprawl of tangled metal and armour ran out from the ravaged walls far into the desert, marred by deep gouges where the drop pods and bulk lifters had come down. Bulbous lander-craft squatted amid the ruins, some hollowed out by gunfire, some intact and operating. Reclamator machines crawled down the long embarkation ramps equipped with lifting gear and purge-flamers. Those who still walked amid the wreckage went warily, their faces covered and their environment suits tightly sealed.

  The fighting had raged through the night, gradually moving away from the city’s edge and further out into the wilds. The Traitor forces had been eviscerated by the initial assaults but had not yielded easily. There was no break, no panic, just a grim, futile resistance that had lasted for hours. Even as the sun climbed into the sky there were pockets of defiance – knots of mutants too steeped in mind-breaking corruption to recognise the impossibility of victory and who just kept on doing what their combat-implants told them to.

  The Ecclesiarchy troops, once landed in sufficient numbers, had been horrifyingly efficient. They had swept across the battlefield in ordered zones, burning everything, responding to the terror-weapons of the Traitors with terror-weapons of their own. Fear meant little or nothing to them – it had been bled out by psycho-conditioning or neural extraction. They were reinforced by their arcane bestiary of biomechanical creations – every conceivable combination of human–weapon interface seemed to have found a home in the forces of the Cardinal.

  None of them, though, had quite matched the bolstered forces of the Wolves, who had pushed deep into the heart of the enemy formations and ripped out the command centres. Caught between the fury of the Space Marines and the systematic advance of the Ecclesiarchy, the contest descended into industrial-scale slaughter. The dust of the desert thickened with blood, turning black-brown and curdling underfoot. Flames were poured across every conquered metre, sanctifying the corpses of the faithful fallen and atomising the bodies of the stricken traitors.

  When the first rays of sunlight angled through the miasma, they revealed a vast circlet of ruins around a tiny epicentre of survival. Above it all, spear-leaved trees still grew in the sheltered courtyards, and the citizens still breathed untainted air behind the atmosphere-sealed chambers, but they were alone amid a swathe of destruction.

  Ingvar stood in the ornate great hall of the Halicon. He remembered the first time he’d laid eyes on it, fresh from the destruction of Undrider and with the situation on the ground unknown. It looked little different – the real fighting hadn’t reached this far up. Gaudy monuments to the Immortal Church stood in the alcoves, carved from alabaster and marble and bearing golden crowns above penitent faces. The heroes of the Adeptus Ministorum always seemed to be penitent. The edifice was built on penitence – an entire species held in thrall by it, locked into fear of error, transfixed by the guilt of crimes committed, planned or imagined.

  Perhaps that was necessary. Halliafiore, the inquisitor who had commanded Onyx, would have agreed readily: mortal humans were wayward, prone to congenital weakness, and only their sanctioned guardians, those given the most rigorous psycho-conditioning ever devised, could hope to face up to the universe without stricture.

  ‘My Lords of Fenris,’ came the Cardinal’s voice, ringing out from the throne he’d occupied. He was used to the grand occasion. ‘Welcome, in the name of the Deified Master of Mankind, to the delivered shrine world of Ras Shakeh.’

  The Cardinal had decreed that the deliverance of the city required immediate ceremony. His acolytes had laid on all the trappings of a celebratory service – a triumph, overseen by the servants of the Ministorum and accompanied by all the gilt-edged finery he could muster. They had done well in a short time – the Halicon chamber had scarce looked, or smelt, more opulent.

  Such ostentation could almost have been calculated to antagonise the Wolves, who wished for nothing more than to capitalise on the tactical advantage and drive the remains of the enemy further into the desert. Still, Njal had ordered them all to attend, even if only for a few moments while Delvaux said his piece. The two forces would have to work together to cleanse the world, and so would have to find ways to accommodate each other’s idiosyncrasies.

  Njal himself stood in the very centre of the capacious chamber, his Terminator armour flecked with the muck of the battlefield. He dominated the entire hall – a man-mountain of ceramite and animal-hides, crowned with graven imagery and draped with bone icons. In the blistering sunlight, refracted through the lenses of a dozen crystalflex chandeliers, the scarce-cont
ained brutality of his heritage was even more evident than it had been during the night. His every gesture dripped with an almost unconscious menace, underpinned and reinforced by the constant hard hum of his armour’s power units.

  By comparison, to Ingvar’s eyes, the Cardinal looked ludicrous. Delvaux had been smoothed and primped with aggressive rejuvenat, making his sleek jowls shine. His finery was extravagant beyond reason, a level of splendour that seemed calculated to amaze or offend, depending on the audience. He spoke casually of the Emperor’s godhood despite knowing Njal would not share that belief. His voice was soft and smooth, though it carried well enough throughout the hall. A vox-distributor, perhaps, lodged somewhere in the man’s throat.

  When Njal spoke, the contrast was stark – his unfiltered voice was like the low crack of thunder, tempered by an extended lifetime of constant warfare. He had communed with Traitors, xenos, the vilest of the neverborn, and had lived to perform rites of destruction over their corpses. Alone among the occupants of that hall, Njal could most closely claim to have experienced the terrible scope of true divine power, and the knowledge of it lent his every gesture the grim weight of innate dignity.

  When the Stormcaller spoke, all listened.

  ‘This is just the start,’ Njal rasped, looking with poorly disguised contempt at the Cardinal’s sumptuous throne. ‘We must take the war back to the enemy.’

  The Wolves of both Járnhamar and Njal’s retinue stood around the Rune Priest in a semicircular honour guard. De Chatelaine stood at the right hand of the Cardinal, decked in what ceremonial finery she could lay hands on. Sister Callia, the most senior of her command still alive, remained at her side, as did forty of the Sororitas of the Wounded Heart.

  Ras Shakeh’s Guard regiments took up most of the rest of the space. Many had come straight from the field and bore the grime of the fighting openly. For all their fatigue, they stood as firmly to attention as they could. They were devout men, and to witness the Cardinal in their midst was more than most would have hoped for in their brutally short lifetimes.

  The rest of the assembled throng came from the Cardinal’s forces: storm troopers and assault troops in crimson armour, flanked by Battle Sisters of the Order of the Fiery Tear. The Cardinal’s command group was the most striking. Standing at the prelate’s shoulder was a thin man in black robes. A couple of cherubs hovered around him, grinning inanely and belching incense. The man’s eyes flickered back and forth, searching through the throngs before him. He looked nervous.

  Beside him stood a menagerie of warped biomechanics. A Battle Sister lurked imposingly among them, her entire left arm refashioned into a bronze-clad flamer housing. Cables looped up and around it, hung with devotional icons. Her face was similarly augmetic, clustered with arcane sensor bundles that obscured her otherwise alabaster-pale features.

  The Cardinal sniffed. He did that a lot, Ingvar noticed.

  ‘Of course, you are correct,’ Delvaux said. ‘We must fight again soon. But for now, let us remember the source of our salvation.’ He smiled thinly. His flesh looked unusually supple, flexing like fat slopped over gauze. ‘We are all servants of the same power. It was by His will that we found ourselves brought here.’

  Njal grunted noncommittally. Ingvar could sense the impatience coursing through every muscle of his lethal body.

  ‘And you are to be thanked, my lord,’ the Cardinal went on. ‘Without the assistance of your fine warriors, this world would have been lost before we arrived, and we would have taken orbit over a dead city. So on behalf of the Diocese of Hvar Primus, please take my gratitude back to your Great Wolf. Their – and your – service shall not go unrecorded.’

  The psyber-raven perched on Njal’s shoulder extended its wings, as if itching to rake at the Cardinal’s eyes. ‘Record what you wish,’ said Njal. ‘I care not, and nor will Grimnar. We must speak of battle.’

  ‘So we shall. I have already ordered the pursuit. There are other cities – dens of corruption, gripped by the dead hand of contagion. They can be recovered.’

  ‘Recovered?’

  ‘Purged. Cleansed. Whatever word does the labour justice.’

  Njal’s scarred lips tightened in irritation. ‘This whole sector is at war. Pause now, even for an hour, and they will recover.’

  The Cardinal bowed. ‘Correct, and my strategos are already at work planning further deployments.’

  ‘So you have more forces inbound.’

  ‘We do,’ confirmed Delvaux, ‘though they will be in the aether for months. What of your brothers?’

  ‘When they can be spared. For now, no.’

  The Cardinal extended his arms wide then, exposing more fabulous detail on his brocade robes. ‘Then let us – please – take this brief hiatus to rest in a little thankfulness. Let us dwell, for a moment, on the deliverance of this place. The Emperor does not abandon the faithful. He will never abandon the faithful.’

  At that, members of his command group stepped forwards. Cherubs emerged from somewhere behind the throne, pumping incense into the Halicon’s upper reaches. Clanging started up, a rhythm beaten out by hooded acolytes with sutured cymbals for hands. It was smoothly orchestrated, drawn straight from the Ministorum’s millennia-old patterns of devotion.

  The crowd responded instantly, almost involuntarily. Ingvar turned to see fighting men, their features drawn with fatigue, suddenly spark with a kind of desperate gratitude. The Sisters bowed their heads, their lips moving in prayer. The entire place began to sway with the dull rhythm of devotion. Soldiers who had endured terror for weeks suddenly began to break down, tears streaming down grimy faces.

  Njal remained where he was for a moment, his frosty eyes locked with the Cardinal’s. The prelate gazed back at him, a touch of defiance, laced with impudent trepidation, playing across his bland features.

  ‘You may join us, if you wish,’ Delvaux said. ‘None are refused.’

  Njal snorted a short, acerbic laugh. ‘Not for us,’ he said, and gestured towards the chamber doors. His Fenrisian honour guard immediately turned and headed for the grand doors. Before he joined the exodus, Ingvar caught a small look of amusement the Cardinal shared with his black-robed deputy.

  ‘As you wish it,’ called out Delvaux, as robed menials in gold masks shuffled up to attend him. They brought ewers full of boiling water, and braziers glowing with hot embers, and ritual scrolls filled with tight-curled sacred scripts. The clanging cymbals grew in volume, filling the chamber with a cacophonic dirge. ‘Though we shall remember your souls.’

  By then Njal was striding down the aisle towards the daylight beyond, bristling with irascibility, his staff striking the marble heavily. ‘That’s good to know,’ he muttered.

  Ingvar, Gunnlaugur and the others fell in behind the Rune Priest.

  ‘This is going to be interesting,’ remarked Ingvar, under his breath.

  Gunnlaugur nodded sourly. ‘Very.’

  The Wolves convened as far away from the Halicon edifice as they could. The bulk of Njal’s warriors were still engaged in the final stages of Hjec Aleja’s cleansing, so only the pack leaders met with their master to plan the next stage of the hunt.

  Njal had brought three packs of ten with him on his Gladius-class frigate, Heimdall, each one headed by a veteran Grey Hunter. The first was Steinn Fellblade, a sharp-faced, sleek-eyed killer with a jagged, wolf’s-head-engraved broadsword strapped across his armour. The second was Hauki Long-axe, whose favoured twin-headed blade hung from his belt on iron-studded straps. The third was Kjarl Bloodhame, who bore a blackened flamer under the blood-red, age-hardened pelt that gave him his moniker.

  Alongside them stood Álfar the Cold, Njal’s Wolf Guard and shieldbearer. His armour was ancient and gunmetal-dark, marked with icons of Morkai. He carried a storm shield with a wolf’s fanged skull set at the centre, as well as a massive chainsword marked with the ice-rune hjarz. He glared out at
the world with heavy-lidded eyes under a frame of long, slush-grey hair. His tattooed face looked liable to crack if it smiled.

  They had gathered away from the sun, deep in the shadowed chambers of the city where the air was cooler and the stone rough hewn. Only Gunnlaugur had been summoned from Járnhamar. He took his place alongside the others, his armour even more battle-ravaged than theirs, his features darkened by the pitiless Ras Shakeh sun, his restored thunder hammer freshly marked with evidence of kills.

  Each one of those warriors was a truly deadly practitioner of Fenris’s murderous arts of combat. Each one of them was capable of rendering whole regiments of mortals to waste, of tearing down cities and stripping starships clean of life. And each one of them, without hesitation or rancour, bowed his head in submission as Njal entered.

  The Rune Priest came among them, ducking under the low stone archway. The runes on his heavy Terminator plate remained dark, but power hummed from them like heat-wash over an engine. His eyes glittered as if lit by an inner flame, blue as the seas in the Season of Fire. The psyber-raven, Nightwing, perched atop his left wrist. As the Rune Priest took his place, it hopped from his hand and into the shadow of a stone alcove, where it stared out, silent and watchful.

  Njal didn’t speak for some time. He rested his chin on his armour’s gorget, and his flame-red beard fell across the ceramite in matted snarls.

  ‘They know what they’re doing,’ he said at last, his deep voice echoing from the stone. ‘They will build a new Cathedral on the ashes of the old. They will drag pilgrims to their shrine and fill them with new fears.’

  Álfar nodded slowly in agreement, but said nothing. No others dared speak. Njal seemed lost in his own deliberations, and none were going to interrupt those.